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“Getting a girl” is part of every guy’s internal wiring. Our kind Lord knew our limitations, so He preempted our problem by giving us a “Get-a-Girl Upgrade.” And all the guys said, “Praise God!” Even the thickest-headed guy will eventually win a girl. It just ain’t that hard.
Our problem, if anything, is overcoming the fear of rejection, perchance she turns a cold shoulder to our advances. Being rejected can be a show-stopper for the timid, but that is another conversation for another day.
Just in case there is a guy out there who does not know how to get a girl, I’m gonna give you the secret handshake, the thing we all know–that something that has endured since the days of Adam and Eve.
Are you ready for the secret?
Here it is in two words: be nice. That’s it. If you want a girl to like you, be kind to her. It’s a fantastic strategy that works. You can break down even the “hardest to get girl” by being a nice guy.
Be nice. There is a reason it is only two syllables. (Let me refer you back to my earlier comment about guys having limitations.) God is omniscient, right? He knows our frame–that we are from the dirt (Genesis 2:7; Psalm 103:14). That is why He keeps it simple for His creation.
Why would He make something as important as getting a girl complicated, especially if we guys tend to be dense about certain things like, well, girl getting? It would be unkind of the Lord to hyper-engineer male and female relationships.
Because of mercy, He has kept it simple. In that sense, even the gospel is not rocket science. Read the following verse about God’s plan to redeem us. Notice how all the words in the English translation are mono-syllabic.
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).
How kind of the Lord. He not only made salvation as simple as believing (Romans 10:13), but He also communicated redemption to us in ways that we could understand and apply to our lives.
Mercifully, you and I do not have to pay for our sins. We don’t have to work through the intricacies of a “man-centered-penance-paying-plan.” All we have to do is look and live (Numbers 21:8-9; John 3:14-15).
The big things in life like salvation, dating, and marriage are not complicated. That is a mercy from the Lord. It’s when our sin interferes with God’s good purposes that the relational waters of our lives become murky and unpalatable.
The key to getting the girl is niceness. Pretty simple. Guys know this, and if they are smart, this is what they will do from the day they meet until death separates them. Strangely, though they intuitively perceive this, it is common for a guy to forget this simple advice once the “dating season” is over and the marriage knot is tied.
Guys can be more about the acquisition of a girl than sustaining the relationship with a girl. I’m like this too. The luster can quickly wear off the relationship, and presumption begins to rule the heart. In time, we stop honoring her by not being kind to her (1 Peter 3:7).
I have spent a good portion of my adult life counseling husbands who have forgotten that what they did to get the girl is the thing they must do to keep her. They are five, ten, or more years into their marriage, and they are nothing like what they were when they first met their future wives.
They have presumed on God and their spouses. The word presumption means merely to take one for granted. That is a sin the Lord equates to iniquity and idolatry. Have you fallen prey to iniquitous idolatry by presuming on your spouse?
For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry (1 Samuel 15:23).
Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression (Psalm 19:23).
Many of these husbands have become harsh, angry, critical, discouraging, and demanding to their wives. They presume on the marriage relationship, thinking they can act any way toward their wives without any blowback from their wives.
In many of these marriages, the wife has been left behind in the relationship as the husband preoccupied himself with other acquisitions. The husband’s “new wife” becomes his work, his ministry, or whatever his latest passion is.
Though there was a time when his wife was just under the Lord in the rankings, she has fallen three, four, or five spots to her husband’s “things I appreciate the most” poll. These inconsiderate husbands are doing things now that they would never have dreamed of doing when they were dating or after they were first married.
Apart from the Lord, a man’s wife is his most cherished treasure, even more cherished than his life (Ephesians 5:25). He has the opportunity and the privilege to put on display the most profound picture of Jesus Christ and His church.
Can you imagine a guy dating a girl and cursing her or being belligerent, critical, harsh, demanding, and mean to her? That kind of dating relationship would never last, or it shouldn’t continue.
Sensible guys know this, which is why they don’t act like that while they are dating. It’s after they get the girl and move into the marriage phase of the relationship that they succumb to “dating amnesia.” It’s like they forgot everything they knew about how to maintain a healthy and God-honoring relationship with a woman.
In a word, they become unkind. There are three things a husband needs to do when the marriage ends up this far from where it began–when it goes from being nice to being un-nice.
