Creating a More Romantic Marriage

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  

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Creating A More Romantic Marriage

Day 1 of 8

Guest:                       Dennis Rainey

From the series:       Why Romance is Important 

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(Nat King Cole singing "L-O-V-E")

Bob:                Believe it or not, this is FamilyLife Today.  Our host is best-selling author and conference speaker, Dennis Rainey.  I'm Bob Lepine.  Stay with us as we talk about L-O-V-E today on FamilyLife Today.

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the broadcast.

Dennis:          Do you think our listeners know who Nat King Cole is, Bob?

Bob:                Oh, yeah, everybody knows who Nat King Cole is.  I bought a two-record collection when I was in college, just because I thought, "He's got the smoothest voice, it's the most romantic music I've ever heard."

Dennis:          Well, you know, we also have a lot of romantic adventures at our FamilyLife Marriage Conference, and I've got a letter here from a conferee couple who attended the Phoenix FamilyLife Marriage Conference – I think this was back in 1991.  This is a classic, keeper letter from the archives of the thousands of attendees who have been to our conference.

Bob:                Now, this is on hotel stationery, right?

Dennis:          That's right – the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale.  "Dear Dennis, when you suggested last night for us to be more creative in our romance, you never gave us the warning that it could be dangerous."  Then in all capital letters, it reads, "RULE NUMBER 1 – ALWAYS BE PREPARED!  AT LEAST WITH A SPARE KEY" – and now the rest of the story.

                        "After dinner and the sunset, we decided to take your advice and to add a little romance and be a little daring.  Staying here at the hotel, we crept out onto our fourth-floor balcony for an incredibly romantic view, not to mention some privacy.  Unbeknown to us, while we were 'communicating' and 'learning more about each other,' the maid was inside our bedroom, turning down our bedsheets for us.  She did not know we were on the balcony.  We did not know she was in the room.  Maybe you can guess the rest.  She locked the sliding glass door."  It is signed, "Two lovers, romantic sky, and lots of privacy.  Embarrassed from California."

Bob:                So you have no idea how they ever got back in, huh?

Dennis:          Your mind is only left to wonder – how did they get back in, there on the fourth floor of the hotel?

Bob:                Well, that is a part of what we hope will be a romantic evening for couples at the FamilyLife Marriage Conference, but we hope that's not the end of romantic evenings for couples.

Dennis:          Well, we really talk about FamilyLife Marriage Conference, taking Saturday and making it an adventure.  That's not the kind of adventure we're talking about.  We are talking about adding romance to your relationship, and I think at our conferences across the United States, that's what a lot of couples really seen infused back into their marriage relationship through all the teachings of scripture that build intimacy in their marriage relationship, they better understand how to relate to each other as husband and wife, and what I wanted to do, Bob, was I wanted to take the next few days, prior to Valentine's Day, and I wanted us to talk about the all-important subject of romance.

Bob:                Now, you call it an all-important subject.  You kind of get the feel that romance is something that's a part of the courtship process.  After marriage, romance just doesn't seem like it has the same, you know – 

Dennis:          – sizzle.

Bob:                Yeah, yeah.

Dennis:          Yeah, that's right.  Well, let me just read something from Song of Solomon, okay?  Song of Solomon, chapter 1, verse 2 – "May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine; your oils have a pleasing fragrance; your name is like purified oil; therefore, the maidens love you.  Draw me after you."

                        Now, here's the Shulamite woman who is attracted to Solomon.  She is wanting her husband as the bride, and, you know, it's interesting that our God devoted an entire book of the 66 books that are in the inspired Word of God to this subject of romantic love, and one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this is I think Christians are afraid of the subject, Bob.  I think we're afraid to address this whole area of romantic love in marriage even though our God thought it all up in the first place.

Bob:                Some people have suggested that Song of Solomon is a parable showing us God's love for Israel or Jesus' love for His church.  You're saying that God put it in the Bible to talk about the romantic relationship between a husband and wife?

