Two Blonde Boys: Valentines Day Post #2

Happy Valentine's Day (again)!

Here is another great article from The Family Room (a publication of FamilyLife from Dennis and Barbara Rainey).

This time, it's for the ladies: Why Sex Is so Important to Your Husband.

"How do you romance a woman?"

Answer: "Wine her, dine her, call her, cuddle with her, surprise her, compliment her hair, shop with her, listen to her talk, buy flowers, hold her hand, write love letters, and be willing to go to the end of the earth and back again for her." That sounds about right, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want that kind of treatment...

"How do you romance a man?"

Answer: "Arrive naked. Bring food."

A woman's picture of romance tends to revolve around her emotional needs and her thirst for a relationship with her husband. It's a package deal, like going on a cruise. Your cruise ticket doesn’t just allow you to enjoy sailing on a ship through beautiful waters to exotic locations; it includes three meals a day plus all-you-can-eat midnight buffets, access to swimming pools, games, exercise facilities, entertainment, excursions to ports of call, and a host of other amenities and experiences.

While a man has emotional needs, too, as Dr. Willard Harley asserts in His Needs, Her Needs, a man's view of romance is much more focused on a single experience: sexual affirmation. In that regard, God wired men and women very differently. As you probably have experienced, these radical differences in approach to romance set the stage for repeated clashes in marriage—the husband pursues romance based on his sexual passion, and the wife goes after relationship...

Like Oil and Vinegar

When God created woman, He gave her multiple avenues for expressing the essence of her sexuality—her femaleness. Because I am a woman, I can participate in sexual intercourse with my husband. I can conceive a child and experience the miraculous process of creating a life in my body over nine months. My husband can only watch and wonder, but he'll never know what giving life is like.

After my child is born, I can physically nurse her for months and even years if I so choose. There is no way a man can feed a baby with a bottle and begin to experience the same deep fulfillment and satisfaction women feel when they successfully nurse their child.

The experiences of childbearing and nursing are affirmations of female sexuality. Women were made to nurture life. It is an expression of our inherent femaleness, even if we never have a biological child. We are nurturers by God's design.

By contrast, a man's sexuality, his manhood, is primarily expressed through sexual intercourse. Of course this isn't the only way he demonstrates his sexuality, but his sexual performance with his wife is an inseparable part of who he is. This area of his masculinity is subjected by the design of the Creator to a brief performance with a woman—his wife.

My point is this: when it comes to affirming your sexuality as a woman, you can participate in intercourse with your husband without having to become aroused. Your husband, however, cannot. His sexual affirmation requires him to be able to perform to complete the act of intercourse.

A wife must understand that temptation can get a foothold when her husband's sexual needs (including the need to feel desired by his wife) remain unmet. There are many voices in a man's world tempting him to fulfill his needs through illicit and perverted recreational outlets. Counterfeit pleasures beckon from every street corner—and every modem...

Grateful for God’s Design

Have you ever thanked God for the way He created you and your husband? God doesn't make mistakes, and thanking Him for His design is the first step in finding peace in your situation. And doing that will give God the opportunity to change your thinking.

Thanking God is a decision I choose to make. From there, I choose to love my husband even if I don't have strong feelings. Love, ultimately, is a commitment to seek the best of the one loved. I can choose to exercise my power as a passionate, nurturing, fully alive woman, or I can withhold and withdraw.

You face the same decision to love your man today.

Your husband will never be the man God created him to be if you don't validate his maleness and understand and satisfy his need for sexual intimacy. You are God's primary instrument of love and affirmation if he is to became God's man. You have the power to make him or break him because men are not born, they are made.