Serving Your Best Friend

…By letting go of your expectations for your husband to meet your emotional needs and redirecting your focus on meeting his needs instead, you are serving him. In this way, his desire will eventually be to serve you as well. He’ll recognize your desire to meet his needs and that desire will be contagious if you do not abort the process by becoming impatient or expecting too much too soon. Just like intimacy, wholehearted service is inspired, not required.

When I speak of serving your husband, I’m not referring to the kind of serving you do in tennis, where you hit the ball to him and now claim, “Hey, the ball’s in your court! It’s your turn to serve me!” I’m referring to serving your husband’s needs out of deep love and committed friendship, with no hidden motive and expecting nothing in return. Jesus referred to this type of service in the following passage:

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that [she] lay down [her] life for [her] friends. (John 15:12-13)

Ask yourself, “Do I consider my husband my friend?”

Keep in mind that treating your husband like your best friend means treating him as the grown man that he is rather than as a child [because]… this mother-son dynamic can kill the desire for intimacy. Men don’t want to have sex with their mothers. Your husband didn’t marry you so he could have another mother, but so he could have a best friend. If you treat him like the grown man he is, you will foster in him an attitude of mutual respect, appreciation, and sexual desire toward you.

Excerpted from Every Woman’s Battle: Discovering God’s Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment by Shannon Ethridge. Copyright 2003. All Rights Reserved. Published by WaterBrook Press, Colorado Springs, CO 80921. Used by Permission. Not to be copied without Publisher’s prior written approval.