Dennis:          I wonder about the people who say that – if they really read the verses, because they've got to do away with a lot of physical imagery that doesn't leave that much to the imagination.  I mean, it's clear they're talking about the whole area of romantic and sexual love in a marriage relationship.

Bob:                Is romance really important for a marriage?  I mean, can't a marriage survive just fine for 30 or 40 years and not have a whole lot of sizzle and spark to it?

Dennis:          Well, I think marriages can survive, I think that's a key word, but will they be what God intended?  I say not.  One of the things that happens in a marriage relationship is if we don't have romance, something that adds excitement and adventure, intrigue, thrill, I think we get caught up in the negative about our spouse, and when you begin to focus on the negative and the faults of the other person, that relationship begins to spiral downward.  And one of the reasons why I think Valentine's is such an important time of the year, especially for the Christian marriages, is to remind us that we ought to be making this subject of romance a part of our everyday diet in our marriage relationship.

The Bible speaks about, over in Proverbs,...

Transcript not available for this episode.

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

Creating A More Romantic Marriage 

Day 2 of 8

Guest:                             Barbara Rainey

From the Series:          Woman's View of Romance

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Bob:                This is FamilyLife Today.  Your host is the executive director of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey.  I'm Bob Lepine, and today we'll learn from Barbara Rainey just how a woman does view romance on FamilyLife Today.

(Music:  "How To Handle A Woman")

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the broadcast.

Dennis:          You know, Bob, because of who we have in the studio today, I've decided I'm just going to kind of push back from the microphone and get my notepad out and take notes.

Bob:                Is that right?

Dennis:          That's right.  I really feel, in due respect for my wife, she's an authority on the subject she's about to speak on and, in fact, you know what I'd like to do?  You can ask the questions – because of the nature of what we're going to talk about, it's pretty delicate, and for me to ask my wife these questions, I mean, this could get a little interesting.  So –

Bob:                – well, I'm lookin' forward to this and, Barbara, by the way, welcome back to the broadcast.  It's great to have you on the program.

Barbara:         You're welcome, it's good to be here.

Bob:                And, Dennis, I'm going to get right to it, because we're going to be talking over the next couple of days about how a wife views romance, and I think the thing that husbands want to know, the thing that kind of puzzles us in this whole deal is what is it that we can do that causes our wives to go, "Ahhhh."  You know, just kind of look at us and melt.  I mean, does that happen with a woman?

Barbara:         Well, I think it does, but I don't think it's necessarily a particular situation, because the things that are romantic to me aren't necessarily a situation or an act or a thing or a gift – all of those things communicate romance – but the particular situation isn't necessarily going to produce what you're talkin' about, which is what we've talked about a lot.

                        You know what I think it is, I think it is the relationship that she has with her husband, and I have been reminded again, as I've been interacting with my family, and I have seen where I have come from and how desperately dysfunctional it was, and I'm thinking, "I am married to a man who has absolutely been a savior to me because of the love and acceptance and all that kind of stuff, and I have been attracted to him because I’m realizing what he's done for me relationally.  So it's not like he thought, "I want to romance my wife, so I'm going to go buy her flowers, and so A+B=C, and this is the reaction and the response I'm going to get," although I think that's very romantic, and I love it when he does those kinds of things, because that communicates sacrifice, it communicates he cares about me, he's willing to go out of his way, he's willing to spend money that, you know, we may or may not have in the budget for that – those are all things that are very meaningful, but it may not necessarily produce the desired response.  In other words, if he's doing it to produce the response, he is very often going to be disappointed.

                        That's why I go back to the relationship – to me, it's the relationship that is ultimately going to fuel the romance.  And so when you ask what I thought of, my thought was – was the day that we spent together in September, and he took a whole day off work just to spend it with me to do what I wanted to do.  We worked in the yard, and we got in the car in the afternoon, we drove for four or five hours and just kinda took off, and we stopped when we wanted to, and we did what we wanted to.  I mean, it was like, in a sense, being on a honeymoon or being in those early days of marriage when we didn't have any responsibilities, and that was more fun, but it was romantic in the sense that it was just the two of us, and we could do what we wanted, and we focused on each other, and we didn't have the demands and the – I mean – we had to come back to it, but, you know – just for however many hours it was, it was really a treat to have him all to myself and to have him say, "I will do whatever you want to do," and we talked all day long.  It was wonderful.  It wasn't romantic in the typical sense of sweep her off her feet, carry her to the castle, and they lived happily ever after.

