Episode 6: Romance in Your Marriage Part 2 of 4: Romance - Fanning the Flames
/Sam and Erica's Marriage podcast
Romance in Your Marriage Part 2 of 4: Romance - Fanning the Flames
Episode 006
February 11, 2019
Introduction
Welcome
Go ahead and subscribe...it’s free!
Part 2 of our 4 part series on Romance In Your Marriage
Discussion
Fanning the flames
When we notice the fire going out or dying down we we have take action to get those embers going again.
We have to be intentional (my word for 2019) if we want to see change.
The Drift
Life gets in the way
Unintentional
Past hurts and unforgiveness can stop a relationship from growing
We understand that where there is hurt, resentment or unforgiveness that needs to be dealt with. We suggest you get counseling. We know it’s hard to just put a “date-aid” on a old wound and expect everything to be ok. One small “bump” and the pain will come right back. Seek professional help, it’s worth it!!
Work, kids, ministry, family can be a diversion from what’s going on in marriage
Can be a comfort zone
Meeting the needs of my spouse (Questionnaire)
What are my emotional needs?
Be honest when filling out the survey. Your spouse can’t meet those needs if you are not honest with the answers.
What are my spouse’s emotional needs?
Generalizations
Her first need is Affection
Hold her hand
Cuddle for the sake of cuddling.
She’s not clingy she has a need.
She may not even be aware that this is a need until it’s not being met.
When you dated or early in the marriage these things were automatic.
His first need is Sexual Fulfillment
Her second need is Intimate Conversation
She wants your undivided attention.
She needs to know that she’s important to you and what she has to say matters.
His second need is Recreational Companionship
Sam & Erica call it “hanging out”
Meeting these needs make you irresistible to your spouse
Realization on whether I’m meeting those needs or not
Love bank/ Love tank.
When we are meeting the emotional needs of our spouse we are making deposits into his or her account.
When we aren’t meeting those needs just the opposite is happening. We are draining our spouse and they begin to feel unloved and will retaliate in a way that hurts the relationship.
Am I willing to meet those needs?
Meeting those needs has to be intentional
Proverbs 5:18-19 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth. As a living hind and graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; Be exhilarated always with her love.
Ladies, I read in a book that our husbands should be so satisfied that’s it’s like if they were so stuffed with their favorite meal and were offered dessert they would turn it down.
It can even work even if your spouse is unaware
Burning hotter then it has in the past
If you know your spouse’s emotional need / love language you are better equipped to show love to them in a way they need it most.
There are blessings in meeting the needs of my spouse
Builds a deeper level of intimacy
Opens up the possibilities in the relationship
Creates oneness.
ACTION ITEMS
This time we want you to go out on a date. It’s Valentine’s Day this week. Enjoy each other. Try working in meeting the emotional needs of your spouse. Share in the comment section how this is going. We want to hear about it.
Pray for our podcast-we are praying for you.
Don’t forget to subscribe.
Share the podcast with two other people.
RESOURCES
Recreational Enjoyment Inventory from His Needs, Her Needs
Recreational Enjoyment Inventory
His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
His Needs, Her Needs on Amazon
Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs
A Celebration of Sex by Dr. Douglas E. Rosenau
A Celebration of Sex on Amazon
NEXT EPISODE
Next we continue our discussion on Romance In Your Marriage.
Transcript
[00:13] Welcome to Sam and Erica's podcast. Here we will talk about practical ways to have an even better marriage and ways to handle the challenges that are sure to come. Regardless of where you are in your marriage, your age, or how long you have been married, this podcast is for you. We will discuss difficult topics from dealing with past hurts and unforgiveness to making date night spicy. Even if you're single, you probably want a better marriage than the marriages you've seen. Join us weekly as we discuss ways to make marriages better. We invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
[00:59] Welcome to Sam and Erica's Marriage Podcast episode 6. Episode 6. Man, that music is so hot! It is, but can you say that if it's your own music though? I have to because it just does not get old. I love that music. We actually had one of our listeners that said she was listening to that music and it had her dancing in her seat. Yeah, I remember that? It's good. Well, let me get back on track. Oh! Again, welcome to Sam and Erica's Marriage Podcast. We are going to be continuing our series on romance in your marriage. But before we get started, I did want to just ask you, listener, to go ahead and click that subscribe button. We ended our last episode talking a lot about what subscribe meant. It's okay to hit the subscribe button. It doesn't cost you anything. Go ahead and click that button for us.
