Marriage is significant and deserving of our utmost best to ensure it flourishes and has the best chance of success. I don’t know about you, but knowing what to do in marriage does not come naturally. Perhaps it does for you. If it does, then you are blessed, and I want to be your friend. Or you could tell me it will all be alright.
For a marriage to be successful, and it most definitely can, you need to resolve yourself because you are wrong and that she is right. Isn’t this what you have heard from almost everyone that wants to give you their unsolicited marriage advice. I myself have fallen prey to this kind of jest but have always meant it in jest. Marriage is so much more than simply giving in to your spouse. Marriage is about mutual respect and love. It is choosing to lay yourself down daily for their sake. I know that it is not very popular in today’s culture. We are told that the idea of sacrificing oneself for the opposite sex is sexist and demeaning! What a load of rubbish. Sacrificial love is the only way marriage is going to work. You can’t always both be right. Both of you can’t lead at the same time all the time. Therein lies one of the great joys of marriage. Learning to work together and to rely on one another’s strengths is an awesome part of the adventure that is marriage.
Marriage is an adventure of epic proportions. It is filled with joy and laughter, romance and intimacy, high’s and low’s. It will provide you with the opportunity to see how selfish you are and what your priorities are. Forgive me if it seems as if I am trying to paint a bad picture of marriage. I am not trying to, nor am I trying to discourage anyone from getting married. It is, in fact, because I hold marriage in such high regard that I want to make sure you know what you are getting into so that when the first bump comes, or a major blow up happens, you don’t simply decide to be done with it. Too many people give up on marriage so easily and throw away something precious because they are unwilling to work through difficult situations. Do not be deceived; difficult situations will come. The romantic image you have in your head of what marriage will be like before you get married is just that, a romantic image that you created in your head. The image tends to change when someone else’s head joins the design team.
I think women have a more romantic view of marriage than men do. Men tend to think about marriage in terms of what it can give them. This is not meant to be sexist or selfish; it’s just the way that we think. We also think of it in terms of what we can do for our future wives. Permeated through all of this, of course, is the promise of sex. I dare say that most men who get married do so because they want to have sex. I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit into your lovely romantic idea of love and marriage, ladies, but it is what it is. Men do not see a problem with this, oddly enough. For a man, sex is as closely tied to respect as love is for women. In a way, I know I am stretching here; you could say that a woman marrying for love is the same as a man marrying for sex. I can almost hear the indignation! Only a man would say that. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps I am not. Regardless, men and women come to marriage, expecting different things because we are different. Let’s move on before every woman on the planet hates me.
I want to put down some thoughts on being the husband that my wife needs me to be and who she deserves. My wife is an amazing woman. She serves her heart out and is a fabulous mother. She also endeavors to understand me and what my needs and wants are and tries to fulfill them. I know this and see it every day. Seeing her do this only makes me want to please her even more. I don’t mean to please her in the sense of completing tasks or fulfilling duties. I want to love her the way that makes her come alive. I want to empower her to do all that she desires to do. I want to lead her in an honoring and loving way. My wife knows my failures and has seen my flaws. I have not kept anything hidden from her. And through it all, she chooses to love me still. If you only knew me well enough, you would know it is nothing less than sincere love that can do that. Love is a choice; make no mistake, and for her to choose to love me despite me is absolutely mind blowing. This woman is amazing, and she deserves my absolute best!
Here are a few things that I have learned being married:
1. Never Forget That She Said Yes
It is so easy to think that your wife is mad at you for whatever reason and that it’s the couch tonight. We tend to beat ourselves up when she is upset with us. Our wives can forget just how much power their words have over us. The moment my wife verbalizes doubt or disappointment in me, then I am crushed. I feel disrespected and unloved. The person I love most in life has shown some dissatisfaction in me, and that hurts. My best friend can say the same thing to me, and I won’t care. My boss can chew me out and disrespect me in front of others, and it will hurt, but it won’t come close to my wife being angry or disappointed in me. For good or bad, our wives have a lot of influence and power over us. One would hope that your spouse is not trying to crush you but is simply trying to voice how they feel, hoping that it will result in positive growth. The hard part is for us to remember that and choose not to think that they hate us.
Remember, your wife said yes when you asked her to marry you. She is in it for the long run. She really does love you and wants to see you succeed. Loving her the right way is remembering that and responding with maturity and grace.
