Get In The Fight
How to love a woman
Welcome to the Get in the Fight podcast. My name is Nate Witson and I'm the founder of Get in the Fight Ministries in our exclusive online fight club for Christian men. Everything we do here is dedicated to helping Christian men become the men that God meant for them to be. So if you're looking for helpful content and conversations that can help you to grow and become the man that God made you to be, then you're in the right place. But before we get started, please do me a huge favor and be sure to subscribe, click the like button, and then leave us a five star review. Doing that helps us to reach more men who are looking for content just like this. Also, if you'd like to learn more about our mission and how to get involved or how to join the fight club, then head on over to Get in the Fight.club. That's Get in the Fight.club and Learn More Today. But without further ado, it's time to get in the fight. So let's go. Hey guys, welcome to the Get in the Fight podcast. I'm your host Nate Witsen. And this is a show for Christian men who want to live bigger and better lives, men that realize that God has us here for a purpose, for a reason, for a really short time compared to eternity. And we're men that want to get after it. We want to wake up from the doldrums. We want to stop living apathetic and passive lives. We want to live bigger, live better, live all in for Jesus. And so if that's you, you're in the right place. Thank you for listening. And also thank you for helping us to get the word out. The best way for that to happen is for you to subscribe on our YouTube channel at Get in the Fight and simply like a comment or like and comment and do all of those basic things for whatever reason with the algorithm. It really makes a difference. So definitely subscribe. And then at the end of this, if this is a conversation that's helpful, would you just maybe click the URL, share it with a friend, maybe just text it directly or you know, even better, maybe just share on your social media for others to find and see too. That's all super helpful. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for being here today. We're going to address something today that I think is just this age old question of this. What does a woman want in a man or what does a woman want from a man? And I think I've answered it. I think I know the answer. I know you're, you might be really skeptical and you should be because this is a question that's been out there for a long, long time. How do we answer the question? What does a woman want from a man? Because let's be honest, most of us don't know how to answer that question. And I think that I do. So listen into today. Let me know if you disagree with me. But this is clearly going to be speaking to married men, married Christian men in particular. But I just want to tell you, I guess, upfront, if you're single or you're a man that's, you know, dreaming of thinking of, praying towards being married one day, but you're not yet, then I would just tell you that this is one that you ought to also lean in closer to and pay attention to because again, if God puts you in marriage at some point, then you're going to want to know how to answer this question as well. Okay. So let me just paint this, maybe all too familiar picture for you that you've likely seen before. Imagine that you're at a restaurant and you are sitting and you see a couple that's clearly they at least look to be married. That's your guess. You may not know that, but it seems pretty obvious that this is a married couple and they're sitting near you. You're not staring at them, but you do notice them. You notice because they rarely look up from their phones. This is a couple that seems to maybe not even know how to talk to one another. I was sitting at a restaurant the other day with my family and I see this couple here. There was games on. I think the tigers were playing and the guys sitting there watching and she would just kind of every once in a while just kind of glance at him like maybe there was something to say like, no, okay, I guess I'll just keep sipping this drink, staring at my phone, whatever he I don't know that he ever looked away from the game. I don't know that he ever just spent any time just talking to his wife and looking at her. And again, that could be totally unfair because I wasn't just staring at them, but this was just something that I noticed. This couple was together, but regardless of what I missed or didn't see completely, I can tell you this, they weren't connected and they certainly weren't connecting at all. It was kind of like two strangers sat together and had nothing really to say. Maybe you've seen that scene play out too. It's kind of this sad deal. In fact, you see this a lot with young kids who are dating clearly on a date and they just they don't even look up from their phones now. They don't really know what to say. They don't really know how to engage or be connected to one another. It's a sad and yet familiar scene that we're all familiar with now. And let me just kind of lead into this now with with that picture in mind with with this question. How do couples get to that? Like, how do we end up there? Maybe this is a better question. What is the big problem that men have when it comes to women? And I'll give you the answer. I think this is the answer. This is what I think is the big problem that we have when it comes to women. We don't really know what