I’ve just finished reading a post called Why Your Hubby Wants Your Body where the author, Sheila, makes the very true point that men make love to feel loved while women need to feel loved to make love. It’s the brilliance of God’s wiring so that there exists no selfishness within our marriages. We literally have to look beyond ourselves to make sure the needs of our spouse is met in order for our spouse to meet our needs. It’s a circle. It’s a beautiful thing, really.

The problem, however, is in us. Whenever we have the tendency to be lazy or unintentionally (or intentionally) selfish, we can muddy the way God designed for us to take care of each other within our marriages. Or we can simply be absent-minded. If we are getting our own needs met, it’s possible that we can ‘forget’ to do the work of requiting our spouse.

I think of it as a well. Each time your spouse meets your need it’s like water in a well. Each time you meet your spouse’s need it’s like water in a well for them. No person in the marriage goes parched because each is pouring into the needs of the other. What happens then, if one spouse is pouring into the other, but nothing is poured back in return?

If you are the spouse who is enjoying being poured into (a wife who has a husband who shows you affection, kind words, hugs, touch or a husband who has a wife who respects you and is willing and enjoys sex with you regularly) but failing to pour back, you are forcing your spouse to get to a point where they may be loving from an empty well. They are being forced into reaching into their reserves to continue to meet your need. And it’s by God’s grace that when not being poured into that they have anything left to give to you.

Remember that you are the ONLY person authorized to meet the needs of your spouse. They cannot get what they need from anyone else but you.

I heard this very simple, but very weighty advice the other day. If you are a Christian married person. This advice is all the advice you’ll need. It’s going to save you time, energy and money that it would have cost you to go see a counselor. These folks said that whenever they have a couple come to them for counseling for their marriage, they listen to the issues that the couple expresses and then ask one question:

Which one of you are acting like Christ in this situation?

You should ask yourself that question, everyday in each situation in your marriage. If you are a Christian this is your whole objective. Die to your own selfishness and live for and like Christ Himself. So what would Jesus do? Think about that – now YOU go do that.

Here’s your problem. You think you are the exception. You’re not. The other day I wrote a post called This Blog Will Not Save Your Marriage. And that’s still true. Yep, even a couple days later that’s hasn’t changed. It was a indictment that said the reason why your marriage is not changing is because all you do is read blogs and books but never execute a plan.

Here is your next indictment. You take advice on your relationship and you don’t think that it applies to you. It does. If someone with a functional and happy marriage tells you that you need to do certain general things, why would you put that advice on the shelf? Why would you automatically assume that what they are saying (and in fact many others saying the same things) don’t apply or won’t work? Why or how could you make such an assumption before you put the advice to work?

I see in too many instances where the general advice to women is that “your husband is wired for respect,” or “don’t speak negatively about your husband in public” etc. But yet, it’s in one ear and out the other and you wonder why you aren’t progressing? The general advice to men is to create a home where your wife feels loved and secure. Don’t speak harshly to her. Yet, you feel like your household is the exception. It’s not.

It’s really childish to cast aside wise counsel. It reminds me of teenagers who still have milk behind their ears but think that they know everything. And as an adult who’s “been there, done that and got the T-shirt” you just have to sit and shake your head thinking, “this idiot thinks he knows it all – but is going to hit a wall.” It’s the same with engaged people. People who’ve been married over any length of time tell them, “Hey, this marriage stuff is serious. There will come a time when you will feel this way or that way. It’s normal but you have to figure out how to stick with it.” And sure as I’m sitting here typing this, they wave off the advice and say, “Not our marriage, it’s going to be an absolute fairytale” Only later to encounter the very thing that the married couple told them to be on guard and prepare for. The newlywed now feel the need to hide what’s going on in their marriage and suffer silently through it.

I have a rule in my life to not “cast pearls before swine”. I now give advice to those worthy of it. If they come to my time and time again only to cast off the counsel – I consider it a waste of time and I cut them off from that counsel. If you know better than me, than why are you coming for my advice? Is it simply to find someone to agree with what you’ve already decided? I’m not going to do that.

