Scripture says, How blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Wisdom is seeing life the way it really is. If there is any area of life where a man needs wisdom—it is in figuring out his mysterious wife. So how does a husband romance his wife the way God designed her to be romanced? That is the question we want to answer from Scripture in this episode.
The quality of our marriage matters! Our mission as husbands is to put on display Christ’s sacrificial love for his bride the church by sacrificing to meet our wife’s needs. But what does her HEART need? The Bible answers that question, which is the topic of this February series. Today’s episode looks at a wife’s need for romance. Now, it’s just a guess, but I suspect you find trying to meet this need very pleasurable. But be warned. No husband and wife walk down their wedding aisle expecting their romance to fall apart, but in nearly 50% of Christian marriages it does, bringing enormous emotional devastation to spouses and children. These broken- hearted victims will tell you, “Romance isn’t easy. It is not a sprint. It is a 26K marathon.”
So, it should not surprise us that a husband’s discipleship responsibility is to keep the fires of romance with his wife burning brightly. Men are commanded by God, Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? (Prov 5:18-19). HUSBANDS not WIVES, are given these three commands. 1) Rejoice, which means, to celebrate—to intentionally take joy in. 2) Let her breasts fill you with delight, which is an erotic term that is used elsewhere in Scripture only in Ezekiel 23:3,8, and 21 for caressing the breasts. 3) Be intoxicated always, which is the command to regularly and often get sexually drunk with his wife. Husbands are not to be naïve, sitting ducks for sexual temptation. Married men (and women), as Paul tells us in 1 Corinth 7, are not to allow their sexual/romantic love tanks get down to EMPTY. One of the clearest biblical principles for combatting sexual temptation is that the best DEFENSE is a great OFFENSE—getting sexually drunk often with your wife. Let me say again, it is the husband’s job to lead the way in ensuring that their sexual/romantic relationship is firing on most cylinders.
But here’s the problem—a wife doesn’t do romance and sex the way we do! She is a woman! When God created Eve to complete Adam, God used an untranslatable term for her, which means “like opposite him.” “Suitable helper” is the best translators can do—but she is the opposite other partner in this one-flesh union. Each sex is gifted for different steps in the same Great Dance. Because male and female sexual hardwiring is so different, misunderstanding each other’s romantic/sexual needs is a major cause of marriage heartache, frustration, and turmoil. At one point in my marriage, (a period during which we had four kids born to us in 3 ½ years), I was full of resentment towards Sandy—because I was getting a lot of busy signals and feared that Satan might bring down my ministry by tempting me, sexually, to go elsewhere. But she resented the fact that I didn’t value the way she expressed love for me in all the other ways, besides sexually, and unfairly accused her of not really loving me or she would want sex as often as I did. Here are some Biblical truths that we needed to submit to, in order to find harmony on this personal, but explosive topic.
3 MUTUAL COMMITMENTS TO OVERCOME SEXUAL MISUNDERSTANDING
1. We will respect the form that our mate’s sexual and romantic desires take, because we value God’s perfect design of the opposite gender. Genesis 1:27 says, Male and female he created them. Men and women both need to learn to accept, rather than resent, our inherent mismatch over sex. We need to stop saying “all men ever want is sex,” or “why do I work so hard to love her in her love language—when she pays no attention to mine, which is having sex more often.” Here is a description of typical differences in male and female sexual natures, identified by Shanna Ethridge in Every Woman’s Battle:
- Men crave sexual intimacy. Women crave emotional intimacy.
- Men give love to get sex. Women give sex to get love.
- Men can disconnect body from mind, heart, and soul. Women’s body, mind, heart, and soul are intricately connected.
- Men are stimulated by what they see, women by what they hear.
- Men have a recurrent semen build up cycle. Women have a recurrent emotional/hormonal cycle.
- Men are vulnerable to unfaithfulness in the absence of physical touch. Women are vulnerable to unfaithfulness in the absence of emotional connection.
