Love Is Outgoing Concern
We need to understand that love is not a mechanical act performed once, twice, or three times a week. Love is constant, outgoing concern, affection, sharing and empathy.
You married people need to understand this — especially you men. This is where husbands fail even more often than their wives.
However, wives sometimes contribute to the problem. If their husbands do try to spend time with them, love them, help them, fellowship with them and encourage them, some wives start an argument right away! They should appreciate and respond to this outgoing concern the husband is trying to develop — even if he does stagger around like a little child learning to walk while gradually learning to express his concern properly. A wife should appreciate her husband's desire to build a happy marriage and to have the right kind of love, empathy and closeness together.
God Almighty will create a beautiful union — if a husband and wife will yield themselves to Him and let Him do it. This God-created union will make a happy home, since it will be based on love, joy, peace, mutual consideration and concern for one another — and for the children.
Curses of an Unhappy Marriage
A happy marriage at home will help you have more personal happiness, balance and contentment. But a man becomes edgy, rebellious and temperamental even on the job if he fights with his wife at home. Many companies are forced to terminate employees because marriage problems at home result in psychological "blow-ups," heavy drinking or carelessness on the job.
Yes, an unhappy marriage can break up a person's job. It may eventually break up the home and separate the parents from their children as well.
So it behooves all married couples to really WORK at cleaving together.
Spend Time Alone With Your Mate
Husbands and wives should just be TOGETHER - sometimes apart even from the children. Get a babysitter, if you can, and go out to dinner, or to a concert once in a while. You can, hand in hand, be like you used to be when you were courting and dating. Dance together, talk together, walk together and fellowship together.
You can even take short trips together. Then you will appreciate the children more, because you've been away from them for a few days (not several weeks or months) perhaps two or three times a year. This doesn't hurt them at all, if they are properly trained and your family is emotionally "close" as it should be anyway.
Look at some examples in the Bible. You'll find that men like Abraham, Isaac and Israel were away from their children far more than many of us today. It's a matter of training the children rightly while you're with them, and giving them a stable atmosphere and foundation for the remainder of their lives.
Of course, many don't have much opportunity to go someplace together, or can't afford it. But there are other ways you can be alone together. You can begin by sending the children to bed by eight or eight-thirty in the evening. Then you will have an hour and a half or two hours together — before you go to bed.
You can listen to music together, read the Bible together occasionally, and do other things together. Sometimes you can have a babysitter watch the children while you and your wife take a long walk together.
Just that much can help a great deal!
Many of you men who have marriage problems should "court" your wife like you used to. Practice the art of trying to CLEAVE to her, and spend time together. Then you will really understand your wife, and she will feel close to you mentally and emotionally. You both will have more of the mutual understanding and affection you used to have when you were first married.
Woman Was Created for Man
After God created the first man, He put him in the Garden of Eden to dress and keep it. Then God said: "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18).
You men need to fully comprehend the fact that, normally speaking, it is NOT GOOD for you to be by yourself. You're not really the "strong, silent type" you might think you are. You're not the great "shining hero" who would charge on through the night —if you weren't "burdened down" with a wife and crying little children.
You wouldn't "charge on" anywhere — except to the corner bar, probably in utter frustration. You know it and I know it! Most of you would be empty, unbalanced and frustrated. And you would be an "oddball," in many cases. Let's realize and understand that it is NOT GOOD for a man to be alone throughout his entire life!
So God said, "I will make an help meet [fit, or suitable), for him." Men should really appreciate the fact that God did make a companion and helper for them.
And every little girl ought to be taught that — with some notable exceptions — women's purpose in drawing breath and being created was to be a help to their future husbands. A young woman should NOT be taught to compete, fight and argue with men, and say, "I'm as good as he is."
It's not a question of being "as good" as a man. It's just that women were created to help men — not to compete with them. Yet many women will say, "Well, I can get a job easier than my husband." Sadly, in our sick, mechanical, clerical, computerized society, sometimes they can. A woman who learns to be a typist, stenographer, bookkeeper, or secretary can quite often land a job easier than her husband or boyfriend.
Why?
Because men have already conquered the wilderness. They've built the bridges, highways and cities. They discovered and learned how to use electricity, made possible central heating and air conditioning, designed and built computers, manufactured typewriters, etc. so women could come in and wait on, help and serve men 99 and 44/100ths percent of the time!
In most cases, women work as secretaries, typists or stenographers. And what are they doing? Although they're not alongside their husbands, they are helping other MEN! Yet, they say, "I'm independent."
Independent of whom? Independent of men?
Who is the president of the bank? Who's the boss over the big department store, the gigantic office complex, the manufacturing plant or scientific laboratory?
A MAN!
They're just serving and helping other MEN. That's all.
Generally, women are NOT building and creating new things. Men do practically all of that, and always have since the beginning of time. A woman simply was not created with those particular abilities to the same degree.
On the average, women cannot normally do as well as men in the fields of science, technology and management!
To Be Homemakers
The reason most women haven't been out building bridges, designing and manufacturing jet planes and rockets to the moon is not because men prevented them. It is because God created them with the intuition, mind, emotions, capacity and tendencies to want to help and supplement a man, and to SHARE HIS LIFE WITH HIM.
And what a tremendous BLESSING to both man and woman! Especially the man, who NEEDS a woman's help!
God designed and created women to make a house a home, to make it and keep it beautiful, to have children — to have the patience, kindness, understanding and perception to work with, teach, train, help, protect and nurture potential sons of God!
God has given every woman a TREMENDOUSLY HIGH CALLING!
A woman should never forget why she was created by her Maker. She should never try to argue with her husband, usurp the leadership of the home, or unnecessarily go outside her home and compete with men in jobs she was not meant to perform.
Of course, it is NOT WRONG for women to be secretaries, typists, etc. Those jobs are the best for women to have, if they're not married. However, most married women — particularly young mothers — should stay at home and be "homemakers." There can be some RARE exceptions — but they should be indeed, very rare!
Woman Made From Man
Notice the rest of the account in Genesis 2:21-23: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh."
That was a wonderful event — when you understand it. There was Adam all alone in the garden — with only cows, horses, lions and tigers around him. But who could he talk to? Who could he share his life with?
If God had put another man in the Garden of Eden, Adam would have been in trouble. Besides not being able to reproduce, they would have been utterly frustrated because both of them would have wanted to be IN CHARGE! They would have had competing, instead of complementing, natures.
So God put a woman in the Garden to be with the man. Then Adam said: "She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore," said God, "shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be ONE FLESH" (verses 23-24).
This is a very beautiful story. But we all need to know and really understand what goes into making a married couple happy in CLEAVING TOGETHER, and realizing that they need each other.
Men and women are not as happy and balanced if they do not have a mate. Neither will they be as happy or balanced if they don't cleave together PROPERLY. They have to really WORK AT IT!
God doesn't say "float together." He said "cleave together." But it's MORE THAN worth all the effort to have a happy marriage. So let's realize this. Let's really appreciate and CLEAVE to our mates!