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Love
Under the Moon and Stars We Did Meet
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
—Lao Tzu
Love is a deep affection or romantic attachment to something or someone. Beyond that, love consists of traits such as unselfishness, loyalty, devotion, tenderness, passion, and compassion. True love is sacrificial even to the point of death. I don’t know any parent who wouldn’t give their life in exchange for their child’s (and probably their spouse’s as well).
Part of the fun of a long-term relationship (of any kind) is the growing together through shared experiences, suffering together through difficulties and heartbreaks, and experiencing the joy of mountaintop encounters together. But getting through the challenges of life as a couple requires us to have a long-range view of love and marriage. If we don’t keep our eye on the bigger picture, we will get distracted by all the inconsequential and inconvenient problems that crop up in life. These distract us from the larger vision of what’s really important.
I continually have to remind the young couples my wife and I mentor to keep their eye on the big picture. When you do that, many of the small problems and irksome habits of your spouse become less significant (or at least bearable). For instance, sometimes the amount of attention young children require can cause a young mother to focus on the children as the center of her world. In that role she is invaluable. But a long-term vision remembers that you and your husband will be together long after your children have grown and moved on. That vision will help her to balance her attention on both her children and her husband. Likewise, men need to remember that work is just a means to support their family. Yes, we get satisfaction from our accomplishments, but later in life your work will be one of the least important things you care about. What will matter most is your family. I remember hearing that advice when I was a young man and thinking, “Yeah, sure.” Now I can tell you—it is the truth.
Falling in love is the easy part. But staying in love takes work and intentionality.
Teamwork
Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another’s glory or toward degrading each other.
—Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III
Think of your marriage as a team unit, not two individuals. Then remember that you are on the same team. Sometimes during the heated battles of life we start looking at our spouse as the enemy. It’s important to give your spouse the benefit of the doubt in most situations. Always look for the best in your spouse. Too often we attach negative motives to our partner’s actions and responses. But in all likelihood your spouse has your best interests at heart. Your spouse cares about you (probably more than anyone else in the world does) and only wants the best for you. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, but I promise you if you communicate that to your spouse, your spouse will reciprocate, believing you want their best too.
The other thing to remember is that a marriage is a living, breathing vessel. It has a life of its own independent of you or your spouse. It ebbs and flows. It has seasons—good seasons, bad seasons, and even indifferent seasons. There will be times when things are rough. It seems like the rough times will last forever. The truth is, they are just a season—they last at most a year or so, probably less. It just seems like they last longer. Seasons of trials are often followed by seasons of joy and blessings. These seem to last for shorter periods, but when you weigh everything out over a long period, they tend to last just as long as the difficult times.
Think of it like the professional baseball season that consists of 162 games and lasts from April to October. There will be times when a batter goes through a slump. He can’t buy a hit. Then there are times when it seems like he can swing at the ball with his eyes closed and get a hit every time he steps to the plate. I’m guessing the slumps feel like they last longer, but over an entire season they even out.
When I became a full-time writer and speaker, it took over six long years of financial struggle before we gained some stability. Those were very lean and difficult years that we struggled through together. I can tell you though that those struggles have been followed by several years now of great joy and blessing. It is so much richer a blessing because we persevered through those trials. The same is true of your marriage. There will be lean times that you will walk through together. Once those pass, a season of blessing and joy will follow. The problem is, we tend not to remember the times of blessing. Struggles seem to stay in our memories longer.
Try this experiment. Sit down with your spouse and try to remember the difficult times of your marriage. Chances are you’ll be able to recall pretty clearly all the tough times you’ve had (at least your wife will). Now write down what the root cause of those struggles was. It’s important to reflect back on our challenges and understand what caused them, especially if you do not want to repeat them. Was it finances? Was a child sick or rebelling? Perhaps old wounds arose and needed to be dealt with. Once you agree about what the cause of the struggles were, now discuss what solved them. This is important too. Understanding how we weathered specific issues can help us in the future during similar situations.
Now try to remember the period that followed, after the problem was resolved. Chances are your marriage went through a time of happiness and maybe even prosperity. Like many problems in life, once we endure and persevere through them, we end up getting blessed for our efforts. The point here is to remember the good times and not just the bad ones. Love is shaped and grown by going through life’s challenges together. There is something about persevering through difficult circumstances that builds character in ourselves and in our marriage. Those who cut and run at the first sign of difficulty never get to experience the joy of standing together on the mountaintop, arm in arm, knowing that you can truly depend on the person beside you.
What Could Go Wrong?
