If you’re new to Delight Your Marriage, this is the first episode you should listen to.

Many people come to my resources with a question on how to make their marriage better but they really don’t know where to start.

This is a rundown on the most important philosophical underpinnings of Delight Your Marriage.

This gives the best introduction to the foundational principles that I use with people from all over the world–by God’s grace–to transform their marriages and families.

Just a few things included:

Listen in and go to delightyourmarriage.com/resources to find out about all the courses I offer to totally transform your marriage!

There are courses for husbands or wives to receive the love you’re craving in your marriage.

Blessings,

Belah

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transcript

0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. All right, welcome. Thank you for joining. So, if you’re new to delight your marriage, that’s what this episode is all about. I want to give you really a rundown of my philosophies. And what I’m doing in this project called delight your marriage, it’s a business, some call it a ministry. But the purpose of it is really to help you transform your marriage, make aligned with God’s will, and in that really transforming your whole life. So let’s dive in.

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So first and foremost, when Jesus was asked, What’s the greatest commandment, he said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself. And so my conviction is that your closest neighbor is your spouse. So that means, you know, they’re on the other side of the bed, hopefully, they are the most important relationships. So when you think about, well, how do I prioritize my life, you’ve got God first, far, far, far above anyone else, including your spouse far above. And then you’ve got your spouse. And then after your spouse, you’ve got your kids. And then after your kids, everyone, everything else. So that includes your ministry, that includes your business that includes whatever you enjoy after that your activities, your hobbies, your income, that all all sorts of things. I mean, that’s the discernment process, but you don’t have to discern your spouse and your kids. They’re your automatic assignment. That’s your first and foremost, God’s will automatically you don’t have to think about it. The rest is a discernment process. And, and it depends on seasons and that kind of thing. Your kids, your spouse, those don’t depend on seasons, they’re always gonna be there. So I think that is a homerun. If you’re married, you committed to this person. They’re your assignments. You’re supposed to love them. Just like you love yourself. Now, what do I mean by loving yourself? What does that mean? Love your neighbor as yourself. What that means is you understand who your spouse is, and how they receive love. So just like if your friends loves cookies, you’re not going to bring them a cake just because you like cake. No, that wouldn’t be loving, that would be selfish. But if you know they love cookies, you’re gonna bring them a cookie, you’re gonna love them the way that you would want to be loved just like you love cake, you would want them to make you a cake. So that’s another huge principle that I teach is love your spouse, the way your spouse receives love. Love your spouse, the way your spouse receives love, and that’s different men and women are different. Even even non Christians, a feminist feminists, people that are completely you know, a gala, terian kind of mindsets. You can’t deny biological differences, not not just genitalia, but voice, the way you think. And even the way the mind is constructed, is different for men and women. Just Scientifically speaking, you look at one piece of the of the brain is a very different shape and size than females from male and females. So. So let’s talk about what those principal differences are. So for women to feel loved, to feel fulfilled in their marriage, I believe they need to have three things to feel fulfilled, they need to be known at her core, who is she her uniqueness and that that’s honored and valued of who she is at her core. who God made her to be her strengths, her passions, her desires, her likes her wishes, all of that who she is. So to be known as the first one, the second one is to be safe. Yes, of course, physical safety, but I’m actually talking emotional safety, that she can come to you with her emotions, her feelings, her cares. Her hurts her woundedness and, and you care. And you want to love her well, and she’s safe with you. And there’s no threat. There’s no pressure. There’s no these high expectations around anything, whether it’s intimacy or anything else, that you accept her for who she is. And you love that about her. You love her deeply. With no strings attached. You

