You must earn your wife’s trust from the moment you meet her until death. How can she respect, follow, open herself to you, obey you, honor you, and submit herself to you if she can’t trust you? She’ll want to know whether you’re able to lead her, and if so, will you lead her gently?
Do you blame everything that goes wrong on her as Adam did (Ge. 3:12) or do you take responsibility? God appointed you to lead her; you must be worthy of her trust. Failure belongs to you, too, so you must work with her and use her gifts along with yours to figure out how to prevent future failures.
God made men bigger and stronger than women, so her husband is the person most likely to hurt a wife by bumping into her or tripping over her. God also gave women more sensitive emotions than He gave men, so her husband is the most likely person to hurt her feelings by being careless in how he talks to her. God made them male and female, and they’re very different. Be careful to protect her from you.
Shortly before our wedding, my future wife asked that I never fuss at her. “I want to love you very much,” she said. “The more I love you, the more your disapproval will hurt me. I won’t be able to love you as much as I want to love you if you hurt me.”
That made sense – the Bible speaks of women as “tender and delicate.” I do not want to keep her from loving me, so I always watch what I say. Nowhere in the Bible does a man criticize his wife. Not once.
The Protection She Needs Most
There is no joy this side of heaven for a man like having his wife enjoy belonging to him; having her follow him gladly is an additional benefit. For her to follow you happily, or to follow you at all, it’s vital that your wife trust you to protect her from your passions and from hers starting the moment you meet her and continuing until one of you dies.
The Bible explains this man-woman thing. Jacob loved Rachel the moment he saw her (Ge. 29:19) and worked for Laban 7 years to earn the right to take her to wife:
And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. Genesis 29:21
Jacob wanted Rachel badly enough to work for years. Why did he do that? He wanted her that badly.
Many valentines have a naked little kid with a bow and arrow. That’s Cupid, the Greek god of love. When Cupid plinks a man with his arrow, the man falls madly in love with the next woman he sees.
God knows that marriage brings great responsibilities and great trials. He put powerful desires into men so they would stand with their wives when things got tough, but there’s a problem – when a man’s attracted enough to a woman to want to be with her, he’s driven to get physical with her, and his desire increases the more he’s with her. No woman can understand this any more than a man can understand how women feel about babies, but every girl must know this and be careful not to be alone with any man not her husband.
How can a woman tell when a man’s sexually aroused? He’s breathing. Nurses in old-age homes say that when a man is no longer aware of them as women, he’s a few hours from death.
My wife tells a young lady that her husband dreams of 5 times before breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bed. God seldom gives him that much strength, but that’s his plan. Girls who haven’t even dated know that they’ll lose their independence if a man does that. It tends to horrify her, but when she realizes that she’ll want him to open his heart to her whenever she wants to talk, which is at least that often, she’ll know it will be OK for her to belong to him if he belongs to her. If he’s hers, seeing his joy in having her will make her happy. The wife in the Song of Solomon agrees (Song 1:2, 2:16, 6:3).
The Bible states that giving herself to a man humbles a woman (De. 21:14, 22:29, Ez. 22:10-11). Your seminal fluid which you inject into her body is about 1-3% sperm. 80% is a sugar solution which may feed the sperm as they swim through her fallopian tube to fertilize her egg. The rest is a mixture of hundreds of chemicals which are absorbed into her bloodstream. Some make her immune system less likely to reject your sperm; others affect her brain, either triggering ovulation or the production of other hormones by other organs. These hormones tend to strengthen her bond with the man who takes her.
This can cause such powerful emotional reactions that losing her independence can be frightening, particularly if she hasn’t been warned. We know Isaac’s wife Rebecca had been warned because she veiled herself before meeting him (Ge. 24:64-65). It wasn’t the custom to veil women or Isaac wouldn’t have told her to say she was his sister (Ge. 26:7), so why did she do it? She’d been told that Isaac had plans and that his agenda would have a powerful emotional effect on her. She covered herself to get a little space.
Men and women are more different than we imagine
The Bible tells us how a man reacts to taking his bride to wife:
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. Psalm 19:5
He feels like Superman, he’s ready to leap tall buildings at a single bound! What of her? The hormones produced in her body by his chemicals have bound her to him. She realizes that this is the man she must please, this is the man who will lead her, and she hopes it will work out well.
She probably wasn’t very interested in coming together. Research shows that most women aren’t aroused except when they’re fertile. This can be a few hours per month or as little as fifteen minutes when her desire can be aroused by a man’s touch.
Men are interested all the time, so we have to learn to control our impulses, urges, and desires.
