Doing Marriage Well is for both men and women. It’s a holistic look at marriage that is intended to help you find ways to make your unique relationship better. It is published Monday through Friday.
When you go to the new site, click on “blog” upper right to see the last week of posts. If you like what you see, you can sign up for emails at the top of the right column.
On Sunday July 15, 2001, I did the first post for The Generous Husband. Today, some 8,000 posts later, I write this last one. It’s certainly bitter-sweet, but I’m not giving up blogging, so it’s okay. (If you want to follow the new blog it’s https://doingmarriagewell.com – and I start Saturday.) Doing this blog has been a big part of my life for a very long time. I’ve enjoyed getting to know many of you online, and some of you in person. It’s been a blast, and a blessing. My thanks to all of you.
The image here is the original top banner for the blog.
I’ve thought a lot about what I want to leave you with. I’m rerunning the first post about prayer at the bottom, because every marriage needs prayer! Beyond that, I want to talk about getting help.
Lori and I have worked with a great many marriages over the years. We now coach online, if you want to connect with us. We’ve had plenty of couples tell us that third party help has improved or saved their marriage. We’ve also had couples say it made their sex lives better. You have to be willing to do the work, but if you are, a bit of skilled guidance can make a huge difference.
When I was young, Christians didn’t go for help. It was as if seeking help was admitting to a horrible sin. Couples suffered in silence, and marriages died in silence. God is clear that we’re supposed to seek wise counsel, and we’re commanded to help others in the body of Christ.
If you need help, please get it. If you don’t need it, but would benefit from it, please get help.
Do you find it difficult to pray for your wife because you aren’t sure what to pray about? Try praying based on the first letter of the day:
Sunday pray for her Spiritual walk Monday pray for her Moods and Mental health Tuesday pray for her Thought life Wednesday pray for her Weaknesses to be healed Thursday pray for her Time usage Friday pray for her Friendships Saturday pray for her Sexuality
On Tuesday, I said your wife’s needs are valid, even though they’re different. What about her sexual needs?
Even if a woman is all about sex, it’s not as high on her list as is the case for most men. Usually, sex doesn’t make a woman feel loved. Rather, she wants sex because she feels loved. Beyond that, if you have the higher drive, she may rarely get to full desire. Perhaps she says yes out of love, or obligation, when she’s not feeling it. Or she says no initially, and then says yes as soon as she is close to wanting it.
This is very different from your reality. Can you imagine what it must be like for her? Can you see how it would affect her sexually? Something else, what if she feels she’s supposed to orgasm every time she has sex? What if you expect this of her and have made it clear it’s not good sex if you’re the only one who comes?
The real problem is most of us have a small, skewed view of what constitutes sex. If we had a broader view, sex would be easier and better for both spouses.
Sex should be an activity done by a couple that includes contact of a sexual nature. It could last a minute, or an hour, or anywhere in-between. It should include as many orgasms as each spouse wants, with zero being a valid number. And each spouse should be free to decide at any point during sex if they do or don’t want an orgasm on that occasion.
If this was how your wife saw sex, and she knew you saw it the same way, it would be easier for her to say yes to sex. It would also be easier for her to initiate sex; even if she was just doing it for you.
Is how you define sex limiting or hurting your sex life?
Today, I want to impress on you that while your wife’s needs are different from your needs, they are just as valid.
When I say needs, I mean what she needs from you to feel loved and cared for. You do want her to feel loved and cared for, don’t you?
We tend to dismiss our wife’s needs because they are different. We don’t understand why they’re important because we don’t understand what’s behind them. We may not consciously dismiss her needs, but odds are we don’t see her needs to be as valid as our needs. And that hurts her and damages our marriage.
Even if her needs are based on fear, trauma, or lack from her childhood years, they are valid. Failing to meet those needs won’t make them go away. She may stop asking, but that doesn’t mean she is less hurt by not having the needs met.
On the other hand, if you meet needs that are based on her past, you put her in a better place to deal with what’s behind those needs. Over time, some of those needs will fade away. And new healthier needs may arise.
Either you meet her needs, or you do not. And why you do or don’t is irrelevant to her.
As this is my last week of posts on this blog, I want to hit a few important concepts before I move on.
For the last nine years, most of my Monday posts have been simple, easy to do things to make your marriage better.
Small things can make a real difference, and a steady diet of small things can be huge.
The power of simple acts is they don’t cost you much in terms of time or energy. This means you can do a couple of small loving things even when you have an impossible week. Giving her occasional bright moments during a dark time shows that you’re still thinking of her, and still love her.
Grand acts are great when you can pull them off well, but they should not take the place of the steady drip of love that comes from doing simple things often.
At the start of this year, I suggested that you Honour Your Wife by Letting Go of Sexual Preferences. I said if there were a couple of things you wanted that she keeps rejecting, you should stop asking for those. I proposed your wife is more important than those sex acts.
Then someone asked, “What if she has a lot of things she doesn’t like?”
I’m assuming this is about a wife who’s willing to have sex, but only does a very few things. So the issue is boredom, not refusal.
It’s tempting to say there are men who would give anything to have regular boring sex, but I realise that doesn’t make anyone feel better.
The problem is pushing such a woman for more will turn her off. She’s doing what works for her. Other things are a problem either because they don’t arouse her, turn her off, or in her mind they’re unacceptable.
My suggestion is to become very skilled at what she’s okay with. And thank her regularly for being there for you sexually. Give her time to feel secure in what you now do. Then suggest something just across the current line. Don’t ask, just say it might be interesting to _____ sometime.
This is the best path to doing more. There’s no guarantee, but if you can be loving and patient, odds are it will eventually move the needle.
NEW FEED: As I gear up to move to Doing Marriage Well, I’ve set up a Bluesky account that will run the blog posts and a few marriage positive “tweets” a day. @doingmarriagewell.bsky.social
If you want to follow by email, you can sign up upper right on Doing Marriage Well. You will receive the last week of posts from Lori.
Whitney Johnson, a Harvard Business Review blogger, has some interesting ideas I think apply to marriage nicely. In Throw Your Life a Curve Johnson talks about the S curve model for understanding how we learn new things.
You start to do something new to improve some aspect of your marriage, or just to make your wife happier. This could be a change of habit, trying to listen better, a new approach to sex, whatever. You start at the lower left of the curve, in the yellow area of the chart above. You are unsure how it’s going to work or exactly what to do. After you struggle for a while, you get the hang of it, and you start to improve rapidly. You get positive feedback from your bride because she is seeing the rapid change; this is the green area. Finally, you have almost mastered what you’re doing, which means there’s not much room to grow or improve. Your wife may stop bragging on you; you may start doing whatever out of habit without much thought, or you may get bored with it. This is the red area.
Each phase has dangers:
YELLOW: The danger here is giving up. This is the most frustrating part of doing something new. There is little growth, plenty of failure, and little or no recognition of what you’re trying to do. The important thing here is to just keep going.
GREEN: The greatest danger here is getting a big head. Don’t let your success or her praise cause you to slack off here or in other areas. You need to add this to the other ways you meet her wants and needs. Another danger is thinking that you’re owed something (see Say no to Quid Pro Quo).
RED: One danger here is backing off just before you master whatever it is you’re doing. Another danger is slipping into autopilot, which means you won’t do as good a job. You might also get so bored you stop doing it, do it less often, or don’t keep doing it as well.
Do you see any of this in your past when you tried to improve your marriage? Do you tend to drop out in the yellow zone? Do you think too much of yourself in the green zone, or think she owes you? Do you get to the red zone and drop what you are doing to start a new curve?
