Does your intimate partner do hurtful things, say sorry, and promise to never do it again, until the next time it happens? Are you afraid of your spouse? Are you scared to say what you think, bring up certain topics, or even say no to sex? Does your relationship leave you feeling scared, isolated, confused, betrayed, or like you never know what’s coming next. Do you feel like you’re going crazy, second guessing yourself all the time, or that you are the one to blame for the conflict in your relationship? If you feel any of these…
Perhaps the biggest piece of baggage a person brings into marriage is their bundle of expectations. Each person has an idea of what their home life, their parenting, their sex life, and their responsibilities should be like. Problems develop when couples assume the other person shares their expectations: A husband may expect his wife to balance a home and career like his mother did. A wife may expect her husband to fix things around the house. When expectations are unclear, unhealthy, unspoken, or unmet, both spouses can feel neglected, frustrated, or just plain angry. And often, couples don’t even…
Richard and I have very different ways of solving problems. My problem-solving techniques go something like this: leave it and see what happens, it may go away on its own. Richard’s way of dealing with problems is: tackle it head-on and work at it until it’s fixed. Both of these have pros and cons. Sometimes my way works, sometimes his way does. However, when it comes to serious issues, like disease or marriage troubles, it’s better to use the “tackle it head-on and get it fixed no matter what” approach. The difference between disease…
To start off the new year we’ve put together some of the best marriage tips that we have learned over the last 29 years. Here’s to having the marriage you always dreamed of! Pray together every day. Praying is one of the most intimate things you can do with your spouse and it will draw you closer to each other. 2. Play together. Bring back the fun! Playing together will bond you and lighten the load of doing life together. 3. Hug and kiss (like you mean it) every day. Nothing worse than that boring old peck on…
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about types of femininity to avoid if you want to change a man. One type is seductive femininity and I used Bathsheba as an example. Since then I’ve been thinking about David and Bathsheba quite a bit and I think I, along with others, haven’t been fair to Bathsheba. Growing up in church, I received the impression that Bathsheba was to blame for David’s sin. In fact, David is often portrayed as the victim of Bathsheba’s indiscreet bathing on her roof. Because she exposed herself by bathing on…
A lady once asked us how to get her husband to come to church with her. After a long discussion, we discovered that she had told him, “We both know that I am better than you because I go to church and you don’t.” Is it any wonder her husband wasn’t interested in joining her in spiritual exercises?! Appearing spiritually superior is clearly not the way to get your spouse interested in spiritual intimacy, but what can you do? Assuming you are already praying for your spouse, here are six things to do: Acknowledge that you cannot change…
Why should you pray about your physical relationship with your spouse? Because it’s under attack. The devil knows that sexual intimacy bonds a couple and represents the love and passion God has for us. And He hates that. Married couples need to counter Satan’s attacks on their intimacy by praying for it. Including God in our intimacy through prayer brings His blessing. (I’ve written here about God in the Bedroom – Connecting God and Sex.) One specific blessing of praying over our sexual relationship is that it will keep it pure. But, pure doesn’t mean boring…
There’s a lot of talk about toxic masculinity these days, but no mention of toxic femininity. Women often resort to toxic femininity when they are trying to change men, but, because selfishness is the motivation for changing men, it only makes the problem worse, and leads men into greater weakness. How does it lead them to weakness? Because women have power. Far more than they realise. The right use of a woman’s power influences men toward strength, and the wrong use influences men toward weakness. So, let’s look at the 4 types of toxic femininity women should…
Does the thought of God in the bedroom make you feel uneasy? Like some who believe God created the earth and then left it to its own devices, we think that God made sex and then backed out, having nothing more to do with ‘it’. Why is it difficult to put God and sex together? Because the world has claimed it. And it portrays its view everywhere without shame. Our culture has smeared our view of sex with 50 shades of sludge, and God’s ideal for sex has been so obscured, we don’t even know what it should…