2. We will both learn to adapt to the other’s romantic and sexual desires. Sexual union nourishes both husband and wife. Paul commands married Christians, Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you. (1 Cor 7:5). The word “deprive,” implies that a stronger sex drive in your mate is not selfish. Notice what Paul does NOT say, “Negotiate: If she wants sex twice a week and he wants sex once a month, meet in the middle, twice a month.” To the contrary, Paul says adapt to the one with the stronger appetite. I rarely hear this verse accurately taught by Christian counselors or by pastors because it feels chauvinistic—since men typically have the stronger sex drive. But the text makes no sense if you say, “meet in the middle.” That leaves the one with the stronger sex drive exposed to sexual temptation—when, universally, Scripture teaches married believers to take their sexual longings to their mate and for their mate to welcome and honor those desires. To be sure, this text does not mean that a Christian wife (or husband) is trapped into always saying, “Yes.” But what it does mean is sending the message, “I welcome your sexual desires focused on me and no one else—but now doesn’t work for me. How about tomorrow morning?” One wife’s negative view of her husband’s sex drive was transformed by this paragraph
Most couples know that for a wife to want to make love, she needs to feel in love. But far fewer realize that for a man to feel in love, he needs to make love. Why does making love bring back the intensity of a husband’s feelings for his wife, and powerfully build his self-confidence? Perhaps, it is because her inviting responses to his sexual advances fill his emotional tank in a profound way. When a wife welcomes his sexual advances, she is giving him what he most needs to be emotionally renewed. As she yields invitingly to his caresses revealing her nakedness, she shows her TRUST in him. As she surrenders to the desire he seeks to awaken in her, he feels more CONFIDENT as a man. As she opens her heart and body to him, she shows in the deepest possible way that she WANTS HIM. Thus, for a man, his partner’s inviting sexual surrender to him meets his deepest emotional needs—to feel TRUSTED, CONFIDENT, and WANTED. He probably doesn’t even know he has these needs, yet his hunger for sex drives him into her arms where they are met. (Intimacy God’s Design for Marriage, Gary & Sandy Yagel.)
It is as if God balances a man’s independent, self-reliant nature by putting into him a physiological need for sexual release that drives him to his wife’s arms where his deepest emotional needs are met as well. When one wife understood this, she stopped seeing her husband’s sexual appetite negatively as a selfish desire for pleasure—but positively, as God’s design for driving her man back into her arms where his deepest emotional needs are met.
3. We will see love-making as the opportunity to give the other our body for his or her enjoyment. Paul writes to the church at Corinth. Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. In God’s design, on the day that a man and woman marry, they participate in a gift exchange. On her wedding night the bride gives her husband the gift of her body and her husband gives the gift of his body to her. In the Family Life booklet, Simply Romantic Nights, one wife was challenged to see sexual union in this way for the first time. Later, she wrote in her diary, “Last night was a sweet evening. I told Jake when I had given my body to him in the past, I had always held back part of myself from him. Depending on my mood, I would give a little of my body or all of my body, but always it was MY decision because it was MY body. So, with a ribbon on and nothing else, I stood before him and offered myself. He wept.”
So, the three commands to husbands in Prov 5, Rejoice in the wife of your youth, Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love make it a godly man’s responsibility to prayerfully seek to overcome the common sexual misunderstandings between husbands and wives by making these three commitments to embrace a biblical view of sexuality and sexual differences. Here is a Valentine’s Day idea: Print the above 2 ½ pages and say to your wife, “These are 3 ideas for insulating our relationship from hurtful misunderstandings in our sex life. I wanted to know what you thought of them.”
5 BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES FOR ROMANCING A WIFE
1. Connect with her HEART before connecting with her BODY. As we saw last week, God’s goal for marriage is the continual experience of being known and still loved—loving intimacy. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Gen. 2:24-25). Such intimacy requires pursuing both conversation, which connects two souls and love-making, which connects two bodies. Sexual connection celebrates the heart connection of marriage. As author Mike Mason says, “To be naked with another is a sort of picture or symbolic demonstration of perfect honesty, perfect trust, perfect giving and commitment, and if the heart is not naked along with the body, then the whole action becomes a lie and a mockery” (The Mystery of Marriage). Here is the point: When pursuing her romantically, always touch her heart before you touch her body. With a woman, there is a vital chronological order to this process: Connect first to her heart. Christian Counselor Barbara Rosberg says: “Men, your sex drive is connected to your eyes; You become aroused visually. Your wife’s sex drive is connected to her heart; she is aroused only after she feels emotional closeness and harmony…You feel less masculine if your wife resists your sexual advances. Your wife feels like a machine if she doesn’t experience sexual intimacy flowing from emotional intimacy.” Linda Dillow and Lorraine Pintus explain further: There is no greater turn-on for a wife than having her husband listen and hear what she is saying. Women need to talk….A woman needs to verbally process in a non-linear free-flowing way. Processing out loud helps her connect her emotions and thoughts in her own way….The goal is to nurture her femininity by allowing her to connect with her emotions. When you meet her emotional needs in this way, she will be far more eager to meet your sexual needs in bed (Simply Romantic Nights).
2. Nourish and cherish her. Paul gives these specific commands to Christian husbands in Ephesians 5:29. The Greek word for nourish used here is EKTREPHO, which means to care for. Romance begins with making our wife feel taken care of.
