MINE ARE NEEDS! YOURS ARE NICE-TO-HAVES

Mother’s Day, 2003. We are nearing the eye of the storm. I am sensing something is not quite right. Chris played the piano that day at church. He is an excellent piano player, but that day, I was not in the mood to notice. I confronted him about something I saw at church that was very disturbing. He asked why I didn’t bother to compliment his piano playing. Why didn’t I bother complimenting his piano playing? It is a death cycle that lots of couples get in.

Truth is, I had a long history of not complimenting him as much as I should have. Harley (His Needs Her Needs) lists this as one of the top five needs of every man. Harley says a man needs admiration: he needs her to be proud of him. I knew that. I knew of other needs he had that I didn’t meet. Why? The death cycle.

The death cycle works like this. I don’t get my needs met. My cup is empty. It is hard to describe my exact motivation in return. It is not exactly retaliation, or maybe it is. I just know that when my cup is not full, and not full, and not full I get angry and resentful. Then, I don’t feel particularly motivated to fill his cup. Unfortunately, the unmet need is all you can seem to focus on. He, in turn feels the same way. He doesn’t get his needs met and he REALLY doesn’t feel motivated to meet my needs. Thus, my needs are not met and. . . I think you see where this is heading.

Can I get brutally honest? I mean down and dirty honest? We make much of marriage problems and how difficult it is to communicate with our spouses. Writers come up with lists and methods to solve these “complex” problems we seem to have with the “impossible-to-understand-opposite-sex,” but the longer I live and the more I get to know my own sinful self, the more I see marriage problems are not nearly as complicated as we’d like to  make them sound. And in my opinion, the reason we like to pretend that they are complicated beyond our understanding is so we have an out when we don’t fix them. We have a “good” excuse when our marriages fail. We can say, “I tried. I really tried, but there’s just no figuring him/her out. She/he didn’t communicate their needs to me.” But, at least we tried, right? As a former pastor of mine used to say, “BALONEY!”

The problem is not that we can’t figure out how to make our spouses happy. The problem is that we know exactly what they would like us to do to make them feel more loved, which in turn makes them happy, but we don’t want to do what they asked us to do. We are self-centered and lazy sinners. . I was, and Chris was. That’s what I propose to you as the biggest problem facing our marriages today. The problem is US!

When our spouses ask if we can talk about something and they finally get around to bringing up the unmet need in their lives, we think things like:

• This request is plain silly.
• They are making a big deal out of nothing.
• This isn’t a “need” it’s a want.
• When is enough, enough? I’m already doing so much for them!
• This is just frivolous fluff.

Now, if you’re talking about my needs….well, that’s an entirely different issue. My needs are important. Yours are _____________ (see above bullet points). What you are asking of me aren’t actually needs, they are more like fantasies on a wish list. Kind of like seat warmers in a car. It’s nice to have, but everyone knows that it’s not necessary! Again, it was true of me. I considered my needs vitally important to be met. I didn’t really appreciate how important Chris’s needs were.

As individuals, we want what we want from our spouses when we want it, and we don’t think we are being all that unreasonable when we submit our request to them. After all, isn’t that what spouses who love each other do? They bend over backwards to meet their mate’s needs, right? They are willing to move heaven and earth to give us our way (and do it with a smile on their face the whole time), and when they do, we brag on them and consider how blessed we are to have such a loving and thoughtful spouse (that is what we should do anyway).

Why is it then, that when our spouses ask us to do something for them that we aren’t thrilled with, we don’t just hop to it and get it done? We never consider that they may not be particularly excited about meeting our needs when we ask, but we count on the fact that they will meet our needs because they love us, and, our request isn’t as ridiculous as theirs!

Everyone gets their “love cup” filled in different ways. Mine gets filled tremendously when my husband performs acts of service for me. Examples: keeping the grass mowed, picking up after himself (shoes, dirty dishes, socks, funky underwear, etc.), bending over and picking up trash that is in the middle of the yard, hauling dumpsters to the street on Sunday evenings, fixing broken appliances, changing light bulbs. I think you get the picture.

