Lessons from 24 Years of Marriage

February, 2009

by: Jack Hughes

Since “Valentine’s Day” comes in February my wife suggested I write about love. I countered that idea with an idea of my own. What did she think if I wrote an article on the “The Pagan Origins of Valentine’s Day.” She gave me one of those looks that happens after you have been married a while. Then she proposed I write about lessons I have learned after being married for 24 years. After several seconds of deep thought, I realized her idea was better. I reasoned it might help those who are married or hope to be married. It would also be less likely to turn all the wives against me for giving their husbands a reason not to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Another lesson to learn — listen to your wife. Below are the biggest lessons I have learned from being married twenty-four years.

I Am Selfish

You meet the girl you hope to marry. Of course, you put your best foot forward. Impressing her and winning her affections is necessary. You become the hopeful-husband-to-be chameleon. You morph and change into whatever it is you think she wants you to be. It’s actually fishing applied to women. You put forth whatever bait you think will attract her to the hook. Whatever you do, don’t scare her away with ungodly behavior! Thankfully, for most young couples idealism is redlined, faults are minimized, strengths glorified. If you have worked hard enough she may think you are the “perfect guy” – but you’re not. Once you get her to swallow the bait of engagement, set the hook with vows, and get her in the boat with an “I do,” reality sets in. She realizes you’re not quite the trophy she once thought. She learns you are selfish.

You want things your way. You’re picky about your food. You control the remote control. You’re messy and don’t clean up after yourself. The picture of marriage you have in your mind is your wife bustling around the house serving you, catering to your every need, like a full-time servant, only better. Texts like, “the husband is the head of the wife” and “wives submit to your husbands in everything” come quickly to mind. Thankfully, wedding vows have the “for better or worse” clause because you are selfish.

If you marry a godly wife, she will point out your selfishness to you. As you read the Word of God, the Holy Spirit also reminds you that love is other-centered, not self-centered. You begin to realize that Christ, the Head of the Church, “did not come to be served, but to serve and give His life a ransom for many.” A study of marriage texts in the Bible say nothing about making sure your wife serves you. Instead they tell you to serve your wife! It is all painfully convicting. Being “the head of your wife” means taking the lead in loving, cherishing, nurturing, honoring, and sacrificing yourself for her as Christ did for His bride, the church. It makes you wonder who caught who!

There is some good news in all of this. As you learn to love your wife, she responds in like kind! In fact, God made women to respond to loving husbands. The more you love her, the more she loves you. Eventually, you get a clue. You start to understand what Paul meant in Eph. 5:28 where he says, “he who loves his wife, loves himself.” You learn to focus your attention on bringing happiness to your wife and she focuses her attention on bringing happiness to you. It is one of those strange paradoxes that by giving away you gain. To really understand how wonderful this is you have to experience it. We are born thinking the key to happiness is to focus on self, but that is the grand lie which the world continues to fob off on us. The truth is if we die to self and serve our wives we will find marriage to be the greatest earthly blessing. Selfishness leads to pain and misery. Through all 24 years of our marriage I am constantly reminded that I am selfish and have to choose to die to self and serve my wife.

I Am Blind to My Sin

Closely related to the lesson above is this fact — I am blind to my sin. It’s like eating a salad and not knowing you have a piece of green lettuce stuck to your front tooth. Everyone sees it but you. I have learned my estimation of myself is not accurate. I usually see myself as holier than I really am. Oh, I acknowledge I am a sinner, see sin in my life, and regularly confess it, but I only see in part. My wife sees even more, and God sees the rest. Coming to grips with your sinfulness is humbling and painful, but a blessing. You are embarrassed when you find out you have had a piece of green lettuce on your front tooth, but are thankful someone told you it was there. It’s like having a bone broken and reset. It hurts, but you’re thankful for the end result.

“Like apples of gold in settings of silver,” my wife has learned to pick proper moments to say, “Honey, did you know…” or “I have something to talk to you about…” Out comes the gentle swing of a verbal bat to whack me upside the head. Sometimes I have a hard time believing it’s true! How can that be when I have preached against that very sin? I know that sin is wrong and would have confessed it — if I saw it in my life. But I don’t. I am blind to my own sin. Thankfully my wife isn’t blind to it and points it out. When married you become one which means your wife has two eyes that see you from a different perspective. She can tell you about things you can’t see. Lesson learned, you are often blind to your sin.