The husband needs to repent: He needs to change. This biblical response is a mercy from the Lord because the cure for restoring a marriage is not complicated. God is so good to us. Think about the lack of complicatedness in some of the more significant problems in life:
Christians can do what no other people group in the world can do. We can be forever changed from the inside out. While the world is scrambling for clues and crumbs on how to be whole, we have the secret knowledge.
Repentance is as near as a humble confession (acknowledgment) of what you did wrong and making a plan for change. When that happens, the Lord will be quick to provide empowering grace to help you do what is humanly impossible to do without Him (James 4:6).
Perchance you are unsure of what repentance means or how to fully practice it, I appeal to you to watch my one hour webinar called the “doctrine of repentance.” I carefully walk through the steps to complete and lasting change.
Don’t ever think you are smart enough or strong enough to maintain a vibrant marriage alone. You cannot do this. I cannot do this. You must seek competent help from a compassionate community of friends.
I’m not talking about counseling. Counseling is a temporary, band-aid approach to a long-term need. I’m talking about a stable, biblical, discipleship community that is willing to speak ongoing truth, with unmerited love, into your life. I’m talking about a local church.
A solid, biblical local church is God’s gift to His children. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus. He also wrote to the churches of Galatia. He wrote to local assemblies, urging them to take care of each other.
If your marriage is in trouble, your immediate response should be repentance. Your next reaction should be to seek help from within your local church to bring you the ongoing care that you and your spouse need.
My Appeal Cannot Be Stronger: Do not try to repair your marriage alone. Seek help. Let the body of Christ be the body of Christ to you. If you live in a place where the church is not accessible or robust, you may become part of our community. We have a large team of friends who would love nothing more than to come alongside you to serve you.
After you begin the repentance process and start working through the competent accountability structures in your life, think through the practical things you did when you first won your wife’s affections. You know what those things were. You’ve done this before. You can do it again.
It’s not a can’t problem; it’s a won’t problem. You will have to decide if you’re going to humble yourself before God and your wife to serve her by putting the honey back in the honeymoon.
Go Back To the Giddy Time In Your Relationship. Do you remember those carefree and silly days when it was just you and her? Those days do not have to remain in your past.
Lucia and I are friends. And we still enjoy giddy, silly, carefree, and fun times in our relationship. By the grace of God, we are buddies. Nothing comes between us, including our children, our work, or our church–by the grace of God.
But it was not always this way. We lost focus. The moorings of a stable marriage broke loose, and we drifted from the God-centered practicalities of our covenant. We needed a serious realignment. You can read about that in my article, The Reason We Blew-Up Our Marriage.
The Lord did for us what we would not do for ourselves. He changed us. We fell in love with each other all over again. Though the pace of our lives is at an all-time high due to the growing demands of our ministry, it does not disrupt our marriage priorities–by the grace of God.
We have to fight to maintain today what we began when we were first married. Our goal is to behave like newlyweds until the Lord sends death to separate us. That means we must continue to grab, touch, hold, hug, feel, and kiss each other as we did in the early days.
But with a twist.
In the beginning, we were young, somewhat silly, naive, and enjoyed intimacy because that is what young people do. Today, our love is breathtakingly more mature. It’s maturity between two people who have seen the devastating effects of selfishness and who have asked and received marital redemption from the Lord by doing the things contained here.
Gentleman: if your marriage is tanking, do not think another woman will solve your problems. All another woman will do is give you another 10 or 15 years to get back to the same place you are today.
Don’t think porn is the answer either. All porn will do is lead you down a path of dissatisfaction to where nobody and nothing will be able to make you happy. The problem is not the woman God gave you (Genesis 3:12) or the ones in cyberspace.
Fortunately, the problem is closer to you and more within your control. The problem is in your heart. If you will humbly confess your sin to God and your wife, get the help you need from your local church, and go back to dating your wife, there is a strong chance you can have an incredible marriage.
I realize some wives can be too hurt, too unforgiving, too stubborn, and too mean to make the changes that I’m asking you to make. This obstacle does happen, and it will make things immeasurably hard for you. My appeal is for you not to short-change the grace of God by not trying to follow Him through the deep waters of an unsatisfactory marriage.
If not trusting Him by doing your own thing led to a mediocre marriage, the best answer you have is to make up your mind to follow Him now regardless of the cost or time involved. And you want to do this without placing demands on your wife changing. You’re doing this for the glory of God.
Gentlemen–start dating your wife.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).