When it comes to things like dishes, laundry, cleaning toilets and tubs, dusting and the like, this is the way I feel: If I do not have to work outside of the home to help earn money for us to live off of because my husband is earning plenty, then all of those chores fall on me. That just seems fair, but if I am expected to contribute to the bank account in order for us to make it, then I think it is only fair that we split the household chores. When the workload is shared equally, I feel greatly loved. If I never expressed the need for acts of service to Josh, I probably would never have them done for me. By telling him, I have a much better chance of getting my love cup filled, although nothing is guaranteed.

After submitting my request to my husband for help around the house, Josh could hear me but choose not to help me and follow a different school of thought. He could opt for the more traditional set-up where the woman is responsible for all household chores because the big man of the house is bringing home the bacon – period. In his own mind, he could argue, “Well, I know this (helping out around the house with the “woman’s work”) is what she would like me to do, but I think I’m doing enough already. I work hard and make money for this family, so she can deal with it. At the end of the day, we’re just talking about a pile of dishes, right?”

WRONG. It isn’t “just a pile of dishes.” It is what makes me feel loved. For those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages, I suggest you get familiar with them. It could revolutionize your marriage. Anyway, good news for me (and for Josh), Josh did not choose to think….

I know what she would like for me to do, but we don’t always get what we want in life, and besides, she and I are committed Christians who made a promise to stay in this deal whether it’s good or bad, so no matter, she will be here ‘til the end. It will be alright.

He understands the Five Love Languages. He doesn’t think it’s “just a pile of dishes.” Josh knows that by filling my cup, that will bring me to overflowing and in return I’ll have lots of love in my cup to share with him. By doing for me, he is also setting the stage for blessing himself. The death cycle becomes a life cycle. Instead of spiraling downward, it climbs upward. He fills my cup, and in return I will pour into his. While all of this mutual pouring is going on, we are both spending real quality time with God, so HE is always pouring into our cups. With a houseful of sloshing-over cups, everybody’s happy.

Hopefully, you are smart enough to figure out what happens if one or the other of us does not fill each other’s cups. Eventually someone’s cup runs dry and bad things happen. I am not saying that divorce will be the outcome and I’m certainly NOT saying that if your cup is not filled by your spouse that it’s a license to go find someone else to fill it , but I can tell you this: things will not be as good as they could and should be. I don’t know about you, but the goal in marriage isn’t only to stay together ‘til death parts us, but to stay together ‘til death parts us and to be amazingly happy with one another.

What divorce taught me is that when we (or our spouse) have a serious need that is not being met for an extended amount of time, we must figure out a way to lovingly yet firmly implant in our spouse’s brain that this is a HUGE DEAL for us. We have got to relay to them that this is not in the “nice-to-have” category.

If we need to paint a picture for them then get out the brushes. If we need to take our clothes off to get their attention then strip we shall! We must make it crystal clear that this is a serious problem that could lead to more serious problems if it is not dealt with. The old, “We are Christians and we would never get a divorce, so I don’t have to worry about it,” is not going to cut it hear folks. Trust me, I know what I am talking about.Let me back up. For some of you, that promise you made at the altar may be enough to keep you together even though you are miserable, but again I say, that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to stay married for life to the same person and end up loving them more on the last day than you did on the first.

So, before you have the talk about an unmet need, you should have a preliminary talk to that talk. Come up with a phrase or slogan and promise each other that you will never say it unless you really mean it. It needs to be something that gets one another’s attention in this area. If you ever utter this special phrase, your partner will know you mean business and they will sit, listen, and take action. The phrase could be something like:

“Honey, you know I love you, but I am about to my breaking point, and if something doesn’t change in this area (fill in the blanks here with your particular need) I’m fearful that our marriage is going to drift to a place that neither of us wants it to go.”

Use your own words, but come up with something that your spouse knows communicates an urgency that you don’t come across with often.

There are things in marriage that are nice to have and then there are needs. Figure out which is which and then share them with your spouse, because if you don’t, it could mean the difference between a fantastic lifelong journey with your best friend that you only wish could last forever, or a dreadful association with a person you regret ever having met that appears to be your own personal torment. Sound a bit dramatic on both ends? It isn’t. The closest thing to heaven or hell on earth depends on what goes on in your marriage, so let’s strive for the former and see where it leads. My hope for you is that it will be the place where both of your needs are met, and as the writer who penned  Psalm 23:5 said, you can both proclaim to one another, “My cup overflows with blessings.”