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This is a great sadness to me.
When a wife steps out (even an inch) from her comfort zone and her husband mishandles this vulnerability.
Whether it’s an inch sexually or in any part of their relationship…vulnerability should be appreciated and complimented and encouraged.
Your response to her discovery of more sexual freedom (big or small) should be, “Oh! How can I love HER more, too?” Not, “Oh, how can I perfect/change/improve her attempts?”
Because the second piece undermines her sexual freedom. That is what saddens me and makes me pray that God will help me do this thing better.
That’s why it grieves me at times that my podcast can be heard by both men and women… because the enemy WANTS your focus to be on yourself.
The enemy wants you to be focused on whether or not you’re getting your “fair share”. Or on “how can she love me better”.
But if we can be more like Christ and put the focus on the other “how can I love her better?”
How can her attempts to love me… inspire me to love HER!? That’s the heart I believe God wants us to have around this topic.
This is a part of what our Masculinity Reclaimed program addresses.
Maybe you have lost all hope that intimacy could be different and you may think you’re doing all the right things — everything I teach you to do, right? But, if it’s still not working, you haven’t tried the program and that might be the step you’re missing.
Listen to the testimonials please, because you’ll hear some stellar men who were doing it “right” and just couldn’t get there until they followed the program and got incredible breakthroughs.
Our whole team will give you 100%, we’d love to have you on the inside!
Schedule a free Clarity Call to get started in our online courses to begin healing your marriage at delightyourmarriage.com/cc!
Love, blessings, & prayers,
Belah
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Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. Your joining me belah Rose is I dive deep into the beauty, power and truths about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. Hi, there, thank you for joining, it’s Bella. But today, I really want to invite you, whether you’re a longtime listener, or you’re brand new, to really look at yourself and see what God might want to be speaking to you through today’s episode, because a couple weeks ago, I released one about how duty sex hurts you as a husband and hurts her. But today, I really want to focus on husbands. Because I think it’s just extremely easy to look on the other side of the street and say, yeah, she should be doing XYZ. And maybe there’s a self righteousness going on. Maybe it’s just pain and hurt and woundedness. Because you’re not being loved the way God designed you to be loved as a man in the ways he designed you. But I want to talk about what ways you may be unknowingly, undermining the progress that maybe you’ve seen. This is for men, they need to hear this, and I hope that you will
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listen closely. So here’s what happens sometimes, and it breaks my heart. Doesn’t happen all the time. But
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when a wife comes through the program, in fact, this is why I had to change the program so much around wives, just a little understanding, because you’ll find out for me, I really care about these things working, the program’s working. And so I changed things. Because I’m really trying to notice is this working or is this not and the husband’s course, is set up completely differently than the wives course. Because I’ve tried to teach the in coach the wives the same way that I teach and coach the husbands, it didn’t work. And I tried vice versa. And so. So it’s set up completely different. And the goal is that they are separate trainings, because we don’t need to be talking about sex, the way that we do with one spouse and the way that we do with the other. It’s not helpful. And so that’s why, you know, I’m always hesitant, and how much to say on this public podcast, because I know, a husband and a wife can both be listening at either at different times, or even together. And it’s so easy to start looking at your spouse with like, I hope they get convicted by this. I hope this teaches them that they should do things differently. And it’s so tough, it’s so tough, because what God expects of us is to love our spouse, well, not to look over to the other side and say, Hey, are they loving me? Well. One thing I do in the work with with clients is about a life vision document. And it’s really focused on when I get to Jesus, what do I want to be true of me? What do I want to be true of my heart, because the things that Jesus sees, no one else sees, you know, the dirt, as well as the good stuff, but also the, the stuff that’s just ah, you know, God made us all. And he and he loves us all. And what he made was good. But sin has gotten in there. And sin is something we are dealing with the flesh is something we’re dealing with, it’s real. And so when I have this vision document, what I have is my ideal of what I want to be when I’m meeting Jesus, this is what I want true of me. And when I talk about my relationship with my husband, I want it to be true that I loved