Maintaining a Wife is Hard Work

Men tend to be task oriented. We often approach life as a sequence of individual tasks that need to be accomplished. When we are ready to get married, we engage in “wife acquisition mode.” Not to be demeaning to my wife or women in general, but this mode is like shopping for a car. You do some research, find out what model you want, what features you like, and when you find the right one, you seek to acquire her hand in marriage. After marriage, you realize that wives need maintenance. If you neglect your wife, she doesn’t run well. If she doesn’t run well, you are miserable. Therefore, you must constantly wash her with the Word, oil her with affection, fill up her emotional gas tank with premium conversation, have yearly or bi-yearly tune-ups where you spend sustained amounts of quality time with her. This requires work, lots of work.

You are driving down the road and you see a car that is dirty, the tires are bald, the muffler has a hole in it, the brakes squeak, and the interior head liner is falling down. Instantly you know something about the owner of that car. The appearance and function of their car tells you about them. They are failing to maintain their vehicle. However, you may see another car the same age, model, and make with even more miles on it that looks brand new, like those cars at the classic car shows. Those cars are gorgeous. Why? Because their owners diligently maintain them. They don’t ignore things when they break. They keep fixing, cleaning, and repairing what is broken so their car always looks new. So it is with the care and maintenance of a wife. You can tell by looking at and listening to a wife how well her husband loves her. The wife who looks and sounds the most like Christ is the wife whose husband loves her the most. But every wife is different. Sadly, they don’t come with a detailed repair and maintenance manual. You have to take the general maintenance plan in the Word of God and work hard to learn how to maintain your own wife.

Wives Change

I have also learned that wives, unlike cars, are organic. They grow and change. This means how I love my wife must change. Some of the needs she had earlier on in our marriage she doesn’t have any more. She’s different. This requires that I be a student of my wife in order to “live with her in an understanding way” (I Pet. 3:7). This requires a lot of observation and study. You have to make a conscious effort to watch your wife, listen to her voice tones, detect her mannerisms, so that you can determine if you are loving her appropriately. Psa. 128:3 compares wives to a “fruitful vine within your house.” Vines are constantly growing and changing.

Most important of all, you need to engage in conversation with your wife. Lots of talking. Did I say “talking”? Yes, I did, lots of it. Growing up in a non-Christian family we only talked about shallow things that didn’t matter. We didn’t have much “real” conversation. The men were silent Clint Eastwood types. As a rule, most men don’t feel the need to “talk deep,” but most women do. This requires men to leave their comfort zone and enter into the scary waters of “dialogue.” I learned I had to ask questions, lots of questions, in order to understand my ever changing wife. You can’t just figure out what works during your first year of marriage and then do that same thing the rest of your married life. No! Wives change.

I Need to Keep Reviewing the Code

Before I was married I studied all the major texts in the Bible on marriage. When I was married I had a good theoretical knowledge of what I was supposed to do and be. Over time I grew in my practical understanding of how to love my wife. The process continues. You might think that once you read, study, and understand the manual that there would be no reason to go back and study it again. I don’t read the manual on my lawn mower or truck every year. I read the instructions once, when I first got them, and that was sufficient. Some men don’t even do that, they just figure things out along the way. However, when it comes to loving your wife, I have learned there is a constant need to keep reviewing the manual.

I am blessed to be a pastor for it forces me to study the code of conduct God has for me as a husband in His Word. When I counsel men who are having marriage problems, I take them to the very texts I need to apply to my own marriage. As I explain the code God has for husbands, I am confronted and convicted with my own shortcomings. I need this. When I teach or preach on marriage I am again reminded of what I need to do and be to be a godly husband. I see where I am failing to love my wife. This is good because it pushes me to keep working on my marriage. The lesson I have learned is this, we never learn the code perfectly, apply it perfectly, or remember it perfectly. Therefore, we must keep studying the code.

Marriage Keeps Getting Better

Finally, I have learned that if I am faithful to love my wife, my marriage keeps getting better. It is hard to explain in words. For those who are selfish, marriage starts out great and slowly gets worse and dies. For those who seek to honor God marriage starts out great and gets better. At five years you wonder how your marriage could get any better than it already is — but it does. You become the closest of friends. There is no one on earth you would rather spend time with. You trust each other implicitly. You are madly, romantically, and passionately in love with each other! You even start acting like each other. You share strengths and fight against weaknesses together. You are a team and have become one. Marriage according to God’s design keeps getting better.

I will close with Solomon’s description of the intensity, passion and commitment of two people in a God glorifying marriage. Solomon says to his bride, “Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as severe as Sheol; its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it; if a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised” (Song 8:6-7).” May God bless you as you seek to give Him glory in your marriage. Lord willing, some of the lessons I have learned will be a blessing to you!