2. Chivalry Is Only Dead When You Stop Being Chivalrous
When I was still courting my wife, I would go out of my way to be helpful and chivalrous. I did my best to make sure that she noticed what I thought about her through my actions. I showed her I valued her time and that her opinion was important. She understood I enjoyed helping her do things, be it with tasks or fun activities. She knew I respected her and wanted to be around her. I did all these things because I was trying to impress her, and because I believed it was the right thing to do. This is what you do with someone that you are pursuing. This is how you act toward someone you intend to marry. When you start to think in that direction, it increases even more. Everything you do then becomes about them. And then you get married, and for some reason, something changes. Call it the maturity of familiarity. We become familiar with one another. The last barrier has been broken, and now we stand before one another, hiding nothing. Everything I have is yours, and everything you have is mine.
In this transition, I believe men subconsciously decide that they can now stop working so hard to impress their wives. Please don’t read that and think that what your husband felt toward you is fake. It’s as if we killed the dragon, swept the princess off her feet, and now what? I have her, and she’s already promised me that she is not going anywhere, so what’s the problem. Unfortunately, men, women do not think this way. In fact, their expectations might only increase now that you are married. What is a guy to do then?
The only reason you stopped pursuing your wife is that you chose to. You made the decision, be it consciously or not, to get comfortable. Getting married does not mean you stop pursuing your wife. As if you know enough about marriage to sit back and relax. Marriage is hard work and not for the faint of heart. You must choose again to pursue her. You must choose again to be chivalrous. Remember why it is you got married. I hope you got married because you loved this person and wanted to spend the rest of your life with them. Don’t stop pursuing her just because you both said, “I do.” The moment you stop being chivalrous, you stop loving her the way you did when you first got married.
3. There’s More To Marriage Than Sex
I can hear the clinks as men are picking up the stones on this one. I mentioned earlier that a lot of men get married because they want to have sex. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that men want to do what is right regarding sex and knowing it to be in the context of marriage pursues marriage to that end.
Sex is awesome! It was meant to be awesome. It was designed to be the best thing you could physically feel in your body in marriage. I said physically, not emotionally, or mentally. Though if you are doing it right, you will feel it there also. Men place a very high value on sex. If women think men place a 10 out of 10 in importance, men will say it’s more like 1 million. I am not trying to be funny here. Men have probably thought about sex more than 30 times before lunchtime. That might be an exaggeration, but the point stands: men have placed an extremely high value on sex. This is because sex is amazing, and also because this is how we are wired.
Having said that, though, I want to challenge what men think about sex. Just because we do think about it as much as we do does not make it healthy. Especially when we expect our spouses to want sex as much as we do. The odds are they probably do not think about it as much as you do. Sorry if you don’t like that, fellas. Sex is important, but it is not more important than your wife. I am a guy, so I know how to treat sex like an act and not an intimate encounter with my wife.
You probably thought about sex a lot when you were younger and leading up to your marriage. You probably had an idea of just how much sex you were going to have once you got married. I am sorry to be the breaker of bad news here; it is nowhere near the amount that you thought it would be. This is not because your wife lacks in any way; it’s quite simply because your stomach is bigger than your eyes. If you decide to have sex 3 times a week for an hour at a time (yeah, right), then that’s 3 hours out of a 168 hour week. Doubling it is 6 hours out of a 168 hour week. You get where I am going with this. Do not think that when you get married, it’s just going to be sex all the time. There will be sex, and it will be awesome, but it is just a part of marriage. There is so much more to discover and enjoy.
Be careful not to chase sex when you get married. You will end up disappointed and frustrated. You will end up pushing away the only thing that can help you be successful in marriage: your wife. One more thing, stop looking at pornography. Pornography kills and will not improve your sex life. Just ask your wife how she feels about it, and you will know in no uncertain terms.
Having said all that, I want to tell you one more thing: have lots of sex in marriage! Have as much sex with your spouse as you are able. It is a powerful glue that will keep you close. Married folks, please feel free to practice number 3 now before reading number 4.
4. Your Wife Wants To Know If She Is Doing A Good Job
Our wives really do want to please us. They want to take care of us and show us that they love and respect us. In many ways, it is similar to men. The only way my wife knows if she is indeed “doing a good job” is when I tell her. This can be verbally or through my actions. She needs to hear that she is doing a good job, and I appreciate everything she does. The longer you are married, the more frequently you will see the cues. The cues are always there, and they are subtle. In fact, it might have been easier for those guys Armageddon to drill and blow up the giant asteroid hurtling toward the planet than it is to figure out the “cues.”
Perhaps it’s not that bad. This really is a simple one to understand and implement. Do you love your wife? Do you want the best for them in all that they do? If you answered yes, then there is only one course of action for you. Tell them how much they mean to you every opportunity you get. Your day is filled with opportunities for you to tell your wife how wonderful she is.