Bob:                You know, as you said, the A+B+C, I thought – men want it to be algebra.

Barbara:         That's right.

Dennis:          They do, and therein lies the frustration as well as the intrigue.

Bob:                And women don't want it to be algebra.  It's gotta be –

Dennis:          ­– no, they don't want a book.

Barbara:         But they don't want to be figured out.  See, I don't think women want to be figured out, because if they feel like they're figured out, then they feel like they're controlled and they're had, and they don't want to be figured out.  I think they want him to love her and be willing to pursue her and to continue to know who she is, because she's not that simple.  I think women don't want to feel like they're that easy to figure out and, "Oh, he's got me pegged," and A+B+=C, and it's going to always work that way.  I think she wants to be more complex and more intriguing and more –

Dennis:          – of a challenge.

Barbara:         Yes.

Dennis:          Because if the man goes A+B=C, and he knows that's the way it works, then she knows –

Barbara:         – that he'll do A+B=C every time, and that gets boring, and I think she would also begin to fear that she'd be taken advantage of and, see, women don't want to be taken advantage of, and I don't mean taken advantage of sexually.  I mean to be taken advantage of in any way – just assuming on the relationship and therefore there's no more motivation to continue to pursue, there's no more motivation – because if you've got it figure out, then why work at it?

&nbs...

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

Creating A More Romantic Marriage 

Day 3 off 8

Guest:                             Barbara Rainey

From the Series:          A Woman's View of Romance

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Bob:                This is FamilyLife Today with your host, the executive director of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey.  I'm Bob Lepine.  Today on the broadcast Barbara Rainey joins us to talk about what happens when a man loves a woman.  Stay with us for FamilyLife Today.

(Music:  "When A Man Loves A Woman")

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the broadcast, and if you were not here with us yesterday, you're in big trouble is what you are – if you're a man, particularly.

Dennis:          That's right.

Bob:                I took notes on yesterday's broadcast, and I've got my pencil ready today, because we're learning how a woman views romance. 

Dennis:          We're learning how a woman thinks.

Bob:                That's right.  And women think differently – that's not wrong – they think differently than men, don't they?

Dennis:          They do, and, well, we've got someone in the studio who is definitely a woman.  She is a great woman, she is my wife, and it's really fun to have Barbara back with us on the broadcast again today. 

Bob:                Yeah, Barbara, welcome back to the broadcast.

Barbara:         Thanks, glad to be here.

Bob:                You know, yesterday – and I've been thinkin' about this all night.  I went home and just kinda mulled on this.  It's a little frustrating to know that once I have an idea of how my wife views romance, she's going to change the rules on me – that was one of the lessons from yesterday's broadcast ­– and to be aware that romance is going to get progressively harder as we continue in marriage.  It was easy in courtship, but it gets progressively harder as we're married.  Is that right?

Dennis:          Absolutely.  

Bob:                Well, that's lousy.

Dennis:          Well, you think about – what's God up to here?  He is trying to rid us of selfishness and, if we could, we would kick it in neutral and just coast all the way in to year 50 of the marriage – we wouldn't have to work at it.  It would just be like jumpin' off the edge of a cliff.  We would romantically fall into each other's arms and hopelessly under the control of romance, like gravity, and not have to really work at knowing and loving and caring for and meeting the needs of the other person.  And I think that's why God created marriage – He created it to be redemptive.  He wants me to give up my life for my wife.

Barbara:         Exactly.

Dennis:          And that's why romance becomes really elusive in a marriage where a man is threatening to leave or a man is sending all kinds of signals that he's not committed, and he's putting fear in the marriage, not casting it out.  1 John, chapter 4, talks about "perfect love casting out all fear," and that's a man's assignment, and a lot of men want their wives to fall in a puddle at their feet and romantic love in a swoon, but they're not willing to give up their hobbies, their interests, their selfish desires for their wives.  Now, how do I know that?  Because I'm a man, and because I've done that.

