LET’S AS MEN TALK ABOUT MYSTERY AND ROMANCE

The Need for Romance  

Mystery and romance are traits we often associate with the dating days -- when two lovebirds delight in the process of discovering one another. The glow of these early days often fades as familiarity, responsibility, and routine settle in, leaving many wives feeling empty and discouraged. But did God intend for women to say goodbye to mysteriousness - and the accompanying romance - once rings are exchanged?

Married life is not meant to be void of either mystery or romance. Understanding romance and how to reawaken it can bring lots of joy in our lives and in our marriages.

When I talk to women, married and single, they have this vision of their lives. They hope life will be something really romantic. Women are longing for romance, but they are not finding it. What appeals to men is the female body and the female form -- it's mysterious. It's not like ours. The way women react is different from the way men do it. It's intriguing. 

A lot of women think [mystery] is for the single girl -- they know she has got to be a little mysterious so he stays interested. The trouble comes when women drop the mystery, and want to "keep it real." They tell men everything about themselves, about their past, about their health problems... and so on and on.  It's just, "Here I am, take it or leave it." 

Men throw romance out the window when they marry, because they caught their prize. Why would they work to catch what they already caught? I think the same thing happens for women. One a woman catches the man, so why does she have to keep up the mystery?  Why can't she wear her sweat suit and hang out and not do her hair? To keep a man, women must change, and the man thinks, this is not the woman I married, that tried so hard. It's not alluring to any man, married or single.

   

I think that for most of us, we get confused, and we think that love means giving people what we love. But love is really about knowing the other person and giving them what they love. I find that a lot of us tend to be occupied with self. Mystery does not do that. Mystery looks at the person we are with… and thinks: What is she interested in?  What would drive her crazy?  Does more talking make her crazy?  Does she just want to sit down and watch TV?

A happy marriage is both partners continuing to be aware of the desires and wants of the other. Wouldn't the world be an amazing place if we all did that? Really, this is just an opportunity for men to re-learn mystery. The majority of men want to be respected and women want to be admired; admired for the work they have done or the money they've brought in. They want to be admired for manly things.  It is really easy for women to admire men for doing feminine things, like, "Oh, I love how you went shopping with me today," or "I love how you cook when we cooked together," but that doesn't really build him up. They like to be admired for their masculinity. A male characteristic in the mental areas is singular thinking. Men can really focus. That is something a woman can admire about men, where women can be multitasking. 

The number one goal of marriage is sanctification. I think that is an amazing goal -- to be made more like Christ.  Who would argue that is not a fantastic goal?  Now the process of it is painful. It is very painful to have somebody say, you know what you just did? That was a sin.  But I think that there is still, almost in the DNA of women, this desire for romance.   True romance, I think, is really the call on our hearts. True romance is a romance that really was made for the Creator. The amazing things God does in our lives, the interaction we can have with Him just walking out and looking at scenes, seeing thunder or lightening, is breathtaking. I think God is the essence of the romance that we crave. 

We try to duplicate it in our human relationships, because we have this idea that love is a feeling. I think we lie to ourselves and believe that marriage should make us feel a certain way every day. That is a great deception from the enemy. Scripture never commands us to feel anything. Nor does it really ask us to seek out any kind of feeling other than joy, which comes from God every time.  I think that the more you are able to take your responsibility off your wife to make you happy, the happier you become. I believe that every woman wants her man to be happy. I think that's really her number one goal. Men are about goals. If a woman isn't happy about something that happened at work, a man feels responsible. That's why he wants to fix it. Or he might get dark and depressed.  It's contagious, because he feels like he has failed. 

  

When a woman is happy, suddenly a man thinks he is doing it right. He feels more like a man. He feels more attracted to her. He feels more interested in her. Then romance just kind of springs to life. Where there was none before, he's like, she is turning me on now instead of dragging me down.  I think romance shouldn't be the goal of your marriage; it should be the symptom. In other words, your goal is love and then out of that comes romance, but if your goal is romance, it doesn't ever come to pass. You might have manufactured romance generated by having the perfect setting. That might be romantic for an hour or two, but then life comes back.  The dishes need to be washed, and the kids need you.