The Seven-Year (or 14-Year or 21-year or . . .) Itch

05/15/2012

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I have recently had occasion to talk with some men about one of the biggest problems in marriages, and biggest causes of divorces and affairs. The problem, put simply, is unhappiness.

When we get married, we often have the idea that our married life will be one of constant joy. That is what we are told, anyway. "The Joys of Wedded Bliss" is a frequent theme of wedding homilies. Marriage is "given" to us, we are told, to bring us joy and fulfillment. "It is not good that the man should be alone," we are told again and again (forgetting that no one is ever alone in our modern world). Each of us promises to love and honor and cherish the other. 

Then, life intervenes. 

The concept of a seven-year itch is an old one. The idea is that at around that time, marriage ceases to be the joy we were all told it would be, at least on a 24/7 basis. This has a lot to do with children, but also with other things that complicate our lives. When we are first married, everything is new and interesting. After seven years, there is not a lot new anymore about our spouse. Our jobs tend to be more demanding. Our children are now around and take up a lot of our time. Wives, in particular, tend to focus much more on their children and husbands feel left out, unloved. Sometimes, the wife feels unloved as well. 

We take nice photos of smiling wives and husbands and children, but the next day we have to get up and fix meals and go to work and do laundry. 

At some point, each partner will realize that he or she is unhappy. I do not mean just "kind of unhappy," but really and seriously unhappy. Their home life is not satisfying. Their sex life is not satisfying. They get very little attention from their spouse. They seem to spend so much money on this whole "family" thing and get very little out of it, they think.

They often leave at these times. They are so unhappy that they believe that the wedding was a lie and the marriage was a lie and that no one loves them anymore. They want something more. So, they leave. They blow up the life of their spouse (who may have been very happy). They blow up their own lives. They want happiness more than they want to stay married. 

I can tell you all kinds of Hallmark Card junk about marriage, but here is the reality. You are married. One of the keys to surviving bad times (and unhappy times are bad times) is to remember that you are married. The option of "I will leave and be happy" is not an option. In the absence of adultery or abuse (and inattention is not abuse), you are married. 

A person who has a disability is in an interesting spot. He can spend his whole life being bitter about his disability or he can accept the reality of the disability and seek happiness anyway. If he chooses to be bitter, to live his life dreaming of what it would be like not to be disabled, then he will never be happy. The disability is what it is. 

As much as you might dislike the comparison, marriage is the same. You are married. That is the end of that issue. There is no option of divorce. There is no "if I left her" option. There is no "if I left him" option. You are married. You begin your live, every day, with that understanding. I will find happiness within the reality of my marriage because I am married. I am not a child to take back my promises from long ago. I am a man and I live within the life I have built. 

When you find yourself unhappy in your marriage, remember that the solution is not leaving the marriage. The solution is fixing your life. The solution is understanding that you are not married because you "made a mistake," but that you are where you are for good reasons. God is sovereign. You are precisely where you are to be. 

Leaving is not the answer for an unhappy married person. Leaving is never the answer, in the absence of adultery or abuse. 

The answer is trusting in God and recommitting yourself to the person to whom you are married.  
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What Is He Thinking?

05/01/2012

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In talking with husbands, I am struck by how little they realize about one of the great difficulties with being a wife, especially a "stay at home" wife. You see, wives do not know what we (husbands) are thinking. 

Men and women tend to be very different in responding to issues. Women like to "talk things out." Men do not. Women seek wisdom in conversations, in sharing, in listening to each other's ideas. Men do not. Men just think about things. Men prefer to consider issues privately and to speak only when they have an answer or, if pressed, only when they realize they have no answer. Women, therefore, often talk about options that even they reject, whereas men think of such conversations as a waste of time. 

For wives, this is a big problem, because you never know what he is thinking. You may think you know. Our culture is filled with the idea that we "really know" what other people are thinking. This is false. Scripture warns us of this reality. "Who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?" 1 Cor. 2:11. We may have some idea about what someone else is thinking, but we do not know. 

And he won't tell you what he is thinking. Asking him "what are you thinking" is not going to get you a truthful answer, because once you ask the question, he is then thinking about your question. 

