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Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
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The Love Dare
By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND

 

The movie Fireproof, illustrated doing a 40-day program of focusing on one of the aspects of love each day.  The following list is 40 aspects of love from the book by Stephen and Alan Kendrick, “The Love Dare”.  The authors recommend reading one chapter per day, writing down your own insights about that aspect of love, and acting out a homework assignment that gives you practice in doing that new love behavior.

1. Love is patient: Patience allows him to correct his own mistakes.  Patience waits and expects that things will work out eventually.  Patience recognizes that I am not the executioner of justice and judgment, but if God calls me to deliver a message of discipline, I will serve as His hands extended.  In other words, be slow to wrath, and be angry, but sin not.  If God is going to call you to be the messenger of wrath, then wait on the Lord, and wait for His call.  In general, don’t say anything at the time, but wait for the situation to pass, and bring it up later when the there is an openness to understand, discuss, and see her side of the story.  Patience waits for the right time, the leading of the Lord, and for the other person to explain their position.  

a. Day 1: Try saying nothing negative to your spouse all day.

2. Love is kind: Kindness is a proactive giving of blessing.  Kindness feels good to be around.  1) Kindness is partially characterized by gentleness.  Confrontations are delivered in ways that are easy to receive.  2) Kindness is partially characterized by helpfulness.  Helpfulness puts its own needs on hold, and serves the needs of others.  It creates a debt of love that others want to fill and return.  He who wishes to be greatest in the Kingdom must be the servant of all.  3) Kindness partially characterized by willingness, and includes a desire to help, and proactively looking to compromise your own needs to meet her needs.  4) Kindness is partially characterized by initiative, which looks to serve, meet needs, forgive and apologize first.  Initiative has desire behind it, needs no prompting, it has internal drive to give, care and share.  All these kindness type behaviors are easy to do when the passion of love is overwhelming the heart, but are hard when the day to day routine of life sets in.  Likewise, it is impossible to just give in to everything that a demanding selfish person wants.  Thus, part of kindness is setting personal boundaries, and defending them with the minimum force.  To train for good behavior is to administer the tough love of training up in righteousness.  Restrain your anger about the violation in fairness or bad behavior, and instead engage in the training of manners and righteousness with kindness and gentleness, as would a person in new love.  

a. Day 2: Do at least one act of unexpected kindness today (in addition to saying nothing negative).

3. Love is not Selfish: Humanity was created with a full spectrum of the emotional drives to ensure survival; this includes satisfying personal needs, feeling personal pleasure, and avoiding pain.  New love is clearly unselfish, and it feels wonderful to give, serve, and meet the needs of our beloved.  There is a crossing point past which selfless giving becomes almost impossible because of the feelings of unfairness that come up.  1) Enjoyable selfless giving has stable existence when I feel that my personal needs are as important to you as to me.  2) Giving becomes painful when I feel that you are only concerned with your satisfaction.  The initial state of new love has many unspoken contracts and expectations, and overlooks a host of deficits in satisfying personal need.  The anesthesia may be felt because of the anticipation of sex, the hope of living life with someone so beautiful, and one that cares for me.  The selflessness of new love is strongly bound up with the hope of the relationship satisfying my personal needs.  The feelings of new love fade when I realize that my needs are being unmet.  The typical, sequence of love fading involves the satisfaction of all sexual curiosity, and the realization that the hopes of life together will not produce the desired satisfaction of personal needs.  Thus, the feelings of love do not come from selflessness alone.  But rather, from a rich complex of meeting her needs and my needs in the appropriate balance.  But a strict balance of giving and taking will not give the full satisfying thrill of new love unless there is an element of selfless caring, and blind faith that says “I desire to give to my beloved simply because I love her.”  I know that she will give back and meet my needs, I have so much faith that my needs will be met, I don’t even worry about them.  I know that when I feel a need that if I speak it that she will be open, receptive, interested, and concerned.  She knows that she has to look out for her survival, and her needs, but she has faith that if she asks gently for her needs to be met that I will jump with enthusiasm.  She knows that I want to act proactively and with initiative; she knows that I am enthused with about looking ahead for situations to intervene and protect her from the feelings of unmet needs.  And, I know that she is as vigilant about meeting my needs as hers, that she doesn’t want to put me out, that she appreciates the effort of service.  I know that she will understand the mistakes or oversights in meeting her needs expectations, and will forgive, since she knows my heart is to serve, and I she knows that I will give her the same grace when she disappoints meeting my needs.  It is easy to be critical of other people’s selfishness, and overlook our own.  The drive to take care of self is so strong and penetrates so deeply and thoroughly, that one must be cautious of feeling self-justified and innocent.  Godly love is delicate, and can survive well only in an environment where needs are met mutually.  (1 Corinthians 13:4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil…)  Return to the feelings of Godly love by communicating my needs, and she likewise communicates her needs.  The emphasis of our “need sharing session” is on discovering her needs so that I can know them, so that I can meet them and give her a sense of satisfaction.  In this discussion, I am not concerned that I will be overtaken by demands, and that my needs will disappear and go unmet because I know there is a limit to the amount of sacrifice I will have to make.  I know that her concern is for meeting my needs, and that she is computing the balance of her needs and my needs, and that she is just as concerned with meeting her needs as mine and wants to limit my sacrifice as her gift to me.  The mutual care and respect for the gift of sacrifice of the other, the perfect balance between that two servants, the knowing that that level of care is present, overrides the need to dwell on satisfying self.  I know that my needs will be met because I am watching out for me, and so is she; she knows the same is true of me caring for her needs, and she can relax in that faith.  Be careful of judging another person’s character, mind, or motivation.  The judgment we feel toward another may indicate the presence of that same issue as our own subconscious reactive habit; that is called projection.  Selfishness is at the core of nearly every sin at some level.  I must guard against giving what I would want, not what you actually want; this is a trap of blindness, and a form of selfishness.  Be ready and willing to see what your partner actually wants and needs, and admit that the good intention to serve did not hit the mark.  The partner should be appreciative of the effort, but should feel free to say what he/she actually needs.  It’s easy for the perspective of self to blind us into thinking we know, think, and feel what our partner needs, but we may be wrong; I must readjust my attitude, be humble, and try again to give with selfless service.