Love must be learned, and learned again and again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.
—Katherine Anne Porter
No one falls in love because it’s the smart, practical thing to do. One of the more tragic love stories of the Bible is that of David and Michal. After slaying Goliath, David became famous—a brave and handsome young man admired by many. This made King Saul jealous and he decided to try to kill David. After finding out that his youngest daughter Michal was in love with David, Saul offered to give David her hand in marriage. In an attempt to get others to do his dirty work for him, Saul then proposed that David bring him 100 foreskins of the Philistines as payment for his daughter’s hand—something he figured would surely get David killed trying to accomplish (given the fact that those were something the Philistines were pretty intent upon keeping). In typical David fashion, he returned and presented Saul with not just 100, but 200 Philistine foreskins and Saul had no choice but to allow him to wed Michal (1 Sam. 18:20–27).
Nothing is said in the Bible about David’s feelings for Michal, but clearly she loved him dearly. At one point when Saul was coming to kill him, she warned David to leave and then deceived the guards into thinking he was in bed ill in order to give David time to get away (1 Sam. 19:11–17). As David remained a fugitive, Saul gave Michal to another man (Paltiel) in marriage, either as punishment for her deception or just to get even with David (1 Sam. 25:44). After Saul was killed and David became king, he eventually bartered with his enemies to get Michal back.
The Bible doesn’t say how long David and Michal were separated, but her new husband wept when she was taken away. David apparently hadn’t gone to any great lengths to try to rescue her, and she may have fallen out of love with David by that point. For whatever reason, Michal soon developed feelings of contempt for him. Later, when David brought the ark of the covenant into the city, wearing a short sleeveless linen garment, he joyfully led the procession “leaping and dancing before the LORD.” As Michal watched him from her window it says, “She despised him in her heart” (2 Sam. 6:16). That’s a pretty strong statement of a wife’s feelings toward her husband. The following passages document as heated and bitter an exchange between the two as any argument that couples engage in today:
When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said [sarcastically], “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!” (2 Sam. 6:20)
David said (indignantly) to Michal,
It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor. (2 Sam. 6:21–22)
And then comes a verse that is one of the saddest I’ve ever read and speaks volumes about the future they shared together: “And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death” (2 Sam. 6:23).
We don’t know if Michal was jealous of David dancing partially clothed in front of the slave girls or if she felt his behavior was beneath the dignity a king should exhibit and reflected poorly on her. Regardless, her scorn and contempt of David led to a relationship that did not produce any children (perhaps as punishment for her pride or because they did not sleep together again). Clearly Michal did not have the relationship she wanted, and her love for David, once so promising, soon wilted like an unwatered flower.
This also brings up an interesting point regarding today’s relationships. The expectations, attitudes, unresolved wounds, and unfulfilled needs of each partner can severely damage your marriage. If any of those desires are not expressed, they cannot be met, and resentment soon creeps in to your relationship.
The one thing that most contributes to a husband’s satisfaction is his wife’s contentment. Because of that he will instinctively assume responsibility for her happiness, and she often lets him. But if he finds that he cannot make her happy, he will eventually quit trying. Nothing is more demoralizing to a man than to have a wife who is constantly complaining and criticizing him.
On the other hand, a wife who uses her powerful words to uplift a man empowers him to accomplishments he could never achieve on his own. As a wife, are you taking responsibility for your own happiness? Are you using your power positively or negatively?
Likewise when a man abdicates all of his leadership roles within the home, it also causes problems. A marriage with a dominating wife usually has an unhappy, insecure woman and a frustrated and unfulfilled man. Assuming the main leadership role in the relationship means she acquires the masculine characteristics that accompany leadership. Being forced to lead and make all the decisions, she soon realizes she has lost some of her feminine charm, which is as important to her as masculinity is to a man. The hurt is compounded when she realizes it is the fault of her husband’s deficiencies. He is less of a man in her eyes. His wife loses respect for him because of his loss of manliness, which causes her love for him to diminish.2
Men, are you leading your wife and family or do you hand the reins to your wife and stand by and watch as she gets frustrated and angry trying to handle all the details of life? Do you allow her criticism (potential or actual) to keep you from even attempting to lead? What would happen if you shocked your wife and stepped forward and assumed your God-given leadership role in the family?
Additionally, men who abandon their families place them in extremely difficult positions. Working with single mothers and fatherless boys, I’ve seen too many cases where the husband established his career while the wife sacrificially bore and cared for his children, only to have him take off with another woman, leaving his wife with the responsibility of raising the kids by herself. These women and children are generally poverty stricken and destitute. I know a lot of men who did not want to get divorced, but those men who intentionally abandon their families should be ashamed of themselves.
