How can couples meet each other's emotional needs better? How can couples prevent emotional infidelities from happening in their marriage? When two people become bonded through marriage they depend on one another for their emotional needs getting met. But what happens later on down the road? Let's take a look.
* Lack of Intimacy Intimacy becomes lost because couples have stopped having intimate conversations and alone time with one another. Understand that intimacy and sex is not the same thing. Sex can be intimate, but you can also be intimate without having sex. Intimacy is the closeness a person feels with another. Watching a movie and eating popcorn together on the couch can be an intimate moment between couples.
* Rejected Feedings - When a spouse exerts their opinion, thoughts and ideas and the other spouse invalidates those feelings, a spouse can feel rejected and unneeded. You can keep the fires burning in your marriage by agreeing and supporting one another. Marriage should not be "her way" or "his way" but "both your way", teamwork. How good and pleasant when fellow believers live together in unity. (Psalm 133:1)
* Lack of Intimate Conversation Do you know the person you married? One reason we lose touch with our spouse is because we stop having intimate conversations. We want to feel comfortable talking with and being with the person we married, but did you know that many couples feel uncomfortable being with each other. What causes that? Lack of bonding (intimate attachment) with one another and fear of feelings being rejected.
* Lack of Same Goals, Aspirations Most marriages have the husband doing his own thing, and he has his own friends and hobbies, and the wife does her own things, friends and hobbies. They are pulling away from each other rather than working to be together and applying teamwork in the marriage. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
* Confusion of Roles In marriage the husband has his roles and responsibilities that should be attended to and the wife has hers. Together they make a team because they compliment each other's position in the marriage. But when the wife tries to overthrow her husband's manly protection and position in the marriage, the balance of the marriage becomes upset. It works the other way too. Couples should be working with and encouraging each other so as to compliment each other's position in the marriage.
* Lack of Spiritual Oneness It's ironic how God brings couples together in marriage, and how couples usually drift apart from each other. They are not basing their marriage on God's truths and principles. Couples need to pray together every day. Reading of the bible and prayer together is a must for a healthy and balanced marriage.
What Happens When The Above Emotional Needs Do Not Get Met
* Lose Love For One Another - Couples lose interest with each other and think they are not in love anymore. Couples desperately need to be encouraging and supportive with the person they married. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)
*Building and Harboring of Resentments -- When our emotional needs don't get met we tend carry around a negative attitude about the person we married. Faults and weaknesses of our spouse become magnified. We may clam up and think bad of the person we married or we may become angered and say mean things to our spouse, or worse become violent.
Resentments will kill your marriage. Do not let the sun go down in your anger and resentment. Talk about your issues right away. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. (Colossians 3:13)
* Emotional and Physical Infidelities -- When a spouse feels unloved, rejected, or dismissed because of the lack of intimacy and spiritual oneness in the marriage, couples go outside the bounds of the marriage to get those needs fulfilled. But this does not work. Let me tell you why.
For you to receive what you need from your spouse, you have to also compromise or sacrifice a part of yourself to "give" back to your spouse. It works both ways-couples need to work together and apply the principles that were designed for marriage. It does not matter whom you are interacting with on an intimate level, you will also need to do the same with them for it to be a happy union.
God teaches us to love on principle not on how we are feeling, but sometimes that is difficult to do. Feelings tell us to go to the other side of the fence for the emotional needs that are lacking in our marriage-this is why there is so much infidelity in marriage. God tells us to go to Him and pray about our circumstances and ask Him for the guidance and answers we need. Which way are you going?
Love must be sincere. Feelings should never be the based on how you love another. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8)
Wonderful piece - I hope that many. many read and apply it in their marriages. Thanks for thinking this through and putting it down for us to read. Marijo
Hi Marijo...thanks for you comments and taking the time to read my article. The formatting got all messed up when I uploaded it for some reason, but I fixed that.
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