Awhile back my wife and I visited Glass Beach up in Fort Bragg California for a vacation. The beach used to be the town dump many years ago and they through lots of glass bottles into the ocean. These bottles broke up into small pieces and eventually became worn down into little clear, green, brown, blue and red pebbles mixed in with the sand.
As we walked on the beach and picked up these pebbles, I noticed that I had more blue pebbles and my wife had more red pebbles. We had an assortment of all kinds of colors but clearly, we preferred certain colors over others. This difference is just a small microcosm of how men and women are different.
In marriage, there are two kinds of love: emotional love and physical love. God designed men and women to want both, but in differing amounts. Women tend to desire emotional love. This takes the form of talking, communicating verbally (saying "I love you") and non-verbally (giving flowers or doing something she has been needing done). Men on the other hand desire physical love (holding hands, kissing, hugging ...etc). Not that men don't need emotional love, or women don't need physical love. We do! But it's not our main attraction. Like the red pebbles and blue pebbles, what you look for is MOSTLY what you fill your cup with.
The mistake often in marriage is to only look at your own cup and feel cheated because it's not as full as you feel it should be. This only leads to anger, depression and resentment. The trick in marriage
is to not look at YOUR cup but look at your SPOUSES cup and see what color glass they seem to be looking for and to help them fill THEIR cup. If both of you focus on filling the others cup with what they are looking for then you will never be without an empty cup.
This fits exactly with what Jesus taught when he said,
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
We often misread this verse and think we should do to others what WE would find fulfilling to US. But that is not what Jesus is asking us to do. Instead, he wants us to see what the OTHER wants us to do and then do it for them. He wants us to take the time to look into the other persons cup and see exactly what they are looking for and see what we can do to help them.
As reminder, married couples should each keep a jar of red and blue marbles (from a hobby store) with different amounts by their side of the bed. Then as they get up each morning or about to lay down for the evening, they will see those jars and be reminded to care more about their spouses jars more than their own.