I’m not condemning you if you’ve been divorced (certainly there are justifiable reasons for divorce and you can’t control the actions of another), but I am encouraging you to try to persevere through a difficult marriage. Not a marriage with serial infidelity or abuse, but one that is difficult. Maybe communication is poor, you’re having problems in the bedroom, or you’re just plain fed up with your spouse for a variety of reasons. Sometimes just letting your spouse know you are committed and won’t cut and run because things are tough is enough to encourage them to change their attitude.
The truth is that happiness cannot be the sole determining factor in whether or not we stay married. If happiness alone were the most important factor in marriage, we’d all need to get remarried every couple of years. That’s about how long the hormones last that give us a “high” every time we enter into a new relationship.
Unfortunately, many women “settle” for a man and then want to change him. A woman cannot change a man, but she does have the power to make a man want to change from his natural self-centered, egocentric nature into one who is willing to make sacrifices for others.
I have no idea what my wife saw in me. I was an angry, broken young man from an abusive alcoholic home. I drank booze, did drugs, and smoked cigarettes, for crying out loud. How could she possibly have seen anything in me that would have led her to believe that I would make at least a marginally good husband, provider, and father? And yet, it worked out for her. I’m not the best husband, but I’m not the worst choice she could have made either. Obviously I stopped all those behaviors long ago and channeled my energies into more productive activities like work and education. But how could she have known that I wouldn’t follow in the destructive footsteps that were modeled for me while growing up? Being in love and getting married forces us to face some character issues we might otherwise never choose to face.
A good woman often brings out the potential in a man. Loving a woman inspires a man to want to be better, achieve more, and earn her pride and respect. I know plenty of situations where I thought a man didn’t have much going for him, but after a few years of his woman by his side, he hit his stride and became very successful. And I’ve seen it work with women as well. Many women bloom under the loving guidance of a good man.
Women have an incredible power through their relationships to effect changes in the world around them. Gary Thomas, in his wonderful book Sacred Marriage, says,
God acts in many ways like a woman. Women are capable of and sometimes commit magnificent acts that manifest incredible power and awaken in us men a profound awe, if not fear and trembling. Yet when they love, they love quietly; they speak, as it were, in whispers, and we have to listen carefully, attentively, to hear their words of love and to know them. Isn’t God also this way?3
If you’ve ever truly loved a woman, or been loved by a woman, you know that statement rings true.
How to Keep Things Right
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”
—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
Good, loving relationships don’t just happen. They take time, patience, and hard work in order to grow and prosper. Everyone experiences challenges in marriage (your problems aren’t as unique as you think they are). Those who are successful learn effective strategies to deal with problems. Just understanding that men and women are different in almost every way is a good first step to having realistic expectations from your spouse.
As a culture we place too much emphasis on the emotion of love and not enough on the action of love. Sure, for the first few months (or even first couple of years) after meeting someone, hormones are coursing through our bodies, creating a high that makes us giddy and allows us to overlook the idiosyncrasies in our partner that will later drive us crazy. But once those wear off and our body stops producing drugs in such huge quantities, how do we maintain a loving relationship?
Our culture promotes the romantic notion of love being about feelings and that our feelings then dictate our actions. It describes love as a passive emotion; we have “fallen” in love, we were “swept off our feet,” or we “couldn’t help ourselves.” However, love is an action, a verb, not an emotion. We choose to love someone and we choose to take the actions that keep that love alive. We choose to invest in our relationship or choose to let it die.
Love is more about what we do than how we feel. Frankly, sometimes I don’t feel like doing loving things for my wife (and I’m sure she feels the same about me). But surprisingly, when I force myself to do those things, I always feel more love for her. She in turn feels more love for me because I have acted lovingly toward her. It’s an interesting cycle, in that our disciplined thoughts lead to actions, our actions then lead to feelings.
Also, as a culture we have an unrealistic perspective of what love looks like. We think someone in love is always happy and filled with romantic bliss. But you can love someone and still dislike or even hate them occasionally. Just as you can hate someone and still love them—like a child’s feelings toward an abusive parent. Emotions are seldom either/or—they are complicated. Emotions are often conflicting. Just because you are ambivalent about your spouse from time to time doesn’t mean your marriage is over. We all go through seasons in any long-term relationship when we don’t like the other person or are tired of them. But because our culture tells us (primarily through movies and women’s magazines) that love looks like romantic bliss and constant happiness, the first time we enter a season where we are dissatisfied or even disdainful toward our spouse, we automatically think the marriage is over and it’s time to move on. Not true. In reality it is a normal function of life and it just means our relationship is following a normal course of growth and development. Often that “falling out of love” phase we enter is the beginning of a new growth cycle that allows us to discover true love and deeper intimacy, which is impossible when chemicals (hormones) are interfering with our thoughts and feelings.