him. Well. I want it to be true that I served him well. I want it to be true that I imitated Christ in the way that I knew that he felt loved and I did those things with a good heart with the attitude that I think would make Jesus smile. That’s what I want true of me. I don’t want it to be true that I loved him, because he did the right thing. For me first, that’s not that’s not Jesus way. Jesus was the one that went first Jesus loved first. So if you’re a husband or a wife, who listens to either my stuff or any other stuff out there, and you think, Oh, if only my spouse if only they would. And I know that I’ve felt those feelings. But that’s not going to move the ball forward to ultimately what we want on judgement day to be true of us. Will you want to be true of you is that you loved your wife well, that you loved your kids well. And if you’re a wife listening, that you loved your husband, well, you sought it out you, you wanted to find out how they functioned, what made their life better how you could empower God’s will in their lives. Because they’ve got a will. God has a will for them, just like he has one for you. And you can either support that and empower that and encourage that. Or be the very thing that impedes that, and blocks that and makes it harder for your spouse to pursue that. So I want you to really focus on yourself in this episode. And in every episode, maybe you’ll pick up on a pointer about like, Oh, I didn’t realize my spouse thought this way or felt this way. But I really want you to focus on yourself. And that’s the crux of what this episode is about is what I have, unfortunately seen is when a wife does my program, and the husband knows about it. Very frequently, his expectations grow. And his pressure grows, and what he thinks his wife should be doing, grows. And so he messes it
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all up. I laugh because I I’m heartbroken by that when I have seen that it it. It’s so sad that she might come to my podcast, maybe I don’t even work with her she could she on her own comes to the podcast, she herself starts making changes, even if they’re tiny movements inside her and he doesn’t see a whole lot of fruit yet. Or he doesn’t see fruit or he sees small fruit or whatever. But all he’s focused on is whether or not she’s doing what belah Rose says she should be doing. And it’s heartbreaking because all she feels is not good enough downtrodden. She feels like she’ll never live up to his expectations. So why try. And then she goes away from him, she goes away from sexual intimacy. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking. It’s the opposite of what a husband wants. But it’s also the opposite of what Jesus wants. When we love our spouse. Well, we become more like Christ because we serve others the way that Christ wants us to serve, which is with the other person in mind. Jesus served us and loved us the way we needed. And what we need to do is keep our eyes on ourselves. You want to know who has a reason to have crazy high expectations. I mean, through the roof around sexual intimacy, like he could, oh my gosh, he could expect the world and then some my own husband, my own husband, I mean, I teach this stuff. I am you know, working with husbands, I hear the I hear the stuff i i work with wives I know the stuff I teach the stuff, how he could have the most and I mean, just over the sky expectations of me around sexual intimacy. And let me tell you something he does not. He does not every little thing I do and yes, sometimes they are tiny. He considers it this big surprise. He considers it something he didn’t expect what a what a shock that she would do this. And what does that do that It motivates me. It says, I’m not pressured here. I don’t have to do anything. But man, I love that guy. He is He is incredible. And with that kind of heart, yeah, it’s fine. It’s great. It’s a, it’s a big, it’s a big joy to make him even more impressed, but that it’s not because he’s got expectations that I’m motivated. That is the opposite. And let me tell you, I’m not saying that this is a problem with your knowledge of the Bible, or your prayer life. This is a misunderstanding of the marital relationship. And it’s a place in your heart that God wants to correct. I truly believe that as a husband. So you might be this incredible pastor, this incredible preacher, and amazing prayer warrior, an awesome music leader that’s bringing people into the presence of Christ, on a daily on a daily on a weekly, whatever, I’ve seen this, it doesn’t matter. If you think that this is your wife’s job. It’s not going to help your relationship that those verses in the Bible are for her, not for you. The verses in the Bible that say do not neglect your spouse or you know, do not withhold from your spouse. It’s not for you to look on the other side and say, Hey, what is she doing? It’s for her, it’s for her to understand this the same way with this podcast, I, you know, I wish I could only talk to husbands and then only talk to wives. But you know what is so funny, even when I give free things just for husbands are free things just for wives, you know what happens? Plenty of wives sign up. And plenty of husbands sign up for the wives stuff. And that’s just what happens.
