For those of you who have not had as much experience in dating as you’d like but still want to get married, I hope this video will encourage you. Subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea, a channel about finding and experiencing marital love. See the description box for my Word Press blog and the Community Message forums. Since my Filipina wife and I got married swiftly, in only 54 days, you know as well as I do that there was a lot that we didn’t know about each other. I don’t believe we got married hastily or haphazardly, we were two adults who made a decision, a big one, to trust God it would work out, relying on His help. We each had needs and we were willing to meet each other’s needs. We did not shut our minds off in making this big decision. Subscribe to this channel; I want to help men see the value in marrying a Filipina or any woman and help them from my own experience to have a lasting marriage with them.
I have seen people say it should take so many years or so much time to date someone in order to know enough about them. I understand where they are coming from, I might be able to debate their position. On the other hand, I admit to saying one time that if you don’t know within three weeks someone is a good marriage candidate then you are asking the wrong questions.
Sounds presumptuous, preposterous, short-sighted, maybe dim-witted I suppose. Although this video isn’t about getting married quickly per se, I should expound a little bit on the three-week statement, even though this video is focusing on the importance of knowing about marriage, which is even more important than knowing everything about your wife. Some things you need to know right away, some things can wait.
I believed that I could find out what I needed to know in three weeks of concentrated effort to find out what I needed to know. I wasn’t expressing the idea that you could hang out with each other watching television or hanging out with friends and discover your compatibility. This also assumes a strong desire to get married on the part of the woman. Frankly, that part I found elusive. I want to clarify that, and in that context the statement stands, about three weeks being enough to know if there is potential there. I am sure that many will still think it is absurd.
In those hypothetical three weeks I thought if I could find a Christian woman, and talk about what I considered the key elements of marriage, she shouldn’t have much to disagree with and it would come down to her willingness and comfort level to trust we could work out a good marriage. True, we would need to have some kind of spark or chemistry and if that wouldn’t be there then likely I would have moved on to the next prospect. If we were just staring at each other a lot, then that would indicate a likely compatibility issue, or if her English wasn’t real good.
So, in that situation I knew what I needed, would discover that by asking questions, and hopefully she believed the same way and wanted to get married as badly as I did. I am not suggesting this is the answer for everyone.
It will take the rest of my life to know my Filipina wife. Many things get revealed early on and then it tapers as the years go by. Only by actually being married will a man and woman know each other as fully as possibly. If your spouse chooses to hide something from you then you won’t know it, you can only know what you reveal to each other, but I would hope that in time there would be no secrets. I don’t believe you have to know “everything “about the woman you are interested in. You have the rest of your married life for that. For me, them being a Christian was the only deal breaker, the only must have. Beyond that it came down to whether or not we could trust each other.
If you’ve seen many of my videos you remember that I was alone for gulp, 30 years without even a girlfriend. When I called the Guinness Book of World Records and told them about it, they hung up on me. They laughed and said they didn’t believe me. I probably wondered how I was supposed to become a good husband without even having a girlfriend. I knew I couldn’t control the timing of getting married but I was able to spend as much time as I wanted to learn about marriage, which is exactly what I did. I was not going to give up the hope of getting married, and I wanted to be a good leader so I spent much of those years learning as much as I could.
There are a handful of things to know that do as much as possible to help the marriage to succeed. Filipinas seem relatively easy to get along with, nevertheless, marriage to anyone needs certain things to happen and here are some of the more important ones.
Know your role-Each couple will need to figure out what their role in the relationship will be. For my money, I have used the Bible for my blueprint. One crucial thing I learned was that although of course, the husband and wife are equal in importance, someone has to take responsibility and ownership of the marriage and that would be the husband. It should be to the point of doing everything he can do to provide for the necessities and protection of the woman. His concern is his wife, more than himself. That might not sound fair but that doesn’t matter, it is about God’s role for the man.
It might not sound fair that the woman can’t have the role of “head” of the marriage as God calls it in the Bible, but that doesn’t matter either, it is about the way God wants it. IF anyone cares, I believe the husband has the most difficult role to fulfill, which is neither here nor there. The wife is by nature able to fulfill the role of supporter of her husband, in the ways that he requires it, which depends on each situation. If those roles become reversed, I don’t think it will work. Men are made a certain way, women are made a certain way, and those differences are complimentary, making for the type of relationship that can endure and thrive.
Forgiveness-Learning to forgive and to say you are sorry and mean it and make changes needed is essential. The Bible says to forgive 70 times 7 which means always. Unforgiveness is not an option. I must remind myself of that. Without that, the marriage doesn’t stand a chance.
Unselfishness-It is one thing to do your own thing as a single person but quite another to maintain this attitude in marriage. The marriage isn’t going to survive. In fact, while being single, the more a person can involve themselves in things that help others, will make being unselfish in marriage easier to do.
Patience-This is another must have for a marriage to a Filipina or any woman to last. You want a marriage that endures, not a marriage you have to endure.
Just those four points are much more important than your personality, your salary, your size, your intelligence or your education.
Without devoting myself to that, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to ask my now wife to marry me on the 18th day of our relationship. That makes me believe that it is more important that a man learn about marriage and relationships than he know everything about his wife. Both are important, but knowing a woman will be a lifetime experience as you go through more things together, and respond to unexpected challenges.
Learning about marriage and relationships you can do right now. This channel, Love Beyond The Sea, has practical ways I am trying to live out myself, I learned what to do before marriage, and have been filling in the gaps after marriage. I was chomping at the bit to get married and felt prepared to do it as quickly as we did. Let’s look at how you can learn.
There are many books about marriage that can be purchased. There are some good resources on line too. Another thing I’ve done is talk to as many people at church as I could. Pastors and elders mostly. I didn’t agree with everything they said but I wanted to learn as much as I could. There are a lot of sermons on marriage available on line. One can also learn from observing what went wrong in relationships that you know about. Those are good object lessons. If you can find someone who has been married a long time you could ask them what has been the key to their success.
I believe that being equipped to be married is more important than knowing a ton of things about someone. Part of that is realizing that we all have character flaws that will make us difficult to live with at times. Asking a lot of questions and spending a lot of time with someone won’t lead to finding a flawless person. Learning about marriage and relationships takes time and effort and can be done without having a girlfriend, In fact, being involved in a relationship can be a bit distracting from learning how to be a good husband, so if you, like many guys, are having trouble finding a suitable woman to be with, this is a good time to “hit the books” so to speak.
It is working for us. As I learn different things about my wife, I have to respond appropriately. The longer we are married the more I realize my own weaknesses that I have to work on. It may be that only when being married can a man truly see his own weaknesses. The same can be said of the wife. You have likely heard the phrase that adversity builds character, but it is better to say that adversity reveals character. No matter how long one has spent getting to know a Filipina on line or even some in person, marriage will reveal things about both of you that you will be ashamed of. No marriage is safe from that. That doesn’t mean that the two shouldn’t be married. Having the right priorities is a must and their priority is each other.
Like me, if you haven’t had much or any dating experience for a while, focusing on what it takes to have a good marriage can help you to be ready for your Love Beyond The Sea.
