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So, what I’ve noticed is that all of us are insecure. For some of us it’s more obvious than others.
It shows up in life, and it shows up in the bedroom.
I want to talk to you about what men are insecure about around intimacy and I want to talk about what women are insecure about around intimacy.
We have the opportunity to help our spouse feel more secure.
But how do we help our spouse when we ourselves are struggling with fear of judgment, rejection and body image (to name a few)?
Well, I think we need to understand where that fear is coming from.
And that’s what we explore together on today’s show.
Do you feel worthy?
Do you treat your spouse like they are worthy?
How can you help your spouse not be so insecure…
-around sex,
-around professional things,
-around the ways that they are in the world?
Hint: it’s different for men and women.
(To understand more about this framework, and get a free PDF download go to delightyourmarriage.com/framework )
So, on today’s show I want to tell you about what I think will be helpful for you to love your spouse in a way that will make them
-take down their guards,
-be less perfect (yep perfection is a mask for insecurity)
-be more vulnerable,
-be more messy & real,
-be more kind & loving,
-be less awkward,
-be more open, and
-be more secure.
And you too.
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, welcome. This is belah rose. Thank you for joining. If you’re new to the show, we talk about the important things in marriage, like intimacy, like your walk with the Lord, like emotional intimacy and physical intimacy. And I really seek to do it in a God honoring way. Today, I want to talk about why both the husband and the wife are insecure, around intimacy. Now, before I dive in, if you have been impacted by this show, whether a little bit or a lot, there is a way that you can give back without really having to do a whole lot. Luckily, it would be a huge support, if you took a few minutes at the most, it’s probably three, three minutes to leave an iTunes review. And if you’re not sure how to do it, if you listen in on your iPhone, for example, you can go to the podcasting app, and search delight your marriage, even if you already subscribe, you still have to search it to get to the place where you can leave a review. So you hit Search, and then you click on the icon, that top icon in the left, top left. And then you’ll see a bunch of shows, and you have to scroll down maybe five or six shows. And then you’ll see stars, and it’ll give you the option to rate and review. And so I’d love for you to do a five star rating, because like I said, that’ll encourage new people to come to the podcast. And also if you leave a review, again, that’ll encourage people to listen. And we live in a world where people look at numbers. And so if you can do that, it really doesn’t matter. On my end, how many hundreds of 1000s of listens, this podcast gets. It’s what people look at in terms of how many reviews and ratings. So as much as I wish it weren’t the case. But for this to be reaching more people, I need your help. And it would mean so much to me. If you could take the moment to do that. That would that would be amazing. So thank you. Alright, let’s dive into what we are talking about today. So here’s what I have noticed with people that I talked to with friends even, we’re all pretty insecure, some less than others. But generally, we all have things that we are nervous about. And one thing that’s beautiful about children is we can watch them and there is no self consciousness in them. They just haven’t developed that part of their brain, I guess. And so they’re dancing around, they’re laughing, they’re in their truest personality, when they’re, I don’t know, 5674 or five, whatever those ages are, where it’s just like, oh my gosh, they’re just bursting with personality. And there’s no, there’s no boundaries around it. Like it’s a beautiful thing to witness. And then we grow into maybe a little bit more self awareness. And it’s a good thing, because we can, you know, obviously, if we always acted like a six year old, there would be a lot of problems. So we, we needed to grow up. And we needed to have more self awareness, self consciousness, it’s a good thing. We went through puberty, and I’m sure there was a ton of insecurity, trying to figure out our place in the world. And then we grew into the high school years where we kind of solidified that personality. And then the, you know, post high school years, whether that was college or working or what have you. And again, that was solidifying our personality. And then we got to a place where some somewhere along the line marriage came in. And a lot of times people started in marriage with a lot more confidence. Then maybe they’re at right now, which I don’t think is God’s best. I think what God wants His our marriage to actually be a place that confidence grows, rather than diminishes. Why do I think that it diminishes in marriage Well, what I’ve noticed that happens is that we have these expectations that our spouse is going to meet.