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It’s so funny. It’s not I mean, it, I know the heart behind it is you want to learn about your wife. So you do the training. But the thing is, it impacts your heart in the wrong way so many times, which is why a lot of the meat is in inside, because then we can actually get into the really important things separately, and we don’t have to worry about the heart, you want to know something maybe outlandish, but even people on the inside of the programs, I don’t allow, you know, mixing, if you will, like some of the trainings or some of the material that goes on, the husbands in our team don’t have access to and vice versa. Some of the things that go on, on the wife side, that sorry that on the husband side, the the wives on our team don’t have access to because it just messes with our hearts. I can’t have that. And it’s something I have to always die to. My husband has incredible strengths, incredible giftings. And man, am I grateful and that’s why I can do this work, because I can just teach you, Hey, do it like my husband works. But there are things just like he’s got things about me that are annoying. And either we focus on those or we focus on the good. And we focus on the stuff that God made in our spouse. And we’re content and that actually motivates our spouse to to make us happy, even more so or we try to fix our discontentment by pushing and pressuring and direct conversations and critiquing and teaching and pushing material on our spouse. That’s not the way all it does is undermine her progress. undermine it. You know, think about a new job that you might be going into and you’re doing your you’re doing your best. And they’re, they’re teaching you the new things, and it’s all brand new. And you feel like you’re you’re kind of getting the hang of it. And then all of a sudden your boss calls and say, Listen, I really need you to get better at this. And yet, I mean, you were you were doing some baby steps in that direction. I thought you you thought that you were doing better at this. And it’s just not, you know, even more so than that a marital relationship. It’s, it’s not going to work that way. You’ve got to be grateful for the things she does. And sex cannot be the only thing going for you. You’ve got to have other things in your life that make you happy. Copy that make you feel filled up. Life is not all about sexual intimacy. I focus on it all the time, because I’m trying to help people. But this should not be your only type of pursuit. There’s a ton of other things that need to be going for you in your life. You need to be serving people. In other capacities, you need to be loving others in other ways. You need to have things that cause you to light up. You know, God made all of creation, get hobbies, start learning new things. I just learned this really cool game that kids play that’s called trumple. And you, you wind up this top and you, you pull the string and it flies and spins really fast, it’s actually hard to figure out, but this little kid who’s nine, he was super patient with me, and he helped me and help me and help me. And finally I got it. And then my son actually got better than me and a number of moments. But the point is, oh my gosh, that occupied my mind for so long. And now I’ve got a new skill. And now when I don’t know or having some emotion or feeling stressed, or frustrated, whatever, I’ve got a whole nother thing that I want to go do. And it’s kind of fun to to master a new skill. I mean, there’s just all sorts of things in this life that you could engage with, that makes you just happier and fuller, and you’re not always thinking about whether or not your spouse is fulfilling you sexually. It’s just shouldn’t be the focus of your mind. Your focus of your mind is man, I love God, how can I serve God today? How can I pursue him more? And hey, this is pretty cool. Why not? Why not learn about this? Hey, why not do that? This is this is great. Your wife is not your only joy.
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She shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be. How can you serve her? How can you love her today? Not because you want to get something back? Not because you want her to change? Because you want to love God well. And by loving God, well, you want to love his daughter? Well, because you are tasked with loving her the way that Christ loves the church. So how does Christ love you? That’s what you get to be to her. Christ doesn’t love us because he’s requiring, or expecting or demanding something back. It’s, it’s a free gift. It’s our choice. It’s our opportunity to bask in his affection. And whether or not we take him up on that as is on us. But you know, it’s it’s fully, fully connected to eternity when we go towards him. Our spouse cannot be the thing that makes us okay, that’s, that’s on us to figure out. One thing I love about the de YM team is we’re growing, not just a numbers, but the thing I like more is that we’re growing in in depth of what we feel like God wants us to be doing and, and one of the things is we’re getting tighter on some truths that we’ve learned over the years of just that, if the husband doesn’t go first, it can undermine the wife. So even so, for example, Pastor Kevin, who’s on the team now, really feel strongly that we shouldn’t launch the wives program, until after the husbands and several months after if we do it that way, we’re still nailing things down. But because there’s too much opportunity for for failure of our programs, we want them to be effective, the husbands have to go first. And it can’t just be head knowledge. It has to be heart change, and it takes a while. And that’s why these transformation stories are after three months or more, because he had to really change. And hopefully you’re listening to this and you’re being reminded that this is your heart we’re dealing with you know, I just have so many stories coming to mind that I remember a wife who she discovered the podcast, her eyes were opened. Her husband was so thrilled that she you did all this stuff and and then he undermined it by saying, giving her critiques and comments about what she Did and sang should do that again, or try it this way. Or we should do this or let me give you ideas on that. Or hey, I’ve always wanted to try this. And yeah, great. One day that would be nice to have in your marriage. But that’s not the crux, that’s not the push. You get to be happy and grateful. And say, Hey, she’s stepping out up to love me, how can I step it up to love her? That’s what it should be. At At a minimum, that should be your response to any good she does in intimacy. All you should think about is how I can love her better. Oh, my gosh, did she take a step to listen to an episode of delight your marriage? Oh, my gosh, I need to love her better. How do I serve her better? How can I be the better husband? Not? Oh, did she do? What belah said, is she actually doing deadheaded? No, that’s the wrong heart. And that’s the kind of undermining that could happen. So to finish the story, what happened is the wife gave up, and she felt more downtrodden. And to the extent that she had felt pressured their whole marriage. But because it had even gotten more intense, with now, having the season that she tried hard, and he just got worse. Then she’s shaking on her way home from work because her anxiety is growing. And she’s got a ton of kids that she needs to love and take care of. But she was at the end of her rope ready to give up all of it, because of his mindset around it. And when I worked with him,