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just love this woman. So that’s number two. That’s to be safe. And then the final one, number three is wholeheartedly cherished. Wholeheartedly cherish now that’s the romance. That’s the stuff that all the chick flicks talk about. That is where she swoons because you’re thinking about her, you want to surprise her. You want to make her feel like she matters to you, you think about her, you wholeheartedly cherish? Why do I say wholeheartedly, you can’t take her to a restaurant and be annoyed the whole time, your attitude matters. If you have the attitude of being wholehearted in the way you think about and care about this woman, that’s what touches her heart. So we’ve got known, safe and cherish. So those are the core principles that I teach of how a woman feels loved and fulfilled in her marriage. So what about for men? What are the three things? Okay, so the first one is respected? What does that even mean? I definitely had a misconception of that for most of my life. But what it means is just the way it was before you were married, before you were dating, even, you would talk to a person that you don’t know, well, with a certain level of respect, you would say things like, Excuse me, or I don’t mean to interrupt, or would you mind if you would regard that person as separate from you, and fully able to have their own identity, their own life, freedom to be who they want to be. That’s called respect. So seeing saying things like we need to, or we have to, or you should, or you have to, or commanding a husband is the absolute opposite of respect. I used to do this, I did. And it was a horrible aspect of our marriage. I didn’t treat him like a man. But I’m not a man. So I don’t need that kind of respect in the same way. So I’m not sensitive to it like he is. But he is I mean, he’s got almost like a antenna a respect to antenna up all the time. And that either puts him in the right direction or the wrong direction, where you know, he his antenna radar goes off at disrespect and boom, he, he responds with anger or responds with apathy, or responds with knee jerk reaction leaving, those are the kinds of things that men respond to disrespect. Alright, so that’s the first one. He needs to be respected. Number Number Two for him is he needs to be admired. Yes, our society says things like the flimsy male ego or, you know, this, this almost like making fun of men’s need for being admired for being someone that that matters for being enough in this world. And as a wife, you have the opportunity to support him in this way to to help him know that he is enough and God did give him these particular strengths. And that’s what you focus on. You focus on the ways God has made him amazing. So you you discover what he’s good at. And, and you think about those things, you focus on the things that he’s awesome at, none of us are going to be 100% of everything. That’s ridiculous. There’s no way all of us are going to have awesome strengths. In all of us, you’re going to have significant weaknesses. And when you acknowledge that that’s not just normal, but this beautiful design God has given us it becomes a totally different way of thinking about your spouse, that you have the opportunity to discover what he is amazing at. And being that cheerleader. Being that cheerleader for him having the understanding. I find that it’s so helpful for wives to think about their husbands as being insecure. That’s just We’re all insecure, I mean, husbands also to be thinking about their wives as insecure is also helpful. We’re all insecure, we all have our insecurity and our spouse is the closest one to us. And so the way we think about our spouse is the way they think about themselves. It’s, it’s impossible not to you, you, it’s almost like your spouse is like holding up a mirror and, and the way your spouse sees you, affects your conception of your spouse, yourself. So my husband has got a high view of me, and I live up to that reputation that he has of me, I feel more empowered, because he sees me as so capable.

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And that’s what I want a wife to do for her husband, is to admire him deeply. Don’t just, you know, consider him like, you’re his mother, you have to teach him all the things you have to correct him in public you have, like these are things that that demean and demoralize and de emasculate a man. But instead, if you admire him, you build him up, you make it known that you think he’s incredible. That’s the stuff that puts his shoulders back where he had has held head held high, he feels like, Man, I’m doing it. I’m living this life. Well. That’s the kind of thing you want to give your husband. That’s what makes him feel fulfilled as a man. And the final piece, wholehearted sexual intimacy. Now I talked about the brain being different for men and women, literally, biologically, the space for sex drive in a man and sex drive for a woman, the man’s space for that in, in where it is in the brain is two to three times larger than a woman’s. I mean, this is biological, he has 10 times more testosterone than she does. And that’s the sex drive hormone. So it’s, it’s biologically normal for the husband to crave sex more than the wife. And what does he craving sex? I talk about this stuff a lot, because I think this is stuff we don’t address Well, in our culture. But when we enter Christian culture to like, especially, I guess, Christian culture, and in a way that’s, that’s holy, and good and practical, and what does that even mean? Like, we can’t just say flour, really flowery language without giving practical how tos because then we’re expecting somebody to go to the dark side to learn and that’s full of sin. But instead, let’s give you practical tools on what to do, and how to do it and that sort of thing. So that’s what a lot of my courses and resources provide, whether it’s my book, delight, your husband, a Christians wife, manual to passion, confidence, and oral sex, or my course, the seduction course, or my video course delight your husband, or my men’s programs, which wild romance rediscover what you had at first, masculinity reclaimed, which is just full of incredible insights on how a man can transform to love his wife well, so I’ve got tons of resources for men and for women, you can go to delight your marriage.com you can click on Resources and really understand and unpack what I’m talking about here. But when we’re discussing sexual intimacy in your marriage, a lot of times people ask, Well, why would a husband have such a strong sex drive and the wife has such a low sex drive? Why would God create it that way? And there are exceptions. Okay, there are exceptions. Sometimes, just as a mentioned, sometimes men have a lower sex drive with their wife, because they’re not receiving respect, and they’re not receiving that admiration. Sometimes men have blocked out their sex drive, because they’ve struggled with sexual sin. And they’ve divorced that from their own desire of sex. And it’s, they need to integrate their desire of sex with their desire for their wife, and it requires a healing process. Those are some reasons and then some reasons. I haven’t worked with every other one in the world, some reasons, it’s just the way people are made and we can accept that that God made all of us different and just like most of us can do certain things. There are some people that have certain things, they’re different and that’s okay, God, God is God and, and he designs people that are different and that’s good. And that’s something we can celebrate and, and love and again, we all have our gifts and and that’s just an additional gift. All right, so but for those that, listen to my podcast, they’re usually in the place of higher sex drive is the husband, lower sex drive is the wife. Or maybe they want to get to that dynamic. And that’s where I’m talking about the integration and the changing the way a wife treats her husband. So why does God make husbands have a higher sex drive than wives? I think one of the main reasons is because a man needs to grow in character. In order to have a wife that wants to be free in intimacy,