5:11
Because we expect our husband or our wife to love us, the way that we receive love. And then come to find out our husband and our, or our wife receives love in a very different way. So they’re trying to love us the way that they receive love, and it’s just a huge mismatch. And yes, the love languages, if you’re familiar with that, that’s part of it. Right? If you want to spend time with your spouse, when your spouse thinks that the only thing that really matters to you is gifts, because that’s the only thing that matters to them, then it’s going to feel like you’re being unloved, even though they’re maybe they’re giving you gifts, but you just want to spend time with them. So yeah, love languages, the part of that, what I would encourage you to think about is a framework that if if you’d like more information about this, you can go to delight your marriage.com/framework. And I have a PDF that that clarifies this for you. So, but this framework is essentially saying that for a wife to feel fulfilled in her marriage, she needs three things. She needs to be known. She needs to be safe, and she needs to be cherished. So what does that mean? Known means that you know, her strengths, her uniquenesses, her personality, who she is at her core. And then you have to make it clear that you know those things about her. So that includes listening, that includes being there to compliment her about these strengths that she has. And the next thing is safety. Now, you might think, well, we’re not there’s no physical abuse in our house, of course, she’s safe. But the truth is, if you criticize her, if you make her feel small or less than if you correct her a lot of those things it, it rips away at the safety that she feels and she has to feel safe to be sexually expressive. So if she’s not emotionally safe with you, there’s no way she’s going to feel safe sexually, to then put herself out there. So it’s very important for emotional safety to be very vital to your marriage. So known safe, and the last one is cherished. That’s what romance is all about. That’s what dates and special going out of your ways is all about. And even right now, most people are quarantined. So it feels like well, I can’t take her on a date. Well, you can do things that are romantic. Absolutely, you can. It just takes thought and creativity. And again, because you know her, you know what she would like, or you discover what she would like you start to think about, you start to be creative around that. So you want to be thinking about would a extra special time where were kids are watching a movie and you you create a romantic atmosphere in your living room where you have a picnic, and you get the hors d’oeuvres and you make appetizers and you make all the different little details to go along with it. That’s romantic, and that makes her feel like you cherish her. There’s lots of different ways to cherish your wife, but it needs to be a daily practice for you. So those are the three things that will make her feel fulfilled as, as a wife, what’s going to make your husband feel fulfilled. Three things again, and this is just to make a framework so that can be a little easier for you, number one respected. Now I heard this probably my whole life. I knew men needed to be respected. But the truth is, I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know that when I criticized him. When I tried to control what he did or didn’t do. When I nagged when I corrected when I taught him that all meant disrespect to him. It meant that I thought he was stupid and men that I thought that my way was better than his. It meant that I thought that the fear that I had of somehow he was going to do something wrong, or he was going to embarrass me or our house wasn’t going to be perfect the way that I thought it should be. Those were things that were really just my fears. But he was feeling disrespected the whole time. So it would draw him away from me it would push him away from me. And so when I started to hold my tongue on the things that I wanted to control or criticize or correct.
10:04
That then caused him to be able to feel like okay, he can be himself. So the first thing is, is respect. The second thing is being admired as a man being admired. So Ephesians 533 says, this is the Amplified Version, let each man of you, without exception, love his wife, as being, in a sense, his very own self. So, among other things in that chapter, it’s a tall order for husbands to love their wives, like Christ loves the church, which is insane to me, because Christ literally died for the church. So the the value that Christ places on the church is immense. So a husband, deciding and choosing to value his wife above himself, is really what the Lord is admonishing to us encouraging us here in this verse. But the next part of it is specifically to wives, and I think it’s very helpful. It says, let the wife see that she respects and references her husband, that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him venerates and esteem Him, and that she defers to him, praises him and loves and admires him exceedingly. So lots of clarifications there. And when I think about my husband, I feel like I do those things to him. Now, just to clarify, hopefully, you are being treated well in your marriage. If you’re not, I have a full series about abuse. I think I did it back in the fall of 2019. And it’s very important clarification because if there’s abuse going on, that needs to be corrected. If there’s not, then you can live in a place that is truly all of those things. Now, I’m not saying that because you’re revering and honoring and admiring your husband, that every man in our society deserves that kind of treatment. It’s not true, because there are men in our society in the world today that are oppressing women in thought, and indeed, and my encouragement and invitation to you is saying that you’re not supposed to do that to every man. That’s not you. You’re not married every man you don’t have to treat him that way. But your husband is the one that you are encouraged to esteem and revere and admire. So the second piece is to admire your husband. And just like being cherished is a wife’s need to feel fulfilled. It doesn’t make a husband less than that. He needs admiration and respect. He needs it. It’s a valid need from his wife. You probably don’t need that. I mean, you would love again being known. That’s a need being being adored, adored, for your for who you are, that’s a need but but for being respected in the same way that a man craves respect from his wife. It’s different we can’t fully as women understand that. But it is a need and it’s a God given need. And the final thing, right, we’ve got respect, admire and the third thing for men to feel fulfilled in their marriage is wholehearted sexual intimacy. Now, I could just say sex, but I don’t because I have heard from so many men that says what we do have sex, we have it several times a week. But it feels like a chore. It feels like she doesn’t want to it feels like it’s just checking the box. And that is not a fulfilling experience for husband. He wants you to be there. He wants you to be present. He wants you to be in it. So again, you can find out more about this. There’s a PDF that I’d love for you to download at delight your marriage.com/framework to understand this framework, but when these things are present in your marriage, when you love your wife the way that she receives love, in a lot of ways almost naturally she’s going to want to love you back in the way that you receive love, at least as she understands it and the there’s more there. But this is kind of
