Back again banging my favourite drum!

So here I am again, reading another article on Reddits Am I the A**hole forum. Short story: the ostensible reason for the post is that the husband wants to give his Mom a key to the family home, even though the wife is unwilling. The deeper story is that the wife paid rent and bills for a time allowing the husband to save up for a home, and now he’s bought the home, and put it in his name alone, and he holds that over her, as “his house”. And the people in the comments are rightly roasting him for using his wife. I am still in the process of reading that post and I will probably go back to it after writing this post.

What this post demonstrates to me though is this: as many people are pointing out, this husband’s behaviour does not show any respect for his wife. And as I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that there must be many men who marry their spouses not out of any genuine or deep-seated regard, or respect, or love, but rather just out of a straightforward desire to use them, or to take advantage of them while gaining for themselves all the benefits of marriage, legal or otherwise. I say “men” but undoubtedly it would work the other way too. However marriage tends to be harder anyway for women so typically I would imagine that even if a woman was using her husband, there would still be an element of sacrifice for her in the marriage. That said, I have read accounts previously where that does not appear to be the case at all. Thinking back over so many accounts I have read on AITA and elsewhere, of almost unbelievable selfishness, it occurred to me that this must be the case, that there was never any real “love” on the parts of so many of these husbands, just pragmatic self-interest. They may well just have chosen wives that they thought that they could most effectively take advantage of and/or control. Perhaps this is yet another example of the famed “rationality” of men, that on one hand they will have entered the marriage using cold, unapologetically self-centred reasoning, but on the other hand, they at least know to feign love and admiration during courtship, because that is what you have to do to get a woman to marry you. So it would come as little surprise if during the marriage such men never take into account their wives’ needs or feelings, as in this AITA post, because duh, it was only ever going to be about their own wants and desires. Except that their poor wives did not know that before marriage, did they? But rather the sad truth is slowly and unmistakably revealed before their eyes.

So I was thinking to myself “Is this what people mean?!” When they ask “Does he (truly) love you?”, is it because the other alternative is that he might be using you, so if he does not love you, and yet he wants to marry you then the likelihood is that he will want to take advantage of you? Off the top of my head, this is what you see in movies. Whenever a bad husband takes advantage of his wife, then the wife or more likely the people around her would say “he does not love you”, the implication being that if he did love her then he would “treat her right.”
Once again I am going to make my favourite point. This way of thinking, trying to deduce whether or not he truly loves you, is flawed, because it makes it an issue of “feelings” when in truth it is a matter of character. The fact is that if someone is fundamentally like this, then he would be a bad person to marry period, even if you did manage to get him to think positively about you, or positive feelings about you as an individual. The example that springs to my mind just now is if a woman marries a mafia don. He might genuinely be crazy about her, and might treat her like a princess, never raising his hand to her. However, if he still caused death and destruction to random individuals in the course of his daily life, then is that really the kind of life that a right-thinking woman wants to live for the rest of her life? This is why I am guessing that mafia dons tend to marry mafia daughters who already grew up in that system, and have accepted it as their life.

To me, the correct question is not “Does he love you?” but rather, “Is he genuinely kind-hearted?” Does he generously and sincerely give of his time and effort to people around him, or does he try to selfishly steal from other people’s time and effort to build his own endeavours? Is he cold-hearted? Is he always trying to cheat systems or processes, and take advantage? Even if he does have genuine feelings for you, will he continue to make sacrifices for you and put himself out for you long after the honeymoon period has elapsed? Because you know what? If someone is fundamentally an outstanding person then he will continue to treat you with kindness and regard even after the intense feelings have run out, as everyone says they will. You know what, I would say observe someone to specifically look out for these characteristics before going near him romantically. As I type, I can’t help remembering someone I knew who made romantic overtures to me. And yet he was SUCH a user. Moreover, he was either completely incompetent about hiding it, or he just did not even bother to try. I could not get away fast enough. If someone proves himself to be a “user”, I would seriously struggle to trust his declarations of love. Because you know what? This is the way his mind works, this is the way he has inadvertently trained his mind, to take advantage, even in those times when he himself does not realise what he is doing. (In fact, even if such a person did sincerely love me, I would still prefer singleness, because to me, honestly, marriage represents such hard work that only reliably outstanding character on both our sides makes it worth it.)
However it occurs to me that someone might not be particularly a “user”, and yet the dynamics of marriage raise temptations. Perhaps it just becomes all too easy for him to squirrel away his own money or perhaps circumstances arise which lead to his wife financially carrying the family, and over time it becomes all too easy to take advantage of this.

As we look to our marriage, we pray, and we need to keep praying. In addition to prayer, something that I am actively looking out for is a man who is actively striving after Christlike character and is committed to keep striving after Christlike character for a lifetime. (To be absolutely clear this is also what I strive after as a lifetime commitment, not just for the sake of being a good wife, whether or not I ever get married.) Because you know what, in the day to day cut and thrust of everyday life, spiritual fervour will ebb and flow, wax and wane. This will leave room for bad characteristics to take hold and grow, like mould. But as individuals, we need to have that deep-seated commitment to keep coming before God, keep expunging before Him our hearts of evil characteristics that we have allowed to develop, keep renewing our commitments to pursue him afresh with renewed fire, renewed zeal. Because if we remain blazing for Christ 10, 20, 50 years on, it will likely not be because we managed to maintain a consistent level of zeal all through. But it will rather be because countless times we felt ourselves growing cold, and we renewed our commitment to immerse ourselves in the Bible. As husband and wife, we challenged one another in our fervour, we held one another up in prayer.

[Also, when choosing a spouse don’t make a negative choice based on what he is not “He is not a user!” Rather, make a positive choice based on what he is, and what he is actively working to become “He is in active pursuit of all that is of Christ”.]

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If you marry someone based on who they fundamentally are rather than how they feel, and if you make sure that that fundamental character is outstanding, then you can look forward to their treating you from that fundamental excellence of who they are regardless of however they might be feeling at any particular time. Sometimes as Christians we treat others in a lovely way not because we want to, not because we think our spouse deserves it, but purely because that is what the Bible says. So as well as aspiring to act this way myself I am also actively looking for someone who is that committed to Christ, that he will consistently obey God even when he does not feel like it, even when he does not believe that I deserve it. However many Christians do not realise that (romantic) “love” needs to spring first and foremost from outstanding “character” because they do not spend enough time immersed in God and His word to find out. What I’m trying to say is that even Christians will overemphasise “feelings”, because Christians on the whole do not spend enough time in God’s presence to get their character deeply changed by God, so they do not know that as Christians we and our marriages are supposed to operate under a vastly superior alternative to consideration of “feelings”.