Don’t feel and act like you are the exception against wise counsel. Even if you are the exception, prepare like you’re not.

In a majority of marriages, I would venture to say that there are areas where for some reason the couple don’t fully trust each other. And you may not even be aware that that’s what happening. It may be because of something said in the past that went unaddressed or for some other cause. When this is the case, words lose their simple meaning. A conversation observed from an outsider as harmless causes such an explosion in your marriage that you side-step the issue just to keep peace in the home.

You know the area in your marriage if it exists. It could be the conversation about in-laws, or the amount of sex being had. It could be about helping around the house. You know not to bring it up or if you’re even able to bring something up around the topic innocently it’s viewed with suspicion. “What do you mean by that?” is a phrase that’s always on your mind in those areas. You don’t fully trust.

I can’t say it better than this link. In the following link, there is a 4 part series of video that  EVERY couple/person should watch – I say at LEAST watch the first video. Let me know what you think in the comments.

The Series is called The Price of Trust Assaulted Relationships: click here or copy and paste this link into your address bar: http://understandingtv.com/series/video/1/The_Price_of_Trust-Assaulted_Relationships/ 

For a long time I’ve told my wife, that if I was a song writer that I would write an album full of great love-making songs and call it “Aural Sex – The Sex Soundtrack.” I’m actually pretty disappointed that no artist has come out with an album that could be exclusively for being getting in the mood and for playing throughout lovemaking sessions. At first I thought that Robin Thicke might have done it with his Sex Therapy album, but it wasn’t what I expected.

So thank God for iPods and such where we can build our own playlist. So I’m asking YOU readers what are some great songs that put you in the mood or you consider good love-making songs, (intense sessions, quickie-songs, down & dirty, sensual, etc.). I will later add links to those songs for all of us to check out! Please comment below with your songs. Help us create a play list…

Since I mentioned Robin Thicke, here’s one of his songs I do like:

Out of curiosity, my wife and I watched this season of Kim & Kourtney Take New York so that we could get a glimpse of what on earth could have happened with Kim Kardashian’s very short-lived marriage. For those of you who are clueless to who what I’m talking about here is some popular culture for you.

Kim Kardashian (according to Wikipedia) is an American socialite, television personality, model, actress and businesswoman. She is basically a reality television stars who is famous for being famous. She recently married Kris Humphries a basketball player for the New Jersey Nets. They had a widely publicized wedding only to end up divorced 72 short days later. Big build up, sizzled out.

The reality show, Kim & Kourtney Take New York is a series that follows sisters Kourtney and Kim Kardashian as they open a clothing store in New York. This past season was re-worked to focus more on Kim and Kris’ first months of marriage and how it came to an end. Now you are caught up.

We watched the season each episode seeing what could be categorized within the realm of normal in any marriage with issues, and things that were particularly common to a first year marriage. We watched as the couple attempted to navigate questions of where they were going to live, finding time to spend together amongst busy schedules, input from in-laws, communication issues, learning how to relate to each other living together for the first time, discovering annoying idiosyncrasies and wondering if it was all a mistake. All very normal parts of beginning a new life with someone.

The final few episodes were increasingly agonizing. We see the couple feel alone, they cry and bicker and seek advice from single people on their marriage. We get an unfortunate bird’s eye view of everything going on and how all the pieces of the puzzle are being moved in the wrong directions. We see the marriage wearing on their personalities until finally Kim wants to call it quits. I know that since this couple is famous and we watched them that we had a right to criticize their marriage, but watching this season made very human in my eyes. It took away the stardom and gave them back their humanity. And it hurt to watch.

I wish Kim and Kris had a marriage blog to go to. I wish they had some married friends that they could have spoken to. I wish that they had reached out to their parents. Watching it, my wife and I saw that what they were going through was very common in marriage, especially the early parts. Young couples rarely seek help after they get married. They feel like they are supposed to be living this fairy tale life at the beginning that they are either too afraid or too embarrassed to tell someone that things are going rough.