I think this is a real challenge for wives. So much of your life is dependent upon your husband (just as his is dependent upon you). Loving your husband means living, every day, with this little bit of a lack of knowledge. You will catch yourself trying to guess what he is thinking and often judging what you think he is thinking. I remember my wife once accusing me of looking at another woman inappropriately and I was puzzled because I could not remember the other woman even being in the room. I was looking at something else where she happened to be. 

But how was my wife to know that? And how could I possibly convince her of it?

Loving anyone requires us to accept that we do not know what they are thinking. It doesn't matter how many clever shows we have watched, or how much "Oprah" we have seen, or what the latest magazine article says, you really don't know. And he does not know what you are thinking either. 

Every day, you live with a man you do not fully understand. This is one of the great mysteries of marriage. It requires patience, including the patience that allows each of us to have our own thoughts. It requires faith that God is sovereign and that He is in control of what happens to us. It requires love, to accept and serve someone as fallible and as secret as our partner in life.     
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A Wedding and Marriage -- Connected but very different

04/17/2012

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Weddings are kind of amazing. This has not always been true, of course. There was a time, not so long ago, when "big weddings" were events for rich people. Now, it seems that everyone must have a big wedding. Even people marrying for the third or fourth time want the whole thing done "right."

I wonder about how we got here. Until the middle of the last century (the 1900's, for those who have forgotten), weddings were simple affairs for almost everyone. The bride would wear her nicest dress, the groom would wear his suit, and the family and friends would all gather. The minister officiated in the church attended by one of the two parties (usually the bride). Very simple.

Rich people, of course, had very different weddings. They had expensive gowns and catered receptions. But they were rich. They did not have these things to impress anyone, but just because that was what they did.

Now, almost everyone wants a big wedding. More accurately, women seem to want big weddings. It is "their day," we are endlessly told. To this end, their fathers are expected to spend thousands of dollars, proving how they "love" their little girl. It is really rather sad.

After all, the services are all pretty much alike. The cliches are the same. People light the "unity candle," which is kind of cute but not very meaningful on any real level. Often, they will have "communion" with just the married couple, which is really odd given that it is called "communion" because it is supposed to be of all believers, but I digress.

The key is that the wedding itself does not really mean anything. The wedding I attended this weekend was, without question, the finest ceremony of any kind I have ever attended. The church was beautiful, the dresses were beautiful, the reception was as perfect as anything can be. The couple looked beautiful. Everything was perfect.

Yet, I wondered. They are married now and, once the ceremony is over, they are just as married (and no more married) than any other couple. Everyone had fun and the economy was nicely stimulated, but, at the end, it is still a young man and a young woman beginning an immense task.

I hope someone told them about all this. I hope that someone, at some time, said to them that they should think very seriously about the whole situation, not just love the wedding. They have good parents and good ministers and I am pretty sure someone talked to them. They seemed to take it all very well.

I hope they know how important this all is. I hope that all the cliches of the service actually meant something to them. I hope they understand that all the noise and bands and crowds will do them no good when they hit their first difficult situation.

I am always thankful for my own wedding. My bride did it all. We had a small wedding, in her small church, with family and friends. Our reception was a pot-luck brought by her family and friends. Our "honeymoon" was moving into our new place. Our photographer was her uncle (we never even look at the pictures). Everything in our wedding said "we are starting a normal life together." I am glad of all that.

A beautiful wedding is a lot of fun. I enjoyed this weekend's wedding as much as any I have attended, except for two. First, my own wedding. Second, the one wedding I performed. In that wedding, the bride and groom decided to forego the usual cliches and have a church celebration of their marriage, and it was beautiful of them to do so.

I love a nice wedding. I hope it will be the start of a wonderful relationship.
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A Wedding Toast

04/14/2012

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Last night, my wife and I attended a wedding rehearsal dinner for the daughter of a close friend. At some point, of course, people got up to give toasts and tell stories. I did not say anything because I am not a close friend of the young people. But if I had, I think I would have said something like this:

Our God is an amazing God. All that He does is beyond our full understanding. We see the complexities and beauties of His creation everywhere we look. From the mountains, to the oceans, to the trees, to the leaves on the trees, each thing is complex, subtle, beautifully arranged. Even in small things, His hand always leaves marks of His love for us. As we peel an orange, we find segments and segments within segments, all there by His grace.

He does the same thing in the marriages He has given us. Those of us here, who have been married many years, can tell you this. He has created each of you, filled with your own thoughts and your own ideas, your own wants and your own needs. And, now, He brings the two of you together in a married couple.