He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls. Proverbs 25:28
Women are hardly ever interested, so your date will have no experience controlling such powerful urges. Some older women tell girls not to kiss “because it’ll give him ideas.” That’s totally wrong. Men don’t get ideas, men have ideas. The problem with kissing is that if it happens during her fertile time, it gives her ideas. When both the man and the woman have the same idea, it is very hard to stop. That’s why the Bible teaches that it’s better not to touch an unmarried woman so as to kindle her desires (1 Cor. 7:1-2).
Protect Her from You and From Herself
On our second date, the Holy Spirit led my future wife to tell me that she wanted to be a virgin on her wedding night. She had no idea she was going to say that, it just popped out. She was embarrassed, but she had made me responsible for protecting her purity. She’d been asking God to protect her for years, now she asked me to help God protect her.
We had no idea how important purity is to successful marriage, but we found out why God had her tell me that. My desire for her had been building since we met, but she’d make purity important and I played things very cool for weeks. We knew fornication was wrong; we were saving ourselves for marriage.
She was put off because I was so aloof. She was about to marry me, she was about to commit her life to me, and she wanted to know I loved her and that I wanted her badly enough to stay with her. She looked at me with a peculiar look and said, “You’re acting so cold and aloof, I’m not sure you really want me!”
That blew me away. Here I was, doing my very best to keep our marriage pure, and she didn’t know I wanted her! There are times when there’s nothing you can say to a woman, there are times when the only way to communicate is with action. I put my arms around her, and kissed her thoroughly, just like romance stories, I put a burning kiss on her upturned face.
I didn’t know that kissing could trigger her desires. We weren’t aware of the warning:
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. I Corinthians 7:1-2
The Greek word translated “touch” carries the meaning of kindling her or arousing her. Having had no instructing in that area, I had crossed God’s line without understanding the danger to our future happiness.
She relaxed for a few seconds, then struggled, then went limp. I finished kissing and looked at her. She was stunned. She was panting lightly; her face was flushed. I picked up her hand and it flopped down to her side, she was limp. My kiss set her off, her hormones were in charge, and she was mine for the taking.
I then did the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. That kiss worked on me, too, I was no longer cool or aloof, I wanted her as badly as she wanted me to take her, but I backed her up until she sat down in a chair, I backed up to another chair, and sat down to get my breath.
After a few minutes, she said, “Wow, you really do want me!” I said, “Yeah, but we better get out of here,” and we got. We were never, ever alone again until after our wedding.
She told me what happened. She said, “I felt a falling sensation, that’s when I struggled, then I was lost. You could’ve done anything you wanted with me, and I couldn’t have done anything about it. I couldn’t yell, I couldn’t struggle, I was yours.”
That’s how date rape happens, a man rubs her or kisses her at the wrong time, and she’s his.
A wife who’s on the pill will never be fertile. Although she can have sex, she generally won’t be nearly as interested as when she’s fertile. Giving herself when she isn’t interested is what “submit” means.
Why Purity Was Important
Serving God by belonging to me cost her more than she expected. My wife knew that God told Eve that her desire would be to her husband (Gen 3:16) and she knew that women are made for men (I Cor 11:9-10), all women should think about those passages. She thought God meant that she’d want to get married. She’d wanted to be a wife and mother all her life; she thought she understood what God had in mind.
Nobody told her what to expect. She didn’t know that God had worked on her hormones so that she’d really be mine. A few hours after our wedding, she was shocked at how strongly she yearned to belong to me. My taking her to wife had deeply changed her feelings. She’d expected to love me, but she also lost her sense of independence as God gave her a deep, frightening desire to belong to me and to serve me.
Deu. 21:14 and Eze. 22:10-11 say that a man “has humbled” a woman by taking her, that’s part of the cost of having a man in her life. We may think this is something the man does to the woman, but the Hebrew word shows that a wife should choose to humble herself as Jesus humbled Himself:
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Philippians 4:8
God wants children to have fathers. God made women so that a woman wants to cling to the man who takes her. Humbling herself by clinging to her husband and serving him gladly helps her children have a father, but her feeling of belonging to me gave her an endless feeling of falling through space. This was the most frightening experience of her life. She wanted to run away!
Weddings are a circus, I was worn out; she couldn’t sleep. Her mind wanted her to run and get back her independence, but instead of running, she went in the next room and cried out to God, “Oh, Lord, what have I done, I let him take me, now I belong to him!”
Then she prayed, “God, I asked you to stop me if he wasn’t right for me, and You didn’t.” She knew God was faithful. All her days, she’d prayed that God would work on her heart to make her the wife He wanted her to be. This feeling of belonging to me didn’t make sense, nobody had told her about it, but such a strong feeling from within her had to be God working on her heart as she’d asked Him to do. She finally prayed, “Lord, You must really want me to belong to him. If that’s what You want, I’ll do my best to submit to him and to belong to him.” Having chosen to humble herself by belonging to me, she came back to bed.
