Not My Girlfriend

We hear it said a lot at weddings, “I found my best friend of whom I will marry and love the rest of the days of my life”. And the blissful couple kiss and are whisked away in a car to live happily ever after.

And then reality happens. Bills, kids, house projects, moves, job changes, heart changes. And a lot of times we feel like we lose our best friend somewhere in the middle of all that mess. Those long late night conversations don’t happen much anymore and it becomes actual work to try to communicate.

We might start complaining about our husbands to our girlfriends. We might think, “Well, they understand me. Why doesn’t my husband get it?” Because he will never have the mind of a woman!

Our husbands are never going to think like a woman. I told one of my mentors one time that I wish my husband could just look at me and correctly assess my thoughts, needs and feelings. She laughed and told me that even after 45 years of marriage, her husband still could not do that! God did not make them to do this. This is what our girlfriends do.

He can be sweet, sensitive, kind, fun, loving, supportive, a great life partner and friend. But he will never be our girlfriend. He will probably never enjoy the frilly things and notice the relational details like we do.

Once we stop expecting them to understand and respond to us like our girlfriends do, the happier our marriages will be.

I know there are some couples out there who might buck the norm on this but that’s just like anything in life. We can’t generalize except to say God designed men to be men and not women. That simple.

My man is a wonderful husband, father, lover, provider, protector, encourager, partner, and friend.

But He is not my girlfriend.