If you’re honest, there are times when you are pretty sick and tired of your children. It doesn’t mean you ditch them and find new ones. Why would you do that with your spouse? Obviously, I’m not talking about an abusive situation, but sometimes it seems as if married people would rather be unhappy than happy. In fact it’s easier to be unhappy than it is happy. It requires more effort to become happy and to maintain happiness than it does to give up and succumb to discontent and misery. I see people every day (and you do too) who seem to relish living lives of disappointment and dissatisfaction. And they enjoy spreading that gloom to the world around them.
Our own attitude has a lot to do with how happy we are in marriage (and in life). If we choose to be content and satisfied, then we will tend to be happy and content. If we choose to be critical and negative, we’ll probably be miserable—and so will our spouse. A successful marriage requires both partners to respect each other. The challenge is that we have to honor our spouse even when we know his or her deepest character flaws.
In his book Creating an Intimate Marriage, counselor, radio host, and author Jim Burns talks about creating a marriage based on affection, warmth, and encouragement (AWE). He believes that if you choose to live a life filled with AWE (despite however your spouse responds), you will not be forced to “live a life based on circumstances or reactions to your spouse. It is a decision to proactively live a life filled with self-control in which you choose to set an atmosphere that leads your relationship to a healthier spot.”5
Even a much loved, considerate partner will profoundly disappoint you at times. Truthfully, we are spoiled. We have been given more of everything than any previous generation in the history of the earth and yet we are still unhappy. Like petulant children we want more and more despite being given everything we could ever need. Our relationships show it.
Loving someone takes a lot of courage. To truly open your heart up to someone is to be vulnerable to being hurt. The more you love them, the greater the chances of being deeply hurt. I suspect many people hold back for that very reason—they are scared of being deeply hurt. Or perhaps they have risked their hearts before and have been deeply wounded.
Part of the problem may also lie in the fact that people today are more self-focused than past generations. For instance, according to the National Institutes of Health, the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is three times higher among twentysomethings than among those over sixty-five. You might be able to explain that away as their maturity level—except that the average college student in 2009 scored significantly higher on a narcissism scale than his counterparts did in 1982. And the high self-regard doesn’t end when they graduate; 40 percent of all Millennials (born early 1980s to early 2000s) believe that they should be promoted every two years regardless of their actual job performance. Most troubling of all are their ideas about right and wrong. “The guiding morality of 60 percent of Millennials in any situation is that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right.”6 In other words they have no moral foundation to base decisions upon other than their feelings—which are notoriously fickle judges of right and wrong.
Having high levels of narcissistic tendencies combined with using emotions (as opposed to principles) as a guide is the very definition of a marriage heading for divorce. It is difficult to love others if you do not love yourself. But being in love with yourself presents a whole new set of problems. It’s hard to love someone else when you are too busy showering love upon yourself. It’s one of the challenges we find in parenting teenagers; they tend to be extremely self-focused. They don’t care about the needs of anyone else.
Interestingly, though, feelings play a big role in a woman’s life, even if she’s not narcissistic. One of the biggest things a woman needs is consideration for her feelings and desires. A man can validate or invalidate his wife by how he accepts her feelings. Her need to express resentments, troubles, and concerns and then have a husband give them genuine consideration is significant.
I have a bad habit of getting impatient every time Suzanne brings a concern to me. Frankly it seems like she brings a lot of concerns to me. But that is one of her ways of expressing her needs and staying intimate with me. It’s also her way of making sure I am aware of important things. Past experience has taught her that I can be distracted or not aware of things around the house that need my attention (like a leaking ceiling or a broken garbage disposal). My wife needs me to be available and willing to support her by listening to her as she processes issues such as relationships challenges she is facing or even internal dilemmas she is dealing with. By acting as a sounding board, I am actually developing intimacy with her.
As men we cannot always solve a woman’s problems, and she probably doesn’t want us to. But what she does want is for us to listen, try to understand, and sympathize. Ultimately she wants to know that we love her and would take away the hurts, injustices, and exhaustion of life for her if possible.7
Isn’t that what everyone wants?
Intimacy-Building Tips for Loving Your Spouse