Overly romantic ideas about masculine and feminine dynamics can destroy a marriage.
Striving to embody traditional gender roles is a good thing, but thinking they are going to deliver you from every relational problem in existence is delusional.
No man is always “in his masculine.” It is not a man’s job to maintain a state of god-like masculinity in order to unlock utter feminine perfection in his wife.
A wife may very well have a husband who could embody his masculinity better and take on more decisive leadership. However if she becomes too transfixed on this problem, she can become totally blinded to her own responsibility in her marriage.
Here is the hard truth ladies, if your man isn’t being adequately masculine according to your standard of what you think a man should be, it doesn’t give you the right to treat him poorly because of it. And too often I come across husbands who’s wives are dumping the weight of the world on them. These women are possessed by a spirit of bitterness, discontentment and resentment. There is often no acknowledgement of this on their end. Everything is always about their husbands apparent shortcomings.
Marriages begin to breakdown in a hurry when we make our conduct and behavior totally dependent on the conduct and behavior of our spouse. Read that again, and soak it in. Too often we wrongly think that marriages are supposed to always feel nice, and be flowing with ease and serenity. Nice sounding words strung together about masculine and feminine dynamics can make you feel like there is something wrong in your marriage, but talking about screaming babies, sleepless nights and more than occasionally annoying and irritating each other doesn’t sell courses the way talking about a man unlocking your radiant inner feminine goddess does.
When we place god-like expectations on each other, we are bound to become disappointed. What marriage really provides, is an opportunity to grow in Christ-likeness. This means that what you should be expecting is humanness from your spouse, rather than masculine/feminine perfection. This means that sometimes they may say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, or say something with a bad tone, or what have you. Does this fuel your bitterness, and harden your heart, or does this give you an opportunity to choose to love even when your spouse is not being loveable? And lets not delude ourselves into thinking that we ourselves always act in a manner worthy of pure love either. No, we all fall short of the glory of God, and we can shame the one we have become one flesh with for the ways in which they have fallen short, or we can love them regardless.
When you let your heart harden, you find more reasons to harden your heart further. And when you choose to love, you find more reasons to love.
It is a very unfun game to play in marriage when we say I won’t treat you well until you treat me well first.
Radical ownership over your mindset in marriage is something that you have control over; it’s a gift that you give to yourself, and your spouse. It’s hard to embody that level of responsibility, but it’s also hard to reject that level of responsibility, so choose your hard.
We grow in love through challenges and we learn how to love when we have reasons to behave in an unloving manner.
This isn’t about wishful thinking or painting over everything with pseudo-positivity nonsense. It’s an encouragement to do your best rather than making excuses as to why you can’t. There is no power in fantasizing about how your marriage could be or should be, only more reasons to be bitter and resentful. You vowed to love this person for better or for worse. Well, here you are.
There’s fantasies about how marriage should look like, feel like, and be like, and there is the reality that sometimes marriage can challenge you down to your core and bring out the worst in you.
Growth and change happens through facing reality, not escaping through fantasy.
Keep going.
-Brendan
This is some tough truth. I so needed to read this. Thank you 🙏
I like this ministry and thank you for a poignant article! The line about choosing your hard is particularly excellent. My honest feedback is that the article seemed to imply a balanced view for both - which you do for most of it. On the other hand there was a paragraph that nailed women to the wall pretty hard. I have been reading a lot about women and bitterness over the years and I vowed to never be like that - until I lived a bit of life and realized that there is not enough coaching or mentorship to avoid that pitfall. There is an article that gained a ton of viewership titled “we aren’t nags, we are just fed up” in Harper’s Bazaar that I suggest as research for you. 10 years of bearing the majority of the burden and responsibilities of the home and childcare and household tasks and still trying to generate income and no kind words, no romance, no “I love you’s” while serving and pouring out made me bitter despite my bests efforts (even starting a book club on the Helpmeet book, etc). There is a reason why women are bitter. Trust me.