they want. We don't really know what it is that they're after. This is kind of that big age old question, right? And think about it. This is kind of wild. Why is it the answering that question of what is it that they want from us? Why is that a hard question to answer? And yet it is. I think that most men are married, or at least most men that are married, tend to be eventually living in a marriage where it's more of a partnership than this like thriving, intimate friendship. I don't know if that describes you, but I know that it describes many. A lot of married men that I know or that I can just observe and look at and see, you see that there eventually goes, there eventually becomes, I should say, this partnership. Like we've got things we've got to manage in our household partnership. You have your roles. I have mine. I go do my stuff. You go do yours. And like, yeah, like we're sitting together, but it kind of looks like that couple at the bar scene or wherever the restaurant scene where they're just like, they're there, but they're not really connected. It's almost like two strangers living together, not really knowing how to connect. There was a, there was a quote that I saw here. I wrote down from an author named Patrick Morley, and he says this, most men are not unhappy with their marriages, but they've never really learned how to enjoy their wives. I think he's right. You know, it's not like we don't want to be married. I think we do want to be married. Most of us that are married are happy to be married. We want to be married, but we're not really sure what to do in a marriage either. We're not really sure how to love our wives like we should. We're not sure what she wants. I think for a lot of us, that's just kind of the thing. We're just thinking like, man, I feel like I know her well, but I don't see it. It doesn't feel like any ways that it's connecting. It doesn't seem like we're able to like solve this puzzle well together. And so many of us men tend to fumble around with marriage. And it's just like we end up being very dissatisfied or disengaged at best. So what I want to do is just present this picture here. And again, I could be off. I'm sure there's things I'm missing here. But I wanted to kind of share what I might guess would be a marriage that we would love to have. And so if you're a woman listening to this, a Christian woman listening to this, I would just tell you lean into this. This is again, just my thoughts is my podcast, my my ideas. And I'm sure there's a lot more than this. But I want to look for a second at a marriage that we would love to have. And then maybe move into talking about how we might build that and then answer that question together of, what is it that women want? And how can we as men in a Christian marriage give that to them? All right. So here we go, ladies, men would love to have a marriage, I think, where he feels respected. And by the way, I've done some polling on this and just asking around. And so again, this isn't like this major poll, but I want you to know, like, this isn't just like me thinking. This is like getting a wide range of responses from men in our community, right? Here's some things men would love to have a marriage where he feels respected. That's a big, big deal. Men would love to have a marriage where his wife understood his sexual needs, and regularly did things that he wanted and enjoyed the most because she wants to make him happy. He would love to be in a marriage like that. He would love to be in a marriage where he laughs and enjoys being with his wife. And she laughs and enjoys being with him. And they just genuinely love being together. Again, almost kind of the opposite of that picture. I was drawn for you earlier of that couple in the restaurant. A man would love a relationship where she expresses, expresses appreciation for what he does and what he does to provide for the home and things like that. Expressing appreciation is a big deal for him. He would love a marriage where she understands the pressures that he feels. You know, a guy like feels pressure about providing for his family. And she's somebody who like encourages him with things that he's passionate about. She doesn't, you know, rag on him and like complain about things that he might do for fun or things that he's excited about or dreams that he might have. He has pressures and just to have somebody understand that, who's like partnering with him would be huge. He would love a marriage where, you know, she doesn't nag or disrespect him. It kind of goes with what we just said earlier with respect. But the opposite is true too. Like we hear from guys talking about, man, my wife just kind of like gets on me all the time. Almost like a mom does. There's nothing probably worse than feeling like you're married to somebody who's like nagging you like that. Like your mom used to when she was at home with you. A man would love a marriage where he feels like she works just as hard as he does. And that they have this shared vision for their family. Now, this is one where, you know, again, fair or unfair. When a guy works his butt off and he comes back and, you know, his wife is just like the house is undone, the dishes, the things that he might have thought she would be doing. You know, nothing seems to be done. You know, she's just kind of been talks about her nap that she took or whatever it is. Again, like I know this is going to get me in huge trouble. I'm not saying that's