Two Blonde Boys: Valentines Day Post #1

Happy Valentine's Day!

Check out this great article from The Family Room (a publication of FamilyLife from Dennis and Barbara Rainey).

The first post for today is for the guys: Becoming the Man of Her Dreams...

What do Sean Connery and Harrison Ford have in common? Whether playing James Bond or Indiana Jones, these actors have been Hollywood's idea of a manly man for decades. They're rough and tough, and can fight, shoot, punch, or drop-kick their way through a crowded alley of bad guys… while barely cracking a sweat. They're unstoppable. Unflappable.

And they usually get at least one girl in the end.

After all, jumping in the sack with any available warm body just goes with the action-hero territory. They reach for the thrill of sex without paying the price of intimacy. Take James Bond. Give him an adventure, and he'll be in and out of more beds than a mattress salesman.

In the absence of models who know how to love, cherish, and relate to one woman over a lifetime, is it any wonder that for the last few decades boys have grown up to be men who are equally clueless about how to give themselves to a lifelong love? Taking their cues from Hollywood they enter into marriage with guns blazing, thinking that their tough guy routine will save the day. But the show barely gets started when they find out how woefully ill-equipped they are to give a woman what she craves most.

A relationship.

I'm convinced we have a generation of married men who are confused and lonely; they're stuck in a lifeless marriage because they never learned how to cultivate a relationship with a woman that speaks to her romantic need for intimacy...

...great romance is the by-product of a relationship.

Simple Gardening Tips

The secret is learning how and what to sow in the garden of a woman's heart. When you sow the seeds of respect, kind words, acts of tenderness, and thoughtfulness, you reap a reward from your wife in abundance. As God said through Hosea, "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love" (Hosea 10:12)...

When you withhold a meaningful relationship (I'm speaking about her need for conversation with you, her desire to see you plugged into family life, her thirst to hear words of affirmation), she finds it difficult to give herself totally to you... Her heart can be like a bank account where you make deposits and withdrawals. Far too often as men we can make withdrawals and disregard making deposits or investments. Every wife needs you to invest security, acceptance, and an emotional connection in her life...

When a man pressures his wife to perform sexually without regard to the relational aspects of such intimacy, sex becomes shallow. Physical intimacy becomes a battle of the wills or a manipulative game that ultimately dies a slow death.

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?

Just as your wife might wonder why sex is so important to you, you might be wondering why relationship is so crucial to her. You might even be scratching your head about why God wired men and women so differently. Look at it this way. As you know, God created Adam first. But did you know that Adam never asked for a wife?

It was God who said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him" (Genesis 2:18, emphasis added). God, in His wisdom, created Eve to be the companion that Adam didn't even recognize he needed. She was created to remove Adam's aloneness. No wonder God placed in Eve an intense drive toward relationship.

God knew that man's tendency was to be alone. He gave us a gravitational pull in marriage—our sex drive—so that we would pursue our wives who, in turn, would call us to know and be known in the context of a relationship...