Ladies, what kind of expectations do you have for your husband?
- Do you expect him to be able to read your mind?
- Do you think he should just know what you want or need from him without asking?
- Do you think you shouldn’t have to ask him more than once to do something?
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m honest with myself, I find myself being rather unrealistic about what I expect from my husband.
Recently, I was teaching An Invitation to Intimacy to a group of married women and we were talking about a comment I heard a speaker from a marriage conferences state. He said that whenever a woman is asked to describe “the perfect man,” she will invariably describe another woman! This is so true, isn’t it?
In all honesty, I think this is exactly what I often do. Since I’m a woman and don’t think like a man, I can find myself believing that my husband should think like me. I think there is a natural tendency for us as women to do this to our men. Then when they don’t measure up, we can become irritated and short tempered because they just don’t “get it.”
There is a fascinating book entitled, His Brain Her Brain by Walt and Barbara Larimore which discusses how our divinely designed differences can actually strengthen our marriages. It is full of documented studies, showing how our brains as men and women are so different, beginning with the 6th week of gestation.
Because Walt Larimore is a physician, he brings authority to his writing of the medical evidence presented in this book. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the differences between men and women, and especially appreciated learning how the medical community is admitting and sharing the facts of how God created us “male and female.” I often find myself reciting this statement: Our differences are supposed to fascinate and complete us as a couple–not frustrate us.
Being married to my man for 36 years now has been incredibly fulfilling, yet there have also been challenges. And truthfully, most of our times of tension, disagreement, and frustration have been when I was unrealistic in what I expected from him. I’ll admit this is something I’m still working on.
In closing, I came across an interesting thought that I have been pondering recently. I believe it will help you as well.
It comes from a preacher/speaker named Mark Gungor who is someone I thoroughly enjoy reading and listening to. In an email tip I received, he stated that as women, we often hold our husbands to a higher standard than we do God!
Wow! Really? How so?
He says that as women, we can find ourselves expecting our husbands to do things without being asked….(true!)….and if we have asked them to do something, we don’t expect to have to ask them more than once……(Okay. Your point?)…….
Well, here it is: Whenever we want something from God, we have to ask Him, even though He already knows what we want! Humm………
And even though He already knows what we want, Jesus instructed us to be persistent in our prayers, by asking more than once! Ouch!…..
Yep! Guilty as charged! Man, there are times I just expect Jim to read my mind, maybe even like God does, which I know intellectually is impossible. And when I do this, it means I am holding Jim to a higher standard than I do God because I expect him to know what I want without asking more than once. Very convicting!
So, I guess the bottom line for me is this–If God expects me to ask Him more than once for the things I want and need, then it’s only fair to lovingly and patiently make my requests known to my husband……..even if it takes more than once!
How about you? Are your expectations for your husband unrealistic? If so, remember–he’s not a woman!
For this round of classes, I decided I wanted to do something different. After having taught An Invitation to Intimacy fourteen other times, I once again tried to think of something “new” to bring to this set of students.
After evaluating my skills, I realized I had learned how to do some PowerPoint a year ago, but had not done much with it. So, after some time refreshing my memory and learning some things I had not known before, I began with lesson one.
It certainly took longer than I had expected to format the information into slides, but after numerous efforts, I created my first PowerPoint presentation for An Invitation to Intimacy. I have to say, it went very well. It was visually interesting and having facts and powerful statements up on the big screen was an even more effective way of helping these women comprehend the information being presented.
You see, once the presentation is created, it can be saved as a PowerPoint file to your computer. Then you simply launch the file, hook your computer up to a projector with a gadget called a dongle which is simply a small piece of hardware that connects on the side of a laptop or desktop computer. (It’s the place on the side of a laptop that has two rows of holes. Contact me if you would like a picture.)
Once you have your computer hooked up to the projector, you just need a screen or a big wall for viewing. It’s really quite easy. It just takes a little bit of setting up.
Since that first week, I’ve been creating a PowerPoint presentation for each week. I’m all the way through week 6 and plan to continue with the rest of the lessons.
In the future, I would like to make these available for leaders to purchase so the lessons can be presented in a more powerful way. Being a visual learner myself, I find that even now I am better able to retain more of the information I’m sharing with others than I probably did in the past.
I’ll let you know later this summer, or simply check back under the leader resources for availability. Like me, you might even find that the PowerPoint presentations will take the place of the leader’s guide.
