relationships

More Unsolicited Relationship Advice

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time, well both of us really, reading and researching couples building and strengthening our relationship as much as possible. Sometimes I think it’s overkill because it seems like we’re both always seeking out tools and books and studies to help us understand each other. It started with Love and Respect and has now grown to things like The 5 Love Languages, Praying for Him/Her, and several Bible studies about growing your relationship/marriage in the way God intended it. If you meet me and Anthony, we seem like a pretty happy couple, which we are, but we’ve both been in relationships where it was pretty happy on the outside but really unhappy on the inside. We want to make sure our inside is more genuinely happy than the outside because at the end of the day, it is only you and your spouse and the outside world doesn’t matter. If the outside world does matter, then you need to reevaluate your relationship. That’s not to say that outside forces don’t influence your relationship because they do. In-laws, friends, jobs, money, kids, etc., all can influence your relationship, but when you go to bed at night, those things are there (except maybe the kids).

I’ll be honest, in my first marriage, my in-laws influenced my relationship a lot. I never really felt accepted into their family except by a couple of my sister in-laws and even that took a lot of time and effort. I would literally have terrible anxiety about going to visit them because I felt like they didn’t like me and they blamed me for us moving to Texas. I think this really affected my ex husband a lot because everyone wants their family to like the person they’re with. I don’t know for sure, but I feel like my divorce probably was almost good news to them. Because my parents really reached out and wanted to know how they could help and if they could offer support that would help my ex husband and I work through our issues, but nothing like that came from the other side, at least not to me. However that is just my opinion. I could be off base. It does happen. This has also moved into my new relationship. I’ve always worried about what my future in-laws think about me and if they genuinely like me because I know I can come off as distant or stand offish but that’s just me as a person. Especially since they really loved the previous ex girlfriend and I am 100% not like her. I think Anthony has the same issue with my family because really loved my ex husband and they aren’t similar either.

I think for Anthony and I, we both knew we were coming into this relationship with some baggage and we wanted to combat that as much as possible. Not pretend that it wasn’t there, but be able to handle it and heal in a healthy way. Believe me, the honeymoon bubble is fun, but eventually you have to come back to the real world where people do have kids and there are bills to pay and exes to deal with. I also think with both of us getting back into our faith and Anthony going to seminary school, we wanted to be equipped to handle the speed bumps in a way where we honored God and our relationship. We’ve both tried to do things our way and every other way, but even in the short time it’s taken us to work through Love and Respect our relationship has become so much more laid back. We still have our tiffs, most of which I’m gonna blame on Anthony (just kidding), but we’re not having blow up fights like we used to. We save those for every few months and even those last less than a day. In reality, the time we do have disputes is when one of us says something and the other person takes it the wrong way or misinterprets what was said. It goes both ways because men and women definitely don’t hear and see things the same. When I ask Anthony his opinion on something and he says “I don’t care, whatever you want” (everyone women’s favorite phrase) I tend to take that as hurtful because I wouldn’t ask him if I didnt value his opinion. In reality, he just wants me to pick whatever I want because it’ll make me happy and most of the time he really doesn’t have an opinion so he doesnt want to pick or say the wrong thing. I’ve come to the very real understanding that men just don’t care about the same things women care about and that’s legit, okay. He’s learned I’m not gonna get excited about tools and I’ve learned he’s not going to get excited about the make up I buy.

Much like if you have a relationship with God, you can’t have doors in your relationship that are “off limits.” You have to be able to talk about things. Things in the past, present, and future. I know that’s hard for a lot of people, and it took me and Anthony some work to get to that place with each other. Anthony is a very self sufficient person and by that I mean, he’s really just taken care of his own problems his whole life. He’s very resilient and has never really relied on anyone for help because when he has, they’ve let him down. So you can imagine, for someone like me who wants to help and nurture and fix things, meeting someone who doesnt open up, has been the test of a lifetime. Patience has been the name of the game. However, the time I put in to earn his trust was worth every second. I’ve very privileged that he does open up to me about things, and much like the “I don’t care” from him, he’s had to learn that when he opens up to me, I give him advice on how to fix and it’s not meant in a way to belittle the issues he’s having.

I’m not an expert on relationships, not even close. I’m not saying you need to have God in your life to have a good relationship, because some people are happy and together for years without God. That’s just what has impacted my relationship in a really amazing way. If you can be aware of yourself and your short comings and how to fix them for the betterment of your relationship, you’re already half way to the smoothish sailing. I will preach that till the day I die. You cannot be with another person if you think you’re perfect or if think you can make someone else accept your baggage without any question and then the piles of luggage can just hangout in your living room for the rest of the relationship. You have to unpack it with your spouse and let them see the real you, scars and all.