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he needs to grow in the way he looks like Jesus, in order for her to want to be free in intimacy, in order for her to want to do anything seductive, or variety or care about his body and how he operates there. He’s got to have the character of Jesus, which is gentle, and patient, and kind, and loving and peaceful, and joyful. Right, it’s the fruits of the Spirit, faithful and self controlled. So when a husband looks a lot more like Jesus, it’s not hard for a wife to want to make love to him. But if she feels like she’s comparing she he that he is comparing her to his past, or to pornography, or to affairs or these kinds of things, of course, she’s not going to feel safe. Of course, she’s not going to be able to trust him. You know, if she feels this pressure or high expectation, she can’t feel safe, she can’t let down her guard in intimacy. And so that’s why it’s so vital for husband to love her in the ways that she receives love known to know that, that he doesn’t want others that she is unique to him, that she is she is the has a uniqueness in her spirit that God designed that that she is the daughter of the Most High and he honors her reveal reveres her like that. And then tip number two, again, to be safe, that she is safe with me accepts her as she is and loves her as she is just like Christ loves the church. Right Christ loves the church, accepting her loving her, having patience with her gentling being gentle with her. That’s how Christ loves the church and wholeheartedly cherishing her. So again, with coming kind of swinging back over to what men crave is to to be respected, to be admired. And number three wholehearted sexual intimacy. So duty sex isn’t isn’t wholehearted, right, it’s the same as the man coming to the dinner and the nice date, whether he’s dressed up or not. And having a bad attitude. It’s not fulfilling. So in the same way for a wife to come to intimacy with excitement, enthusiasm, variety, visuals, and, and loving his body and specifically his member God designed it. God designed it as holy. That’s that’s his design. The enemy tried to steal it and manipulate and make everything feels a sinful around sexual intimacy, but it’s not. It’s God’s design. And lots of activities are specifically even written in the Song of Solomon. very explicitly, you can read it, it’s pretty powerful. The words that are just dramatically oral sex is right on in there. I mean, that’s, that’s the God designed us to be free in sex. To to even in Proverbs five, it talks about being nice created by your wife’s love, inebriated and it’s talking in contrast to adultery. So it’s talking about sex. We are supposed to have a freedom and connection in sexual intimacy that’s unlike anything anywhere else. And so yes, a huge amount of my resources are around sexual intimacy, because that needs to be consistent part of a married couples life. And being that your marriage is your highest human relationship. The husband has to look more like Jesus to fulfill that piece of marriage and a wife has to be disciplined. That sounds strange, but the truth is, if a wife has a lower libido, which Most wives have a lower libido than their husbands. And I’ve already told you scientifically why.

