Husband-Wife Need For Each Other

In response to the posted article "Husband and Wife, Love and Priority", a fellow blogger "Dauphine" made comments of which the following is a portion. Please read. I have a response afterwards:

"Do you know how long I've been pondering in my mind what you just so eloquently stated in this post? Yes yes and yes!! The relationship of husband and wife has been put on the back burner and seemingly having children if that's what the couple 'wants' is a way to justify this now 'old fashioned' arrangement. Husbands and wives do indeed need each other first, as this is healthy for them as well as a healthy and ordered example for their children."


Dauphine:

Thank-you for your response. Looking at things psychologically, I think we greatly miss in our current culture how "tremendously" husbands and wives need each other. Not only is committed marriage considered "old fashioned", but aspects of our culture and lives have caused us to "compartmentalize" our duties, time and enjoyments together in marriage commitment.

Our needs are met "inside" marriage, not "outside". For example, we husbands, who tend to be impacted greatly by what we see visually, are bombarded by media with women dressed seductively to intice men for the sake of advertising. Yet, everything a man could ever want, could ever need, is met abundantly in his wife.

God made woman and man this way. Only we are easily distracted to think "Maybe the grass is greener on the other side". But it never is.

Note: Research indicates that emotional closeness is prone to decrease with a couple during the period when they are raising children. It need not.

Often, great marital experience begins with the husband and wife purposing to spend enough "TIME" together. And when we do spend "TIME" with our wife or husband, maybe we should not be so quick to get caught up in the "psychology" of what is troubling us.

First, spend "TIME" together. Commit to two hours a week of being together as a couple with none of your beautiful children around! ... For two hours a week, spend time together, for each other, with no one else around. Don't talk about "problems". Just "BE TOGETHER". Commit to that specific time-slot together alone for the two of you every week. Hold to it religiously. Don't worry about "How things will work out." God put more than we realize in man and in woman, so that a natural process transpires alone in itself and in its own time.

The choosing of a specific two hour slot of time together on a weekly basis speaks "volumes" to both the man and the woman. Experienctially, it establishes on deep emotional as well as practical levels that "You are a couple." The mere fact of "TIME ALONE TOGETHER" reinforces in the mind, soul and body that "Each is the most important person to the other." (If you don't feel you are the most important person to each other, don't worry about it. You "are". Spend time together and the Holy Spirit with His abundant grace and power will make this relevant! You don't have to know the reason behind everything!)

Let me go a little further with this. ... So often we couples argue frustratingly with our wife or husband, when strange as it might seem, the reason for our frustration is that we need the other person we're arguing with so greatly! ... (Its an amazing phenomenon.)

Finally, with so much talk in our society today, I believe there is not enough emphasis on "sex". Yes, and I mean the only healthy and truly loving sex there is, that which is and can be within marriage.

Sex is a wonderful thing, given to married couples, and no one else, and so much more important than all our societal "noise" recognizes. The precious, sacred sexual relationship between a husband and wife, guarded and cherished within the healthy confines of lifelong matrimony, is the "THERAPY" natural in itself to move the couple relationship forward to spiritual and emotional healthiness, peace and maturity. ... If every thought of man at a moment of weakness was to grow to instantly turning to thoughts of his wife alone, and if every response to negative impulse of a wife was to "influence" her husbands in directions good for both of them, then there is no end to the joy and healing that can take place.

Yes, Dauphine, husbands and wives are not comoplete without each other. We were never meant to be complete without each other! ... Too often we withdraw from the one we love, then unconsciously criticize them for the weakness they exhibit due to our withrawal. ... If we would only realize that often the times when we fight, are really the times we are saying "We need time together!" Time to rub a back gently. Time to walk on the beech and notice the sunset, while not saying anything. ... And if that difficult to do, start with twenty minutes. ... Trust the process. And when you trust the process, make it faith in God as well.