Healthy marriage, healthy sex life with the one-another Bible passages.
Several years ago, I prepared for an endometrial ablation. After talking with veterans of the procedure and reading the informational material from the doctor’s office, I knew the first 36 hours post-cauterization were probably going to be pretty rough with pain. Dave would be my means of support and I was anxious about my recovery. He point blank asked, “So, what do you want me to do?” I asked him to check on me every 30 minutes once I returned from the outpatient procedure and was back in our bed. I also asked him to set an alarm on his phone for every 30 minutes, so he wouldn’t forget me. He did and just knowing that helped me relax.
Now, don’t judge him for needing an alarm. What I want you to understand is that I asked this without snark and he accepted it without being insulted. He did it because he cares for me.
Another example of care is something I do for him. Dave is not, typically, one who needs excessive order or structure in his life. However, he has asked a few things I puzzle over, initially, because they don’t make sense to me. One request is that I fold his underwear in thirds and then in thirds again, creating a little square undie box. Now, some of you might think, he could just fold his own laundry if he’s going to be that specific. But, Dave and I have divided labor in our home and I do the laundry and fold it, but we each put our own away. (We all have that one chore we don’t hate, even kind of like, for me that is laundry.) So, after the request, which was made kindly, I started folding his underwear as requested. Then, one day he commented his underwear fit better in his drawer when they are folded in thirds. Voila! There was the reason.
Have Equal Concern and Care
[info_box type=”success_box”]“…But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts would have equal concern for each other,” 1 Corinthians 12:25 (NIV).
Or
“…This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other,” 1 Corinthians 12:25 (NLT).
The Greek word for care is μεριμνάω = merimnao = care. It is used in the Bible to describe anxiety, worry, and concern.[/info_box]
How are care and concern different from love?
Here’s an analogy using 1 Corinthian 12 thoughts. If love (which includes eros, phileo, and agape) is the entire body, care and concern are like the heart and hands. Care and concern are key ingredients to love.
Care and concern are cornerstones of a devoted friendship, which is essential to a long-term marriage. Love is, too, but I believe care and concern are more specific, action-oriented ideas. Extending care and concern to your spouse helps them feel heard and valued.
An attitude of care and concern is gentle and unselfish.
4 Ways to Show Care and Concern
Practice the pause and don’t make assumptions – Pause for a moment when your spouse says or does something that you might have reacted negatively to before. Do not immediately judge your spouse’s ideas or discount them. Hold ideas that you find questionable loosely without judgement until you can get more information. I don’t know about you, but more times than not, my assumptions about Dave’s motives or what he is actually trying to communicate to me are wrong. If I hadn’t suspended my judgement of his folding preference, I wouldn’t have treated his request with care.
This was a pivotal action in our marriage. I can’t stress how important is it, especially when first trying to eliminate immediate negative reactions to ideas that you don’t like or agree with. This helps your spouse feel heard and valued.
If you are the low drive spouse, what assumptions have you made about your spouse’s higher drive? Pinpoint your assumptions and kindly discuss them with your spouse to see if they are true or not.
How to Listen Without Getting Defensive
Agree to a week of positivity.
Why? It’s a trial run to insert care and concern into your life if you find that most of your thoughts about your spouse and marriage are negative.
For one week, agree to…
~ Not complain or grumble, whether it is about each other or something/someone else. There are ways to communicate without complaint or grumbling. How you communicate is very important.
~ Compromise completely on all activities outside of work. These compromises are made with a positive attitude. No pouting. No one suffers, however. That is the beauty of a compromise. What if he wants to have sex that afternoon and you aren’t ready? Then, you set a time within the near future to be intimate and then wholeheartedly show up at the appointed time (that’s a compromise).
Frequent random acts of kindness. Buy your spouse’s favorite treat food. Tune into his favorite station so that the next time he fires up the car it is on. Clean out her car for no reason. Little gestures that say, “I was thinking of you during my day,” show a great deal of care.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to a marriage with mismatched sex drives, care and concern are distributed two different ways. Just like 1 Corinthians 12:25 states, there should be no division in the body, the parts have equal concern for each other. If one part of your marriage has a higher interest in sex, you take that seriously. You also take seriously the lower drive spouse’s preferred method of connection. If you do these two things equally you will be creating a healthy marriage and a healthy sex life.
Additional Resource – The Gottman Institute describes the key equation for a loving, long-term marriage. The principles are dead on! (This is a secular video.)