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Myself included, I have to be disciplined, I have to recognize this as God’s will for my life, to make love to my husband on a consistent basis within Hoosiers. And that means I need my food to be in check, I need to have exercise as part of my life, I need to not compare myself to others, I need to reject the enemy’s attacks of me thinking about what my husband saw in the past, in his sexual sin, I need to reject what the enemy wants to lie to me about I’m not good enough, or I don’t know enough, or I don’t have the curves like some women do. I’m not sexy enough. Those are lies from the enemy. So a wife has to reject the lies of the enemy, and commit to loving her husband the way that he receives love, in God’s will, in God’s will. And it also requires her to not get too busy. It requires you to have rest as part of her lifestyle. And again, those are things that are in line with God’s will think about Mary versus Martha. So these, again, are just major principles that I teach with delight your marriage. Another really key thing is having your connection first and foremost with the Lord. Which means that the openness that you have with your spouse is limited. In integrity. That’s very important. Because sometimes we share with our spouse, everything, everything, everything, everything. And a lot of them are hurtful and harmful things. And if you really live according to the principles I just discussed, it’s obvious you cannot share all these negative thoughts that go through your head with your spouse. And a lot of people say, Well, I’m just being honest. I’m just being honest. But I would say no, you’re just being mean, you’re just not living according to the principles of Jesus. Jesus didn’t share everything with everybody. He shared according to what they were ready to hear. And that’s the same with our spouse. Yes, I can share everything with God. I can share my disappointments with my spouse, I can have my spouse, I can share the sadness I have, I can share my grief, I can share the joys I can share it all. But with my spouse, that’s not going to help anything. Me to just be all negative and complaining and all this stuff. No, that’s called lazy. That’s called mean. Let’s call childish and immature. And so my discipline is treating my husband in a way that’s respectful and admiring and honors, his sexual drive and the way God made him. So it’s not to say that, that you need to repress all your feelings and that sort of thing. No, it means honoring your spouse, and figuring out how to strategically change your marriage in a way that honors the ways they receive love. So receiving love is key, or giving them what they need to receive love. And recognizing that you’re actually tearing down that stuff you’re building in your marriage, growing your marriage, by exposing all this negativity to your spouse. Minecraft encouragement in integrity is finding finding help in that whether it’s my work whether it’s working with me specifically I work with one on one coaching I also work in team coaching, and and graduate groups as after doing a course with me. And so that’s very practical, I can help you otherwise, getting some some mentors around you getting some girlfriends or some some gentlemen who can keep you consistent and faithful to the teachings of Jesus and, and help you with the disappointments and the sadness and the things that make you want to lash out at your spouse negatively and help you move your marriage forward.

