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Marital Intimacy Destroyers – Wives

Marital Intimacy Destroyers – Wives

by applyingmybeliefs

There are ordinary things each of us does that impede, lessen or even destroy intimacy in marriages.  Men do some to their wives, and wives do some to their husbands.  Here we are going to look at five everyday behaviors that wives do that diminish the intimacy in marriage.

  1. Consistently rejects a husband’s sexual advances. Part of the way a man connects (has intimacy) with his wife is through sex.  When his wife consistently rejects his reasonable requests for sex, he internalizes it as a rejection of himself.  In this wives ought to try to remember that in a marriage she is the only one who can legitimately provide him with this activity.  Not providing a realistic amount of sex pushes him into the territory of wanting sex but not getting it at home.  This runs the risk of making him vulnerable to the many temptations of sexual pleasure our culture offers.
  1. Offers critical appraisal of things in life. When a wife is a critical person, she not only criticizes people and situations around her, but she is critical of her husband, often unknowingly.  Although it is often hard to understand, criticism of a husband’s actions is received as condemnation by men.  This is because men so often internalize what they do as who they are.  So then, critical words, even if they are 100% justified can be destructive to a marriage.  This doesn’t mean a wife cannot criticize, it does mean that criticism needs to be worded thoughtfully and used sparingly.
  1. Fixes his work. In this intimacy destroyer, the wife goes around behind the husband and touches up his work.  For example, if he makes the bed, the wife goes and adjusts something, or he washes the dishes, then the wife rewashes a couple of pieces.  The message is “Buddy, you don’t match up to my standards?”  Is that really smart?  No, because he experiences it as a major slap in the face.  It is far bigger for him than it is for the wife.  A wife will know this is a problem, because the husband most likely won’t say anything, but he will stop trying to help the wife with the chores.
  1. Coveting things that are outside the budget. Often a wife will express a desire to have items that are not affordable.  For example, a new car, designer goods or an exotic vacation.  The husband might hear the first few expressions of unaffordable things and not be impacted.  After that though, he will hear a different message, “You are not a good provider.”  This is going to result in him not wanting to talk with a wife about any of her desires, dreams and wishes, even legitimate and affordable ones.  He might even begin to hide money so that the wife won’t spend on items he thinks they can’t afford.
  1. Putting him down. This is not the same as criticism.  The putting down of a person is a work of judgment and condemnation.  When a wife puts a husband down, and especially if she does it in public or in private to her friends she is emasculating him.  One thing that men really want from a wife is respect, and spousal condemnation destroys a husband’s feeling that his wife respects him.  When this is going on in a relationship the husband probably won’t say a word, but he will check out.

Women – If you’ve read this list and honestly want to know if you do these things, ask him, but don’t be surprised if he won’t tell you what you do to hurt him.  This is because he wants to protect you from himself and any bad news he may have for you.  This list is best discussed with a trained counselor, because sometimes the truth is painful.

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Marital Intimacy Destroyers – Husbands

Marital Intimacy Destroyers – Husbands

by applyingmybeliefs

There are ordinary things each of us does that impede, lessen or even destroy intimacy in marriages.  Men do some to their wives, and wives do some to their husbands.  Here we are going to look at five everyday behaviors that husbands do that diminish the intimacy in marriage.