[01:47] We also had a couple of voicemails that were left and one of them was left from a listener and she suggested that we interview couples on the show. Yeah, so we wanted to let her let you guys know that that is something that we have in the works. We talked about that in the very beginning of Sam and Erica's Marriage Podcast. So we will definitely be doing that , stay tuned. We'll have that coming soon. Absolutely. Absolutely. So again, we're in episode six. We're in episode two of our romance in your marriage series. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how to fan those flames of romance. A lot of times in our marriage those flames that were burning so hot in the beginning, they can fade away. They kind of, yeah, the flames kind of died down a little bit and we're going to be talking today about those flames and we're going to be talking about our ability to kick start those flames. These scripture that we're actually going to come from today, in this section is going to be 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8
[03:00] and it's a scripture that you're probably very familiar with, but we decided that this would fit perfectly in this episode. Love is patient. Love is kind, it does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. I love that. Yeah, it's a very, it's a popular scripture. When you, in the classes that we've had it fits. It fits, I mean it's so perfect. And when you really slow it down and you really look at those pieces, I think you come away with the understanding that God is explaining to us that love isn't so much about the way you feel, but love is what you do. It's actually so beautifully explained in that passage that it's actually a matter of your will, to love is a decision.
[04:12] It's a series of decisions, some choices, some will decision. Right. One of the things that I like about this scripture and, and um, I've done this before is I've literally gone in and replaced the word love with my name. And so it would say Erica is patient, Erica is kind. It really gives me the opportunity to look inside myself and really see if I'm actually showing love to my family members, to my friends or to anyone as I'm, you know, I'm supposed to be showing the love of Christ. And so it really helps me to take a personal inventory of, you know, how I'm doing in this area. It's good exercise. It's good exercise. So in this episode, again, we're going to be talking about those flames that sometimes they can die down. I'm hoping that the person listening to this as an experiencing that, hoping that the flames are burning hot because that's a condition that we can have all the time.
[05:09] But we first want to speak to that listener that may not be in the season where things are burning hot. The flames could be kind of dwindling. And for most of us and "Er" you tell me if I'm wrong, we will have times in our marriage where those flames will start to diminish a little bit. I think you're absolutely right and it's not anything that's done intentionally, uh, life happens. You know, we get married, we have children, we get caught up in our careers. We have, you know, some of us may be taking care of family members and so marriage kind of, unfortunately the flame between the husband and wife, it can kind of, it can kind of get lost. It can kind of die down. But we can, we can get it back with some hard work and some effort. And I don't even know if the work is hard it is effort and we're going
[05:58] to talk about that a lot more in this episode. We kind of used another term for the flame dwindling down, we actually kind of labeled it "the drift" you know, uh, a husband and wife can kind of drift apart. That doesn't take any effort or any work. That's almost like the natural pull of life. It's pulling both people in two different directions. Not, not necessarily bad things, but just one person going to work, the other person going to work or being at home everyday life things. They just kind of get in our way. And I think before we know it, we're in danger of being pulled pretty far apart. And I think that's where that feeling of the drift where we recognize it. I actually, I like that terminology because you know, generally when you think about drift, you're kind of, you know, you're being blown away or you know, just being moved from side to side.
[06:59] And that's generally what happens. We are, you know, life like we said before, life gets in the way or not necessarily gets in the way, but life happens and you know, before we know it, we're in a routine, we're going to work, we're coming home, we're taking care of the kids were paying bills, we're going to bed. And it's the same thing. We talked about this in the episode before about date night. It's real easy to kind of just get caught up in the routine of life. And as crazy as it sounds to say, if we look at different seasons in our lives, some of us may have experienced a time when that drift is comfortable. The drift is like our escape from issues that we might be having in our marriage. So having that space between me and my spouse, maybe like the place, maybe the condition that I want my marriage in because I'm not feeling her. I'm not feeling the love.