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So that’s key. Another principle of mine is taking the long view is doing work, a lot of work in the short term, so that the long term is better than the long term is better. So I’m not really of the mind that marriage is hard forever. I think that if you really do wise work in the short term, which is hard. In the long term, you’ve you’ve already built the house now it’s just maintaining it. It’s you know, getting the you know, the extra I don’t know how you maintain a house. I live in New York City. All right. I’m in an apartment I don’t mean 18 hours. But that’s another principle of dy m is, you don’t need a lot to be happy, you don’t need a lot to be happy. My encouragement is to have a daily practice of gratitude for me. And my students, I say, write out your gratitudes 10 Every single day, and include several of them to be about your spouse, you don’t need a lot to be happy. And you have to make yourself happy in many different ways, to be able to show up, filled up for your spouse, your faith, your connection with Jesus has to be strong. Your joy, taking taking joy in the small things. You know, for men, sex can’t be the only thing that makes you feel like a man. You can’t be waiting around for your wife and say, you know, my life is miserable, because my wife doesn’t make love to me, I that that’s not an acceptable response when you get to Jesus. Like, I wish I had started the ministries that you called me to, but my wife wouldn’t have wouldn’t have sex with me consistently and joyfully and freely, so I didn’t do it. Like, that’s just not an excuse that I think Jesus is going to be okay with. So my invitation is to do do the things that you need to do in the short term, to transform things in the long term. And get your marriage in place, get your marriage fixed. So you can focus again, on the things that God wants you to be focused on. Another key principle that I teach is about consistent habits. So I’m very much a checklist person, I am very much a, how do we turn a principle into practical applications, which is why I have courses, which is why I work with people so closely because I want people to have that very specific how tos. And that I mean, that’s men’s my men’s program are shockingly different than my women’s program, I mean, dramatically different. And that’s, that is part of the reason I think some people wonder why I’m not more specific in my podcast. And some of it is that if I tell a husband, the same thing that I tell a wife, a husband, expectations will go up. They’ll, they’ll see their wife in a negative way. Because they’ll say, Oh, they’re not doing enough for me or that kind of thing. And that’s just icky and wrong, and not the way God wants us to see our spouse. There’s too much in the Bible about thankfulness and gratefulness for us to have that perspective of your spouse. It’s just not, it’s not godly, it’s not right. But at the same time, if I said all the things that I say to men, in my work, men, women also would have this perspective of my husband not doing enough, you know, why doesn’t he just listen to Bella, and all these sorts of things. And, again, it’s not going to help anything, it’s not going to make you feel more empowered on what to do to help your side of the equation. And that’s really what my invitation is that you clean up your side of the street, you do what you can do for your marriage, you that’s the only thing you have jurisdiction over, you can only change yourself. And you can change yourself in dramatic ways. But when I’m talking about habits, I do mean, specific practices that you do every single day, every single day, because you as a husband, or you as a wife are wired so differently than your spouse. These are disciplines. They are disciplines, when I talk about how I have to be confident in my body to seduce him in a really exciting way. Those are disciplines. That is not a natural thing that just happens in a long term marriage. They are disciplines. It is a way of living. That’s required. I think the same thing for men, being patient and kind and gentle, and a good listener and holding her when she cries. I mean, those are disciplines. It’s a discipline to become more present. It’s a discipline to learn how to affect her heart well,

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but it’s worth it. And these are habits that become who you are. So I really love this quote. I tweaked it a little bit, but it’s pretty much Aristotle’s quote it says, You are what you continually do. Character then is not an act, but a habit. You are what you continually do. Character then is not an act, but a habit. So that’s my invitation to you is to love your spouse the way they receive love. And I think the last principle that I’m going to share. And obviously, this is a short podcast, I’ve got tons of episodes to go into each of these things way, way, way more. But the final piece I want to give you is the insight around strategy, the insight around strategy. So if you’re a two out of 10, you should not treat your spouse like you guys are at an eight out of 10. So when I talked about how much you’re sharing, and how much you’re open with your spouse, yes, be honest. But be wisely open, be wisely open based on where you are right now. Again, if you’re at a two at a 10, you’re not going to share all this negative stuff that’s going through your head, and all the loneliness and sadness and all the things because that’s going to move you guys backwards to be a one out of 10. Instead, you’re going to share the good, you’re going to share the tiny little things that you can appreciate about your spouse, you’re going to be really intentional to make yourself happy in other ways. And slowly the things will move up to a three out of 10. And again, you’re going to apply a bit of a different strategy when you’re three out of 10. And then you’re going to get to a four out of 10. And it’s just going to be extremely strategic. And you can see this in lots of biblical characters. But I’ll just give you an example. Like Esther, this was an evil, evil king, such an evil king that he allowed hate to be within his kingdom in such a degree that he allowed for genocide, genocide in his own kingdom, that he’s going to allow people to kill others. Now, Esther was not a lazy girl. I mean, this man was so evil, that he raped young girls, he captured them first raped them all, and then picked Esther to be his wife. And that was after he had murdered the last wife he had like he was evil. And yet, Esther was able to change his heart by employing the principles strategically, she gave first, she was extremely careful about how she implemented these principles. She, she served him, she, she respected him, she admired him, she even honored him in front of his friend, all of these sorts of things, she made love to him more than once, she did this very strategically, and then she was more open, she shared again, strategically, carefully with respect. So she was strategic, that’s my encouragement to you is be strategic in your marriage. And again, you know, I’ve got so many resources for you, whatever that means, whether it means working with me very closely in a in a, in a team coaching environment, a one on one coaching environment, you can learn more about that on my website, delight your marriage.com/resources. Or it might mean a course it might mean self directed online course or it might mean my book. But you have to be strategic, you have to learn, you have to grow. You have to be the one that says I’m going to change this, I can’t change my spouse, I’m going to change I’m going to be different. I’m going to do the hard work. Whenever there is a problem between myself and my own husband when there ever there’s a tense moment and argument. I think about

