Teflon Marriage and Parenting

God did not design our spouses to shield us from acknowledging, accepting and acting on personal responsibilities like parenting our children. The Jews of the Old Testament going into the New Testament were like children parented by the Law until God the Son Jesus Christ came and offered them a marriage relationship. In a marriage relationship we are adults with adult responsibilities. We don't stop being our parents' children, but our parents are no longer responsible for our behavior, and our spouse is not designed to take responsibility for our behavior. We are responsible for our own behavior while God and our spouse are to love us continuously in truth, mercy, forgiveness and other godly qualities.

Parenting is a job for each individual father and mother. Childlike spouses may complain that their parental spouses do not want frequent sex and/or creative sex such as putting on costumes and acting out love plays.

When a couple operates as the union of a childlike spouse and a parental spouse they will have trouble bonding because they act like Teflon to each other. Mature adults are repelled by sex with children. Mature adults are not disinterested in sex; they want sex with another mature, committed adult.

Yet sometimes a parental spouse enables the childlike spouse to pass off his parental responsibilities onto her which is destructive to both spouses' sex drive. One way mothers enable fathers to pass their parental responsibilities onto them is to require the family to have a certain economic standard of living that requires the father to work at one or more jobs, businesses and/or ministries for excessive numbers of hours weekly. When he is done working, his energy spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and physically is sapped. He doesn't have enough inside of him to give to God, wife and children.

Ohiyesa (Dakota for "Wins Often"), who took the name Charles Alexander Eastman when he received Jesus Christ as His Savior and Lord in the 1800s, is a husband, father of six children, physician, writer, author, speaker, advocate for Native American Rights, among other things, who described American culture as "a system of life based on trade." Many Americans both Christian and non-Christian worship trade which is really the love of money. The foundation of their lifestyle is money, not God. They value material wealth more than their relationship with God, spouse and children. We need to earn money to obtain things needed for survival and enjoyment. The source for obtaining anything is God. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 the Message Bible says, "If you start thinking to yourselves, "I did all this. And all by myself. I'm rich. It's all mine!"-well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors-as it is today.". 

In order for fathers to parent in the Biblical way, mothers and fathers may need to live in a town house instead of a single-family home, or they may need to rent instead of own, or they may need some other creative living arrangement. Some married couples can live in large houses with both spouses operating in Biblical balance in their marriage, parenting, employment and other areas of life. Other married couples are not able to do this; they need to reduce their material lifestyle in order to lift up their relationships with God, spouse and children. It's worth it to find a successful way to work fewer hours at a job, business and/or ministry in order to have the internal resources to build a balanced marriage relationship and to build a parental relationship with our children that is complete (male and female both active extensively in a parental relationship with their children) instead of incomplete (mother/child parent relationship with virtually no father/child relationship.)

Parental roles in order foster fun, fulfilling marital sex. These couples are more likely to totally share themselves in multiple ways. Dr. Gary and Barbara Rosberg write in their book The 5 Sex Needs of Men & Women Discover the Secrets to Great Sex In A Godly Marriage, "The reality is that we often want the same things. Our deepest desire, whether we're male or female, is ultimately to become one. He wants intercourse; she wants intercourse. He may want physical intercourse more than she does, and she may want emotional intercourse more than he does, but when a couple can meld physical and emotional intercourse, they will find the pathway to great sex."

Frequent, fun, filling marital sex is not simply physical unions. Our relations with our spouse is connected to our relationships with God, children and others. Marital couples have better sex when fathers have an active, loving, extensive relationship with their children. Ephesians 5:4 Amplified Bible says, "Fathers, do not irritate and provoke your children to anger [do not exasperate them to resentment], but rear them [tenderly] in the training and discipline and the counsel and admonition of the Lord."

If fathers tell their daughters and sons, they are priceless treasures, but spend little or no time with them learning who they are in detail, then their words are false and will probably inspire anger. Children want fathers to love them in truth and reality. Love takes lots of time and effort. When we become comfortable with the parent-child relationship, then a father may not feel compelled to answer a daughter's questions about dating and/or sex with "Go ask your mother." The same applies to mothers and sons.