normal. I'm not saying that's the way it is. But I'm saying from a man's perspective, these are things that guys have said where they go, man, I just, I hope that I'm not the one just killing myself here and that we're not equally working as hard in our respective roles. That's what I'm trying to say. And I know that gets tricky. But this is a marriage that a man would love to have. He also would love to have a marriage where she loves Jesus first and foremost. And he's deeply respected for his leadership in that way. Now, here's the thing. According to marriage experts, the number one problem that men say that they have, though, is that they have a marriage that isn't working like it's supposed to. Some form of answer ends up saying that I would like a marriage like the one I just described. I want to be respected. I want to marriage where she understands my sexual needs and responds because she wants to not because she has to. I want to laugh and enjoy each other. I want appreciation. I want her to understand the pressures, all of these things. We have expectations. She has expectations. And then they have marriage problems. And the answer for it is that they say that it's just not working like it's supposed to. Think about that phrase there, like it's supposed to. There are these expectations, these supposed tos, that each of us come into a marriage trying to solve and figure out. And when we are just missing it, we end up going like it's not like I don't want to be married. I do, but I don't know how to solve the problem. I don't know how to answer those questions. I don't know how to fix this together. So this marriage then is just it's just not working. So here's the thing. How can we love our wives and build better marriages that actually work? This is kind of where we're going with this today. I want to introduce you to a verse again that you've probably, if you've been around church for a long enough time, you've gone to this passage many times, it is appropriate for this conversation. But I want to focus in on two different things here that are going to help us to answer this question of like, how can we love our wives and build better marriages that work? How can we answer that age old question of what is a woman really want? And I think this passage is where we need to go. And so here's where it is. Ephesians 5, verses 25 through 28, I want you to listen to two phrases in particular. Okay, here they are. Just as and in the same way. Just as and in this same way are the two phrases that I think are going to really help us to answer these questions about loving our wives in ways that we're just not sure like, what does she want? What is she looking for from me and how do we then figure that out so that we can build a marriage like it's supposed to work? Here's where it says this. Ready? Ephesians 5, 25 through 28, husbands, love your wives just as 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 staying or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. So now don't miss this. Why don't men know how to answer the question about how do I love a woman or what does a woman really want from a man? What is she looking for from me? Why don't we know how to answer that? I think this is the answer because we don't yet understand how Christ loved the church. I think this is where the answer lies. How did Christ love the church? It was like this. Christ love was volitional. Have you ever heard that word? It seems like this church word that I've heard you hear that doesn't always make sense to me. I can't always remember it, but here's what here's what it means. It wasn't emotional. It wasn't based on emotions first anyways. Volitional means a deliberate act of the will. It's kind of like this, John 3 16. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. We know that one. God so loved in this way. He so loved it that it was a deliberate act of his will. How did Christ love the church? Deliberately, right? It was a volitional, not emotional act. He was doing it on purpose. It was deliberate. Think about this in Matthew 22 37. We are told to love the Lord your God with all of your heart. This same word, this same phraseology is that we are to deliberately, as an act of our will, love God. So we see how God loved. It was not emotional. Like as long as my emotions are right, I'll give love to you. No, it was deliberate. It was purposeful. It was something that he chose to do. He acted on his choice to love. And we are told to love him in that way. And this is the thing. To love a woman then, like Christ loves the church, is an act of deliberate will. It's not the emotions that you feel. And this is vastly different, isn't it? From the presentation that the world gives, like when you watch movies or listen to music and all of those things, it is all emotional. It's this on fire, passionate, you know, everything's perfect, or it leads to this perfect scene, or it's just again, highly emotional. But to love, like Christ loves, is to love somebody by choice, not by feelings, right? So here's some deliberate choices that I just marked down for us that I think we need to come back to. How do I love my wife in a way that I'm supposed to? Well, I have to make it an act of my will, not an act of how I feel. And here's some things that scripture tell us that we could do. And I just want you as you listen to this man, I want you to listen and consider like, how well are you doing at loving like this and demonstrating