[07:59] We talked about, you know, the scripture that's really an action word. Yeah. I'm not feeling the love and it's real. It's like you said, it's real easy and comfortable to just stay in that spot. Yeah. That feeling, the love thing that probably gets a lot of people in trouble going into marriage. Like we have this whole phenomena fallen in love and so then we hit a season in our marriage where some people feel like they're not in love anymore and we build our lives or our perspective of our marriage around this "do I feel like I'm in love?" thing. It's just not the same picture that's painted in scripture. The scripture, you just read Bae, is really about what love is and it doesn't have anything to do with how I feel, you know? I I do know, you know, romantic love is a real thing and we want to feel like we're in love.
[09:06] Gary Chapman in his book, The Five Love Languages, he refers to it as the tingles, right? You know, we want the tingle, the problem is that when we don't feel the tingles anymore, we end up having this kind of uh, an inaccurate perception about what our marriage is. So if I don't feel the tingles for Erica, I say, you know, I just, I guess I just don't love her anymore. And we've heard people say things like that. I'm not in love with her. I'm not in love with him. The feeling, you know, the thrill is gone. But, and we're laughing, but this is real life. This happens before you know it, you know this unfortunately and it's sad to say, but this is how affairs has happen. This is exactly how, you know, the thrill is gone. You know, the flames not burning anymore. So I'm going to look elsewhere.
[10:04] It can happen. I do want to back up though Babe and just say that we understand that there very well could be a listener out there that the drift has happened in their marriage because of some past hurt or unforgiveness. Um, we do want to encourage you, if that is the case in your marriage, to seek professional help. We want you to get some kind of counseling. We know that, you know, we did all that talking last week or last episode about the date night. We know that the "date aid" is not going to heal your hurt or pain. So we definitely encourage you to get some professional help. Seek some counseling before it's too late. It's definitely worth it. Absolutely. Absolutely. We are strong proponents of counseling. We are! We do advise Christians, we advise everyone to get Christian counseling and you know, if you're getting Christian counseling because there'll be three things, there'll be prayer, there'll be scripture, the Bible and there will also be discussion of sin. If you having counseling and those three things, one of those three things are missing
[11:06] you probably want to seek a different counselor. So that feeling of falling in love, uh, we don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it, but I do want to let people know that as exciting as that time is in the beginning of your relationship, you can have that feeling again, that feeling is 100% within your control. And we're going to talk about a couple of steps, a few, I'm going to say a couple because it's about three maybe four steps that you can take to rekindle your flames to get that feeling to, to get the tingles again for your spouse. Erica mentioned a very important point that when that feeling is not there between you and your spouse, it's very easy for someone else to spark that little feeling. And that's exactly how affairs start. So when we talk about that feeling, what really ignites that feeling is when your emotional needs are met, that's really what makes you feel so in love with that other person.
[12:23] It's not that something magnetic happens between the two of you. It's that during that courtship period or during that season when things are good, you feel like you're vibing. That vibe is actually the two of you are meeting each other's emotional needs. The thing about that season though or the period of time when you're dating is that you really don't even know that these are my emotional needs that are being met. You know, we're talking, we're spending time together, we're not going to talk, you know, the physical attractiveness is there and we're not going to talk about sexual fulfillment because that's when you're married. You know that's for married folk, but you don't really, like I said, you don't even know that your emotional needs are being met. That's why everything is going great in the relationship, you land in marriage and then you get married and again, life happens and you wake up and you go, wait a minute, something's going on here.
[13:26] He's not meeting that need or she's not meeting that need and thus the drift. When we and so we're talking about emotional needs. One of the things that we want to talk about and we're going to ask that you check out is an emotional needs questionnaire. It, and the way this questionnaire works is it allows each of you to identify what your emotional needs are. Once you know what your emotional needs are and what your spouse's emotional needs are, it puts you in a position where you know a) how to meet your spouse's emotional needs. How to make your spouse feel loved. How to make your spouse feel fulfilled, but you also know yourself so you can know what's out of whack, what are you missing, what area is causing this disconnect or this frustration? So we actually found this questionnaire in the His Needs, Her Needs book.