Barbara:         See, when I was thinkin', when you talked about it being redemptive, I was thinking that as you were saying that, and that, ultimately, is what is going to draw a wife to her husband, because when she sees him loving her unconditionally, seeking to understand her and know her and be involved in her life and help her and all of those things, then she is going to respond to him, and as she sees him giving up himself and denying himself and getting rid of his bad habits or putting away his hobbies or whatever for her, those kinds of things are redemptive, and so I think that, in the long haul of things, as we see marriage as being a redemptive relationship, that is the hope of responding to one another.  That is the hope of having romance – is growing together in Christ, denying yourselves for each other, and especially for a husband as the head of the home and the head of his wife, as he will deny himself for her, as he will love her, as he will sacrifice for her, if he will seek to understand her – why she is the way she is and accept her for that and not condemn her for it and not seek to understand her so he can get her to change so he can be happy with her, but all in pursuit of loving her, then she will respond to that ultimately.  Again, it has to be for the purpose, though, that God intended, and that is to love her as Christ loved the church.

Dennis:          With no response in return.

Barbara:         That's right – with no strings attached.  In other words, he can't say, "I'm going to do this, and then she's going to respond, and then I'll get what I want," because that defeats the purpose of sacrificial love, because then it's not self-sacrificing.

Dennis:          And that's the difficulty for a man, because a man usually sets goals, and he is after something, and with romance it may be the sexual dimension of the marriage relationship that he is in pursuit of his wife on, and that's why, as you approach this subject of romance and learning how to speak it as a man to your wife, you've got to understand that you deny your agenda and let the goal be solely that she would feel love; that she would know she is valued, cared for, and cherished, and that she is seeing you nourish her, just as Ephesians 5 talks about.

Bob:                But here's the rub in that – because a man is thinking to himself – "The way I'll know that, the way I'll know that she's been loved is she'll respond."

Dennis:          Right.

Bob:                So if she's not responding, then the message is –

Dennis:          "I haven't done a good job loving her."

Bob:                I haven't done a good job –

Dennis:        &n...

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

Creating A More Romantic Marriage 

Day 4 of 8

Guest:                         Barbara Rainey

From the Series:         A Woman's View of Romance

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Bob:                Welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Today we're speaking frankly about how a woman views romance.

(Music:  "Love and Marriage")

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the broadcast.  We are beginning Week Number 2 of our look at Creating a More Romantic Marriage, and I just want to encourage folks, if you missed any of last week's programs, or if you're going to miss any of this week's programs, this is a series that husbands and wives ought to get and listen to together, and then they can talk, they can interact, about what they hear on the tapes.

Dennis:          You know, this subject of developing and cultivating romance in a marriage relationship is a discussion that is long overdue among Christian couples, because we ought to have among the most passionate relationships on the planet.  Our God created romance in the first place.

Bob:                Well, we're going to talk on today's broadcast about how men and women view romance, and we've brought your wife, Barbara, back in the studio with us today.  Barbara, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Barbara:         Thanks, good to be here.

Bob:                And one of the things that we want to do is look at research.  

Dennis:          Right.

Bob:                You commissioned that be done at our FamilyLife Marriage Conferences across the country – we had a researcher who talked with women about how they view romance, how they view it primarily, is that right?

Dennis:          Actually, this Top 10 list of romantic acts came from both men and women.

Bob:                Well, let me go over the list, Barbara.  I'm going to go from 10 to 1, and I'll read what people indicated expressed romance, and then I want to know, as a man, and I want to know how I can keep these ideas in front of me and sprinkle them into a relationship as a way to express romance – again, with no hidden agenda, no – not driving for anything.  Number 10, hands are romantic; holding hands, particularly, is romantic for a woman.  Do you like holding hands with Dennis?

Barbara:         Mm-hm.

Bob:                Why is that romantic for you?