I don’t know how many of you have ever read Shaunti Feldhahn’s book, For Women Only, but it is a book I believe every married woman should read.
I discovered this book about four years ago, not long after its release. Since I teach classes on sex and intimacy in marriage, I was especially curious about what it had to say regarding the sexual relationship. When I opened up the book for the first time, scanned the table of contents, and saw the chapter entitled, “Sex Changes Everything: Why Sex Unlocks a Man’s Emotions (Guess Who Holds the Key?),” I decided to buy it.
As I began reading, I learned that Shaunti wrote this book after beginning a different project. She was in the process of writing a fictional novel and the main character was a man. During the course of trying to write her book, she discovered quite by accident that a man thinks very differently from what she believed a man thought.
It was during this time that she and her husband Jeff contacted a national survey company and began compiling questions to send out to men around the country who would answer different questions and could make comments on various topics. The results of that survey are what prompted the writing of this book.
While some of the information in Shaunti’s book didn’t surprise me, like, “Men want more sex.” However, it was statements like, “Men want more sex than they are getting. And what’s more, they believe that the women who love them don’t seem to realize that this is a crisis-not only for the man but for the relationship.”[1]
How about this one: I had always known that men were attracted to beautiful women. God wired men to be “lookers.” Shaunti calls a beautiful woman that attracts the attention of a man as an “eye magnet.”[2] Yet, these next statements caught my attention: “A woman with a great body is an “eye magnet” and is incredibly difficult to avoid, and even if a man forces himself not to look, he is acutely aware of her presence. Secondly, even when no such eye magnet is present, each man has a “mental Rolodex” of stored images that can intrude into his thoughts without warning or can be called up at will.”[3] In other words, a man can’t not be affected by the presence of a beautiful woman, even if he is a happily married man.[4]
There are many other revealing truths that come to light through the reading of this book. It’s not hard to read mostly because it’s a small book with fairly large print. Plus, the chapters are not overwhelming in length.
I strongly encourage you to spend a few dollars and some time reading through For Women Only. Not only was it a book I thoroughly enjoyed, but I’ve used several different quotes in my classes, as well as having some great conversations about this book with my husband.
Footnotes:
1. Shaunti Feldhahn, For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2004), 91.
2. Feldhahn, For Women Only, 111.
3. Feldhahn, For Women Only, 111-112.
4. Feldhahn, For Women Only, 112-113.
Originally posted 2009-06-19 11:58:48. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Not very long ago I was reminded of a book I once read that had encouraged Jim and me to change what we did and had in our bedroom. It talked about decluttering and making our bedroom a place of relaxation and one that provided a peaceful environment. Another book I read even said that the only things that should happen in the bedroom are sex and sleep!
I remember how convicting those books were for me. In fact, after I learned these things and thought about them for awhile, I realized there were some things I could do to improve the atmosphere of our bedroom.
I had started by putting up some pretty drapes, buying a CD player to play some relaxing music, and getting an artificial tree for the corner of our room with little red and white lights strung through it. That way we could enjoy some soft lighting and beautiful music whenever we wanted to relax or be intimate. With two big La-Z-Boy recliners along a wall that used to be filled with books from floor to ceiling (definitely a distraction to me because of how messy they could look), we had done a pretty good job of creating Engedi for the two of us. Distractions were finally at an all-time low.
However, there has been an issue we have needed to deal with lately–laptop computers in the bedroom. We haven’t had a television in our bedroom since the late 70’s, so that distraction hasn’t been a problem for a very long time, but I realized we were spending a lot of time on our computers back in our room in the evenings. A great deal of what we did was worthy of our time; however, we often found ourselves working late into the night when we could have been spending our time together reading, talking, or being intimate–even going to sleep at a decent hour!
Well, a few weeks ago, we had a discussion and realized we needed to do something different concerning this issue. We talked about how we could have more time together and decided to move our laptops out of the bedroom once dinnertime occurred. That would keep us remain visible to other family members and give us opportunities to become involved with them during the evenings. Plus, we decided to encourage each other to head for the bedroom at a decent hour.
Except for an occasional project that causes one, or both of us to have to work late, we are definitely doing better. Removing our computers from the bedroom in the evenings has allowed us more time to be intimate, to relax after the children go to bed (which can be a challenge when you live with teenagers) and to get a decent night’s sleep.
I predict we will struggle with this on occasion, but at least for now, the distractions in our bedroom are under control. And to be honest, I guess that is the best anybody can hope for 