as a deliberate choice, this kind of love to your wife Colossians 3 19, husbands love your wives. And here it is, don't be harsh with them. Deliberately make a decision that you will not speak in a harsh tone or act harshly in any way with your wife, your words, your tone, your facial expressions. Think about that. How are you doing men in the harshness with which you deal with your wife? You can deliberately choose to demonstrate love like Christ. As Colossians 3 19 points out here, don't be harsh with them. First Peter, first Peter, three seven says this, husbands in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and his heirs with you of the gracious gift of life so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Two different things that I think stand out here when it comes to a deliberate act of the will of the man. Be considerate and treat them with respect. Understand how your wife is made and be considerate. And this is like, I think this is important for men because it seems to me like men deal with friends in ways that are always going to feel considerate, but it's kind of just the way that men are like the way that we tease and joke and you know, we'll berate somebody that we think is really kind of like, you know, a good friend of ours, but we can bring in some of those tendencies with our wife and she's she's not built that way. It's like live with your wife in an understanding way. Be considerate. Not just again in the harshness or the tone, although that's part of it as well, but consider it of like, what does she like? What does she want? What is it about the way that she's made the love language, for example, that she has is she a gifts person, then meet her there even if it's not yours and it likely won't be your love language gift. It's like being considerate of the way that she's made. It's treating her with the highest respect. It's treating her and cherishing her as most valuable and just going like, what else can I do? Like, this is my favorite person. Be considerate as if she was your favorite person. Treat her with deep respect. How about this one? 1 Timothy 5, 8, anyone who does not provide further relatives and especially for their own household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. That's like a very strong message to us here from God's word. Anyone who doesn't provide and that's kind of the thing that stood out to me there. How do you deliberately choose to demonstrate love to your wife? How are you doing at providing for your family, for your wife? Now, here's the thing is providing just paying the bills. Pause, right? Think through that. Many times, this is kind of where we've stopped this and we're like, she knows I love her because I bust my butt. I work really hard. Everything we have is because I am paying the bills and I'm providing for her. Cool. That's one area and it's important, of course, but do you provide for her emotionally? Are you providing for her spiritually? Are you meeting her where she's that relationally, like all these kinds of things? If you don't provide for your relatives, of course, means you're not, if you're not working, if you're kind of a bum, if you're letting your wife be the leader in that kind of way and it's not this, you know, thing where you're equally contributing to that. And again, I've got several examples in my head of guys who are not the main provider financially. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that necessarily. It's not exactly what I'm saying. But those other relationships that I can think of also provide in ways that match what they need in their home. Their wife isn't looking at him like, man, I wish I had some help here. That's big. That's important. But again, I don't want you to think of this as like, the only thing I need to provide for is money. And as long as you've got that checked off, everything's good. Clearly, it's deeper than that. How about this one? Defusions five again, 28 and 29 in the same ways. We just read this verse. Love your wives as your own body. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, nobody ever hated their own body, but they feed and they care for it just as Christ does the church, right? Just as Christ feeds and cares for the church, right? Love your wives as you love your own body. And guess what? You take care of yourself, don't you? I mean, you feed yourself anyways. You're concerned with making sure that all of your needs are met. What if you deliberately went into your marriage after you've already been in it for 20 years or 10 years or 35 years, wherever you're at, and you recommit to loving her as of first importance, loving your wife like you do yourself caring for her as if she was first in line, not you. That's how Christ loves us, right? And so this is the thing, like, how do we answer this age old question? How do we provide for our wives in ways that can strengthen our marriage and demonstrate for her like all of those deep needs of her life? We can do it deliberately as an act of the will in the same way that we see that Christ loves the church. Do you want to love your wife and give her what she needs at the deepest parts of her heart and the deepest needs of her life? It starts with having a better understanding of Christ's love for the church, okay? To build on that, you've heard this probably before, but I just kind of want to give you these quick things to think about in addition to that. There's three roles that I think