When I say that your wife needs to hear that she is “doing a good job,” I am not trying to paint her as this weak and childlike person that needs the constant affirmation of a man to have value. Just look around you, and you will see what your wife is competing with. How far can you go down the road without seeing a billboard of some half-naked women in lingerie? Every time there is a commercial break, there are ads filled with sexual innuendoes. At football games, there are cheerleaders just happily bouncing around for your enjoyment. On the cover of almost every magazine is the image of the “perfect woman.” One that never stops smiling and is always up for exciting sex and knows how to make you feel like a man. If you think that your wife does not see this and does not know that there is a battle going on for your attention, you are a fool. You are an even bigger fool if you think your wife does not notice you staring at these “advertisements.”
I have only lightly touched on pornography and the havoc it causes. In case you did not know this, let me tell you: pornography is fake. In reality, it is staged sex that takes hours to shoot, not because they are having so much fun that they can’t stop. No, it takes that long because it is made up. They have to record for that long to piece together a film of the best parts for their shoot. It’s fake sex between people that get paid to do it. It’s not love or sincere. The best porn can’t hold a candle next to sincere, sacrificial love, in marriage.
Your wife is competing with all these things, and she needs to hear that she is better. She needs to hear that she wins, hands down. Just smiling and saying thank you when she does something nice is not good enough. I’m not saying you need to break out into song and dance every time she does something, but you have to make the woman know how much you appreciate her. She is your biggest champion and the one person that wants to see you exceed most in life. Tell her how amazing she is every day.
5. Honesty Is The Best Policy
Honesty is something that should be very easy to talk about but quite often is not. It can be a terrifying thing to decide to be honest with your spouse. I know that sounds like a “duh,” but it’s true. I said earlier that our wives have a lot of power over us because we value them highly. This, in turn, can lead to us not telling them something for fear of what might happen. This is, of course, based on a lie that we choose to believe. We do not want to be honest with our spouse because only one of two things is going to happen: Either they are going to be so hurt and crushed they will hate us for life, or they are going to be so furious they are going to hate us for life and possibly cause us significant boldly harm.
We lie to ourselves that if we are “dishonest” with them, we are really protecting them from being hurt. By not telling them the truth, we really love them. This is a hazardous road to go down. I will say that there are times where this is, in fact, sound counsel. I have heard of pastors giving that form of counsel in a certain kind of situation. It’s not just issued based as much as it is the spouse’s personality and overall health of the marriage. One should never decide this on their own. You need an unbiased and objective perspective here. I am not smart or old enough to be giving that kind of counsel. When most men decide to withhold the truth from their spouses, they are doing it out of fear and not love. Anything done out of fear will not lead to life or growth.
Being honest does not have to be scary. Believe it or not, your wife really wants you to be honest with her about your feelings, thoughts, and life. There might be something “bad” that you need to come clean on, and that might be difficult and cause some pain, but that still is no reason not to do it if you and your wife cultivate an environment where you tell each other what you are thinking and how things make you feel then honesty will be easy, even about things in your past for instance or sin. The two of you are a team and need to stand together. If you have not cultivated an environment where sharing is encouraged and openness and honesty are valued, this might be harder but not impossible. Start with small things and work your way up from there. You don’t have to unload every single thing you have been keeping from her all at once. Start little by little, and trust will grow.
Your wife is your biggest fan and your support. She wants to know you deeper every single day. Being honest with her and yourself even will strengthen your marriage. I have yet to meet the wife that says her husband goes too deep all the time or that he shares too much. Our wives desire to know us completely and to be completely loved by us.
Some Final Thoughts
I hope this encourages you and challenges you to be a better husband to your wife. Marriage is an amazing adventure that only works when both of you are on board to make it work. As the husband, it starts with you to man up and be the husband your wife deserves. I know it is not sunshine and roses all the time, but that’s alright. I love my wife, and I have decided that I am standing next to her no matter what comes our way. She is my biggest fan, after all.
If you have read this and come away feeling absolutely miserable because you know that you are not doing any of these things or are doing them, but your wife is just not reciprocating your actions, you need to talk to someone. It would be best if you got some men in your life that can speak truth into your life and situation. You absolutely do not need to talk to another woman. The reason is simple: you have a wife with whom you are experiencing some tension. You do not need another woman on whose shoulder you can rest your head. Do not lose heart; there is always hope.
I love my wife and am determined to become the husband she deserves.