- Saying, “Honey, I’ll do the dishes and get the kids to bed. You go relax” is a great way to start off a romantic evening.
- Feeling cared for means lifting her load. “Honey, what can I do to help?” Dillow and Pintus put it bluntly, “When she offers to help you organize your tool bench, it counts as an interruption. When you offer to vacuum the house, it counts as foreplay” (Ibid).
- It means YOU take care of the details for your date night. YOU feed the kids. YOU line up the baby-sitter. YOU make the dinner reservation.
- Wives’ sexual desires are often buried beneath the pile of tasks and responsibilities that surround her. One wife told her husband, “Please get that clothes basket full of dirty laundry out of here. I just can’t concentrate on making love while the clothes cry out, “Wash me.”
- Romantic get-aways and weekly dinner dates are very valuable for wives. Getting physically away from all the responsibilities she FEELS about her household and profession screaming from her laptop is imperative to make room in her heart to FEEL romantic passion for her husband.
Romance to a wife is not only making her feel cared for, it is also cherishing her. A few years ago, while speaking to a Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group I asked the wives, “What makes you feel most loved by your husband?” Their answer was, “feeling cherished.” To cherish a wife means to treasure her, highly prize her, deeply appreciate her, regard her as precious. Here are 4 ideas for cherishing her.
- Becoming more grateful to God for her. Prov 18:22 says, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Thank God often for her. We all married up! How could such lovely creatures love US?
- Want to know her heart. As we saw last week, knowing that we cherish her enough to work at understanding what is in her heart says she is precious.
- Make sure she is your number one priority.
- Don’t take her for granted. In a spare moment let your mind drift to her numerous virtues and the way those strengths cover your weaknesses.
3. Give her non-sexual physical affection. In Song of Songs 8:1-2, it appears that the bride is daydreaming and wishes that even though the marriage has been consummated and she longs for her lover sexually, she also longs for brotherly affection from him. Oh that you were like a brother to me who nursed at my mother's breasts! If I found you outside, I would kiss you, and none would despise me. The ESV study notes say, “This verse seems to indicate that in Israelite culture, romantic kisses were to be reserved for private contexts, while the kiss of family affection was deemed appropriate in the open—hence the wish that he were a brother.” Non-sexual touch and hugs contain no element of demand—no expectations of getting sexual. Such affection makes her feel loved—the best way to start her romantic engine. It is easier to go from warm to hot than cold to hot.
4. Remember her as your first love. Prov 5:18 Rejoice in the wife OF YOUR YOUTH. In Revelation 2:4-5, the disloyalty of Christ’s bride to him is likened to a lover who has forgotten his first love. Christ’s command is, “Do the deeds you did at first.” Romance is making her feel special as your sweetheart. She IS special because you have chosen her from among all the women on the planet to be YOUR sweetheart. Romance is making her FEEL special, pampered, like the princess that she is. Lucy Sanna and Kathy Miller, in their book, How to Romance the Woman You Love, write, "From our survey we learned that every woman needs to feel appreciated, wanted, and loved....As long as he shows me that I'm special--no matter where we are or what we're doing--that's romance." There is a reason women love flowers. Romance is showering her with love and coaxing out her femininity. Flowers inspire beauty and softness in a wife. Cards, foot-rubs, affection, candles, soft music, treating her like a lady, kissing her as soon as you return home, love notes, a relaxing bubble bath while you put the kids to bed--anything you do to pamper her and make her feel special is romance to her.
5. Adore her and praise her beauty. Song of Songs 4 reveals that a wise husband takes lots of time making his lover feel beautiful and desirable with words.
Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful...Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that graze among the lilies…. You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you. You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice! Your lips drip nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.
Four parts: 1) Go slowly. Sexually, men are microwaves, women are crockpots. 2) Make her feel beautiful. 3) Make her feel desirable. 4) Do it with words. You don’t have be an Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose famous love poem begins, “How do I love thee. Let me count the ways.” Just be YOU; but love her with words. I love your smile. I love the way you laugh. You look beautiful tonight. I love the smell of your hair. I love the touch of your smooth skin. You still have what it takes to light my fire.
May the romance principles of God’s Word help all of us men lead our wives into the intoxicating love life the He wants for us and brings him glory.
For Further Prayerful Thought: (see your show notes for additional questions)
- If a husband’s sex drive is stronger than his wife’s what do you see as the challenges of helping her accept his masculine sexual hardwiring as God-created?
- Why does it make sense to advise husbands, “First work on meeting your wife’s need for emotional intimacy and learning to romance her well. Then try to help her see the biblical explanation of how to handle your differences in sexual desire?
- Which romancing insights most stood out to you?