Being mine was an act of her will. Her mind didn’t see any reason to give up her independence and belong to me but God had answered her prayer and worked on her heart so that she wanted to be mine. As she prayed, she decided that her heart wanted what God wanted and her mind followed where her heart led. Having decided that she would belong to me, she’s always done her best from her heart and from her mind.
Once she humbled herself, she could be a keeper at home. Many women want to keep working because earning money gives them freedom and independence. Having willingly given up her independence, however, the money, recognition, and praise of work had no appeal. Humbling herself made her content to give up her job and take care of our children, her husband, and our home as God desires (1 Ti. 5:14).
The fact that I had earned her trust made her able to give up her job when the time came. A woman who doesn’t trust her husband generally wants to keep her own income stream just in case. Consider this:
The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. Song 2:8
Why is he rushing home? To admire the curtains? To see how neatly she’s stacked her towels? Nope, he’s rushing home because he’s confident that his wife will welcome his most intimate touch. She, on the other hand, is eagerly awaiting his desire to talk to her, tell her everything that happened and how he felt about it, and to tell him all about how her day went. It is as scary for a man to open his heart to his wife as it is for her to open her body to him, but that’s what the Bible teaches. God did indeed make them male and female.
The Importance of Talk
Just before our wedding, my future wife told me she was really looking forward to being married. I was too (Ge. 29:21, 1 Cor. 7:9). I thought we were on the same page, but she went on. “I really like talking to you. Once we’re married, we can talk more in a day than we can talk in a week of dating.”
That’s more talking than a man can imagine, she was expecting hours per day! I’d been talking a lot while dating because we couldn’t do anything else. I thought once we were married, it would be a done deal and we wouldn’t have to talk about it any more. As she got marriage on the table, as she made me responsible for protecting her purity, she told me that talking to her a lot more than I could imagine was an important part of our marriage covenant.
I had no idea how vital this was. Suffice it to say that a woman can’t follow her husband unless she knows what he wants. She can’t do what he wants unless he opens his heart to her so that she knows him well enough to know what he wants. Then she can be sure he’ll be happy with her, which makes her happy.
If I hadn’t promised to talk to her, I’d probably have been too impatient to communicate with her enough for her to feel that I valued her mind. Opening my heart to her was scary, but Proverbs 31 says “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.” God wanted me to know that it was OK to open myself to her. Opening myself to her made me hers as opening herself to me made her mine. The Song of Solomon teaches that husband and wife are supposed to belong to each other (Song 2:16, 6:3). God led her to ask me to promise to talk to her, and all that talk made me hers and convinced her that I was hers.
Keeping her Calm
The hormones which take away independence wear off in a few hours. If her husband makes love to her more often than that, she’ll stay calm and always feel like belonging to him. When he leaves for a while, these feelings fade, independence returns, and she can guide the house more vigorously while he’s gone.
A married woman takes on herself the yoke of pleasing her husband as we take on Christ’s yoke.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. Matthew 11:28-29
Making sure your wife can trust you helps her find rest in belonging to you. She won’t like flipping back and forth between independence and dependence unless she trusts you deeply.
The wife in the Song gets advice from her mother how to please her husband (Song 8:3); a man should read the Song and follow her husband’s example of appreciating her and Mrs. Lemuel’s advice to teach their children to praise and appreciate her (Pr. 31:28-29). It gives his wife comfort and rest in belonging to him, she’ll rejoice that God made her so desirable to him and that he enjoys her so much. If he doesn’t give her rest, she’ll find his desires an abhorrent burden. I’ve heard women say, “I’d rather die” than submit.
Women Need Protection
Years later, my wife explained why waiting until we were married was so important. Her emotional reaction of belonging to me was so frightening that she didn’t think she could have stayed with me if I hadn’t already promised before God and our families that I’d be hers until death. If we hadn’t been married at the time, she would have walled off that part of her emotions, and they might never come back.
There is non-Biblical evidence for her fears. The book "Unprotected" by Psychiatrist Miriam Grossman explains biological reasons why sex outside marriage is so damaging. Having treated more than 2,000 students for depression and other psychological problems at one of America's most prestigious universities, she wrote about her observations that a woman can become very depressed when she realizes her boyfriend had no interest in her beyond sex. She published the first edition anonymously because claiming that men and women have different emotions was so Politically Incorrect that she feared for her job.