You think, sitting here, that you know what this marriage will bring. You believe that you know the one you love so well that nothing will surprise you. But God always surprises you. For a Creator who lavished such care on oranges and leaves, imagine the care He has lavished on each of you.

Tomorrow evening, at your wedding, His creative powers will be shown again in you. You will learn so much more than you know now about each other. In years to come, it will seem, looking back, that you knew nothing on your wedding day. The depths of who you are, and Who He is, will amaze you.

In 30 years, and I speak from experience, you will be amazed at what God has wrought.

In the book "The Magician's Nephew," CS Lewis tells of a boy and girl who observe the creation of the world of Narnia. It is a beautiful story, filled with amazement and even fear, as life comes from nothing.

Tonight, we, your friends, are like that boy and girl. We stand and watch as God creates a new thing, a living, breathing, relationship like nothing that ever existed before. To Him, therefore, and to you, we raise a toast. To new life and to new lives. May God bless you as you begin yours.
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The More Things Change

04/13/2012

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For a lot of us, marriage represented a kind of "fixed state" into which we were entering. We knew our parent's marriages, or so we thought, and they seemed pretty stable. Whether good or bad, they looked stable to us. We did not think of ourselves as changing and we certainly did not think our new spouse was going to change, so everything would be "just like today."

We learned, within a few weeks at least, that this was not true. Your suddenly sexual relationship alone made a big difference, if you were celibate until marriage, but everything changed. You suddenly lived together and saw each other all the time. You saw your spouse not just when they were ready to be seen, but all the time. Things change. 

Getting used to that change is sort of the center part of being married. You come to realize that all the "stable" marriages you saw when you were young only looked stable. They were actually dynamic relationships, changing all the time. The people who had you as a baby (when they were 25 or so) were very different from the people who raised you (in their 30's) and the people who hold your children as their grandchildren (in their 50's). 

That is kind of what it is all about. I realized, the other day, that I actually do not even remember the details of my marriage relationship from 20 years ago. I cannot remember the tones of voice that seemed so important at the time. I don't remember how much we laughed, or cried, or just sat silent. I remember some events, but the day to day experience of the marriage is not something easy to remember. (What I do remember, I do not trust. I know how memory clouds things.)

So, lots of things change. Everything, in fact, changes. You change. He changes. Your situations change. Everything changes.

Yet, still, there is something that must be said. I remember more than you might think. I do not remember all the little things of my life, but I remember my wife. I remember how she looked when I married her. I remember how she looked on our first night together. I remember how much I loved her then, knowing her only a very little compared to now. Sometimes, when I look at her now, I see the girl I married, as she was when I married her. I cannot look at myself and see myself as a young man, but I can look at her and remember her as a young wife.

Everything changes and we deal with those changes. We grow and our love grows and we have hard times. Sometimes, it seems that the changes may overwhelm us.

But, if we stay together, we build something worth having. Through all the changes, if we hold to each other, we end up with something that cannot be broken.
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Laughing at Things

04/12/2012

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Right now, my life is going pretty well (except for money, but why be depressing now). I am enjoying my life. One of the things I do when I enjoy something is I smile. I also laugh. I enjoy things, I smile, and I laugh. 

This drives my wife crazy. To her, laughing is what you do when something is funny. When she hears a laugh (even when she sees a smile), she assumes that I am "laughing at" something. If I am laughing because of how much I love her, she assumes I am "laughing at" her and is offended. 

Is that about as good an example of human relationships as you can find? I laugh because I am happy and in love with her. My wife remains a beautiful woman and I am happy to be married ot her. I sometimes see her and just smile at the pleasure of her presence. She interprets this as being unloving. AARGH!

How often this is how our lives go. Everyone is doing something logical and reasonable and kind, but it is not perceived that way by everyone. I was raised in a happy family where smiling and laughing were how we related. She was raised in an unhappy family where negative attitudes and judgment were frequent. Her response to my laughing is as automatic as my laughing is. She is being reasonable, I am being reasonable.
 
Going forward in your life, be very careful about how you interpret what your husband does. Remember that his life was not like yours before you were married. No matter how long you have been married, he is not exactly like you. He may not mean what you think he means. 