  1. Looks at other women in admiration. Men look at women other than their wives, and they notice them; that is mostly unavoidable.  However, some men go beyond looking and noticing, they move that extra step to admiring.  This happens when a man takes a second or elongated look at a women, it happens when they view pornography and it happens when they act out sexually.  The message to a wife is that they are not enough, that the man prefers somebody else over them.  Men will deny this of course, but that doesn’t make this untrue.  It pushes the woman away in an emotional sense, because the women feels like her trust is violated, and that is how it lessens intimacy.
  1. Speaking down to her. Some men, and this is often done unconsciously, speak with terseness in their language toward their wife.  The poor spouse on the receiving end receives this as a message of demeaning of her person, and often doesn’t even hear the content of the message, she hears only the tone.  This makes a husband unsafe to be around, and she moves away a little each time this happens.
  1. Takes her contribution for granted. Husbands know that they go to work and provide the household with an income, which is their contribution.  What they often miss is all the small stuff their wives do, and even when they think about it, they dismiss it as easy things to do.  Over time this is recognized as a lack of appreciation by the wife, and her contribution to the smooth running of the household is not valued.  And even though it may not be true, she ends up not feeling valued.
  1. Makes unilateral decisions. Some men believe they should make all the big decisions in a marriage, and often most of the small ones too.  In doing this they shut the wife out and destroy any sense of partnership that their spouse may have.  The message is; your opinion is not valuable and I don’t value it.  This is guaranteed to create distance between a man and a woman.
  1. Interrupts her when she is speaking. This is most often done when the wife is trying to tell a husband something, but also may happen in public too.  The husband may be thinking the wife is taking too long getting to the point, or that he knows what the answer to the problem is, or that she is simply talking out of ignorance.  The reason for an interruption is actually irrelevant, because the damage is done by the event of the shutting her down.  The wife is told by this action that what she has to say is unimportant, and she internally interprets this to mean she is also unimportant.

Men – if you believe you don’t have a high level of intimacy in marriage, but honestly want it, you can discuss this list with your wife.  However, your wife may be afraid to be open, so it is probably best to discuss this kind of list, with your wife present, in an emotionally safe place with an experienced third party coach or counselor.  An open and honest appraisal of these items can be very challenging to hear.

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Pastor outed on Ashley Madison commits suicide

Let’s pray for the family of John Gibson and for others that suffer through our problem.  This is why we have the empty chair in the middle of our circle.  Sometimes we lose hope if we don’t know there is a way out…

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2015/09/08/gibson-family-interview.cnnmoney/

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/08/technology/ashley-madison-suicide/

John Gibson was a pastor and seminary professor. When he wasn’t teaching at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, one of his favorite pastimes was fixing cars.

He was married with two children. His daughter, Callie, was teaching in front of 250 college students when she got the call. Her father had killed himself.

It was August 24, six days after hackers exposed the names of millions of people who had signed up for Ashley Madison, the notorious site for those seeking affairs. Gibson’s name was on the list.

His wife, Christi, discovered her husband’s body.

“It was a moment that life doesn’t prepare you for,” she told CNNMoney. “I had to call my kids. How do you tell your kids that their dad is gone and that he took his own life?”

In his suicide note, Gibson chronicled his demons. He also mentioned Ashley Madison.

“He talked about depression. He talked about having his name on there, and he said he was just very, very sorry,” Christi said. “What we know about him is that he poured his life into other people, and he offered grace and mercy and forgiveness to everyone else, but somehow he couldn’t extend that to himself.”

Ashley Madison was hacked in July, and hackers released users’ personal information in August. Since then, authorities in Toronto have said they’re investigating suicides that could be linked to the data dump. Hackers have also sent extortion emails to people who were on the list.

Gibson said her husband was likely worried he’d lose his job.

“It wasn’t so bad that we wouldn’t have forgiven it, and so many people have said that to us, but for John, it carried such a shame,” she said.

Gibson, 56, was known as a great teacher with a “quirky laugh,” but he had struggled with depression and addiction in the past, his family said.

In a statement, a spokesman for Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison’s parent company, expressed the firm’s condolences.

“Dr. Gibson’s passing is a stark, heart-wrenching reminder that the criminal hack against our company and our customers has had very real consequences for a great many innocent people.”

Since his death, his family has made a pact to be more transparent with one another about their struggles.

Christi Gibson has a message for the 32 million people exposed and their communities.

“These were real people with real families, real pain and real loss,” she says. But “don’t underestimate the power of love. Nothing is worth the loss of a father and a husband and a friend. It just didn’t merit it. It didn’t merit it at all.”

–Eric Marrapodi contributed reporting to this story.

 

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Hilton Hotel Chain Eliminates Porn from On-Demand Video Offerings

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/25/hilton-hotel-chain-eliminates-porn-from-on-demand-video-offerings/

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.25 Aug 20150

The international Hilton Hotel chain has decided to eliminate all specifically adult films from its on-demand offerings, saying that adult entertainment “is not in keeping with our company’s vision.”

