My wife and I watched a marriage seminar on DVD this last weekend that we both really enjoyed. It's done by a guy named Mark Grungor and is called "Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage." First of all, it was very good and I highly recommend it to any couple interested in improving their relationship.
It gave us a good time to laugh about our differences, learn some things, and then discuss later the things we agreed with and didn't agree with (which is a very important step after these type of things to make sure they apply to your situation). There were many pearls of wisdom throughout the video, but I'd like to share one that really stuck with me.
I have often been amazed at how God designed men to need sex to feel loved, and how women need love to want sex. For years it has seemed like a big cosmic practical joke, something to frustrate both sexes for all of their married lives. Why? has been the question for many men in this area.
Instead of looking at this as an impossible impasse, however, we need to look at it as a circle in which we both help complete. For me to get the sexual intimacy that I desire, I need to be focusing on loving my wife in the way she wants to be loved. And, for my wife to get the love she wants from me, she must understand that she creates that attitude in me by giving me the sexual intimacy I want.
If husband and wife both had the same needs, it would be much harder for those needs to be fulfilled because we would both be wanting the same thing all the time. But since we have "opposite" needs, we can each focus on fulfilling each other instead of ourselves.
Mark Grungor said the reason why men have the sex drive they have is not because we're dirty, perverted, or sex crazy, but it's a simple way to force us remember to love the girl. Our sexual desire should make us ask ourselves, "How have I loved my wife lately?" and "How can I love her right now?"
Of course the problems arise when we turn our sex drive into a reason to be self-fulfilling and not self-giving. So we must ask ourselves: Am I completing this circle or breaking it?
June 26, 2008
Why Doesn't She Want Sex Like I Do?
May 29, 2008
Bad Marriages Aren't Funny
One of the things I hated to hear as a newlywed was, "One year, huh? So you guys still like each other!" Still like each other? Is marriage supposed to be one big practical joke on the unsuspecting couple? For sure my marriage has changed over the years, but I most definitely still "like" my wife.
This thought comes to me today because I saw a post over at the blog Husband Clothes that is nothing but funny quotes about Marriage, Sex, Men, and Women. Though I always enjoy humor that points out the unique differences between men and women, hearing negative jokes on marriage never really hits me the way it's supposed to. For example:
- "My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met." Rodney Dangerfield
- "I don’t think I’ll get married again. I think I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give her a house." Lewis Grizzard
- "The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy. The happy wish to be married, the married wish to be dead." Ann Landers
None of this is at all supposed to insult the writer over at Husband Clothes, it's just the fact that we have these jokes that really gets to me. Is marriage really that awful? Goodness I hope your answer isn't yes. And if it is, have you really ever mulled it over and asked yourself how to change it? I mean, wouldn't life be a lot more enjoyable if you could work on making it like it used to be instead of just complaining to your buddies about how it is now?
And coming back to those bright-eyed newlyweds: Why in the world do we even want to joke about how bad it will be? We may only be joking, but the power of suggestion is very real. Our joke today could be someone else's marriage five years from now.
And bad marriages just aren't funny.
May 18, 2008
Satisfy Your Hungry Eyes
One of my favorite things about being a man is Woman. God did something amazing with Human Being 2.0 and I will never get over it. He designed men to like to look, and he designed women to like being looked at. That design fits perfectly into marriage and can create wonderful intimacy and closeness if we work it right.
Most husbands are not married to the twenty-two-year-old Photoshopped cover models and the nineteen-year-old college girls at the beach. And for the husbands who are, they won't be for long – age catches up to us all. (That and those who want real commitment don't go looking for the girls who advertise.) Too many married men get caught up looking and lusting after these kinds of girls and they begin to take their own wives' beauty for granted. I am married to an absolutely gorgeous woman, but the more I start noticing the other women around me, the less I am affected by her beauty. And I want to be affected by her beauty.
Televesion, magazines, the internet and summer serve up an entire buffet of beautiful women daily. By starving your eyes from outside sexual stimulation, you can train your brain to define beauty based on the woman you sleep next to every night, and that is a pretty awesome trick.
The more we can keep our eyes away from Maxim and MTV, the harder it will be for us to find flaws in our wives' figures. When we can learn to starve our eyes of the sexual stimulation we get from all women – and only let our eyes go wild for one woman – we will remember how beautiful she is, and she will feel the difference.
So keep your eyes hungry.
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May 9, 2008
Marriage Is Not 50/50
I hate it when I hear married couples say things to each other like, "It's your turn," or "I did it last time." Even before I was married, hearing exchanges like this made me feel really uncomfortable. They reminded me of how my sister and I would argue over chores, and I most certainly didn't want to marry my sister. Hearing people say, "Marriage is a 50/50 relationship" didn't sit well with me either. Then one day the thought hit me:
Marriage isn't 50/50, it's 100/100.
The 50/50 mindset is self-seeking. It's when we say things like, "I did the dishes last time, so I don't to have do them this time." And whenever you are asked to do more than your share, you are tempted to be put out. 100/100, however, carries a whole different perspective. Instead of being focused on what you give with your half and what you get from hers, you are solely seeking to satisfy her needs. You'll still both take turns, but not because it's your right, but because you're submitting to each other's love. And 100/100 keeps no record of who did what last. This is yet another way of answering the question, How have I shown my wife that I love her today?
There are many times when it is my turn to do the dishes, but because I have something else I need to do (like this very post, for example), my wife goes ahead and does them. We don't keep track, we just keep working at 100%.
When we are focused on each doing only our own half we are centered on where my job ends and hers begins. But marriage is about teamwork, and what team ever got anywhere with the players only giving fifty percent? If we want to succeed in marriage, both sides have to give it their all, all the time.
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