[14:35] So both the questionnaire and a link to the book or in our show notes, but we believe that identifying what your emotional needs are, that's the beginning of this thing. And emotional needs sounds kind of like a clinical term or something technical, but it's really not. When we talk about emotional needs, we're talking about things like Erica described in the dating experience. You know when you're dating, you tend to spend a lot of time talking. Well, one of the primary emotional needs for people is intimate conversation. So when a person who has that need has someone they're in a relationship with talking to them, hearing them talk, hanging on every word they're making, they're having that need met in a really, really important way and that connects them to the person that's meeting the needs. Right!
[15:32] When you are taking the survey I want to encourage you, and I'm only speaking from personal experience, be honest. When you take the survey because it's important that your spouse, you guys are going to change exchange these surveys so your spouse really needs to see what is going on in your heart so that they are better equipped to meet your emotional needs.
[15:54] Another thing about this whole emotional need thing, and this is discussed not only in His Needs Her Needs, but it's also in The Five Love Languages. A lot of our frustration in our relationship, especially when we're trying to rekindle that spark. One spouse may be putting in a lot of work, making a real effort to connect or to meet their spouse's emotional needs, but oftentimes we reach out in the way that we're designed. So we're trying really, really hard. But as Gary Chapman would put it, we're not speaking our spouse's language, we're speaking our language to our spouse. So it's really not doing anything for our spouse and we're working really hard and that just gets us more and more frustrated. What identifying your emotional needs as well as your spouse's emotional needs will help you to be more efficient, more effective in your efforts. You'll know exactly what to do to get your spouses flames burning again. Right!
[17:06] There is probably, well, I don't know, but I'm going to say that there is probably nothing more frustrating than when you're trying to speak to someone in a language that they absolutely don't understand. That's right. You know, you're, our native tongue is English and so for us to go somewhere else, say France or Spain and try to speak English and they're speaking Spanish, we are having a horrible disconnect. Nothing. We are the translation is just not happening. That's the same thing with meeting the emotional needs or speaking the love language of your spouse. You're talking and they are not receiving. And it's frustrating for both people because the, you know, the receiver is going, why doesn't he understand? Why doesn't she understand? And then the giver is going, why doesn't she understand? Why doesn't he understand? And it's, it's just not, the connection is just not being made in. That's frustrating and then that again causes the drift.
[18:02] So just some examples of emotional needs because you haven't seen the survey yet. You haven't seen the questionnaire yet. But in the book, His Needs, Her Needs they make a couple generalizations about some emotional needs. They talk about, uh, one of a man's first emotional needs is sexual fulfillment. They say that the sexual experience for the man is not just about the sex act, but it's also, it also reassures him in that his wife is attracted to him, that she sees him as desirable. That this thing though it, there is a very strong physical need, there is also the psychological things that, um, make this an emotional need more than just something that's just biological.
[18:59] One of the needs that he talks about for women is a woman's need for affection. She has a desire to just be held to be cuddled. And for a guy, he might think, oh, she's being a little clingy, I just need my personal space but you know, this is something that she really needs. And she may not even realize that this is an emotional need of hers until it's actually not being met. When you guys were dating, you know, you did the hold hands, you did the cuddle, you did all those things that did not lead to sex because that's the other thing, you know, it's the, the physical closeness outside of sex. And so, you know, when you were dating it worked fine. You get married, life happens and now that physical need or emotional need for affection is not being met.
[19:48] Yeah. Not In the same way. Right. It's really easy not to meet that need. Uh, another one that they talk about being a man's, they actually say this is, again, this is just a generalization, but they categorize it as most commonly. The second most important emotional need for a man is recreational companionship and recreational companionship is just doing the things that you really like with the person that you really like the most. Uh, in His Needs Her Needs they describe that as something that makes deposit into a man's love bank. That every time I get to watch football with Erica, now when I associate that thing I like doing with the person that I love, it makes me feel better about Erica because that's something that we do together. So I connect those two things and the authors of His Needs Her Needs, they believe that that is an essential piece in the emotional setup of most men.
