Your wife has 10 questions to see if you’re ready for marriage. Do you have the answers?
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I had the pleasure of interviewing your future wife a couple weeks ago in my “Letter From Your Future Wife” article. You guys loved it, and the ladies loved it too. So I went back for round two and got more insights about what your wife is looking for.
Since your wife is smart, she disguised her gems in a series of 10 questions just for you.
They’ll challenge you.
They’ll engage your mind, and they’ll help you to become the best man you can be. Especially #9.
1-Would you be proud to share your thoughts about other women with me?
Our lives are built on our thoughts. So if they are charitable, generous, and respectful, you’ll have the foundation for happy relationships and a good life. If you view women with less dignity and respect than they deserve … your wife will ultimately pay the price.
Just because you admire other women’s beauty doesn’t mean your thoughts are bad. Your wife wants you to see and be moved by the beauty of all women, but where you are moved to is up to you. Will you be the master of sexual desire or will it master you? Your thoughts will determine that.
2-What do you really want to build with me?
Your wife is a human being, which means she is here to create. She isn’t a safeguard from loneliness, and she isn’t a free pass for sex. She wants to build something meaningful with you and add to it for a lifetime. She wants to make a masterpiece out of your love, and have the world be a better place for it. So what are you actually planning to build with her? Will it be something you’re proud to share with your family and future generations? Will it be a work of art? Will it be a source of security and prosperity for those to come?
3-What makes you think you’re ready for me?
What makes you think you have what it takes to grow with someone and love them better for a lifetime? These things are required for a lasting marriage, but they take virtue and commitment. Have you demonstrated a commitment to personal and spiritual growth? Have you learned to love yourself better with each passing year? If not, focus less on looking for the right girl, and more on being the right man.
If you haven’t found your calling yet, look for that now. You are blessed with unique gifts and talents that can be used to build a brighter future for all of us. And when you find your calling, you live an inspired life of serving others. That also happens to be the basis of unconditional love, and the precise road you’ll meet your wife on.
4-Is the respect and honor of women your highest priority?
Do you strive to support the worthiness of all women in all parts of your life? Your wife will be your most precious angel; so will your sweet daughters. And when you look at other women, you are looking at someone else’s wife or daughter—you’re looking at a precious angel.
How you look at them and the way you treat them is how you consent for your own precious angels to be viewed and treated. Will that be with the utmost respect and dignity? Or will it be degrading in any way? Society doesn’t expect you to respect women with your thoughts, but your wife and children depend on it for their happiness. They depend on you.
5-Will I grow old with a fit and happy man, or will I have to watch you fall apart?
If you plan on doing the family thing right, you’re going to have lots of people depending on you for as long as you live. And if you’ve made fitness a lifestyle, you’ll be strong and capable till your dying days. You’ll also be able to please your wife sexually into the golden years, and play with your kids and grandkids till you drop.
That’s the good life, and your fitness is a key part of it. How could you better commit to being a whole and healthy husband and father?
6-Will you be the man to make the right decision even when everyone else says it’s wrong?
Your wife doesn’t need someone who follows the crowd, because the crowd is marching off a cliff. So do you have the courage to do what’s right no matter the consequence? Do you have the conviction to follow your heart and mind no matter the popular opinion? Or are you the guy who just follows the crowd?
7-Are your friends helping or hurting our marriage?
Since friendship is what marriage is based on, friendship is what supports it. Because studies show 75% higher divorce rates in couple’s whose friends divorce, this fact is not hypothetical: your marriage depends on your friendships.
So what kind of friends are you bonded with? What kind of thoughts and behaviors are they sharing with you? Are they helping you to be a stronger and more courageous husband, or do they encourage you to settle? Do they challenge you to think for yourself and live to higher standards, or are they selfish and comfortable? If you have solid friendships with respectful and virtuous men, your wife will be supported all the more, and your life will be richer. So find and be a better friend.
8-Do you have any ties with your exes?
Your wife needs you. Not 90 or 99 percent, but all of you. One thing that will keep you from giving your full commitment to marriage is a lingering attachment to other women. Whether the bonds are sexual, emotional, or otherwise, attachments to exes will restrict your ability to give all of yourself freely to your wife. And without a full gift of your life, jealousy and invulnerability will work to destroy a relationship.
So do you have any connection to your former girlfriends? Can you think of them without wistfully reminiscing, or having your eyes glaze over? If the relationship failed, it wasn’t worth hanging on to. But physical attachments have a funny way of making relationships look way better than they actually were.
If you aren’t 100% over your exes and totally free from attachment, make a mindful practice to become free. Dissolve the physical and emotional bonds in any way possible. This requires reflection, forgiveness and being realistic. You can’t expect to keep in touch with a sexual ex and not rekindle old feelings at some time or other.
9-Do you know what love is? Seriously, do you know what love is?
Our most important life decisions are love-driven, but most people don’t have any concept of what love actually is. Do you know how precious it is? Do you know how worthy it is to make sacrifices for? Do you know how rich it will make your life? Do you know how to practice love unconditionally?
If you don’t know these things, you won’t be able to master your life or relationships; there will be a blind spot that wrecks your progress. So if you want to master love and share it with your spouse for a lifetime, learn more about it. Become a student of love. Read my free e-book to get started.
10-What have you sacrificed to make our marriage special?
