Avoiding the D-word, Part II

By Taisa Efseaff Maffey

Safeguard #1: Treasure your spouse.

Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).  Think about how you treat a material possession you have that you treasure – a car, a fancy dress, a piece of expensive jewelry, an antique piece of furniture, a gigantic TV, a special family keepsake.  Do you leave it lying around somewhere where it’s vulnerable to being damaged or lost?  Of course not.  Because you care about it and even have emotional attachment to it, you take careful measures to protect it from anything or anyone that can cause it harm or take it away from you.  How much more do we need to protect our marriages and keep them safe?  The first step is to treasure your spouse.

I think a common problem in marriage today is we’re not serious enough or vigilant about our marriages; we gradually begin to take our spouses for granted and treat them casually.  We get duped into thinking marriage is self-cleaning; it maintains itself as we go about our daily, weekly, and monthly activities.  It’s easy to allow our spouse to slip down the list of priorities when we feel there are so many other things that demand our attention first – jobs, bills, kids, pets, housework, and the list goes on.  We think the spouse can wait – they’ll still be there once we attend to everything else – but this ultimately puts our spouse (and our marriage) in the precarious position of being at the bottom of the list.  Let’s face it, things at the bottom of the list tend to fall by the wayside.  In other words, low priority spouse = dead marriage.

While we were in the early stages of our relationship and falling in love, one of the mushier texts Ethan and I would send each other was, “You’re my Favorite.”  (Notice that “Favorite” is capitalized.)  We still say that to each other today.  It may seem like a cutesy statement, but we mean it in a deep way (hence the capitalization) to declare to each other that above anyone and everything else (except for the Lord), we view each other as #1 – the very best, the most important, and our first preference every time.  Every time we say that to each other, we’re saying, “I choose YOU; I want YOU.”

Now, I recognize every couple is different, and other couples may not express their love verbally as much as they do in other ways (though I would argue that it’s important for every couple to have some verbal expression of love in their relationship).  But the point is making your spouse your treasure – treating them like they’re the greatest person you know and making them feel that they are most important and precious in your life, that they are your Favorite.  This means that they are more important than your job, getting the housework done, your favorite sports team, your “me-time,” your own family members, even your kids.

Yup, I said it: Your spouse should come first before your children.  I think it’s safe to say this is harder for women than it is for men.  Starting at conception, kids are born to be dependent on their moms.  This dependency lessens as they grow older, but it’s still always there.  Moms, in turn, have an innate compulsion to care for and protect their children, which is as God intended, but not to the extent that women treat their kids better than their husbands.  In Titus 2:4, it is written that women are to love their husbands (first) and their children (second).  Dr. Laura Schlessinger also writes about this in her truly necessary book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands:

“Literally hundreds of men have written to me about their pain with being marginalized after the children were born.  Once their wives became mothers, they had no time to be wives.  The men would even compliment their wives on being great mothers, but expressed considerable pain over not being shown love, affection, or sexual interest.  The typical reply from a wife challenged with this was ‘I only have time to take care of one person, and our child is that person.  I’m just too tired for you.’

“This puts fathers in the ugly and uncomfortable position of feeling competitive with and resentful of their children, whom they love so much.  They miss the affection, companionship, and lovemaking they used to share with their wives.  They feel put aside and shut out and unimportant.” (28)

On the most basic level, the following verse encapsulates how we should be treating our spouses: “Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:33).  It’s interesting the distinction made in this verse, that husbands are to love their wives while women are to respect their husbands.  This doesn’t mean the converse doesn’t also apply, but the wording suggests that it is of primary importance for men to show their wives love and for wives to show their husbands respect.

What happens when a man doesn’t feel respected by his wife?  He might get angry a lot, he might give up trying in the marriage altogether, or he might look for that feeling of respect from somewhere or someone else.  What happens when a woman doesn’t feel loved by her husband?  She might whine, nag, become cold and withdrawn, or again, she might look for that feeling of love from somewhere or someone else.  Any one of these scenarios results in serious problems, if not disaster, for the marriage.

Bottom line: Make your spouse feel treasured.  Don’t neglect them.  Don’t criticize them.  Don’t make fun of them.  Treat them better than you treat anyone else.  Brag about them to other people, especially when your spouse is around and can hear you.  Take care of them, do things for them, put their needs first.  Compliment them, encourage them, tell them you appreciate them.  Husbands, tell your wives how much you love them, how gorgeous they are, and how thankful you are for everything that they do.  Wives, tell your husbands you respect them for their hard work and admire them for some of their more manly qualities.  (I’ve never met a man who doesn’t like to be recognized as manly.)

As a side-note, I recommend reading The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman, which discusses the different ways in which people demonstrate their love to others and desire to receive love from others, which may in fact be different.  For example, I tend to show my love by doing acts of service, but the way I feel the most loved is when I receive words of support, encouragement, or praise.  Ethan is different from me.  While I know he appreciates the things I do for him, he feels most loved when we’re spending time together, even if it’s just watching TV.  If you don’t get around to reading the book, you and your spouse can discover your love languages by taking a quiz on the Web site: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/.

Work Cited:

Schlessinger, Laura. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.

Continue on to Avoiding the D-word, Part III, or re-read Part I.