Real Life Marriage: Pursuing My Husband

I've been realizing something lately. I have as much responsibility to pursue my husband as he does to pursue me. Yes, I still believe in traditional complementarian gender roles. Yes, I still believe that the man should make the marriage proposal. (He does, after all, bear responsibility for the family according to God's design.) As a wife, though, part of my job as "support staff" for my husband is loving him well. Loving him well requires some pursuit.

What got me thinking along these lines? Well, a friend gifted me the Wife in Pursuit book earlier this year, and man, did it rock my world! The author, Selena Frederick, writes in that book about the wife's responsibility to initiate in areas such as words of affirmation, quality time, etc. Before God, the wife has the responsibility to add positivity to the marriage, to show love, to prioritize. These things have nothing to do with gender roles.

After one particular challenge in the book and a season of limited time with my husband, I realized something else. Sometimes my pursuit of my husband means making myself very available. I am a doer and can make myself constantly busy. My husband values me enough to not want to interrupt me, which often results in us having little quality time together. Yes, I think to myself that he could ask for time at any time, but his asking is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to take care of my responsibility. And that sometimes means pursuing my husband by literally sitting on the couch asking my husband what he wants to do, and then waiting until he decides something. This is hard for me to do and requires patience, something that's hard for me to practice. My husband is important to me, though, and when I wait on him, I show him that I value him. That is pursuit.

Marriage is not a tit-for-tat, quid-pro-quo relationship, but ironically, when I pursue my husband, it generally results in what I want and crave: more quality time and more of his attention. I guess in pursuing my husband, I show that I value these things more than I value my busyness, and I thereby encourage more of them.

Married life is not always easy. Pursuit isn't easy. Being selfless isn't easy. But it's all necessary. The hard is necessary if I want my marriage to be better. And I do. The pursuit of a better marriage is not only about me or my husband, either. It's about God's glory, and pursuit of that is a lifelong goal!