Allow her freedom. Don’t restrict the full potential of her womanhood and her humanness. If she has dreams and aspirations, encourage those and support her in any way you can. If she chooses to work outside of the home and have a full and meaningful career, let her. Don’t be reluctant in your tolerance and encouragement. If she chooses to be a stay-at-home wife and mom, support her in that choice as well. If she wants to have friends, hobbies, attend classes of some sort, learn new skills, let her. Encourage her and don’t make her feel like you resent the attention taken away from you.
Wife, be sensitive to the fact that your husband still needs your attention. Just as he should balance work and home life, you should balance your work or your outside activities and your home life.
Husband, don’t let your freedom to have outside friends and interests (and just like for the wife, we’re referring to healthy interests) take priority over your duties and obligations to your wife. She needs your attention too.
Respect each other’s differences and needs. Men and women have different temperaments, different likes and different needs. The more you learn about your mate, the better you will be able to understand and tolerate those differences. Work hard to get to know your mate. Simply living in the close proximity of marriage will teach you a lot about each other, but you have to really work at building the close relationship whereby you really know each other. This is not unlike our relationship with God. We can know God or we can KNOW God. It’s a matter of intimacy and degrees of knowledge. Do you really know everything that makes her glad or sad? Do you as the old phrase goes, know what “makes her tick”?
Don’t try to change each other. Perhaps I should have put this as the number one topic on the first page for it is a matter over which not only relationships may be destroyed, but deep wounds are suffered and it kills spirits. I may be amiss, but I believe, as I have observed, that more often women will attempt to change their men, than will men try to change their women. It may be the nurturing gene at work in women, or perhaps they simply have different ideals and expectations than men. It is less common that a husband or boyfriend will suggest or even insist on changes to her style of dress, hairstyle, or makeup preferences. He likes what he sees in her appearance, and is more likely to accept her as she looks. A man is initially attracted to a woman based on her appearance. Do not think that shallow. It is natural and as God intended. Don’t try to change it or argue against the rightness of it. If he does not like her appearance, he is not attracted to her and will not seek to pursue her favor. For that reason, it is not common for him to call for major changes on her part. There are exceptions of course. Chances are, she will make greater demands for him to change than he will make of her.
The demands for him to change often go beyond just his choice of clothing styles and how he cuts his hair. They often go to the heart of who he is, for who he is, very much determines what he likes to do. What a man does with his life, in terms of career choices, and even the hobbies he enjoys, very much follows what he is personality wise. A wife making unreasonable demands can often kill not only his ego and his sense of manhood, but his spirit as well. I have known individual men who gave in to the demands of a new bride to give up his dream of a career, which to her was undesirable for one reason or other. For her, he chose something else and remained an unhappy shell for the remainder of his life. Forever filled with regret over what he missed and what he could have become. What he greatly desired to become and make of himself, he never did or became. Wife, if he is a soldier, and you make him give that life up to become an accountant, or even a doctor or lawyer, you will no longer have the man you fell in love with. If he has a lifelong dream to enter law enforcement, or take on any other career that you may see as overly risky, if that desire is more than just a passing fancy on his part, you do yourself and him a great disservice if you compel him to give up that dream. The greater damage is done to him, but it will reflect in your marriage relationship as well.
If he likes to ride motorcycles, or own firearms, get over your fear of those things. Yes, there is reason for and the responsibility to exercise proper precautions, but if he is exercising due respect for these hobbies and not reckless in his enjoyment of them, let him enjoy them. If you cannot learn to like them yourself, at least allow him to enjoy them. And don’t hound him about it.
Do not exhibit signals of shame toward him. If he has a tattoo when you meet and begin your relationship, for instance, and you do not like tattoos, do not, even in jest, put your hand or other covering over his tattoo attempting to hide it from view in the company of others as though it is something you are ashamed of. You are sending the signal that you are ashamed of him. If he does not have one, and he expresses the desire to you to gain one, then you two have room for discussion. Of course you have every right to voice your approval or disapproval over the matter. Husband, your body is not your own. If it is a whim or an impulse on your part, you owe her the respect of valuing her opinions.
Deal with the little irritants and quirks you so dislike now. If those annoying little habits or personality quirks bother you now, how much more so will they irritate you after just a few years of marriage? Are they things that can or should be changed? Have you talked to him or her about them? Are they worth bothering with? Will you get used to them and completely overlook them in good time?
It really is not important how the toilet paper roll is oriented on the roller. Likewise the paper towel roll in the kitchen. Whether it feeds over the top, or from underneath matters not a hill of beans. It is not a matter to argue over. The same thing applies to the toothpaste tube. Eventually it all gets used up whether it is squeezed from the bottom, the top or even the middle. It’s not worth having heated arguments over. Are your mate’s quirks any worse than the quirks that you have?
Share each other’s dreams. If we’re alive and have any degree of passion for anything, we will have hopes and dreams. Those may be simple, or they may be grandiose. A young person dreams of adulthood, a career, getting married, raising children, and being happy. A young man may have a dream of earning a degree in political science, entering public service, and eventually running for high public office. Perhaps even the presidency.
When we have a dream, by the very definition, a dream is a passion. A passion burns so deeply inside us that we usually cannot keep it quiet. Who better to tell than the one you love the most? You may think the dream is totally outlandish or at the least unattainable. You may be right. Be careful. You might be wrong. How tragic it would be to discourage someone you care deeply about from pursuing his or her dream that though you thought it was unattainable, in truth could have been realized?
Someone I know recently told me that throughout her life she had developed some “good ideas” but others told her they were really bad ideas. They sounded realistic and achievable when she described them to me. She had been discouraged from trying to realize those dreams. What a shame. She never even bothered to try. Why should she?
Tell each other your dreams. Share your dreams with your mate. Make your dreams your mate’s dreams, and make your mate’s dreams your dreams. Become involved at least, in the sense of appreciation and support.
Build dreams around your marriage. Look with high hopes to the future. No, we do not know what the future holds for us and Scripture tells us that we have no assurance of tomorrow, but we should still plan as though we will have many years to share with each other.
If you are just starting your marriage early in your adult years, you have your entire lives ahead of you as clean and unwritten as a fresh un-painted canvas. You will begin and raise a family. You will begin careers. At least one of you will. You may buy a house. You will plan summer vacation trips. You will enjoy watching your children grow and eventually turn into adults themselves. You will see them marry and begin families of their own. All this is assuming that God allows you the years and the health to enjoy these things. Even if you come together in a marriage that is not your first, and perhaps you already have achieved some of these dreams, you will begin your own set of dreams, hopes and aspirations.
Deal with jealousy. Do not be jealous of your mate. The most common form of jealousy is the fear of losing the affections of your mate to another. There is another form of jealousy that is just as destructive to the marriage relationship. That is the jealousy of your mate’s success, his or her friends, family, or anything “good” in his or her life.
Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy? (Prov 27:4 NIV)
The problem with such jealously has been dealt with in previous topics such as your mate’s friends, or family. Jealously will cause harm not only to your mate, but to you as well. It is one of the most destructive of human emotions. It will also cause sour relationships beyond just yours with your mate. Family and friends are affected. Talk to your mate about those things which you struggle with such as jealousy. Examine the causes if you can identify them. Most of all make the problem a matter of prayer. In severe cases, godly counsel is probably advisable.
Don’t be so possessive of his or her time that you can never allow for outside activities on his or her part, nor allow them to spend a little time with a friend or family member.
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Copyright © 2006 Dan W. Dooley