[21:02] We have actually, so in Love and Respect, it's called shoulder to shoulder and His Needs Her Needs William Harley refers to it as recreational companionship. We just call it hanging out. Sam needs to hang out with his girl. Yeah, that's right. It's just hanging out and we actually have a good time. You know, we didn't coin it as recreational companionship, but you know, we decided, look, let's start doing some things together. We go to the range. I love going to the range. We're not talking about the driving rain. No, I love going to the firing range that just gets my juices flowing. But we really, we really have a good time together when we do that.
[21:47] Yeah. And another thing about, uh, recreational companionship is it allows you guys to explore new things together. You know, you broaden the number of activities, not only that you like, but that you guys like doing together. It'll often introduce you to some things that you've never done or that you haven't done in a long, long time. And then you find out how much you guys enjoy being together around that event or around that activity. And it really does give you a different depth in your relationship.
[22:25] The second need that he says for women is the need for intimate conversation. Now this actually really hit home for me because that is like one of my emotional needs. I really love for Sam to talk to me. I just want to talk to me, he's nodding his head. She loves it when I talk to her. I just want him to talk to me? And you know, that's really what it is guys. We just want your undivided attention just for a little while. We want to and that actually makes us feel loved. We want to know that you know, that you're into us or we want to know that what we're saying is important to you. Uh, we want to feel like we're valuable to you. And so that is a need of ours. And again, when we were dating, this is something that happened automatically. We talked about this in the beginning. It was automatic. We stayed on the phone for hours at a time and now there is silence
[23:23] We're just handing off the kid, the only time we see each other, the only time I'm talking to you is when I need you to do something. The only time you're talking to me is when you're conveying some information, you know, and that's just not meeting those needs. And when those needs go unmet, it really does cause that disconnect, that drift. But if we began to meet those needs, this thing is so, so effective, it's almost like cheating. Just like the relationship cheat code. If you want to make yourself irresistible to your spouse, start meeting their emotional needs,
[24:08] Start meeting those needs. One of the things about, you know, the intimate conversation is guys, yeah if the only time you talk to her is during halftime or you know, when you just don't have anything else to do. And she's your, you know, your couple of minutes before you go to bed. Yeah. I don't think that that need for sexual fulfillment is going to be met any time soon, definitely not as often as you think. Um, so you know, there is really a blessing in, in meeting the emotional needs of our spouse.
[24:39] That is, it's a funny thing, but it really does make a good point. When we meet at the emotional needs of our spouse, often times they reciprocate without even knowing. It's not their plan, but those things make our spouse feel so good. Erica said that it blesses them. It blesses our spouse in a way where they reach out to us in return in ways that they know make us feel good. That's why date nights generally end in a sexual encounter. Because you've spent this recreational companionship time together, you spent time in intimate conversation. You've probably shared some affection, like you guys are meeting each other's emotional needs without thinking about it. When you take the time to spend one on one time doing something together sex is all most the natural progression of things. You know, we talk about, uh, are you willing to meet your spouse's emotional needs? Like for a lot of guys, having a wife next to him, watching the browns on a Sunday have sex at halftime that's like a date I'll never forget it. It's like all needs met. I am good. You'd probably end up with a lot of discussion, a lot of intimate conversation after a, after a Saturday, a Sunday afternoon like that, you probably end up with a little intimate conversation. Affection would probably be flowing, that's just my guess. I'm pretty sure.
[26:34] I'm pretty sure you know ladies, I have to say I've been married almost 29 years and probably about 10-15 years in, I decided let's figure out or let's try to see what's going on with this football thing. And so I just got a blanket on Sunday. I get a blanket, I get a pillow and I lay right there on the couch and I go to sleep. I'm close to Sam, he can reach out, I'm right there, lay down on his lap. We go to sleep and that's our Sunday. That's, that's us having our recreational companionship. And you know, I'm not asking a hundred questions throughout the game.
