The Marriage 101 Series Becoming Your Husband's Best Friend
OUR HEART
Something that has truly been our heart is to have a place for marriage education here on our website. To us, walking beyond the wedding day with you is so important. It is great to stand with you on your wedding day and we love it, but it is more of an honor to us if we can stand with you throughout the years. The wedding day is full of wonderful excitement and wonderful feelings, but what happens when things get a little rocky or you “fall out of the feelings of love?” Even if you have lived together before marriage things can change. And we want your marriages to not only be strong, but to last and having the necessary tools to build healthy and strong marriages are not always available. Thus, it is our heart that some of these tools are readily available to our brides and our followers, which is why the Marriage 101 series was created. I remember choosing my bridesmaids for my weddings and one specific one said to me, “Jennifer, I will be honored to be your bridesmaid, but it will not stop then, I promise to walk with you through your marriage, so when times are hard I will stand with you in prayer and be a strength when you are weak!” This friend has honored those words so many times and this is our heart and hopes in our relationship with our brides. That if needed, we can support you through the rejoicing of your marriage and the hardships.
RECENTLY
Recently, a good friend came to me sharing some of her struggles in her marriage. I just sat and listened to her for about an hour. My heart was definitely heavy for her. As she was talking, I remembered a book that I read about 2 years ago that I sorta stumbled upon at the library one day and I shared the overall idea of the book with her, encouraging her that it would be an excellent read for her and that if she was willing to read it, I would also read it again along side her. I also suggested that if she wanted to we could meet once a week to discuss the book and challenge each other with the advice inside. She agreed. This week we started the book together. I decided to take this a little further and weekly write about the things we are learning from the book. If anyone is interested, the book is called, “Becoming Your Husband’s Best Friend”- Secrets to Loving the Man You Married by Lisa & David Frisbie.
CHAPTER ONE-FIXING YOU OR FINDING ME?
This morning I was at the gym. If I am not shamefully watching trash tv, I am reading some kind of book that will help grow me in some way…whether it is for our business, our marriage, our finances, or our children. Today, it was Chapter one of “Becoming Your Husband’s Best Friend.” The authors begin the first chapter correcting the mindset of so many wives. “Many wives tend to think their husbands need to change, their kids need to adjust their attitudes, or the problem people in their families or those around them are the ones who need a lesson in humility.” It is so easy to look around our world and notice all the issues and all the problems that other people have especially our husbands. Taking a step back and realizing the truth behind this is sobering. Often times, we as wives, easily point the finger at our husbands and forget to examine ourselves. A lot of times we hope that we can “adjust, improve, transform and enlighten our husbands” and if he doesn’t get started in that transformation quickly we will be the ones there to remind him over and over. Which often is why women drag their husbands into counseling offices. Ouch! This strategy is not necessarily apparent to us women. Nor does the strategy work much. “Many husbands would rather visit the dentist than see a counselor. At the dentist office, their pain is short-lived and can perhaps be relieved with medication. But after they see a counselor, Novocain doesn’t help.” TRUTH! So, what is the solution? The solution is that we adjust our focus back to ourselves. Let go of the need to fix our husbands and instead begin worrying about our own hearts and life. We may find that what we see about ourselves is much larger than what our spouse is doing. You may say, but he doesn’t do anything around the house, he is lazy, he plays video games all day and night, he spends no time with me and isn’t even interested in our relationship and all those things may be true, but the challenge is to stop focusing on what he is or isn’t doing and take a step back and evaluate you. The authors introduce 5 areas (which will be discussed in later chapters) that women do to sabotage their often good intentions of helping their marriage. So, if you are frustrated by your husband’s behaviors and attitudes, agonizing over his apparent lack of interest in making the relationship work, you may find yourself in some of the upcoming blogs. Let’s step back and truthfully take some time from looking at our husband trying to find ways to make things better and instead use that time to examine our hearts and attitudes.