The hotel chain said in a statement:

We are making immediate changes to our global brand standards to eliminate adult video-on-demand entertainment in all our hotels worldwide. While the vast majority of our properties already do not offer this content today, this content will be phased out of all other hotels subject to the terms of their contracts. We believe in offering our guests a high degree of choice and control during their stays with us, including Wi-Fi on personal devices.

Hilton’s move has garnered kudos from industry watchers such as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). Dawn Hawkins, executive director of NCOSE, says she is grateful that the hotel chain will no longer be seeking profits from hardcore pornography, which inevitably leads to sexual exploitation.

“We want to publicly thank Hilton for its decision to create a safe and positive environment for all of its customers,” Hawkins said. “Hilton has taken a stand against sexual exploitation. Pornography not only contributes to the demand for sex trafficking, which is a serious concern in hotels, but it also contributes to child exploitation, sexual violence and lifelong porn addictions.”

Hawkins said that thousands of supporters contacted Hilton through the organization’s website since 2013 to state their opposition to the availability of hotel porn.

“Earlier this year, Hilton Worldwide reached out to us explaining that they were looking at making these changes and to set up a meeting to talk about these issues in person,” Hawkins said. “At the meeting, we learned that Hilton Worldwide is committed to helping curb sexual exploitation and certainly open to changing policies they have that contribute to exploitation.”

The NCOSE has subsequently removed the hotel chain from its list of “leading contributors of sexual exploitation,” otherwise known as its “Dirty Dozen List.”

The list comprises the 12 primary contributors to sexual exploitation, including American Apparel, American Library Association, backpage.com, CKE Restaurants, Cosmopolitan magazine, Department of Justice, Facebook, Fifty Shades of Grey, Sex Week, Verizon, and YouTube.

In its statement, Hilton said that “Adult video-on-demand entertainment is not in keeping with our company’s vision and goals moving forward.”

Hilton’s decision is in keeping with a broader trend to remove on-demand porn from major hotel chains. In 2012, Catholic law professor Robert P. George of Princeton teamed up with the well-known Muslim intellectual Shaykh Hamza Yusuf to write letters to the CEOs of major hotel chains asking them to consider removing hotel room pornography, noting its “degrading, dehumanizing” and objectifying nature.

Omni Hotels and Resorts also stopped selling pornography in 1998, and Marriot has said it is “phasing out” pornography sales, while the Hilton chain had previously defended its continued sales.

In 2013, Nordic Hotels – a major Scandinavian hotel chain – announced that it was eliminating pay-per-view pornography channels from its 171 hotels.

Revenue from video-on-demand services has reportedly fallen in recent years as guests bring their own movies or stream content via hotel-provided Wi-Fi.

Robert Mandelbaum, director of research information services at PKF Hospitality research, said that the “decline over the past seven years has been really dramatic, profits from on demand services have dropped by half since 2007.”

“Between 2013 and 2014 demand for pay-per-view services fell by 12 per cent, and that’s while the hotel industry is achieving record profitability,” he said.

“It’s not like we’re in the middle of a recession. The hotels themselves are full, people just aren’t paying to use these services anymore,” he said.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome

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The Case of the Super Christian

1 Timothy 1:12–17 – “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might dis­play his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.”

Do you find yourself struggling to measure up to the way you think a Christian is supposed to behave? How would you feel if a great Christian leader admitted to a similar struggle? Many of us probably find Paul’s self­-disclosure above a great relief because we struggle with a perfectionist ideal of how a mature Christian should behave. We idealize others we know or see in leadership and compare ourselves to them, feeling we do not embody the love, grace, patience and wisdom a “good” Christian should.

As a result we feel inferior, guilty and discouraged; our growth path becomes hampered by these obstacles. However, knowing that someone like Paul, who served God passionately and accomplished so much in his life, can say that he is “the worst of sinners,” gives us hope. It helps us to not focus on trying to be a “super Christian” and instead accept where we are today.

The goal of spiritual growth is not perfection but maturity. Our growth in Jesus will bear fruit in a transformed life and character (see Galatians 5:22 – 23). But we will still have issues and struggles. The Apostle Paul also said, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (see Philippians 3:12). We must press on and not let our imperfections get us down.

This devotional is drawn from Boundaries, by John Townsend and Henry Cloud.