[27:13] No. Because she knows. I do know football. She's had a lot of practice. She knows the game,
[27:18] but that, that's our time. Yeah. I've learned to be okay with football on Sunday.
[27:23] So when we, when we're willing to meet, when we're willing to be deliberate, we're willing to take the steps to meet our spouse's emotional needs. I think that puts us in a position that, that God would want us to be in. That we ought to be serving our spouse anyway and this is a way that we serve our spouse. If I could do something like just taking a moment, a few moments to talk to my wife and I knew that this would register as, this would be a huge deposit into her, then why wouldn't I want to do that? Something so small if it could make a difference, if it could change her countenance, if she could, if this could make her day by me just doing something so small, why wouldn't I want to do that?
[28:18] And I, I agree Babe. It's, you know, it seems like it's it seems like a no brainer. Like, you know, absolutely. Why wouldn't I want to do that? I think we may have talked about this earlier. We have to make a choice. You know, we have to decide, wait a minute, I need to start treating my husband as the gift that God has given to me. You know, I need to start putting more effort into rekindling the flames of this relationship. I need to start paying more attention to my spouse and even, you know, picking up on hints related to those emotional needs. Um, so I, yeah, it seems like it's a no brainer, but it really takes, we talked about not hard work, like you said earlier, but some effort and the decision to meet those needs. One of these scriptures that I came across while we were preparing for this is Proverbs 5: 18-19 and it says, "let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth as a loving hind and a graceful doe.
[29:26] Let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be exhilarated always with her love". Ladies, I have to say that I read this in a book about, um, the name of the book is called The Excellent Wife. It's probably about five or 10 years ago when I read this in the book and it was talking about sex. And so the premise behind the story in the book was the author is saying that our husbands should be so full from sexual fulfillment that you connect to the fact that he's had his share of his favorite meal and he is just so full that he is saying no to dessert. When I read that first, I thought, oh, that's a lot. But then I thought I really had some time to settle and I thought, how blessed would my husband be, how beautiful would our marriage be if his need was being met that way? So let's kind of think about that. You know, I know that we have children, we have work, we have housework, we have grocery store, we have all those things, all those responsibilities. But let's just see if that's our husbands, one of our husbands emotional needs let's just see if we can put some effort into fulfilling that need for him this week.
[30:49] Man, that's a beautiful picture and it, and it does apply to every emotional need. If whatever the emotional need is, if we could feel it to the degree where if it were a meal, they wouldn't be able to take another bite. I believe that that would be exactly the way we should be approaching those, meeting those needs for our spouse. This is, and this is thing I'm telling you, this thing works. It's so crazy how well this works that even if you're one of the people that are listening to this podcast and your spouse isn't, I guarantee you if you take these few steps, you take that survey, you kind of look as you're taking a survey, you may have some indication as to where your spouse may be and you won't be 100% accurate, but if you do your best and you make an effort to try to meet some of those needs that you believe to be your spouse's emotional need, you will see it change your spouse's view of you.
[31:51] You will spark flames in your relationship and your spouse doesn't, know anything about right, right it you will become irresistible to your spouse. They won't even know why they are digging you like it. It will mess them up. Right? They, that's the way this works. When you are full, there is an overflow there. There will be this, this natural gravitation, this natural pull to to reach back to reciprocate it. It just happens. It is. It's almost like I said like it's almost like cheating. It's like a life hack. It is really crazy now, and this is for
[32:40] not just for those people, but for anybody. No matter where you are in your marriage. If you've had, if you're in a great season, more emphasis on this, you can make the flame burned that much hotter. No matter where you are in your marriage, you can use a little more heat. Everybody wants to feel like they're on fire, on fire. Everybody wants to tingle, right? Everybody wants that "Oh my gosh, I'm in love feeling" all the time. And we can have more of that. The gist of this is that, you know, when you know your spouse's emotional need or you know your spouse's love language, you are better equipped to show them in a way that they need it most. You're able to show them in a way, in a language that they speak. Um, and like Sam said, you know, you can do this and your spouse not even know or if not even participated or taken the survey, you can just start showing him or showing her affection and you can start, you know, having those intimate conversations, you can start doing or participating in the recreational companionship and the sexual fulfillment, sexual fulfillment.