Barbara:         I do it because it says, "I want to be close to you, and I like you, and you're my friend, and I want to be next to you."  I mean, those are the kinds of things that communicates to me, and that's the reason that I initiate it, and I think that's probably the same for him, too.  So I think it's the closeness that it communicates.

Bob:                Okay, how about Number 9, which is massaging one another – rubbing the neck.  Do you like when Dennis reaches over and rubs the back of your neck?  Dennis, massage oftentimes will have a sexual connotation, and some women may pull back from liking massage because they think it's just foreplay.

Dennis:          Right.

Barbara:         Exactly.  I think that's right.

Bob:                So if it's non-sexual massage where it's just – "Let me rub your back, and you can fall asleep," then that's okay?

Barbara:         Oh, I think so, yeah.

Bob:                Number 8 on the list is serving – serving the other person – common courtesies – opening the door, holding a chair out for somebody, doing little acts of sacrifice.  Is that romantic for a woman?

Barbara:         To me, I don't think of that as being as romantic, if I had to define them, as, say, holding hands but, again, I think it's important to do.  I think it says "I am denying myself for you.  I am going to serve you," and I think that anytime a husband can serve his wife sacrificially and do something for her, he's communicating to her that he cares about her and that he loves her and she's special, and he wants to make her feel special.

Bob:                Okay.

Dennis:          Let me make a comment on this next one – number 7 – because this made this spot in the combined list – 75 percent of the men picked this item as number 1 of what was most romantic.  So this, again, kind of lets you know the men viewed this substantially heavier and weightier than the women did because, together, it became number 7.  

Bob:                So men had it at number 1, women –

Barbara:         Someone must have had it a lot lower for the average to be seven.

Dennis:          It must have been a lot lower.

Bob:                And number 7 is a kiss – an unexpected kiss, a nibble on the back of the neck, or just kissing each other.

Dennis:          Now, why do you think, Barbara, the women would have ranked that so much differently than the men?

Barbara:         Because I think it probably, if the truth be known, they might have felt that he had another motive, and I just wonder if some of the women were feeling suspicious.  I think some of these other things might be able to be seen as an individual fact or as an individual gesture –

Bob:                – so if he opens the door, she doesn't feel he's up to something, but if he kisses her, she wonders what's goin' on in the back of his mind.

Barbara:         She might go, "Okay"—yeah, right – "I wonder what he's thinkin'?"

Dennis:          And the rest of this list, really, if you look at it, with the exception of this and the massage – really, are statements of a relationship and women view romance through the eyes of a relationship.  They want to be loved, known –

Barbara:         ...

Transcripts are not available for this episode.

Transcripts are not available for this episode.

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

Creating A More Romantic Marriage 

Day 5 of 8

Guest:                        Dennis Rainey

From the Series:     A Man's View of Romance 

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(Music:  "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?")

Bob:                This is FamilyLife Today.  Our host is the executive director of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and if you've ever scratched your head and asked yourself the same question Henry Higgins asked himself, then stay with us for today's edition of FamilyLife Today.

(Music:  "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?")

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today, and let me see if I can do a recap, Dennis, for our listeners here as we begin the broadcast.  Last week you talked with us about why romance is so important for a marriage relationship.

Dennis:          Right.

Bob:                You talked about the "romance robbers" that every relationship experiences.  Barbara joined us, and we spent three days talking to men about how wives view this issue of romance, and we just had a couple of days with the guy you describe as the "Michael Jordan of romance," who talked with us about some creative things that his group – that he calls the "Men of the Titanic" have done to communicate romance to their wives, and before we talk to wives about how their husbands view romance, you want to spend one more session talking to the men, right?

Dennis:          Right.  You know, I think a lot of Christians are afraid to discuss the obvious.  There is a great struggle that is taking place in the Christian bedrooms of our nation, and if that struggle is going to be diminished, and Christian marriages are to emerge, then that means we've got to get honest and look at this biblically, we've got to look at it and speak out it forthrightly and, in the best way we know how to talk about it, be able to speak honestly first of all to men about what they're feeling when it comes to sexuality.

Bob:                Now, is it okay for the wives to listen in as we talk to their husbands?