that men need to play in their lives. And I think if we play these three roles better as men, you will watch the women respond. Now, I can think of so many stories where men are struggling because their wives are not responding to their different needs, sexually, emotionally, mentally, whatever it might be. And this is not a guarantee that if you do what you're supposed to do, that she will absolutely respond. But what I will tell you is that good, willed women will be more likely to respond. And either way, it is not your job to change her heart. In fact, you can't change her heart. What you can do is focus in on your relationship with Christ and learning to love her like Christ loves the church, regardless of how she responds. That is up to her and God. And that is going to be tough for you. That is going to be a burden to bear as a Christian man if you have an unresponsive wife. But what would happen if you start to respond to a message like this and actually play the roles that God has for you to play and then let him deal with the rest. I think that's kind of where my suggestion is that you go with this. Let's focus on making you the man that God meant for you to be and go from there. So here's a quick rundown. The three things, three roles that we men need to play. Number one is the role of a prophet. What is a prophet? A prophet was somebody who basically represented God to the people. God would speak to the prophet. They would go to the people and share God's message with them. So men, we are to represent God to our wives and to our families. Well, how do you do that? You give Godly wisdom. You point them to Jesus. You train the children and the Lord. You teach them to pray. You teach them to be comfortable to pray out loud. You teach them that we don't skip church. Those are all quick things that you can do. A prophet is somebody who walks with God and leads people to God, points people back to Jesus. Are you doing that? Are you playing that role? Well, are you representing God to your people, to your family? That's the role of the prophet that you are meant to play. There's another role called the priest. The role of the priest was somebody who represented people to God and then mediates for them. Here's what that means. It means that we are to spend time and prayer with God on behalf of our wife and our kids. Are you praying regularly for your wife? Do you pray regularly for your kids or for your marriage? Are you setting the spiritual temperature of your home or does your wife? Are you sacrificing the things that you desire most for the good of her or for the good of them? Or are you really kind of just really about you? Are you a little selfish in this way? Are you representing and bringing your people to God in front of God? Are you mediating on their behalf? That's the role of the priest. Right? So the prophet is representing God to the people and the priest is bringing the people to God and mediating and praying on their behalf and pleading to God for them. Are you doing that? In your marriage. The third thing is the role of a king. These are all kind of old style things, but they're really important, I think, in using these images and these ideas and helping us today to have better, stronger marriages and knowing how to love a woman better. Are you playing the role of a king in your home? And what does that role? It just means this. Are you taking responsibility for the welfare of your people? That's what a king would do. We are to lead. We are to protect and we are to provide in, you know, in all the needs that we have for those who are under our care, right? We are to work hard, but not just financially, like we just talked about, we need to provide spiritually for our home. Did you know, man, that that's your job. It's not your wife's job. It's not your church's job. Not the school's job. It's not anybody else's job. It's your job in its mind. We are to be the spiritual leaders in our home, right? Are you doing that? How are you doing in that? How are you doing at providing an emotionally stable and strong home? How are you doing at providing them with your best effort and time in real presence or do most of those things get given out to everybody else? Are you protecting your wife? Are you protecting her from sexual wandering and lust? Are you protecting your kids from the threats of things that they're not aware of when it comes to social media and, you know, phones and relationships and all these other kinds of things? Are you involved in their lives? Are you leading them? You know, and again, this is about like learning to love your wife, but a wife has needs of watching her home be cared for and protected. And when the dad isn't protecting his kids, his wife feels it. And that's kind of why I'm mentioning so much of this. She is going to feel like what it's like when it's unsafe for her or for the kids, right? But she also will be drawn to a man who will protect them spiritually and emotionally, mentally and all those kinds of things. Are you providing? Are you protecting? Are you leading? Are you leading your family by loving Jesus first? Do they catch you praying? Do they catch you reading the Bible? Do they catch you just worshiping and listening to music that honors God? Do they catch you just being in love with God? Do they see you becoming the man that God had in mind for you to be? Are you being a great example of what it looks like to follow Jesus? That's what they mean. That's what