We are told to respect our husbands in the bible, and if we don’t have a good example of what respect is, then the easiest example I can relate to is how you would treat a king. The king is powerful, kind and gentle with his wife. He respects her back because she is the daughter of a powerful king and she is worthy. When they are in public, he should be in control not her. She should never correct or embarrass him. She should do her best to dress nicely and be worthy of her position as his wife. She should share her gifts with others around her and be generous. He shouldn’t humiliate her in public either. She shouldn’t try to outshine him in front of others. She should be beautiful at all times in front of people.
BDSM wouldn’t be an issue because she is a queen! I know life isn’t a fairytale, but that doesn’t mean we should give up honorable ways. Kings shouldn’t have to worry about proving themselves to their wives, their work needs to be to win the battle, to be willing to give their lives to protect a people or for a cause, bravery should be his goal not popularity. They should both treat each other with the utmost respect. Queens wouldn’t write about their sex lives online. The higher and more honorable the king is, the higher the wife is also. It is in both of their best interest for the wife to glorify the king every opportunity she gets. It makes him look strong when he is giving to her and her look beautiful when she is graciously receiving what he provides. She should give him the gifts of loyalty, honor and a willing heart to please and obey him and in return he loves her, provides, and protects. If you treat your husband like a king, he will be more likely to return respect to you. If you treat him like a fool, he will grow angry and feel he has to prove something or he’ll just give up and escape or he’ll demean you so your comments are worthless in his mind. You have power to influence him only if you treat him as worthy. Choose an honorable relationship rather than a selfish one. Give more than you receive instead of being the fat, rich royalty who sits on their throne and ignores what’s outside of their castle walls. Have a higher purpose than yourselves as a couple. A marriage is supposed to be a representation of Christ and the church and Christ is a king and the church is His beautiful pure bride.
Tagged: BDSM, Christ, Christian Marriage, God, Husband, Marriage, Pleasing Your Husband, Queens, Relationships, Respect, Wife, Wine tasting descriptors
I really one line in particular from this post: Choose an honorable relationship rather than a selfish one.
That can and should be applied to all relationships. Of course, it is easier said than done.
Yeah, none of us are perfect, but it’s good to look at an ideal and see what we’re reaching towards, sometimes it brings confusing little things into a better perspective.
A refreshing take, compared to underlying message of the woman who seems to be stuck vacuuming.
(knowing full well that might open up debate).
Somewhere there’s a bible verse that basically says “in our daily duties, God brings meaningfulness to them and to be faithful” but I’m lost as to where to start looking for it.
I believe it is in Luke, addressed to Marthan and speaks of God’s word being eternal and giving meaning to our daily activites. Haven’t been able to find it specifically yet. A lot going on here.
Thanks!
In Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, it was the meek, humble hobbits who were given the job of holding the evil ring, it would have corrupted the powerful wizards and elves who touched it, only those who were humble were able to handle great evil without being affected.
Found this comment while looking at David Schnarch’s website. It illustrates to some degree how to continue to respect your husband under difficult circumstances that he seems unwilling or unable to address.
My husband is overweight. I would find him more attractive if he successfully confronted himself about this issue. We’ve had a number of candid conversations about this over the years; when I speak to the best in him from the best in myself, I feel empathy toward him about this. When he responds to my comments in ways that demonstrate integrity and good will, it increases my respect for him, even when he is saying things I don’t want to hear.
He has tried and failed to lose weight in the past. When he admits that he doesn’t know if he can be successful, and that he knows that at some point he may face health related issues as a result of his obesity, I feel relieved that he is confronting himself about this even though it’s not what I want to hear. I can see that he is “mapping my mind” when I express concern about him, and that he understands the potential consequences for me if he is unable to address this issue in his own life.
It’s a “moment of meeting,” to use David’s phrase, and while we both feel sad about it, we don’t feel so alone in our sadness. The external circumstances may or may not change, but we are able to maintain a collaborative alliance about it.
As I see it, you are uniquely positioned to be empathic toward your wife for two reasons; you are in a unique position to remember what your relationship was like when you shared the same faith, which may enable you to understand her sense of loss about this. You also know what it’s like to feel betrayed by those whom you trusted within the Christian community, which gives you insight into her feeling that she has been “betrayed” by you.
As I understand it, your ability to maintain an empathic stance toward her, while maintaining your integrity with respect to choices you have made about your beliefs is the stuff of which differentiation is made.
http://crucible4points.com/smfforum/board%3D131.0
The link is not direct. I only give it as attribution of some sort.
That looks like an interesting forum…I like his perspective on respect, thanks for sharing it.
