What does I do really mean I was invited to attend a wedding a couple of months ago and it was one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever seen. The venue was beautiful both inside and out. It was by a lake. There were four photographers walking around taking pictures of the wedding party before the wedding, during the wedding and after the wedding. I can’t even imagine what it would be like going through all those pictures. But as beautiful as it was and as much money as was spent, because I heard the family spent $100,000 for this, I was just wondering as I sat there, did this couple get good pre marriage counseling? Do they really understand, when they said I do, what they were saying? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about here for the next few minutes. For guys … I do expect to be able to spend as much time with the guys as I always did before we got married. I do expect you, after you get home from work, to keep a clean house just like my mom did. I do expect you to have meals ready for me when I get home even though you work full time, and I do expect you to give me sex whenever I want it and as often as I want it. For the women, some of the I do’s maybe are, I do expect you to spend more time with me now that we’re married. I do expect you to take an equal share of responsibilities doing house chores. I do expect you to be a spiritual leader. I do expect you to understand me at all times and I do get to spend time at the club with the girls. I do want to spend all major holidays with my parents, and I do want you to watch hallmark movies with me. Now that may be a little bit too much to ask but these are just some of the I do’s that I have heard from couples as I’ve worked with thousands of couples in counseling so let’s look at a little bit more at that. The most important I do is this; I do give you exclusive rights to meet my most intimate needs. Let me read this again and I want you to pay close attention. I do give you exclusive rights to meet my most important needs. Too often when people get married it’s like, I expect you to meet my most important needs so look at the contrast between those two thoughts and talk about them for just a minute. When couples come in for pre marriage counseling I often ask what are your plans for the next few years and at what point do you plan to get a divorce. No one is thinking of divorce during pre-marriage counseling. So, I ask the guy to look at his fiancé and tell her why you’ll be a good husband. Why should she marry you? Then I ask the lady to do the same. While most marriages in the beginning do not believe that they’ll ever end in divorce, either one can have an affair in the relationship and often that affair will lead to a divorce. Statistics show that it’s pretty common. That’s among everybody whether with religious convictions or not. An affair seems to be the best answer sometimes when needs are not being met. Sexual unmet needs can turn into frustration and the guy thinks she just doesn’t like sex, so he begins to look for another way to have his needs met or live with sexual frustration. A wife expects her husband to meet her needs for intimate conversation undivided attention that she craves and if not met it leads to frustration and maybe she looks for someone else to meet that important emotional need. Marital breakups happened frequently when their needs go unmet. How are you to meet someone else’s needs? This is one of the questions I want you to talk about when I finish. So often you come into marriage, and you expect your spouse to meet your needs instead of really focusing on how you can best meet theirs. So how do you learn to meet their needs? The most important way for a husband and wife to continue to stay happy in their marriage is learning to meet the needs that are most important to each other. In another podcast, I will be discussing some of your most important needs. We’ll look at the five most important needs for men and women that’s mentioned in the book His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F Harley. What you need to understand is that those mentioned in the book may not apply to you, but you really need to talk about what your needs are and even more important, after you find out what they are, the other person needs to know how to meet them. That’s what we’re going to talk about in following podcast. So come back, looking for more. By J Douglas (C)