So, how am I supposed to deal with this? I don't know. I enjoy my life and I love my wife and would not know how to stop smiling and laughing. The trouble is that I really do love her and am happy to be with her. 

Smiling and laughing is pretty much a natural response. :)

   
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Hard Days

04/03/2012

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One of the great struggles for all of us is dealing with hard days. We are surrounded, each of us, by sinful people. We know that we are to love them, which, biblically, means we are to seek their good, not our good, in our relationships with them. We are to be patient with them, kind to them, gentle with them. The same thing is true in our marriage. We are to be kind, loving, gentle, forgiving, patient, and all the other things that the preacher said at our wedding. We are not to seek our own. We are not to be whiners and complainers. 

But, no matter who we are, there are days. There are times when you feel as if you have been just as kind, patient, and gentle as you could possibly be. There are times when you just cannot take another whine from someone else. There are days where you just have to close a door and spend a moment in quiet or you are going to explode. 

This is where love gets its greatest test. At that point where you reach the breaking point. Where you feel that someone else needs to be patient, that someone else needs to be gentle, that someone else needs to listen to what you want to say to them. People whine and complain endlessly. People devour your time in nonsensical things. People never repay the kindnesses you have given to them. There is a point where you just want to give up and blow up and let it all out. 

Don't.

The tendency of people to decide that they have been "patient enough" is merely one more sin. What makes you think that there is such a point? I am not told "be patient enough" but "be patient." I am not told "be gentle enough" but "be gentle." The measure is never outside of myself. It is about who I am. 

We talk about someone being "more patient" than we are, but that is really a false concept. We are either patient or we are not patient. We either are gentle or we are not. Being gentle for a few days is not being gentle. Being patient for a few hours is not being patient. 

Hard Days arise for us. Days where the people in our lives seem worse than usual. Days where something goes wrong and sets us off. Days where we snap a little, where we bark a little, where we are not patient with someone. Days where, after we have sinned, we excuse it by remembering how patient we were before we were not patient anymore. 

Hard Days come. Being patient is about always being patient. The fruit of the Spirit is not gentleness "up to a point" but gentleness itself. The fruit of the Spirit is not reasonable patience, but patience itself. 

Do not let the Hard Days beat you. The defeat in such cases is not just for a moment or even for the Hard Day. It is a defeat of everything you want to be, everything God is making you to be. 

Hard Days are the test. Do not fail it.
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Romance, Sex, Romance, Sex, Romance . . .

03/29/2012

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One of the problems with romancing a husband, as many wives would say, is that it will lead to sex. "All they ever think about is sex," is the common response. "If I do that, he will want to have sex with me," we are told.  

Well, yeah. What's the problem?

There are two things being asserted here. First is that romancing a man causes him to think sexually. Second is the idea that your husband wanting to have sex with you is a problem.

As for the first, this is like saying the sky is blue. Of course romancing a man causes him to think sexually. I would note that the same thing is normally true of women. One of the constant complaints from wives is that their husbands want to have sex without romancing them. Well, doesn't that mean that romancing them is connected to sex?

Men are constantly told that they "must romance their wives" in order to promote a healthy sex life. So, romance is connected to sex. It just is. For both sexes. To complain that romance will lead to sex is nonsensical, like complaining that cooking leads to food.

The more troublesome problem is the second issue. Why does it bother wives that their husbands want to have sex with them? I do not get this at all, except where the wife no longer wants to have sex with the husband.

If your husband wants to have sex with you, this is a very good thing. That is exactly what God wants him to want. (Read Proverbs 5 again.) God wants him to desire you, to have sex with you, to be "intoxicated with your love." What part of that seems bad to you?

All day, for most men, he is surrounded by other women, but his desire is for you. Why is this supposed to be a bad thing?

The reality is that it is a "bad thing" only when the wife does not want to have sex with her husband. When a woman expresses unhappiness over her husband wanting to have sex with her, then you know that she has not yet understood being an Excellent Wife. Proverbs 5 and 1 Corinthians 7 are sufficient texts, but more are available.

You want your husband to want you. Every day. You want him to awake in the morning being intoxicated with your love. You want him to think of you all day. You want him to want you at night. You want him to focus all of his sexual drive, all of his sexual desire, and all of his sexual energy on you.