Dennis:          I think, for today's broadcast, you ladies can just eavesdrop as I just have a heart-to-heart talk with the men, because I think a lot of us, as men, are really confused, and this first point I want to make with the husbands is you need to reserve romance and your sexuality for your wife only.  What I mean by that is God has blessed you and given you great sexual energy.  That ought to move you to serve her, to love her, to sacrificially give to her without resentment.

                        Now, those last two words are very important – "without resentment" – because I think God gives us, as men, this urge to initiate toward our wives for a reason, because our wives are different.  They have relational needs, and what we do with our own sex drive, as we look at our wife's needs, can either move us to using our wives as an object or we, as men, can realize that we need to get on our wife's wavelength and how she views romance; that is, her need for relational love, and that means spending time with her, taking walks, some of the things we've talked about earlier in this series.

Bob:                Are you saying here that if a man is failing in these areas, if he's not communicating love to his wife on her terms, then he really needs to make that a priority before he has any expectations from his own wife?

Dennis:          I'm saying when Paul commanded husbands to love their wives, He commanded them to nourish and cherish their wives.  The picture is of bathing them in nutrition for their soul.  What is that for a woman?  It's a relationship.  It's sharing your life, as a man, with your wife, and if you don't do that, most likely your wife is going to feel like a sex object, and I think one of the best questions a man could ask his wife at this point, to see how he's doing, is say, "Sweetheart, when I make love to you, do you feel loved?"

I'm convinced there are a lot of wives who would say, "No.  I may feel pleasure, I may feel sexual release, but somehow, sweetheart, you're not communicating real love to me, because you haven't met those relational needs."

And it's not what the man is doing or not doing in the midst of the actual act of intercourse.  It's what he hasn't done to prepare that relationship with his wife and enable her to feast on having fun, on being nourished and cherished by someone who tenderly cares for his wife.  

Now, this next thing I need to talk to men about at this point – this gets kind of tough to speak to men, but I've gotta do it – men sometimes have a higher felt need for sex than their wives, and I've got a couple of questions for you men who continually find yourself in overdrive in this area.  

The first question is – are you feeding your sexual appetite throughout the day?  Your fantasies, what you look at, what you watch, what you allow your mind to feast on – are you feeding that regularly throughout the day in an unbridled fashion?  It is a wise man who, first of all, looks to himself in saying, "Am I really setting up our marriage to win here or am I somehow, because of what I'm allowing myself to think about all day, am I being selfish in arriving at the marriage bed almost setting my wife up to fail because I have so feasted in my mind on my sexual creativity?"

Bob:                There needs to be some self control and discipline that a man exercises over his own thought life?

Dennis:          Discipline is a part of the Christian life, and I think for a lot of men this goes down hard, because what we would like to say is we would like to have complete freedom to think about what we would like to think about and arrive home all sexually energized and charged up, but the problem is – what's our wife been thinking about all day?  She's had kids draped all over her legs and arms, tuggin' on her skirt, and here's the man arriving home.  He's had all these thoughts, and his wife is nowhere in the ballpark, let alone ready to go to bed with him.

                        A third thing I'd like to encourage the men to do, and this is going to sound the riskiest of all, but it's absolutely important that you share your feelings about your own sexuality.  This is what women really don't understand about men, because men aren't in touch with what they're feeling about their own sexuality.  And a part of this, Bob, I believe, is a man must express to h...

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Creating A More Romantic Marriage 

Day 6 of 8

Guest:                             Dennis Rainey

From the Series:          A Man's View of Romance

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 (Music:  "As Time Goes By")

Bob:                This is FamilyLife Today.  Our host is the Executive Director of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  Stay with us as we talk about how men view romance today on FamilyLife Today.

(Music:  "As Time Goes By")

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the broadcast today, as we continue to talk about romance on the program today, and today we're going to talk to wives, right, Dennis?

Dennis:          And I've got what one man wants me to do on this broadcast.  He wrote me, "Help my wife understand how I think as a man."

Bob:                And you're going to do that in one broadcast?  

