Yesterday I posted a status that said “Men: When you meet your wife’s emotional needs in all likelihood she will meet your sexual needs”.
Some men were trying to tell me that a man can’t meet the emotional needs of a woman. One even said, “unless he marry’s his twin its impossible”. Another said, “they would buy a beer to any man who has met the emotional needs of any woman”. I don’t drink but he may owe me something, right?
Not only can he meet her needs but God commands it in marriage! If you dont think you can be there emotionally for a woman then you don’t need to get married. Yes, you don’t have to be perfect but you have to at least give her what you got and grow from there.
Is it easy? Sometimes and some days it may be while other times it isn’t. Life and marriage isn’t supposed to be easy but its worth it when done God’s way.
God said for men to love their wives as Christ loved the church. That means agape kind of love. That means sacrificing your EGO for her because Christ sacrificed everything for the church!
Society has brainwashed so many men to believe that they can’t be emotional and if they are then they are really a woman but thats a lie. With God we become more emotional as we grow closer to him. God changes everything for both the husband and wife.
The more you are willing to grow your marriage the more intimacy that will flow into your marriage. Intimacy comes from trust and trust comes from being vulnerable with each other.
Vulnerability is key in any marriage because without it you have no marriage. Being vulnerable creates trust in the two of you and that in turns fills your intimacy cup. When intimacy is overflowing in a marriage, they are connected like never before.
The more vulnerable you are with her, the more she can be that to you as well and the more the two of you will connect in ways that you can only imagine!
I am telling you, its worth it but it takes work and as you work the rewards of an extraordinary marriage are there!
The enemy understands all of this and thats why he does everything to keep the two disconnected. He knows if you are disconnected from God and each other, he wins because all the other parts of marriage will start to fall apart and both of you start fading away.
Have you ever seen couples divorce and say we just grew apart. They didn’t just grow apart, they just did’t do the daily work that keeps them connected on a daily basis.
So what do you do?
Many people put 1 hour a day into self-improvement. Do you realize that if you also put 1 hour a day into marriage growth, that would change everything. You put the work in daily!
It’ doesn’t happen over night but the more you learn about each other, the more you read and study on marriage and communication the more you will be able to meet her needs.
What does that look like? Read daily from not only the bible but also marriage and communication books. Practice what you learn. Listen to 2-3 sermons a week on marriage. With the internet at our fingertips, find a few preachers you like and search their sermons. there are thousands of them.
Start talking to each other instead of at each other. Find out who each other are. Listen to each other. Be there for each other. Really get to know each other emotionally, mentally & spiritually! Its the small things you do each day that move you forward or backwards in marriage.
God expects you as the man to take the lead here even though it may be out of your comfort zone. He holds you more responsible for the marriage than your wife and yes he holds her responsible too.
It all starts today. You have no idea where your marriage can be 10 years from now. if you do nothing, you may not even be married in 10 years but if you start today towards being there emotionally for your wife, your marriage will blossom from where you are today into something extraordinary!
Take a chance and be vulnerable!
Living an Inspired Marriage,
Chris Benton
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The article is well intended. Unfortunately it would appear that the motivation is to satisfy phallic needs. Quid Pro Quo. I’m really sick of that thinking parading about in church circles as Godly. True Love is when you love and are simply abused back, verbally and emotionally assaulted. I have become a Doormat Christian. Christ calls us to be doormats. There is no reward for loving those who love you back. We are to be kind and loving to those who abuse us. I think many wives verbally and emotionally abuse their husbands, in many cases due to emotional/mental problems. They look great at church, but I hear off to the side, differently. I suppoe it sounds really manly to think “We” Men, are in control. It supports a manly Christian View Point, to obtain credit for a successful marriage. But I think what is expoused here is the exception rather than the rule. It takes two people focused on Christ to obtain that rare nirvana expoused in this article. Horizontal focus does not work. A godly woman seeks God as her covering, not her husband. Otherwise you end up in the same situation as the Catholic Church, where priests are needed because they think Jesus is no where around to be found. How silly. Jesus is inside us. So it is better to be abused , which in my experience (what I grew up in), is how it works. Jesus is teaching me to love back despite the abuse. I am learning how to do that. As a Christian I expect to be abused. Christ calls me to be abused and love back anyway. So I am working on letting Christ in me to be my all sufficiency, not my lower phallic self. Love gives. It doesn’t seek self satisfaction. So I am quite happy to be abused, ignored and put down. As James says, count it all joy. Indeed that is what it means to be called a Christian… It is not for blue birds of happiness. Pursuit of anything but Christ, leads to nothing but bitterness. So I am content only in Christ, not my wife, not my phallic sympbol, not my manliness, not my bible knowledge, not my wisdom, not my paycheck and not my bank account. It is better to want nothing but Christ and to know nothing except Him crucified and to participate in His sufferings.
My apologies for a few of the errata mis-spellings in previous post. I just wanted to end my comments with the final note…
So I thank God for my sufferings, which teach me to rest only in Christ.
No person can ever give me that rest, not even my Wife,
and no husband can ever satisfy a Wife’s emotional needs, that only Christ can Satisfy.
But if both are focused on Jesus, we can both learn about Christ, who is the ony one sufficient for our emotional needs. And by that we learn Agape love together.