It never ceases to amaze me how seeing things in the right light can take a seemingly powerless and familiar idea and release treasures from heaven. We have been dumbed down by what we thought we knew. We tread through life with best guesses until shown otherwise. This happened to me the other day. There is an old concept floating around that tries to give light to the actions of men and women. The idea says that men pursue a woman until they conquer them. Once they do, the case usually being marriage, the pursuit then stops because they have conquered their goal. Not a very promising concept for either in this case. The explanation then is given that men are goal oriented, and now the man must work to keep the fire alive. Sound familiar? Even though you may even see some truth in this, let me ask you, how much life do you feel from this? Something seem missing? What if we could see this in a different light? Same situation, different angle.
The bible declares that when two are married that they become one. Now obviously this is a very big subject and could take a long time to study out but lets say even if you didn't consciously understand this, you did understand this on a much deeper level. Let's say you saw your spouse as an extension of yourself. Where does that take us? Up until the point of marriage your future mate was outside of you. You could pursue, treat them in ways you never thought of before all because they were an object of your desire. In some ways they were not under your rule. When marriage came then there was a change. Why? Because they are no longer outside of you but part of you. You no longer see them as an object that you have to give to obtain. You now have them, and with that comes a responsibility that few of us every perceive. Husbands are to love them as their own bodies. Now most would think that this is something to work towards but think, what if we do it naturally? Somewhere down on that deeper level we already began to love them as ourselves. Now that could sound all romantic and whatnot but the problem is, what if you didn't love yourself? How then would you treat your spouse? Answer, as an extension of that dysfunction. Let me propose that a man stops pursuing a wife after marriage because a man has stopped pursuing himself, and a wife is now an extension of that lack of pursuit. So rather than blame your spouse for not keeping the fire alive it just might be you have some stuff in you that you need to look at. Go deep! It just may be what the doctor ordered.
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Eph. 5:28
