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Featured Make Your Mate Your Best Friend

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by John of Japan, Mar 10, 2014.

  1. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Mine is a male perspective. Hopefully some of our ladies will help with theirs.

    Find a way you can serve Christ together with her: visitation, prayer times, etc.

    Have family devotions with her and your kids--with just her and you if you're newlyweds or your kids are grown.

    Do Bible studies with her. We're going through Heb. 11 right now because she wanted to study faith.

    Share with her what you are reading, and read out loud to her your favorite passages.

    Watch a good movie with her. Patty will watch a Jackie Chan movie with me and I'll watch a rom-com with her. She'll even laugh at the Three Stooges with me!

    Find a TV show you both like and order the DVDs. Looking at a broadcast show with her is fine, but we like the DVDs better--you can FF commercials and inappropriate scenes. We're going through Stargate SG1 for the 2nd time, and Season 5 of Get Smart.

    Take her to a ball game, either just you two or with another couple. Do NOT go with you, her and some men. She just wants to be with you, and maybe even will become a fan.

    Go shopping at the mall. Even go in a clothing store with her and stand around looking helpless! Ladies dig this. If you can't hack the shopping, get a good book and sit in the food court, just being there waiting for her.

    Go take in a museum together.

    Patty and I love to go to an "English Garden" outside of town at the Ueno family farm. For a nominal entry ticket (we get the season ticket), there are a couple of acres of beautiful flowers. Afterwards we get lunch at the cafe on the grounds.
     
  2. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    If you get a little extra money, put it aside to take her for a special time at a hotel or fancy restaurant.

    Take her out to eat once a week to give her a break from the kitchen. Almost anyone can afford a fast food restaurant once a week.

    When she needs a break, wash the dishes for her or do some other housework for her.

    Don't buy a book or DVD for just yourself. Buy one for her at the same time, and give her the choice--don't choose for her.

    Go for nice long walks, holding hands all the way. If you have to go the PO or some other place on business, make it an opportunity to go on a walk together.

    Go on bike rides together.

    Walk in the park or along the riverside together.
     
  3. righteousdude2

    righteousdude2 Well-Known Member
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    Thanks....

    .... I didn't ever make her my best friend, John .... she just hapened to fal into that catagorey right after we met and started dating. We still date, and we've been doing that as a married couple for nearly 34 years now!

    Great advice!
     
  4. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Amen, brother! Our 35th anniversary will be in May. Gets better every day!
     
  5. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Have a hobby with her. Find something you both can do and enjoy together.

    Go on trips together. Become sightseers. If you'll check on a state map or the Internet, there must be places within an hour or two where you can go to have inexpensive fun.

    Go to fun places in your own town together: bowling, miniature golf, etc. I know a Japanese pastor and his wife who play "park golf" together, a version of golf unique to our island of Hokkaido which is like playing par 3 golf with croquet equipment.

    Exercise together. If you are good at a sport, find a way to do it with her. Our family of 3 practiced kung fu together, and my wife made it to green belt before deciding to try something else. But we had great fun, and have a priceless picture of the three of us in kung fu outfits.
     
  6. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    I'd been divorced as a result of my now-well-known gambling addiction (at least around these parts, speaking of BB) for 20 years when I met Liz. By the way, for those of you who don't know, I'm Mike.

    I had just about given up on ever meeting someone who could love me for who I was, because I was finally at the point that who I am is all I want to be. What an amazing woman!

    I told her my past, told her my future as God has thus far revealed it, and she immediately became my best friend. She works 12-hour shifts at Level III NICU unit in midtown Kansas City, Missouri -- that's the "big KC." The "little KC" is in Kansas and don't amount to much, unless you're a NASCAR fan or a crack addict. Unfortunately, the offspring of the latter wind up at her hospital a lot. She's been doing this for 40 years and loves it. She's dedicated to those babies in the same way I'm dedicated to men in general, and addicts in particular.

    Two such dedicated people have to find ways to escape the stress of that dedication. We've become very close in a very short time. We thoroughly enjoy each other's company no matter what we do, even if it is just sitting and talking -- something I've never done with any other woman in my life. Not even Mom.

    I do special things for her as much as possible, just to let her know I'm thinking of her when she's away. We do a nightly devotional together before retiring, and she tells me her faith has become more active since she met me. That's pretty amazing, since I believe the same thing about my faith since I've met her. It is no accident. God is at work.

    We enjoy yard work together -- I never liked yard work, personally, until I met her. Too much like growing up on the farm, which I loved, but not the work as a stand-alone.