If Kim and Kris had come to me, this is what I would have told them:

• What you are feeling is common. You are not the first person to start off this way in your marriage but end up having a long happy marriage.
• You both need to end taping this show and go away and be married without the cameras. They are too much to bear for a new marriage. You have to be able to be absolutely vulnerable and honest and this is hindering that because you have to consider your fans.
• That “lovey-dovey” feeling ebbs and flows. Don’t put much stock in that. You need to aim for love that grows deep like roots on a giant tree. It’s the underworking root system that allows for the tree to grow that strong. You can only develop those roots with time and properly cultivating your relationship and seeing each other through hard times.
• Speaking of hard times this one is your first. How you handle will determine what happens next. You are married put everything else on the backburner to figure out how to make this marriage work. Get books, get counseling and figure out what you need to do.
• Be better at compromising. These are lessons that you have to learn at the beginning. You need to pick your battles. If everything is important than nothing really is. If you are not willing to budge on certain situations, it just means that you are selfish. Be honest and determine if your hard stance is based on selfishness or if it truly means something. Then give in on some things
• Don’t take someone else’s side over your spouse.
• Learn how to communicate with one another. Really listen to each other’s needs. Really make it your quest to meet those needs. Understand that a need doesn’t have to be logically understood to be legitimate. Figure how the root of those needs and meet them for each other. Every time.
• Kris, be more gentle with Kim. You are very rough with her. Your tone is rough, you are very physical. Treat her like she is delicate.  It’s not always what you say, but how you’ve said it.
• Kim, be more flexible with Kris. You are not very accommodating. Also, stop acting like you two are dating. He is your husband – not your boyfriend. Learn the difference and act accordingly.
• Don’t you dare ever mention the word divorce again. Ever. It’s not an option for you. Consider it impossible to get one and then with that attitude figure out how to make your life enjoyable when that option is taken away.
• Pray. All the time. Pray for your marriage, pray for wisdom and pray earnestly for one another. This is your only hope.
• I know you wanted a fairy tale life and marriage. Understand two things: The life that you dream of has to be worked on and the work is rarely without resistance or difficulty. Embrace the fact that it will take work and put more effort into this than you do into your jobs. Second, each fairy tale looks different. It doesn’t have to be what you’ve seen in someone else’s marriage. When you get married you take a blank canvass and turn it into something beautiful that’s all your own. Don’t be so rigid to what the two of you think marriage is supposed to be. You are both wrong. Come together and what you’ve worked hard to agree to is what marriage should look like.

If Kris and Kim reached out to me and my wife we would tell her about our rough first year and how wonderful things are now. I hope that they don’t finalize the divorce before they reconsider. Like most newlyweds, they don’t know every other married couples story of the valleys that came along with those peaks. I wish they would have reached out to me.

What advice do you have for a newlywed couple? What advice do you wish you had given to a couple that divorced? Comment below.

“I want John Cusack holding a boombox outside my window. I wanna ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey. I want Jake from Sixteen Candles waiting outside a church for me. I want Judd Nelson thrusting his fist into the air because he knows he got me. Just once I want my life to be like an 80s movie.”

This quote from the movie, Easy A reminds me that it’s thinking of love in terms of things happening in dramatic fashion is dangerous. Grandiose displays of love or the idea of them could get you into a lot of trouble in the long term if you think that’s all there is to it. I like to call this type of love – heroic love.

Heroic love is the kind of love that only carried out with bravado. It’s the kind of love that says, “if someone looks at my wife or speaks to her wrong I will punch him in the nose.” Heroic love says, “nobody is going to talk negatively about my husband! I will go off!” Heroic love is that love that decides that I would take a bullet for my spouse.

The problem with loving only with bravado is that it neglects the day to day common courtesies of respect, entreaties, making sure you speak kindly to your spouse, making sure that they don’t have to repeat themselves because you listened the first time. It neglects to remember the discussions that you had and the promises that you made.