I recommend his book “Imtimacy and Desire” frequently because his perspective is so different from that of other MCs and STs. The first time I read it I had a hard time buying into it and didn’t see that much of myself. The second reading really hit home. If you read it, have a lot of time and quiet like all mothers of three girls do. It’s fairly dense stuff, but easily understandable. Don’t let the evolutionary perspective stop you from reading it. The second time I continually referred to the footnotes in the back in real time as I went along. It was worth the extra effort. Good night, Sis.
Sounds interesting.
Sis et al,
If I understand correctly, it is David Schnarch’s point of view in “Intimacy and Desire…..” that intimacy and desire problems are not dysfunctions within the realtionship, but rather are a natural and necessary part of the growth process the relationship experiences as it matures. These problems arise with the passage of time due to the “process of elimination.” As the novelty of the relataionship decreases and there is less unexplored territory and opportunity for interpersonal discovery, the ‘thrill’ of the realtionship wanes by process of elimination. We then make the mistake of trying to regain that thrill in hopes of reviving the relationship. Of course, since all has been experienced or learned, there is nothing to recapture or revive. What we need to do then is plumb the depths and deepen out relationship which will grow the intimacy and enhance the desire. Intimacy and desire problems need to be treated developmentally as they are never fixed but dynamic, as such they cannot be cured per se, but only “treated” on an ongoing basis as part of the process. I know! With relationships, does the work never end?
There is a high desire (HDP) and a low desire (LDP) partner in all relationships, and not just in the area of sex but all issues. The LDP will be in control in most instances. HIgh and low are relative terms here. They do not mean over- or under-sexed, just that one will have a higher desire than the other. Also, the low desire partner will conrol the sex in the relationship. They will control, when, where, how and to what degree sex happens. They do not do this by joint consent between the two, or unilateral decision or fiat, it is just the way it works. Out of respect and consideration, the HDP bends to the framework establised by the LDP. Neither may like the dynamic, but it will be the dynamic they live their relationship within. The good news, it can be tweaked. It can even flip-flop back and forth with age, health, time, or other circumstance. You can be HDP in some things like sex, dining out, vaction choice; and LDP in others like child rearing, style of house and decorating, and choice of car.
I encourage many people to give his ideas consideration, especially if they have tried the usual communication and empathy route and find it ineffective or lacking in some areas. Anytime I hear the sex is “okay” and we communicate well but something is missing still, this is the place I tell them to look.
It is not anti-God, but it does support some ot it’s conclusions from an evolutionary point of view, especially the development of the human brain and the prefrontal cortex. Do not let this put you off. It bothered me a bit at first, but I didn’t let it discount the importance of the rest of the message and continued. I was also uncomfortable with some of his vernacular that was not scientific, but believe that was not a lack of professionalism as it was a desire to speak on a level that was more user-friendly for the broader, non-academic community. In spite of the way I describe the concepts, they are very approachable without a strong sense of science or college level knowledge of psychology and sociology. I am an avid reader with strong vocabuary though, so others may find it tougher sailing.
I strongly encourage TWO, well-spaced readings. It all makes so much more sense the second time around after that computer between your ears has had time to sort it by relevance. The chapter on oral sex is particularly enlightening and revealing about sex and intimacy in general. It has nothing to do with technique (Sorry.) and everything to do with trust, giving, receiving, submission and vulnerabitlty, which is what it is all about anyway. I wish it weren’t so long and slightly dense for those who are time-constrained, attention-constrained, and generally dislike reading, but it is what it is and well worth the effort. Unlike my writing, not a lot of exposition to wade through. All meat, few potatos.
Somehow I missed this comment today, lots of good stuff in here…enough for a blog post. Wanna guest post a review?
We could tie in your poll from your other comment (although I’ve not had much luck with polls here)
The review idea intrigues me. It may be a bit so I can research it some. The above comments are just a small part of what he teaches and I have a hard time keeping concise as you may have noticed.
I really didn’t mean a poll as much as throwing the question out there as worded to provoke as many answers as possible. I also would keep the question broad enough to let it be self-definng to some degree, however, when done that way there is always the risk that one skewed answer will set the stage for another and the whole train can jump the track in pretty short order. Did you ever see the men and women’s sex surveys on generoushusband/wife blogs?. The answers to the specific question were interesting in their own right, but it was the open ended question at the end that was most revealing. I also have a very long series of men’s and women’s responses to a similar question. I saved the comments as Word.docs. I am now unsure of the survey origin though. They were extremely enlightening. They demonstrated that sex isn’t always about the act. I won’t post them here. The women’s comments ran 12 pages.”If you could say one thing to your husband, what would it be?” 12 PAGES! The mens’ was 5 pages. I might e-mail them to you. I know you want to get away from so much sex stuff, but I think there is other stuff there for some interesting posts.
You woudn’t be trying to push me into my own blog, would you?
Haha! if you want to, just email me something and I’ll post it here for you. BTW, I think you could write a great blog.
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