    We enjoy movies, good food, an occasional relaxing glass of Merlot, baseball, basketball (though she cheers for the "wrong team," some mythical bird invented in Lawrence, Kansas, whereas the "real team" is a bunch of Tigers from Columbia, Missouri -- talk about a "house divided!"), she's learning to like soccer, but football is beyond her ability to cope with thus far. She's a ballet fan and I have to admit, I'm beginning to enjoy it, too.

    On Valentine's Day I got her 13 red roses -- one for every month we'd known one another to that point. One of her sons said I was setting a dangerously expensive precedent. :laugh: I'm not a seafood fan. She is. That evening, we went to a seafood restaurant on Kansas City's Plaza. She loved it.

    For no particular reason last fall, she got me a personalized Kansas license plate that reads "GOMZZOU" -- which probably pained the inmates greatly at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility, but probably not as much as such a gift would have pained her a year before that. Her Jayhawk flag was badly tattered. I got her a new one for Christmas. That pained me greatly. :love2:

    This woman is (dare I say it? YES!) sexy, beautiful, intelligent, loving, and absolutely marvelous. I am the most blessed man alive, no matter what the rest of you may think. :laugh:

    Yes, treat your woman with love, cherish her, surprise her with small things, surprise her with big things, show her affection, bless her with compliments, lavish her with love.

    Before I met her, I vowed that if God would bring me someone like her, that is how I would treat her. He's a marvelous loving God. He delivers on His promises. The acts I've listed above are things I never thought of doing for my former wives (two of them, one in my youth and one in my middle age and both in my days as a heathen) but they come as second nature now. To God be the glory.
     
    #6 thisnumbersdisconnected, Mar 11, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 11, 2014
  7. Amy.G

    Amy.G New Member

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    Wow. Your post made me cry. I can't imagine being loved like that.
     
  8. NaasPreacher (C4K)

    NaasPreacher (C4K) Well-Known Member

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    Looking for that silly 'Like' button again :)
     
  9. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Excellent post! (Like *) Thank you Mike.
     
  10. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    Good post John, but let's not get carried away, eh? [​IMG]



    ......................................[​IMG]
     
  11. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Yeah, I realize this is a very high standard for some husbands.... :laugh:
     
  12. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    Though you say this facetiously about standing around in a mall looking helpless, most of what has been said on here is, indeed, a high standard. It really shouldn't be. Nonetheless, I understand how familiarity breeds, not contempt, but complacency, in a marriage. I intend to make our honeymoon last the rest of our lives. :smilewinkgrin:
     
    #12 thisnumbersdisconnected, Mar 12, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 12, 2014
  13. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
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    Sure you can sister. You just had a bad run but there is someone that I am positive will cherish you & you will reciprocate.

    I don't have to tell you, none of us are perfect & nobody is saintly, but God's behind our being together & one day (when you least expect it) it will happen.
     
  14. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
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    Come on.....the guy is nuts!
     
  15. thisnumbersdisconnected

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    Ah, shoot! We can do anything for an hour or so! :laugh:
     
  16. abcgrad94

    abcgrad94 Active Member

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    JoJ, thanks for such a wonderful, uplifting post. I have the best dh in the world, and he treats me the way you described in the OP. I can just about guarantee, if a husband treats his wife like that, she will respond likewise.


    **one disclaimer--I'd rather go through childbirth again than attend a ball game, even with my dh. Seriously. He can go with a guy friend. :smilewinkgrin:
     
  17. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Well said!
     
  18. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Amen, sister! Thanks for the woman's view.
    Have you and your hubby watched "Fever Pitch," a fun romcom? The wife (my best friend) and I watched it together the other day. While it may not convince you to go to ball games with your dh, maybe you'll just have fun watching the couple figure things out.
     
    #18 John of Japan, Mar 12, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 12, 2014
  19. John of Japan

    John of Japan Well-Known Member
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    Consider the relationship portrayed in Song of Solomon. He calls her, "my sister, my spouse" four times. She says to him, "O that thou wert as my brother" (8:1).

    My wife is my sister in Christ, and I am her brother. Ideally, the sibling relationship is a special, very close friendship. My sister and niece are coming to visit us here in Japan, and I keep imagining things we want to show them and places we want to take them. In the past I've been on picnics with my sister, to museums, to conferences, and done many other things together, especially when I was a single college student and she was a prof.

    The marriage relationship should be even much closer than the sibling relationship, amen? Thus, your spouse should be your best friend. :type:
     
  20. padredurand

    padredurand Well-Known Member
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    A friend of Salty's posted this to Facebook.

    "He isn't well now, sometimes he forgets my name, but it's OK. I vowed "for better or for worse" and a promise is a promise."

    She used just a few words but spoke volumes. Growing old together is truly a gift from God - doctors visits included.


    He who finds a wife finds a good thing, And obtains favor from the LORD.
    Proverbs 18:22
     
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