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he found out that it was on him. And that was the reason their sex life was backwards. Was because in what why she was resisting, even though she quote knew better by now she knew she learned all the stuff that I taught. It was on him, it was his fault. He was the one that was blocking her from blossoming, it was his attitude towards her. See, your wife is really smart. She knows what you’re thinking about her. She gets it, she knows and she’s either going to be drawn towards that attitude or away from it. And that means an intimacy when you give her that space, and you give her all the things she needs to thrive as a wife. Now, it’s like, oh, my gosh, he’s the one that that gives me all the acceptance and love and appreciation to make me thrive. Of course, I’m drawn to him in all the ways including intimacy. So that’s really important for you not to undermine what’s going on. So, you know, happily ever after the two of them lived. And all these, these children now have a happy home to come to. And, you know, he had to go into even some, some psychiatric things that he had no idea where there. He just thought it was her fault that he was miserable. But the truth is, he himself was the problem. And he had to address those things, in order to then be able to love her well, the way that she needed. So that’s just one story of many that I could share. And, again, I don’t want you to have a wife and a program when you are mistaken. And you might not even realize you’re mistaken. And you might not realize, again, some of these are incredibly godly men, but they just have it backwards. They have it backwards that their mindset around intimacy is undermining her motivation towards it, her desire for it. And I don’t even like I don’t like saying the word libido like, pressure for sex as a libido killer. I’ve said that before. But libido, it makes it seem so separate from her heart, but that’s not true. Intimacy is so wrapped up in how she feels about you. It’s very much less around physical, straight up physical desire. There are times that that’ll happen. That’s cool. That’s great. But it’s way more about your, the way your relationship is and whether or not she wants to come to bed with you. Now if you just had an argument, no, sir. That’s not going to help. She’s not going to be interested in coming to bed with you. But if you’re the safety, accepting, loving, you know, joyful man that she wants to be around. That’s it. I mean, of course. So again, my husband does not have expectations of me. And I’m still a woman. And there are times that I get off track and I kind of forget what’s going on even though I, you know, I’m, this is my work. So how do I forget, but that’s just just life. But he’s not gonna give me any kind of flack for it. And he just is thrilled about what we do. And the more things he has in his life that makes him happy, the easier he is to be satisfied with what I give him. But he’s not waiting around for me to make him happy. That’s my invitation to you, is get a lot of fun things in your life, be a happy guy. You know, whether it’s mountain biking, or waterskiing or fishing or hiking, or, you know, I’m just making things up right now. But whittling, whittling or, you know, all sorts of things, tech, or video editing, or, you know, powerlifting, whatever it could be, maybe things that you were interested in, when you were a kid, and you need to just circle back to that and start getting a curious mind around this world that God created. But don’t don’t look to your wife for all your pleasure and fulfillment in life. That’s just not fair. That’s not what cup wanted. That’s not the way he set this thing up.
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So don’t don’t undermine her progress. Get some really good things in your life going on. Love her, appreciate her accept her gratitude for her. And, yeah, and and do your own work. First, you know, the masculinity reclaim program, obviously, I would encourage you to come in. I mean, this is this is what we do. And I’m going to be sharing quite a lot more transformations with you over the next couple days, some rapid fire transformations, because we can’t post them all on the podcast, otherwise, you’ll Well, I don’t know what you’ll do. Maybe you would like them all on a podcast, but it would be a lot of episodes. So I’m going to do a bunch of them. Just really short, so you can listen to those. But the point is that we want you on the inside, our whole team is ready to give you 100% to yeah, really seek a god to transform things. Wherever you are, whether you’re really feeling hopeless, or whether you’re, you know, just it’s been good. But it’s never been passionate. I mean, this is gosh, there’s this great testimonial of a man who was in ministry for 22 years and married for 19 of them. And he never felt like he could give a message on marriage because he never felt like he had a level of freedom in that. And now, intimacy is better than it ever has been in his whole marriage. Yay. And he is excited to tell everyone he is in love with his wife, which has never been something he has felt he could share or or felt deeply. So just amazing kinds of things come out of this, this program and we would love to have you on the inside. Go to delete your marriage.com/m Invite. We’d love to have you prioritize this next three months, I mean, a quarter of a year. What if the whole thing transforms? Really, it could do that? Listen to the transformation stories and see if pray about it. See if God would want you to commit to this program. God bless you and I look forward to having you on the inside so does the whole team. We are excited to have you on the inside to let your marriage.com/m Invite