15:04
at the very core of what may be holding you guys back. So what does this have to do about insecurity and fear in the bedroom? Well, we’re all insecure. We’re insecure in different ways. So for a wife in the bedroom, she’s insecure of things like, do I know what to do? Or is my body good enough? Or Am I sexy? Am I sexy enough to do this thing? Though, these are fear, she’s always thinking about the way she looks. A lot of times, in a wife’s mind, she’s standing across the room, even if she’s in bed with you. She’s perceiving what she looks like and wondering, oh my gosh, is my fat jiggling? Or is the is it? Am I looking awkward? Or is the sexy enough? And all those things are in her mind as she’s trying to make love? And then the other piece is men are insecure? Because they’re like, Okay, do I know what I’m, how can I make her have an orgasm? Do I know what I’m doing? If she’s not enjoying herself, it’s my fault. If she doesn’t have an orgasm, it’s my fault. And also, he is very insecure about his body as well, but it’s more along the size and shape of his member. That’s a huge insecurity for men, women, just so you know. I should clarify for all the men listening, I have never, I’m serious, never heard from a client, that she wishes her husband was larger. That has never been something I’ve heard from a client ever. Because women we don’t think like that. Men think like that men, they’ll make a competition about anything. But that’s not innately what women are craving. It’s just not. They’re craving to be known and cherished and safe. And that will draw them towards intimacy. Not you know, some crazy technique or some size or any of that kind of stuff. That’s that’s not the the draw towards intimacy for her. Alright, so, again, men are insecure in their ways women are insecure in their ways. Here’s something if you’re taking notes, write this down. Sometimes, we are so focused on our own insecurity, that we cannot even see that the other person is insecure. So we are acting out of our own insecurity. And our spouse is also insecure, but we can’t see it. Because all we’re doing is focused on our own fear. Are we good enough? So my invitation to you is to assume that your spouse is insecure. And figure out how you can encourage them, how you can make them feel more confident, more relaxed, more at ease. So all the insecurities I just went through, there’s plenty more, but try to put a curious hat on. If you don’t feel loved by your spouse, maybe there’s insecurity there. Maybe there’s fear there. A lot of times, men will say, Oh, are you kidding me? In fact, not only men, but women will say this too. If you saw my spouse with other people, you would never say they were insecure, never they’re the most confident person in the room. But let me tell you, if somebody is a perfectionist, it means they are afraid of looking anything but perfect. If they are critical of others, that means they are critical of themselves. There is insecurity about whether or not they are worthy of connection. Whether vulnerability is messiness, and imperfection is unattractive, or all of those things that keeps you all disconnected. As about fear is about fear. And you know what God says is there is no fear in love. There is no fear in love. So recognize that a lot of the time what keeps us apart from each other is fear is insecurity. Am I good enough? Do I know what I’m doing? And a lot of times we feel like well, I’m going to just be perfect
20:01
And that’s what I’m going to present to my spouse is perfection. But perfection is is. It’s particularly, right because if you’re perfect in front of your spouse, then you are presenting something that’s not truly you. So you’ve got your guards up while you’re trying to make love to your spouse. So it’s kind of like you’re coming to the bedroom, all suited up in medieval armor. And you expect it to be a fulfilling experience. It’s like, No, this is not going to be fun for you or your spouse, because you’re both suited up with your ideals of perfection.
20:48
So here’s what I want to invite you to do is recognize you both are insecure. And number two, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? Well, I have been looking at Colossians 312. A lot recently. In fact, it was some on my my whiteboard. And I crossed things out and rewrote them and tried to understand and tease out what this verse means. But here’s what it says. Therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with hearts of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which is the bond of perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. For to this you were called as members of one body, and be thankful. So I’m gonna read that also in the English Standard Version, just to give us another insight. So it’s put on then as God’s Chosen Ones, holy and beloved. So that first chunk reminds me that you know what, I’m imperfect, but God chose me. And holy and beloved means that I was set apart, and I am loved by God, the God of the universe, the universe, it means that my imperfect self, my human messiness, that makes mistakes all the time. God found worthy, not because of my own goodness, or righteousness, those are filthy rags, compared to God’s extreme righteousness, wonder and holiness. Right? Not because of him, but because Jesus chose me. Jesus made the sacrifice so I could be clean. And he found me. And shows me just like he found you, and he chose you, you are holy and beloved. So that that is our security. Service, because God knows us. He knows everything. He knows all the mess, he knows all the dirt. And yet he chose you. Even in the midst of that mess, and dirt and grossness, and he loves you. So there’s our security. That’s what we need to ground ourselves in, and who we are in Christ. So then we’re we’re coming at life with abundance of worthiness. We’re not looking for others to validate us we’re, we’re getting our validation from God. So then the rest is easy. We’re just giving away what we have from God. And to clarify what those things are, it says, Put on then, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. So There is a lot of wonderful things in there. And I would invite you to spend some time reflecting on Colossians 312, through 15. But I would invite you to really think about, I don’t have to be afraid, I don’t have to be insecure, because God says I am enough. And so when I step out of myself to love my spouse, the way they receive love, so whether that’s a wife, I want to know her, I want to make her feel safe, and I want to cherish her. You step outside of yourself to your husband, and you do those things for her. loving her as Christ loves the church. Like that kind of value you place on your wife, it is worth it.