she needs to see, right? Now, for those of you who are thinking maybe that my marriage is anything but that, it looks nothing like that. Here's again, the thing that I want you to hear. And I've already kind of said this, but I just want to make this clear. You can only control you. There's nothing that you can do to manufacture a changed heart in your wife. If you're listening to this and going, yeah, but you don't understand she does this or she doesn't do this or whatever it is. All I'm trying to say to you listening to this, there's a reason God has you listening to this. And what I want you to hear is this, love is a deliberate choice that you have to make. This isn't about her. You need to become the man that God meant for you to be. And when you do that, then you will see what God can do from there. But what are your options? You either stop playing the role that God meant for you to play. You stop trying to become the man or you just once again surrender your desires, your wills, your wants, your wishes. And you say, God, here's where I'm at. And you just honestly and genuinely come back to him and say, I need you. Please help me to be responsible for me. Help me to become the man that you want me to be. And would you help fix this over here? I can't do it, but God, you can. This is the prayer of a man that God, I think is going to honor that prayer. And if he sees you working at being those things that you need to be the prophet, the priest, the king, he sees you praying and like bringing your wife before him and your kids, he sees you putting in the effort to make him first. That is your best shot. That is, that is where power and life comes from. And God is faithful. That is what you need to know. God is faithful. It doesn't mean you will get everything fixed necessarily. And you don't want to go into this trying to again, manipulate him to be like, as long as I do this, you better do this. That's not how this goes. That's not how this works. But you just surrender your heart back to him again and say, God, I need you. I can't do this without you, but help me to surrender to you, take control and have all of me. If you will do that with that humility, I think God will do big things in your heart and in hers, potentially too. Do you remember, by the way, giving your marriage vows? These vows are like really important. We kind of forget them over time. You know, like on that day when you gave those vows, you made a choice that day in front of God and in front of her family to love her. Well, how do you do that? How do you love her, especially if she doesn't deserve it? How do you do that? Especially if things are not going well, you make a decision, you decide, you make it volitional, you make it an act of your will, a deliberate will, not a feeling that you have about her. But what you do is you look to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of your faith, and you love her like he loves you, undeserving, unfaithful, imperfect you. He wakes up when it doesn't sleep, but you get the idea when you wake up, you found that he has never left you. He is faithful to you despite you, despite me. He chooses to love us like this every single day, because that's who he is. So play the role that God meant for you to play and see what happens. Make a decision and act of your will to follow Jesus into your marriage, to make him number one, and then to treat her in all those ways that we talked about, to treat her with respect, to treat her with kindness, to love her by decision, not by how you feel about it. Be the prophet, be the priest, be the king of your home and of your marriage, and then trust God to do what only God can do in her heart and in yours. So how does a man love a woman like Christ loves a church? That's the answer. That's the age-old question and the age-old answer that we need to get back to. And if you're not sure how to do that, then study deeply beyond even what this introductory kind of conversation is about how Jesus loves. And as you watch how he loves, you mimic it and you practice it and you let that become who you are. That's the answer. That's the hope for loving a woman. So listen, if you know somebody who's just struggling and I bet we all do, unfortunately, if you know somebody who needs to hear this message and I bet that you might, then just share this with them. If you think this is a worthwhile conversation, do them a favor, do me a favor, and simply just click the link at the top, copy the URL whatever, and just share it with them and just say, "Hey man, this might be a message that could encourage you," or whatever it is. Send it to somebody that's super awesome, that serves your friend and serves the kingdom well. Because you know what? It's not easy to love like Jesus, but you can do this with him in first place in your life. And that's what I'm praying for you today. So listen, thanks for listening. Thanks for fighting for your marriage and for the heart of your woman. Now you do the hard work, which is you go out, you get in the fight, and you fight for that marriage today. All right, thanks for listening. We'll see you soon. Hey guys, thanks so much for being here today and listening to the show. Please be sure to head over to the website at getin'thefight.club. And before you go, if you haven't already, please subscribe, click the like button, and leave us a positive five-starry. And make this huge difference. Have a great day. You'll get in the fight. [Music]