Marriage Tip #5 “Know Your Needs”

Whenever I’ve talked to young, future pastors who’ve asked me for some tips on knowing the right things to say, and the right questions to ask for best uncovering who they were getting into bed with regarding the leadership, I’ve always responded the same, “You can’t,” doing interviews with elders, and vice a verse, is like going on first dates with girls you don’t know.  Everyone’s got bows in their hair, lipstick on just right, no smears, the perfect presentable dress, and always minding their “Ps and Qs,” as well as not acting like gluttons at the restaurant , it’s impossible to know what you’re actually signing up for. Pasturing a church is a lot like getting married, if you don’t know each other you’ll never see what’s below the serf ice, and what you don’t see can sink a Titanic of a relationship.

Why do arraigned marriages have such a better success rate than gooey eyed marriages, I think it’s because the arranged marriages don’t expect much other than mutual civility, and they know they have to find out who each one is, while the gooey ones think the gooey stuff will continue and last as long as the fake make-up.

Pastoring for thirty years has brought me an inordinate amount of laughter, none more than when officiating at weddings. I almost can’t keep a straight face when the gooey eyed ones drool over themselves while reciting their “Tell death do us parts.” I know that they don’t have a clue as to what they are committing to, when they say “For better or worse,” for I know too well that it will later be amended to “That’s the last straw buckaroo, geet yo stuff and yo mule outta da house.”

One of the greatest helps in keeping your mule in the house is to know your stuff. By knowing your stuff I mean to say that each of you need to know what makes “YOU” tick.

Most of us don’t know what makes the “Us” in the “We” tick, much less our partners. Women and men are not playing on a level playing field, women, you have titled the field up hill, with you up the hill, and the man up the creek, to make the field even more difficult to play on, we strewn the field with each one’s dirty laundry that’s been kept in the black holes of the homestead.

But there is great news. If each of you can find out what your stuff is, you’ll have a super chance at cleaning up the messy confusion.

Here’s what you need to do, take some savings and buy a book, then do the book together, especially the needs finder, then put your big adult clothes on, and act like adults, listening to each other’s needs. Then, here’s the kicker, then you get to cattier as best as you can to your partners needs.

The book to buy is “His Needs, Her Needs,” by Willard F. Harley. Carol and I, as well as Mark and Keri Posthill have been using this book for years, it is a great book on finding out what your needs is.

Look, here’s the deal in marriage, each of us give kindnesses that would be pleasing to ourselves, but what we don’t know is that they don’t satisfy another person who’s lacking our same needs. The book is a discovery book in finding out what makes you tick, once this is done then each of you share what your type five needs are and how best to meet those needs, this is done through talking about them.

Maybe this illustration would be of a help. Billy and Blanche have been having a dry spell in their marriage for about eleventeen years, then one day Blanche buys the His Needs, Her Needs book and convinces Billy that the book will enhance their sex lives, Billy is all in. Once they get into the book Billy finally understands that being silent isn’t what Blanche needs, she likes gifts, especially gifts with silver and plastic are combined, so one day Billy is perusing through a medical book at the Doctors office and discovers some beautiful pictures of replacement knees, which have both shiny metal knee caps as well as beautiful plastic meniscuses, all of sudden Blanche comes to mind. Soon Billy orders away for some knees and wraps them for Blanche, Blanche opens them with a joyful squeal, oh, how thoughtful Billy, I love you so much, let’s go out and have a grand time out on the town, Blanche then showers him with kisses of which he’s unfamiliar.

Now their marriage is no longer in a dry spell because Blanche had her kneeds met, and Billy’s too.

And all because they knew themselves first, by knowing thyself, you can best describe what is needed, when each of you do this all that is needed is the ability to be nice to your soul mate according to their needs, cool huh?

Knowing and explaining your needs is the best way to take off all the fake make-up of the dating years. Now you can stand before God and make some real vows, tell death do you part. Cool huh?