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It is worth it. That is God’s daughter, you’re dealing with, you’re not dealing with some creature that was supposed to meet your needs. You’re dealing with God’s beloved daughter that he chose, and you get to be his hands and feet in loving your wife Well, in loving her well, the way that God loves her, you get to do that. And for my dear wife listening, that your husband be respected, because again, that’s his emotional need to be respected and admired and wholehearted sexual intimacy. That’s what makes him feel loved and filled up, emotionally filled up. A lot of times, wives were like, How in the world could sex be emotionally fulfilling for him? Ask any man he is like, that’s a crazy question. That is exactly how I feel the moment of orgasm, he feels absolutely on cloud nine. And it lasts for a couple days. And then we get to enjoy each other again. So my invitation to you is to be wholehearted in that. So again, that is God’s Son. That is your first human assignment to love your husband well. And the thing is, if we get priorities messed up, if we mess up the priorities, then we say, Okay, I’m going to put my ministry and then my husband, and then my kids, or my kids, and then my ministry, and then my husband, or my kids, my husband and my ministry, that is not God’s priorities. You have to have your spouse above your kids, otherwise, your kids are not having the model that God wants. And you both are better parents, when you both are filled up in the love that God wants you to have. When a husband is filled up in sexual intimacy, he can be more patient with his kids. It’s just the way it is God created him that way. In the same way you as a wife, if you feel loved by and cherished and known, you are more present mother because you are not wounded by the lack of love in your marriage. But it has to be the priority. Because when you love your spouse, well, your love spouse, your spouse loves you, well, it’s just a natural response. But one of you have to get out of your own insecurity and fear, to love the other well. So again, put on as God’s Chosen Ones holy and beloved anchor of yourself in that you are chosen, you are holy, you are beloved, anchor yourself in that. So then you can fuel being a person of compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other and putting on love. So I know you can do this. I know that the fear and the insecurity that comes into the bedroom with you. You can place it to the side and you can say I’m going to love my spouse, well. I’m going to make them feel more encouraged. I’m going to make them feel more secure. I’m going to have a compassionate heart for them. I’m going to get out of myself. And notice that I am validated by the God of the universe. I’m not a gaping hole needing of affirmation. But I can love my spouse well. I’m not going to be critical of their desire for validation. I’m going to encourage who I see that God made them to be you can do this. So let me pray for you Father, I pray for them. A dear spouse, whether it’s a husband or wife, listening, Lord, I pray that what you want them to hear. First and foremost is that they are your beloved, that they are filled up by you that they are fully loved by the one who called them worthy, not by their own deeds, not by who they are, but because Jesus, you saw them, you created them, you came to earth to save them. They were chosen. They have been chosen and called and loved to their very core. And that is what validates them so they can love others well. We love because we were first loved. God give them the grace to love their spouse well, because they
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have been loved first. God, I ask that any fear that they are given to you in this season, whether it’s fear on the outside, or fear just between the two of them, fear of getting hurt again, or fear of making a wrong move or being rejected? God, I ask that you would give them the grace to love and forgive the past. In Jesus name. Amen. Wonderful. Well, thank you for listening. Thank you for being with me. I don’t take it lightly that you spend time with me each week. I would be extremely honored and grateful if you went ahead to take the few minutes to figure out how to leave me a review. If you listen on iTunes. I told you how to do that in the beginning. If you listen on some other app, a lot of times there’s an opportunity to leave a review. A lot of times there’s not but if you can, I would really appreciate it and would encourage and increase the the breadth and the impact of this podcast. So thank you, again, for being listener from spreading the word from sharing it for other others to listen to. I
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appreciate it so much already. God bless you and I look forward to talking to you next week. Bye