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the good things in life don’t come easy. But when it comes to romance, we have selective memory. Could it be that life and work are so stressful that we look for an escape in romance? With how sex has become a commodity, and how casual dating is, it certainly seems so.
But love in marriage isn’t an escape; it’s the journey and challenge of a lifetime. And just like you have to sacrifice to grow in strength or education, the same is required for love. So what sacrifices have you made for lasting love with your precious angel?
A couple of sacrifices I happily made were giving up porn and casual relationships. Now I’m able to look at women without thinking of what I can take, but what I have to share and how I can grow through the inspiration of their beauty. And I’m closer to my future wife, my friends, and my family.
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Conclusion
Your wife needs a man who makes love his masterpiece. And you need a woman with the same approach. What would prevent you from being that man and marrying that woman? If you ask the right questions and have the courage to challenge yourself, the answer is nothing.
What question do you want to ask your future wife? Put it in the comments section below and, if it’s good enough, I’ll feature it in next week’s article!
Originally published at www.dowlingwriter.com
Photo—Guilherme Yagui/Flickr
Some pretty good stuff here, Dan, but number 4? Why the heck would that even be on the list. The other nine are all pretty good, but 4 is not even on my radar, let alone my highest priority. I judge women as I judge men, individually. If I see a group being cheated because they are a member of a group, I’ll be there…but I no more internalize the happiness of women then I do gays, accountants, or NFL linebackers. I honestly believe that a man with that intent, out dating, is setting himself up to be used and… Read more »
That Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote is quite beautiful. Thanks for sharing Anthony – yes there are women ‘out there’ that are not unicorns and have no problem with their SO looking at or chatting with a very beautiful women. We may even have a little chuckle about how he blushes & fumbles his words (& we may even walk away from that conversation in the hopes of making him more at ease). We are capable of seeing and even being affected by extreme beauty ourselves & totally understand it in others. I have known other women like that too. I… Read more »
Thanks for that Elle. Alas (but not really, I’m dealing), I’m in a long term relationship (10 years now!) that I have no intention of ever leaving, but jealousy is an issue. It’s been an issue in all (ok, both) of the relationships I’ve been in. It’s a hard thing to deal with, because I have so outrageously little relationship experience for such an old man. It’s hard to refute the regrets I have about certain things to do with the first few decades of my life, and everything I missed. The ultimate irony is that, far from wishing I’d… Read more »
Oh you of hardened hearts and little faith. #4 obviously challenges you the most. Maybe think about it some more with an open heart. Thank you so much for your comment and readership. DD
Oh you of hardened hearts and little faith. #4 obviously challenges you the most. That’s kind of arrogant. Many of us do honour and respect the women in our lives. What we don’t do is put them on pedestals and treat them as demi-goddesses. I love my girlfriend but I near don’t deify her as a “precious angel”. She’s a capable woman and a wonderful companion, but a snowflake or a princess? No thanks, that way lies deference and grovelling gratitude that leads to taking away women’s agency and excusing their bad behaviour. If that’s the way you want to… Read more »
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Frank. Heck, I could be arrogant– thanks for mentioning it! If arrogance makes for another top ranked article on the GMP, sign me up for more please.
Unfortunately I don’t know enough about you to judge your words. But doubtless, my commentary on them would have no impact on you.
Again, thank you for time. And for reminding me how awesome it is to be me.
Pridefully,
Dan
That’s right. responding with insults instead of addressing the very possibility that you could be wrong, or that your advice could be damaging to men who don’t know any better, ensures we have “The Conversation That Nobody Else Is Having.”
I’ll be sure to avoid your articles in future if all you can do is respond with childish insults.
Thank you for your continued involvement in the conversation!
I do appreciate your time.
Dan
Is it just me, or does the woman in the picture seem, I don’t know,drunk, or stoned?
So I went back for round two and got more insights about what your wife is looking for.”
Is there really any news here? It seems to be pretty much the same content as the last one, just wrapped in different ribbons.
It depends on how you look at it! I sincerely thank you for your readership 🙂
Well, thank you for responding 🙂
Thank you Daniel Dowling! Thank you. Thank you! Thank you!
You are so welcome!!! Thanks for reading and enjoying!
I have to say, these questions are somewhat unrealistic. Could we, collectively, as men, ever find a woman who was secure enough to know that we are “moved by the beauty of all women”? Really? If I ever meet that unicorn, I’ll take pictures. Do you have ties with your exes? This knife cuts both ways. I’m friends with one of my exes. We were friends for a decade before we got together, decided to try being in a closer relationship, then broke that part we call “the experiment” off after a few years before we wrecked the friendship, and… Read more »
All good insights, Anthony!
Is it me, or do the questions or the framing of them seem a bit one-sided?
I don’t remember the exact quote or author, but someone wise once said that in a real communion of souls, when in love, two people aren’t looking *at* each other so much as they are both looking in the *same direction*.
Wow! That idea hit me hard enough that I did some googling!
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Original French is “L’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction.”, from page 203 of Terre des Hommes (1939)
Thank you @Mostly_123 for causing me to dig a bit for this. I’ll be doing so follow-up research now, because this quote contains so much wisdom, I need to read it in context.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Little Prince
Must read for any sentient being 🙂
Totally. I’ve read it in the original French, along with English and Spanish translations. I have all three in hardcovers. 😀
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! The concept you’re speaking of is the “transcendental third”, which all of these questions point toward. It depends on how you read the questions of course 🙂