Sexual Intimacy is a Win-Win

Earlier this week, Anthony and I were discussing a blog post he wanted to create about porn addiction. I made a comment about he should include a women’s view, which would be from me. He said it wasn’t really that type of post. It was more of a “man up and stop watching porn” type post. So I said maybe I’d right a counter part to his post. If you haven’t checked out his blog, please do. Biblethumpingjesusfreak.com

I was contemplating how to approach this because porn and sex are very very VERY different for women than for men. Then, as I’m reading my Love and Respect book (highly recommended) I come to a chapter about sexual intimacy in marriage. I call that coincidence a God Wink. The second half of this book is split into a wife section and husband section and they discuss values your partner has and how to best support those values. For things men value they use the acronym C.H.A.I.R.S.

  • Conquest
  • Hierarchy
  • Authority
  • Insight
  • Relationship
  • Sexuality

Now I will be candid and say that sexuality is not an area Anthony and I typically struggle in and I think it’s because I had a pretty good understanding of the male value of sex prior to us being together. However, in my encounters with married men in the past, I can say this seems to be an area a lot women struggle in and, for lack of a better term, weaponize against their husbands. I would never dismiss someones actions of cheating on their spouse, but when men cheat, it’s because they are not having their needs met at home. Sometimes the wife is doing it consciously and sometimes it’s unconsciously. Not just the physical sexual needs, but the emotional need they receive from sex. As women, we don’t feel the anatomical need for sex as men do. Granted, it’s fun for us too, but men biologically need sex.

Truly, ask your man how they feel when they don’t have sex or even masturbate for a week, a month, etc. I bet he will tell you, it physically hurts him and messes with his emotional stability. That is exactly what this chapter talks about. Depriving your husband of sex because you’re unhappy with him and feel he doesn’t meet your emotional needs. How it causes him distress and makes him pull away from you as a partner. Think about it. When your man sees you come out of the shower, his brain automatically goes into turned on mode. He can’t help it. He shouldn’t be punished for finding you physically attractive, because in reality that should be what he does. In all the places he could seek sexual stimulation (porn, other women, masturbation), why would you want to punish him for seeking it with you?

Ladies we’ve all done it. “If he thinks he’s gonna get some after how he treated me, he’s dead wrong.” I will fully admit that I’ve rolled over to my side of the bed to pout and then be angry when he has the audacity to try and make advances. Believe me, this isn’t him dismissing your feelings or saying sex is more important than meeting your emotional needs. For men, sex is a stress reliever and an emotional release. It makes them feel better so a lot of the time, they think it’ll make you feel better. Sex for them is the equivalent to you wanting to talk about your feelings.

Emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy is a two way street. “But all he wants is sex.” I know it seems like that on the surface, but that is how he gets to the level of emotional intimacy you want to get from him. Now believe me, I would never encourage someone to force themselves to have sex if they really don’t want to, but how many times as women, do we withhold sex to be malicious? When you do that, it’s the same as if you asked him to listen to your problems and he said “I’m not in the mood.” How hurt would you be? Imagine if he did that day after day, week after week, and then complained that all you want to do it talk and you don’t care about his needs.

It’s a bit daunting when the shoe is on the other foot, especially when we live in a society that promotes this idea of women using our sexuality as a weapon. They want us to feel empowered and act as if we are owed respect and love simply because we have something men need. Yet, we feel upset and used if men use emotional manipulation to get sex from us. Neither of these actions is okay. There is a way for both parties to get their needs fulfilled and you have to have both to make things work. Women need to be aware of men’s need to have physical intimacy and men need to be aware of women’s need for emotional intimacy. They go hand and hand and they are both NEEDS. Sometimes the man has to give emotional support first to receive physical support and sometimes the women needs to fulfill the physical need before her emotional need can be filled. There has to be a give and take.

So moving forward, if you feel your relationship is lacking in either of these areas, ask yourself if the other end is being fulfilled. Women, if you feel like he’s distant, ask yourself if you’ve been withholding of his need for physical intimacy. Men, if you feel like she’s being withholding, ask yourself if you’ve taken the time to meet her need for emotional intimacy. I guarantee that if both partners work to fulfill their partners need, the relationship will grow deeper and more intimate for both people involved.