You see, heroic love is lazy. It only springs into action when it’s necessary. It’s the quintessential “hero” only showing up when there is a dire need. It’s deceptive because the need that it puts on its cape for is generally so big that the one that it helps thinks that there must truly be real love there if this person was moved to action over such a grand cause. Think about it. If your husband came to your aid when someone was disrespecting you at the mall you’d be all swept away his apparent generosity and care that you’ve forgotten that he doesn’t speak very kindly toward you himself at home – that he’s not very gentle towards you on a day to day basis. You didn’t consider that perhaps he came to your rescue at the mall because he felt disrespected by someone disrespecting you. His act of love may have been more selfish.

Remember Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger who saved the lives of 155 people on US Airways Flight 1549 back in January 2009 by safely landing the plane in the Hudson River in New York? He was hailed a hero because he stepped up in a dire situation and figured out a way to protect and save everyone that was under his care. And he was in fact a hero. It’s also now common knowledge that he is very meticulous about safety and constantly doing things right in the air. But let’s pretend for a second that he was a generally reckless pilot. Let’s pretend that before he flew that he would always have a few beers and then barely follow protocol, but still managed to land the plane in the Hudson safely out of sheer selfish motives to live himself. We would still call this guy a hero praising him even though he was reckless on an everyday basis with the lives of those under his care.

That’s how some marriages are. The spouses step up in the big things, but are below par in the everyday. Listen, heroic love is necessary and should be a part of a healthy marriage – just like we needed Captain Sully to have his heroics in operations on that day. But guess what – we are calling him a hero for something that is simply a part of his job duty. Don’t settle for simply heroic love in your marriage. Don’t simply be a “hero” in your marriage and don’t allow your marriage to float by from rescue to rescue. Heroic love is for movies.

Are you guilty of only giving heroic love? What are you going to change today? Leave in the comments how you are going to move from heroic love to the everyday love.

In his spoken word poem, Jeff Bethke highlights frequent and problematic issues in marriage while pointing to Jesus as the ultimate healer, redeemer and restorer of marriage. Check it out! Comment Below, Let me know your thoughts.

If you haven’t noticed. It’s been quite a while since I’ve last posted. I’ve been busy with work projects, some personal business projects, a load of personal life stuff, enjoying my wife and doing more planning for things we have going for 2012. I thought – “Blast!, I have got to get back to posting on Happily Married After.”

I have a list of topics that I have written to choose from, but every time I look at it I just don’t feel inspired to write. Frankly, these days I’ve been feeling that I’ve really said all I wanted to say on the topic. I feel like one of my marriage blog counterparts, Kathleen in her posts here and here. There are hundreds of great marriage blogs out there and we are all whipping out tips and being champions for marriage daily so I know there are resources available for you when I haven’t posted. Like Kathleen, I want to make sure what I share with you here is continually worthwhile to you and not trite marriage tips.

It occurred to me that this blog will not save your marriage, really. Neither will the hundreds of others. We can offer tips, suggestions, news and wear our fingers to the bone typing and telling you all we know – sharing our most private details of our lives in order to help you change in your marriage, but none of us have that power. When we marriage bloggers share with you these things, they are suppose to help you recognize something in yourself or to help you be more tolerant to the place that your spouse is in – but if you don’t see how it applies to you and execute a plan – it’s just bathroom reading material! We can no better save your marriage, than the minister or pastor at your church can save your situation. We can only point you in a direction.

I am working on a project with some other marriage bloggers, that I hope will be released some time this year and I will not stop blogging here. I have some more things to say. But your job is to make sure that this year to not let another year pass and you’ve not executed what you’ve learned. Take responsibility for your own marriage.

There’s only 12 days left until Christmas so just in case you need another gift idea, head over to Union28. (affiliate link). They have great clothing and gear that have a great message in supporting marriage. And it’s not cheesy. The clothes are actually pretty good. If you click the link/picture below, it’ll take you directly to their site where you can see for yourself and you can even get a discount using this link.