If you do not want this, then what do you want? Do you want a roommate? Do you just want a financial support who stays at work late because he has no reason to come home? Do you just want someone who is stuck being married to you?

If you love your husband, you must actually love him. You must want his happiness. You must want him to be intoxicated with your love.

If you want less than this, then you should never have married at all. Why promise to be a wife when you only want a roommate?
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Romancing a Husband

03/27/2012

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Okay, so you have decided to romance your husband. Now what? First, you need to do something very important. Check your own "wish list" at the door. He is not you.

There are multiple lists of things on the internet that are supposed to be "romancing your wife" and they are a good warning for wives of what to avoid. For example, consider this list given to men and think about how it will work for you:

   1. Take walks with your wife.

Okay, you may think that having your husband ask you to take a walk is romantic. And it may actually work for your husband. But, to be honest, walking with a wife is not romantic to a husband. Being invited to take a walk is often really just a way to get him to stop whatever he is doing, which may be worthwhile. Also, how fast do you walk? A lot of husbands have a hard time with their wife's slower pace of walking. Not a great husband romance tool, unless you are on the beach. Then, go for it. 

   2.  Tell your wife you want to romance her.

Do not try this one. Telling your husband you want to romance him is like singing a song about how much you would like to praise God. Why not just praise Him? Telling him you want to romance him makes it a competition to see if you do it well. Do not tell him. Just do it.

   3.  Take your wife out on a romantic date.

Okay, now we are getting somewhere. Taking him out is a good idea. But what if he makes all the money in the family? Hard to make a date to be about him when he pays for it. A much better plan is a date at home. No, seriously. Put the kids in bed nice and early and make a special meal for just you and him. Much more romantic for a husband than another bill at a restaurant.

   4.  Write your wife love notes. 

This is not a bad idea for husbands either, but be careful. Make sure his friends will not see it. Make it something real that you feel, not something from some store.

   5.  Hold hands with your wife in a restaurant. 

Not a bad move here, either. But if you want to really reach your husband, don't hold hands (a very static kind of thing). Rub his arm absent-mindedly. I saw this recently with a couple and thought how nice that looked. Sit next to him at a meal. Rest your hand on his leg. Be intimate. Hand-holding may be great for wives, men need a little more.

   6.  Share a dessert with your wife.

I do not get this at all. Sharing a dessert is nice, but I do not see it as romantic. It is just a good way to save some money, get a dessert, and cut down the calories. Not romantic.

   7.  Read your wife a love poem.

Don't even think about it. He does not want to hear love poetry. Ever.

   8.  Write your wife a love letter.

This is just like writing a love note, just longer (I guess). 

   9  Read a love letter to your wife.

Getting kind of repetitive here. Do not read a love letter to your husband. Let him read it. Seriously. When someone reads to you, you are required to respond in some manner that validates their reading. Let him read your love letters privately.

  10. Tell your wife what you love about her.

This should be a regular feature of your relationship. Tell him you love him. Compliment what deserves complimenting. Appreciate what he does for you. If you consider this to be a special thing called "romancing" that you only have to do for a special occasion, something is very sad somewhere.  
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Romancing a Husband

03/27/2012

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Men are frequently told that they are supposed to "romance" their wives. They are usually told this by their wives or by someone who does not know them. Men are supposed to set up "date nights" and special outings with their wives. This is very important, we are told. 

Okay, fine. Wives, romance your husbands. 

Wait, I never hear that. In all of my life of listening to people preach and teach on marriage, no one has ever said "wives, set up a date night with your husband." No one has ever said "wives, romance your husbands." Why not?

Well, I think it is because we have reached an odd stage, especially in Christian marriage, where husbands are just not considered very valuable. I remember grocery bags from my Navy days, where the local commissary (grocery store) had bags that said "Navy Wife -- Toughest Job in the Navy." Sounds nice, but it is not true. Being under fire is a lot tougher than having a husband being under fire, but that is how we think about things. Husbands are just not valued.

Your husband is not valued by this culture. Did you realize that? There are all kinds of websites and special books about how great wives are. Where are the ones about how great husbands are? Nowhere. Or, at least, not as obvious.

Why don't you take a different approach? Instead of waiting for him to appreciate you, how about appreciating him? 

Romance your husband. Sit down and think about what you can do for him, to show him how special he is to you. You might be surprised how many ways there are to make your husband special.  
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