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I you know, I have got it. I’ve got a part to play in this. Had I done something different things would have gone differently. It’s lazy thinking to say it’s all my spouse’s fault that’s lazy. It’s not it’s not okay. It’s it’s not a cop. I mean, it is a cop out. So that’s my encouragement for for all of us is to look at ourselves to look at the beam in our own eye rather than trying to focus on the splinter and our spouses I think about what could I do differently? How could I be the person of peace and love and goodness to my spouse to attract them to Jesus not to push them towards what I think they need to become but attract them towards Jesus in the way that I love them well, alright, so I have given you tons of like drinking from a fire hydrant principles here I totally get it if you need to listen to the several times or go into other podcasts and and, you know, other episodes of mine and really dive into some of these principles that you know, I just went through so quickly so it makes sense that you know, you need to dig in more but let me pray for you as your as your moment All of this over Father, I pray for the person listening. If this is their first time, God, to my work, I pray, Lord, that there will be an openness and their heart to what you might want to speak to them. A lot of my stuff is different than what a lot of people say, even therapists, even common knowledge or common wisdom, Father, I pray that if there is a point of insight that you want them to have, even if it was just one little piece of this podcast episode, I pray that you would make it really clear to them that this is what I needed to hear today. And Father, I pray Father, that You would give them the wisdom to know the difference. The resources they need to move forward with if there was a particular resource that I mentioned that they need, I pray that you give them the the gumption to go do it, to give them the motivation to go do it to change, to change themselves, to transform their marriage, for the for the results of their their kids and the rest of their lives, Lord, every person they interact with God, let them love their spouse after you, but before anyone else, are we thank you, we love you. And I bless you, in Jesus name, Amen. I did forget to mention my credentials here. And I’ll go ahead and do it just to give you insights on on why I think my my opinion is helpful for you. But at this point in my career, I’ve had the the grace to work with therapists who work with, you know, marriage counselors who work with others, some of the biggest names in the the marriage field that you would know, if I told you, I’ve worked with them on their own marriages, people who’ve been married just a handful of years to 4549 years, even 55 years, I haven’t been married 55 years, I’ll tell you that. But by God’s grace, these principles work and my work with them has transformed. So many, my podcast has been awarded in the top 30 relationship podcasts in 2018 2019 2020. So very thrilled with that from a company that that reviews, different different websites in different categories. And so I’m honored there. And then another piece is that we’re closing in on a million downloads. And I think by the end of 2020, we’ll be at a million we’re at like 950,000. Last time I checked, and it’s just growing each time. And then the next piece I wanted to mention is 100 and 155 countries worldwide, which is insane. It’s just amazing that people tune in, and I get to see marriages transformed from people who are divorced, who were separated, talking to lawyers and husband, you know, attracts his wife back, or a wife, who her husband’s having an affair, she’s able to attract him back to her. And he even left the job he was in with this other woman and they moved towns based on him what he did. And so it’s just amazing that God can transform people in the worst brink of divorces, a brink brinks of divorce, all right, you get it, the brink of divorce, and bring them to a place of intimacy where later they they’ve shared things like I feel like I’m the man of her dreams, or his love just oozes out of him. And these are people that were just about to get divorced. They’re in the midst of affairs. And so yeah, or people that have had pretty solid marriages, but intimacy was just a problem. And it wasn’t until they got these other principles, right, that they were able to completely shift things.

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So I hope that today’s podcast has been very value oriented for you. And again, there’s so much more in my episodes in my resources, I’d love to invite you to learn more. Go to delight your marriage.com you can really find out so much you can search. You can find out by topics you can learn so much. And check out the resources. I’d love to have you in a program. I’d love to work with you. In a closer degree. I’d love to give you tailored advice. There’s so much more here. And I really look forward to having you sign up for my newsletter and you’re going to get insights in your inbox each week and I’d love to have you there. Go to the light your marriage.com to sign up. Alrighty, God bless you and we’ll talk more soon