Real Marriage_ The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark Driscoll [30]
We may have more than one love language, or see our love language change in different seasons of life. For example, a wife who used to enjoy touch may find that with a newborn nursing baby, her body needs a break, and what she would really appreciate from her husband is some service in the form of help with the baby. The problem is that most of us give and receive love according to our own love language without considering the love language our spouses prefer and loving them in their language. For husbands, this means we must pay attention to our wives and also ask them how we can honor them emotionally, even if it doesn’t come naturally to us.
We cannot demand to be loved only in the ways we want to receive love, but also need to be willing to see the different ways our spouses are expressing love. For example, if you like touch and gifts, but your spouse loves to serve you through time and acts of service, be willing to accept those and encourage her to be creative in other forms as well. This takes attentiveness and was something we did not do well in the early years of our marriage. For example, I (Mark) love touch, but Grace prefers service, so I would sit on the couch alone at night and stew while she was busy doing chores rather than simply being with me. Meanwhile, I would buy her nice gifts when what she really wanted was service—she was sometimes overwhelmed with the demands of young children. God has helped us to understand and take better care of each other, so things have changed.
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Too many men are more like conquerors than explorers. They get married— which is akin to landing on the beach of an unexplored land—yet fail to explore the landscape and all its wonder. Our wives do not want to be conquered; they want to be explored emotionally.
Honor Your Wife Verbally
How do you speak to your wife? Do you have nasty nicknames for her? Do you raise your voice? Do you threaten her? Do you give backhanded compliments? Some men say, “I would never hit a woman.” How about with your tongue? (Both in speaking to your wife and about her.) When your wife is not there and you’re with your buddies, how do you speak about her? What do you say about her? Your children will pick this up as well. If you start saying critical, cutting, demeaning, cruel, or disrespectful things about your wife, your children will be left in the awful position of choosing between their mother and father. Invariably some of your children will despise their own mother and speak evil of her in an effort to remain loyal to their father. They’re casualties of war.
As a man, you could defuse this and take away that fear by honoring your wife verbally and speaking honestly, respectfully, and lovingly to her and about her. God hears everything; you are not getting away with anything.
Honor Your Wife Financially
Admittedly, many men hit tough economic times due to unemployment or injury. They want to work but have a hard time finding a decent job. Such men need encouragement to keep seeking gainful employment and the humility to take whatever job(s) they can to feed their families. My own dad was a construction worker who often had seasons without work due to the economy, and I deeply respect the fact that he would seek side jobs and do most anything to make ends meet. When he finally broke his back, he reinvented himself by going to college, getting a degree, and pursuing a new career. Through it all, my mom stayed home to raise five kids and, although times were tough, we got through it without ever going into debt.
The Bible plainly says, “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”a In Genesis 3, as a result of sin, the woman’s curse was in relation to being married and having children. This means that a woman will be stretched and sanctified as a wife and mother. Much of the frustration and pain,