A healthy man is not threatened when his wife is prospering. Rather, he is delighted.
A healthy man is not threatened when his wife has dreams and goals that are not about him.
A healthy man understands that his wife is an image-bearer of God, with gifts and goals and personhood and calling that rightfully belong to her.
A healthy man understands that his wife is not abandoning her personhood when she says, “I do”. She gives up nothing but singleness. She adds companionship and intimacy and love.
A healthy man lives with her with understanding, as a co-heir of eternal life. He does not need to control her, so he seeks to understand her.
A healthy man understands that when his wife is safe and prospering wherever God places her, she adds blessing upon blessing to her home.
A healthy man knows that Jesus is sanctifying and cleansing his wife and doesn’t need another mediator to do it.
A healthy man knows that love and respect, if not freely given, are not love and respect at all.
A healthy man knows that he has much to learn from a wise woman, if he is not too proud to listen.
My Only Comfort 
💜
That is so beautiful it almost makes me weep. I suppose it’s how husbands are supposed to be. (Possibly a lovely dream. ) Handy to have a goal if I ever try again. I guess I’m snarky and hopeful, but certainly contently divorced.
This needs to be incorporated into wedding vows. Wish it had been part of mine.
I think instead of telling women how they are responsible for “helping” their husbands to be healthy (such as be a good wife, satisfy all your husband’s needs and then he will rise up and be that leader you’ve always wanted and needed) maybe we should be taught this, what true love looks like. Because of my experience, this does not even seem possible. It seems more like a dream than something that could be real. It is nice to think that some women experience this. I’m glad they do. I would not wish my experience on anyone. Thank you for offering hope.
I’m so sorry for what you have been through. The modern church has excelled in creating a space for poisonous men to thrive
This was so lovely to read but it is an illusion in my life. I was thrashed this morning because I dared to tell my husband that I wanted to travel abroad with family without him. Is that so wrong? Am I his clone that I have to go everywhere with him so that he can continue to control me?
I am so, so sorry. No one should ever have to live like that.
The domestic violence helpline can connect you to local resources.
I’m praying that God will protect you and lead you to safety
https://www.thehotline.org/
This was so beautiful for MANY reasons! It reminded me of the “style” of Proverbs: short and sweet, significant and straightforward. There is room for honest discussion, but no wiggle room for outright denial.
Someone said these should be wedding vows! So well said, and ironic because I recently read a story about an older man and woman, very much in love but very much entrenched in a legalistic, abusive and controlling church. The preacher marrying them, centered his words around her submission to him as conditional to her being loved by him, and him being loved by her conditioned on her being submissive to him. It was treated as system of safety and protection, of structure and stability—for BOTH of them. It was suggestive of equality: husband and wife DO have equal (but distinctly different) roles; one is not complete without the other and both sides must work together in order to coexist together.
Doesn’t sound one sided or toxic or tyrannical, does it? But it is exactly that–not to mention unbiblical.
Marriage should not be treated as transactional; by definition marriage is relational. It is not like there is no give and take, but at its root it is NOT two people exchanging “goods and services” in order to be treated as worthy and loved. A wife should never be expected to give up a piece of her mind in order to gain a piece of his heart.
Sam alluded to this: she gave up nothing but her singleness. Not her dignity. Not her salvation. Not her independent thoughts and feelings, her hopes and dreams, her boldness and tenacity.
What angers me is the lack of common sense. Ever seen the movie “Father of the Bride?” The wedding planner arrives with his designer crew at the house where the reception will take place. They keep saying how they think it’s beautiful and wonderful, and then: “we’ll change it all though, let’s go!”
A man falls in love with a woman when she is single. Hopefully he can articulate what attracted him to her; what he loves about her. Imagine being at the alter, saying such wonderful things, but then saying: but (now that we are married), I’ll change it all, though.
So, you fell in love with a woman you say you love, consider to be lovely—but now you want to change it all. So you fell in love with a fixer upper, a designer’s dream? You fell in love with an image bearer of the Lord, only to insist she be made into an image bearer of your idea of her?
Wedding vows might want to include things like: I will not strip of you of your dignity. I will not deny your intrinsic worth in Him and from Him. I will not take away your freedom that He died for. I will not demand or command. I will not force or coerce.
Sam used words like what a “healthy” man will know and understand. Sounds hard to believe, but a healthy man is actually quite unburdened. You are free to love her in a simple and straightforward way.
Flip if around. A healthy woman will know and understand that only a man truly freed by Christ will be free to love her as a woman truly freed by Christ.
That is true safety and stability. Anything less is chaos and confusion.
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