Dennis:          Well, maybe two, but we're goin' for it.  You know, we're talking about how you can build romance into your marriage here in anticipation of Valentine's Day, and there are undoubtedly a number of marriages who are listening into this broadcasts right now, who are much like the sailors of old, who used to be afraid of an area of the ocean called "The Doldrums."

Bob:                The Doldrums?

Dennis:          The Doldrums – they were near the Equator.  It's an actual spot, and it was a place where there was no current, there were no winds, and so a sailor could happen into this area and, literally, their boat could be stalled out in the middle of the ocean for days, even weeks, because there would be no wind to pull them out of The Doldrums, and I think that's what happens in a lot of marriages.  And, you know, that's really why we're doing this series.  We want to help marriages not just merely experience romance, because He wants us to have marriages that are alive, that are thriving, that are contagious – Christian marriages – so that we can tell the world about why our marriage is exciting – and that's Jesus Christ.  And I think Jesus Christ wants us to have a romantic relationship.  He doesn't want us to have our marriage be adrift in The Doldrums.

Bob:                We've talked over the last couple of days about how a man can romance his wife.  It's a different process for a woman to romance her husband?

Dennis:          It sure is.  A woman looks at romance, and she spells romance "relationship."  A man evidently doesn't need that many letters to spell romance, because he spells it very simply – s-e-x, sex.  And what we did was, we surveyed over 800 people at our FamilyLife Marriage Conferences, and it was really quite interesting to see what communicated romance to the men and what communicated romance to the women, and a lot of women are very good students of their husbands, and they are becoming very astute at learning how to communicate romantically in the love language of their husbands so that they have that romance as part of their relationship.

Bob:                You know, I've got to believe there are some wives who, right off the bat, though, almost resent you saying that.  They almost resent you saying that romance and sex are synonymous for a husband because maybe it puts pressure on them, or maybe they just don't want that to be all there is to romance with their husbands.

Dennis:          Well, there are a lot of women who have an aversion to that, because they are so relationally bent, but whether you resent it or your embrace it, I think you need to listen carefully what we're about to talk about, because it is of vital importance to any marriage that wants to be all that God intended.  

                        I ran across this little piece by Dr. Joyce Brothers, and Barbara and I included it in our book, "Building Your Mate's Self Esteem," and Dr. Brothers really points out that boredom in the bedroom can really be the demise of a marriage relationship.  She writes, "Sexual boredom is a major element in the 20-year fractures in marriage.  Too many women" – now listen to this carefully – "too many women accept their husband's decreasing interest in sex without stopping to think what might be causing it."

                        I think what we've got to do over the next couple of days is talk straight to women about this subject of sex with their husbands, because it's my personal belief that there are a lot of men who are very, very frustrated with what is taking place in the Christian bedrooms of America – notice I said the "Christian bedrooms."  I'm talkin' about the marriages that are attempting to love each other with the sacrificial love that Christ spoke of in Ephesians, chapter 5.  There are women who are committed to their husbands but somehow, in the Christian community, I don't sense the sparkle and the sizzle that ought to be a part of Christian marriage.  And for that reason, I'm going to risk it.  I really want to talk honestly and straight about the sexual needs of men today.

                        Now, as I do that, I really feel like, at this point, I need a little bit of a disclaimer here, because there is no doubt about it that men are selfish, and there are a lot of women who are listening to our broadcast who are married to men who really ought to be lined up on the 30-yard line in the Rose Bowl and kicked through the goalpost, because they are self-absorbed, they treat their wives like they're an object and, personally, I'd like to work 'em over, because they are either quoting verses, they're goin' to church and, in the meantime, they really do not give women the dignity that they ought to have.  We talked on the previous broadcast about how men need to romance their wives, and so I want the women listeners to know that I've been careful to talk about how women need to be treated by their husbands first.  But men are selfish.

                        A second disclaimer I want to say is that a lot of men have damaged women emotionally.  I mean, they've neglected them, they've not made them a part of their lives, they have become apathetic.  There is no excuse for a man treating a woman with anything other than the love which Christ commands us to treat our wives.  

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