Am I Qualified to Give Marriage Advice?

Since I started Love Beyond The Sea on Valentine’s Day in 2018, now and then I have gotten the comment generally saying that since I have not been married for very long, that I have absolutely no business whatsoever dispensing any marriage advice to anyone! How dare I! They say I have little experience with women and marriage.

Instead of retorting with “hey buddy, why don’t you mind your own business, who cares what you think?”, I think it is a reasonable comment which is why I want to address it here today. That kind of comment doesn’t bother me, it’s just that if someone actually believes that I should remain silent on women and marriage, that would bother me and I will explain why.

Subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea. Over here, I try to share whatever I can from my own marriage that I believe can help men get and stay married. I don’t think many people at all, men or women, can handle being single. It’s just too tough of a lifestyle. It certainly wasn’t for me so I kept grinding looking for a wife, and finally found one in 2015 when I was the ripe old age of 53. I will link a playlist called Singleness that has 38 videos in it so you can learn about how I viewed being single for a protracted time. Can a long period of unwanted singleness help someone become a good husband?

Life experience-I wasn’t born yesterday. While I may have been “in the wilderness” for 30 years during the prime of my life-get ready for this-from 24 to 53, that doesn’t mean I didn’t soak up some knowledge that would help me be married. Oh, yes, I was still single from birth to 24 but I wasn’t looking for a wife during that time, but I had an epiphany at 24 that I better get looking for a wife. 30 years, later, God gave me one. Do you want to wait that long? They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but this kind of wait can ruin your life.

Since I didn’t expect to be alone that long, I started learning from every marriage resource I could get my hands on, such as books, tapes, and videos, marriage sermons, conversations. I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs while my youth was slowly vanishing. I was learning and I share that with my subscribers. Where is it written that someone has to have such and such amount of experience with women and marriage before they can give advice? I’ve been happily married for 6 years, do I have to be married for 20 years before I can talk about what works? Why do I think what I say has merit?

Biblical authority-2 Timothy 3:16 says All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That includes the very important institution of marriage, which God created for the good of mankind. The Bible is for instruction. It describes how to have eternal life and how to be a godly husband. That is the basis for what I say here on Love Beyond The Sea. It isn’t my opinion or experiences that are inspired, I merely try to relay what I can apply from the Word of God from my marriage to viewers of this channel.

This is why I can speak so dogmatically and why some people are turned off by it. I believe I am using the ultimate source of truth of all matters so I don’t want to regard anything else, certainly not my own opinion. I screwed up once, so I knew my way didn’t work. I would be ashamed to tell you my wisdom, but I am not ashamed to tell you God’s wisdom about marriage. I owe that to you. Check out other channels. Where do they get their confidence, where do they get their justification to say what is the way to go about anything? Opinions are a dime a dozen.

Lack of marital experience not needed-The fact that I got married in less than eight weeks to a younger woman from another country nearly 10,000 miles away, and brought her here to America and have been married for over six years, ought to count for something. It is designed to give optimism to other men who are not married but who want to be. Is YouTube crowded with people like that who want to encourage you to get married? Are there people in your life who are urging you to get married? Do you think people don’t even care? Well, I do. There are plenty of MGTOW channels to let you know all women are like that, you can’t trust anyone, the system is rigged against you, don’t get married. Do you want to listen to that?

Single people can know about marriage-Since I was single for 53 years, is that too much time alone to be able to talk about marriage? Timothy was a single pastor in the Bible and he was young, something almost unheard of today. Some might try to make the claim that all pastors need to be married because most of their church or congregation is or will be married (I hope so). That didn’t prevent the apostle Paul who may have been widowed but was for sure not married, from helping the young single man Timothy know how to guide or advise people to know how to act in marriage.

As a pastor, Timothy, who may have been in his 20s, could teach people about marriage without being married himself, because he deferred to the Bible for his wisdom, just like I do. Much of what I say about marriage was written by Paul and inspired by the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians.

The point being that this single man was not teaching from his vast experience of being married, he was teaching based on the word of God. On Love Beyond The Sea, I am using the very same source. It isn’t my opinion that matters, it is what the wisdom of God teaches us. For instance, when the Bible tells us exactly what love is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, then I can say the same thing to you. I can tell you that as a husband, this is how you are to love your wife. This is the best way for you to treat her and the best way for her to want to respond to you in kind. Moreover, this is how God loves us.

People say I shouldn’t have married a much younger woman, it will end in disaster.
People say I shouldn’t have gotten married so quickly, it will end in disaster.
People say I shouldn’t have brought her to America, it will end in disaster.
People say I shouldn’t be giving anyone marriage advice, I just haven’t had enough experience with marriage or women to give marriage advice. We have been married for over six years. Almost all of our relationship has been as a married couple.

So who are we supposed to learn from? How many people out there are willing to talk to people about marriage? Do you want to lean on advice from someone who is living with someone outside of the commitment of marriage? It isn’t hard to live with someone without commitment; you are free to walk away at any time. Would you prefer advice from MGTOWs? From players?

Am I qualified to talk about marriage? Of course, I am. Because I keep my opinion out of it, and defer to the word of God for what works. That is what separates many other channels from Love Beyond The Sea.