Nothing says "love" like "you are always going to be second in my life".
Posted Oct 3, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC
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Even when I was still a believer, this always stuck out to me as being entirely insane. What's the point of your marriage if another relationship in your life is always going to take precedence over it? I would not be comfortable with my wife being more in love with Jesus than with me, and I don't think any reasonable person would be.
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Full disclosure: still a Christian, although a woolly one(!)
I like to think that loving Jesus would could even deepen your love for your spouse, if Jesus is actually "Love himself"
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This is how I always understood it as a Christian. Loving God would help you love your spouse more. They really aren't second place because they are still the human you love the most, and divine love is different than human love.
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How is Jesus "love himself"? He only loves you if you follow all of his nitpicky rules which are not very well defined. If you don't you are punished. He's like an abusive boyfriend "I don't want to punish you, but you are just so bad! If you didn't keep sinning I wouldn't have to send you to hell!" How is that different from "if you hadn't burned dinner I wouldn't have had to give you a black eye?" That's not love.
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Never noticed how close "righteous love from god" is to abuse.
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The thought is like thinking that putting the oxygen mask on yourself is more important than putting the oxygen mask on the other person. And "God" is supposedly the oxygen mask.
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Yes. I will always love myself God more than you(wife). Amen. : /
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Also, I don't think I buy the whole "your spouse needs to be your best friend" thing. Maybe my marriage sucks and is doomed; I don't know. But we're not best friends.
I agree; I mean I'd say my SO is my best friend but that's just because I don't have very many friends. But I don't think your SO is meant to fulfill 100% of the needs in your life. That's why people have a network of friends and family who all play a different role in our lives, remembering this has allowed me to accept that my SO has flaws and its ok that she isn't interested in every single thing I'm interested in.
I'm not entirely sure what you imagine best friends to be like.
My husband is my best guy friend. My four girls friends who have been there through everything are still my best girl friends. They're different types of best friendships and are all important. My husband didn't replace my friends; he fills a different spot in my heart. So no, your spouse doesn't need to be the only best friend you have, and I can see where other relationships would still hold more value that your spouse. For instance, my mom and her sister are best friends, and I can say for certain that my uncle and aunt aren't besties and are still married.
Yeah this was a problem for me. My spouse was my best friend. Then when we split up I didn't have a best friend to talk to. Just church friends who did a lot of praying for us. After the divorce, I connected with a non-Christian friend and he gave me more support than a hundred praying friends. Instead of praying for me, he was a friend.
The advice I now give is "find a spouse that isn't jealous of the time you spend with your best friend but will never want to sleep with him/her.".
Unless that's your idea of a group thing.