a. Day 3: Buy your beloved  something that says, “I was thinking of you today.”  Continue to refrain from any negative comments.

4. Love is Thoughtful: Thinking about how to please your mate is the precursor to actually doing things that actually pleases him/her.  The things he needs may be more related to work, sex, recreation, and the things she needs more related to conversation, and household needs.  But, these needs can be reversed, and either spouse can have neurotic needs related to sensitivities acquired through life experience.  To overcome the irrational reactivity to life-stimuli, you must enroll him/her through rapport, confrontation, and change in the process of transformation.  Until your mate wants to change, and has changed, it is important to continue to serve him/her and meet the irrational, nonsensical, absurd needs.  Harmful or immoral desires should be opposed, and take top priority in transformation.  Codependency is not a loving response to bad behavior; it is a disguised form of selfishness as it allows him/her to continue on the path to stunted character development, and robs him of the growth and reward of personal victory over self that awaits in eternity.  Thus, thoughtfulness includes gentle, tentative, and encouraging confrontation.  Thoughtfulness includes using the initiative and foresight of needs that may arise during the day, month, and year that he/she may encounter in executing planned projects.  Men tend to be more focused and not be aware of all the things that she needs.  She tends to be more multitasking and may be more critical of his unawareness of her needs, thinking that he should think of things that are needed to help her get chores done.  Her challenge in personal growth is to be understanding of his perspective, and gently ask for what she needs, and kindly ask for a transformation of his habits regarding learning to do a particular type of assistance.  He may forget to do chores, and her job is to kindly remind him rather than using punitive tones and covert disapproval to induce pain and fear.  

a. The irrational wife: She may be irrational in her judgment of needs, methods, and priorities.  It is not appropriate that the husband spend his entire life catering to irrational needs, but he must prepare and wait for the right time and place for confrontation and change.  Regardless of her irrational thoughts and emotions, his job is to love her, and understand her needs and feelings.  Eventually she must confront her irrational needs, feelings, and beliefs, but the transformation to rationality may take a lifetime.  If it becomes apparent that she has a significant number of irrational fears and/or neurotic processes, the specific instances of irrational behavior should be recorded, dated, and kept in a notebook listing the instances where he believed there was irrational behavior.  The story should be recorded with sufficient detail that it can be reconstructed accurately when the situation is discussed.  The discussion should be prearranged for a mutually agreeable time without distractions, and a time without current emotional activation.  These meetings should be at least weekly so the backlog is small.  Rational concerns can be confronted, discussed, understood, and new behavior adopted.  Some men and women have been severely traumatized and have strongly dissociated from the traumatic situation, and have no memory or reason for their reactivity, emotionality, and irrationality.  And everyone has emotionally sensitive points associated with ordinary life traumas and training.  All of these sensitive points must be confronted.  There is an expectation of safety, intimacy, trust, and satisfaction of needs in the ideal marriage.  But, life is imperfect, and there are natural incompatibilities, frictions, disappointments, and criticisms.  All these things imperfections of life, relationship, and unmet expectation ions bring up subconscious feelings, reactions, and memories of pain.  Marriage has the potential of being the worst disappointment because within it is the highest expectation.  It has within it the highest, best, and last hope we have for actual satisfaction of our deepest needs for love, intimacy, safety, and happiness.  The marriage usually begins happily, but the façade may crumble when unmet expectations ***.  But irrational needs should not be satisfied.  , and the expectation of their satisfaction may be great.  .  , it may be necessary to confront the issues with a therapist.  He needs to know that these are sacrifices, that he has been times when the transaction was unfair.  If too many are made, and there is no reason that such sacrifices should be made, and there is no hope that the sacrifice will ever be rectified, then he may eventually be overcome by the injustice of selfish or neurotic behavior.  

This is necessary to show fairness in the case of the neurotic mate who does not have the perspective of understanding the sacrifices that she has been given.  Such tabulation should not be necessary when there is good mental health, but when there is emotional pathology/imbalance present in the relationship, she needs to know that her sense of being uncared for is not correct, and she needs to reframe her perspective conform to reality.  ***