[33:49] And that can imagine that that's the guy's number one. Imagine that. I didn't say that was my number one. No, I said the guys, you know, it is sad to say it was my number one. It's the guy's number one according to the author of the book, according to the author who wrote the book, to the author. But you know, when you start, you can actually feel the flame. You can feel the fire's burning, you know, he becomes a little bit more attractive. She becomes a little bit more attractive. And before you know it, the tingles, you're starting to feel something, something that you haven't felt in years. You starting to feel it and you're not 100% sure where it's coming from. It's coming because you guys are meeting each other's emotional needs. Meeting those needs really does build
[34:37] a different level of intimacy that there's a different depth of this, this bond when it's coming out of having a healthy emotional state with your spouse, like when your spouse is, the person is meeting all of these needs for you. You really do just, it does give you a, a different level of openness, a stronger connection. And Erica mentioned at the very beginning of the podcast, it almost affair proofs your relationship because nobody else is meeting those needs. If your emotional need is intimate conversation, and I'm not talking to you at all, it's crazy how somebody else on the job starts talking to you and you start to kind of feel a pull toward them. It's not because sometimes they're a downgrade. You would never talk to that dude, but he's pushing that button, he's meeting your emotional needs and your spouse is not meeting it. So it's really easy for you to start gravitating toward this person at your job and you don't even know why. The person's not attractive, right? It's because they're meeting that emotional needs. So when we s as husband and wife, it's our responsibility to make sure that we're the person meeting our spouse's emotional need.
[36:08] That is absolutely right. That is spot on. It's really, it's very easy to kind of, here we go with that word again, drifts. You know, you go to work, you have the conversation before you know it, you're out to lunch. Before you know it. Oh my goodness, what has happened? What has happened with my coworker, right. With my coworker. And it's only because he's having intimate conversations with me. He wants to know what's going on. He's interested in what's going on. So it, it is so easy and the same thing, another need that the guys have ladies is physical attractiveness. You know, look, that's my husband's number two. Yes, I need to get it together. I need to keep it tight and right. I mean, because you know, that's real. I need to get it together. And when I'm off my game, I need to look in the mirror and go, wait a minute, my husband, look, it's gotta be right. So anyway, we need to take that off. if you want
[37:09] no, that's good. I like that. I like that. So we know that Valentine's Day is right around the corner. Right around the corner. We're going to ask that this time you guys go out on a date and that you enjoy each other. You try working on meeting those emotional needs of your spouse.
[37:28] We also want you guys to share in our comment section. You can give us a voicemail, you can drop a comment on whatever platform you're listening to the podcast and give us some, you know, let us know how this date night thing is going. We want to know the good, the bad. If it's working great. If it's not, try it again and let us and let us know.
[37:47] Maybe there some things that we can, maybe we can give you a little insight, right, right.
[37:52] You know, try the uh, date night in a box.com. You can try that. Or, you know, just go to dinner, go to movies, whatever you want. We just want to hear how it's going because we know that it's real. Date night is exciting for us. If you couldn't tell when we did the last episode, it's really exciting. This whole romance thing, it's got our fires burning. So we just want to know what's going on with you guys. Yes.
[38:14] And we also want you to continue to pray for us and continue to pray for our podcast. We love doing this. Uh, but we really understand from a spiritual standpoint that you know, the enemy doesn't want stronger marriages. So, uh, we just ask that you continue to pray with us and pray for this podcast. Pray for the podcast, pray for Sam and Erica. That's right. First, pray for Sam and Erica first. Yeah. And hit that subscribe button. We want to ask that you actually hit that button. That way you'll automatically get the next episodes. Lastly, we asked it, you share, if you're liking the podcast. If you think it's cool. Uh, that you share it with two people that you just open up your text message app and you text them, Hey, I just found this podcast, you might enjoy it. You give that little semi colon and then you type in seasonsministries.org/podcast and you hit send. Thank you again for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you join us again next time. God bless. God bless.