Women know that men should protect them for their emotions. If he takes her out of season, she’ll think of him as a cad and a thief even if she wanted it at the time. Having seen that I was strong enough to protect her not only from my passions but also from hers, she decided to trust me. A man wants to have his wife several times per day. This seems like more than a little much to a woman, especially in the first months of marriage when she isn’t sure how well her lubrication works.
When she was nervous, I’d tell her I’d stop if she said, “Ouch!” and I did. Knowing that she could trust me not to hurt her, she was willing to try. Except when she was ill, or hadn’t drunk enough water, or right after giving birth, God made her able to absorb all the passion I can generate so “Ouch” didn’t happen often.
How Stupid can Husbands Be?
There are few stupider things a man can do that are as stupid as showing his wife that in his passion he doesn’t care about hurting her. A woman has a thousand thousand ways of deflecting her husband’s desires. She’ll evade him and frustrate his desire unless she trusts him to be careful with her.
Being humbled makes her more sensitive to how he feels about her. If he’s as appreciative of her as the husband in the Song of Solomon, she’ll be OK with feeling his love and desire more strongly (Song 7:10), but if she thinks he’s unhappy with her, she won’t want to feel put down any more often than she has to.
God designed women so that your wife multiplies whatever you give her and reflects it back to you. Think about making babies. You give her one tiny cell. She nourishes your strength within herself and gives you a baby with billions of cells. Every cell of that baby has your DNA (Gen. 5:3). If you give her a boy cell, she makes a boy, if you give her a girl cell, she makes a girl. We reap what we sow:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7
God gave your wife sensitive emotions so that a she wants you to be pleased with her (1 Cor. 7:34) and so that she can tell whether you’re pleased or not. Her emotions make her a mirror; she’s not a light. Give her anger, criticism, unhappiness, she’ll be tempted to use her power to vex your soul to death (Jud. 16:16), multiply your unhappiness, and give all your unhappiness back to you. If you give her praise, appreciation, honor, and love, she’ll multiply all the happiness you give her and fill your house with the light of your joy in her. Men and their sons reap what they sow to the woman guiding the house, very quickly. A man must teach his sons to honor and appreciate their mother. If a meal turns into a kitchen disaster, for example, they must appreciate it and help clean up and fix it if possible, if only for the sake of the effort she put into it.
Nowhere in the Bible does a man criticize his wife or a son his mother. Not for burned food, not for broken houseware, not for anything at all. Not ever! We know wives who received so many complaints that they quit cooking and bought prepared food so they could say, “Take it up with the manufacturer.” Wives seek praise. A woman is far more likely to stop doing something that isn’t praised than to stop doing it if she’s ordered to stop.
Sow love; reap a house full of love. The secret of being happy in marriage is for you and your children to convince your wife that they are happy with her and protect her so that she trusts her family enough to follow you and enjoy giving herself to you. That will make her happy, and her happiness fills your home with love and light.
The choice is yours; God made her a mirror reflecting back your relationship to her and your feelings toward her. It really is that simple.
Can You Love Her as Christ Loves You?
Now we get to the final and most difficult question for you. Christ expects you to love your wife as He loves you. God knows that women often do things that drive men crazy, but that’s part of the package God gives as a gift, you don’t get to pick and choose which features you want and which you don’t. Neither does she – you, too come as a complete package. That’s why both of you should ask God to choose His best.
Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Colossians 3:19
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27
The Greek word translated “love” is agapao, which is an act of will, it is not an emotion, it is something you are commanded to do if you marry her. Note also that Christ sanctifies the church and cleanses it to present it “to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” Are you prepared to help her develop her gifts and talents to present her to yourself a “glorious wife?” “Without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” means that you must treat her as perfect for you.
Paul wrote that we do the work of spreading the Gospel because our love for Christ “constraineth us,” that is, makes us do it. We serve Him because our love for Him makes us want to please Him.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; II Corinthians 5:14a
In the same way, our love for our spouses should constrain us to do whatever we can to please him or her. If lost people see married Christians working to please each other out of love, they’ll often ask how we can handle the problems the other person causes. That gives us a chance to talk about God’s love and God’s forgiveness. God forgives us, so God expects us to forgive other people in the same way He forgave us.
Are you prepared to dedicate the rest of your life to treating this woman as Christ expects?
For further information on a woman’s needs, look at
https://successful-marriage.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-my-wife-told-me-before-we-were.html
which explains what she told me about herself. What the Holy Spirit led her to tell me about making her happy laid the foundation for our marriage. We wrote it down because it applies to many women. If you’re thinking of becoming serious about a woman, discussing that article with her would explain her needs and give you confidence that you can make her happy.
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