Bringing happiness to your wife: How to keep your marriage strong

Very interesting passage here about marriage and divorce.

The Pharisees used it to justify divorcing their wives, with the only bone of contention being what constitutes “indecent.”

I’m not going to get into that now, other than to repeat what Jesus said to the Pharisees:

God never commanded divorce. Rather, he allowed it as a concession to their hardness of heart. (Matthew 19:8)

Couples first harden their hearts to God and his ideal on marriage (Matthew 19:4–6), and then they harden their hearts to each other.

But the second part of this passage has a verse that strikes me.

God told the people,

If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him.

For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married. (Deuteronomy 24:5)

God apparently knew the importance of the first year of marriage. And he wanted to make sure that it got off to a good start.

I love the last phrase, “he is to be free to…bring happiness to the wife he has married.”

I think in that one little phrase, we see a key principle to keeping marriages strong: a desire to bring happiness to each other.

So often, marriages fall apart because instead of focusing on their spouse, husbands and wives focus on themselves.

Instead of thinking about how to please their spouse, they’re always complaining that their spouse doesn’t please them.

That, in fact, was the very root of divorce mentioned in verse 1.

If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her… (Deuteronomy 24:1)

Here you see what the man’s focus is.

It’s no longer on pleasing his wife. Rather, it’s on how she is displeasing to him.

And because of that selfish way of thinking, he now desires to divorce his wife.

I think it should be pointed out that God puts primary responsibility for keeping the marriage healthy on the husband.

It is the husband, he says, who is to do what he can to bring happiness to his wife.

Why the focus on the husband? Perhaps because he knew how women are wired.

Women were created to be responders. And when they see their husband seeking to bring happiness to them, they in turn seek to bring happiness to their husband.

But when women don’t get that love from their husband, when they sense that their husband is more focused on his own happiness than her own, that’s when they start nagging their husband and complaining against him.

Then the husband gets ticked off, becoming more selfish and less loving toward his wife, leading the marriage into a downward spiral to divorce.

Unless, that is, someone makes the decision to stop that spiral, stop being selfish, and focus on the other’s happiness instead of their own.

Even so, it takes both sides to make a marriage work.

And God, as I said, says it should start with the husband.

Because of that, Paul writes this command to husbands,

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:25)

Christ was the ultimate husband. He didn’t look out for his own interests. Rather, he gave up everything for the church, that is, you and me.

As Paul wrote,

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

So husbands, are you dissatisfied with your marriage? Then stop focusing on yourself, and start focusing on your wife.

Stop focusing on your happiness, and start focusing on hers.

And as you do, more than likely, you’ll find that your marriage will begin to go in an upward spiral into the kind of union that God intended from the beginning.