When fathers abdicate their parental responsibilities, and mothers absorb them, mothers are subjected to extreme pressure to function outside of the Biblical model for wives. They become like a parent to their husbands who are saying and acting out, "I am not mature. I want someone else to handle my responsibilities."

Immaturity and marriage don't mix well. Genesis 1:24 Amplified Bible says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall become united and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." God designed chronological adults to put some distance between them and their biological or adoptive parents, so that they may form a multifaceted, strong, higher order relationship with their spouse. A spouse who becomes like a parent to another spouse creates a desire in the childlike spouse to separate instead of bond with them.

While a wife may enable her husband to turn her into the father/mother, she resents the husband's behavior. Resentful people reek of anger. Anger can become depression, bitterness, meanness or something else that acts like Teflon preventing intimacy.

While often it is the father who may pass off his parental responsibilities to the mother, the mother may do the same thing. Sin is no respecter of persons.

Childlike husbands need to learn to switch from demanding infants who want their spouses to take care of their needs to adult husbands able to give themselves up for the needs of their wives and children. 1 Corinthians 13:5 Amplified Bible says about love, "It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]."

Childlike husbands do not consider that their wives have needs separate from their husbands' needs. Some of the needs of wives are for their husbands to love them and to love their children. When a husband has an active and expansive relationship with his children, he frees up his wife's time and her heart to pursue a job, business, ministry, a hobby, a friendship or something else. This type of husband helps his wife live in balance. Balanced people are often happy people. Happy people are often eager for marital sex. They are more willing to wake their husbands up with a kiss, a smile, foreplay and a sexual workout. My Twitter friend Nancy Wasson says, "When you choose to live a marriage of LOVE, your spouse changes before your eyes."

Please chat with me via my Twitter name "Michelelove30," Google+ and/or leave an on-line comment.
 
Parental wives need to learn to respect their husbands, and stop treating them like children incapable of fathering their children. Parental wives will need to learn how to encourage their childlike husbands to accept his parental responsibilities and to adapt to his parental style which may be very different from hers. She will need to learn to stop covering his parental mistakes and to allow him to reap the consequences of his choices. For example, if the husband feeds his children candy for Saturday breakfast, then he needs to spend the day caring for sugar-crazed children. Submission to a spouse is not about enabling evil but empowering good behavior. Ephesians 5:22 Amplified Bible says, "Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord." God is good and is molding His people into a clearer reflection of His goodness.

A spouse who insists to remain a childlike husband is not capable of being a Biblical husband. While God asks us to be forgiving, believing, trusting and welcoming to people like children, He calls His mature people to live and to share the full counsel of His Word. Ephesians 5:25-26 Amplified Bible says, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her,  So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word." If a husband insists to be childlike, refusing to mature in Biblical principles, then he will not be able to sanctify, cleanse and wash his wife in the Word because the Word is not operating in his life at a high level.

A husband who is in authority is also living in his responsibilities. Jesus Christ had authority because he lived in Biblical principles. Jesus Christ was not irresponsible or accepting of responsibilities that were not His own.

Conversely, a parental wife has taken over her husband's parental responsibilities, so that her husband is no longer in authority in an area God designed him to be in authority. The parental spouse has become the head of the house. A parental wife like a childlike husband is not living in Biblical principles.

Because in America we tend to associate authority with tyranny, we may miss the Biblical truth that authority is service as it is applied to family relations. A great marriage involves both husbands and wives serving each other enthusiastically and expansively. Luke 22:24-26 Amplified Bible says, "Now an eager contention arose among them [as to] which of them was considered and reputed to be the greatest. But Jesus said to them, The kings of the Gentiles are deified by them and exercise lordship [ruling as emperor-gods] over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors and well-doers. But this is not to be so with you; on the contrary, let him who is the greatest among you become like the youngest, and him who is the chief and leader like one who serves."

Continuing to live as a childlike husband and a parental wife will systematically cause spouses to act like Teflon to each other preventing intimacy, love and sublime sex from sticking to their relationship.