His needs – Her needs…aren’t real needs Counseling Solutions

His needs – Her needs…aren’t real needs

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 09:05 PM PDT

How do I know when my desire for love has changed into a need for love?

A very good question!

Let's start with anger.

Anger is the quickest and easiest way to discern if your craving for love has jumped from a desire to a need.

Remember, it is not necessarily wrong to desire, but when a desire goes bad, then you're in trouble.

One of the ways you will know if your desire has gone bad is when you get angry if that desire is not met.

This applies to any desire that you may have.

Let me illustrate how a desire goes bad by using this formulaic teaching from Paul David Tripp:

Desire – "You should do ____________ for me."
Need – "You will do ___________ for me."
Expectation – "I expect you to do ___________ for me."
Disappointment – "You didn't do ___________ for me."
Punishment – "You didn't do _________ for me, therefore I am going to make you pay in some way."

Case Study: Desire Gone Bad

Mary, who has been married to Bill for 21 years, desires that he love her in a particular way. This is a good, normal, and expected desire. However, the problem is that Bill is self-absorbed.

When they were dating, Bill did all the right things as far as demonstrating his love to her. Mary was convinced of his love and knew she had found the right guy.

Unfortunately, Mary had her own selfish, empty love cup agenda. When Bill brought her flowers, wrote her letters, and took her to fabulous dinners, during their dating relationship, it all seemed right and exactly what Mary craved.

Unfortunately, Mary was self-deceived in that her undisclosed craving was that she believed she needed and deserved a person who would give her a life according to her expectations.

Mary lived in an idealistic and romanticized world of her own making. She also had a weak understanding of the doctrines of sin and of man.

She was not spiritually prepared for real life, in a real marriage, with a real sinner. She was selfish. She was also an idolator, but the idolatry was masked in a desire for love, the expectation of any girl.

None of this was discernible, because rarely does anyone look beyond the surface of their lives to ask the right questions about what is really going on in the heart.

Bill was selfishly conquering and Mary was selfishly allowing herself to be conquered.

It all went well until Bill finished conquering his prey and then slowly turned to other things. After he "bagged" his wife, he was off to vocational and hobby pursuits.

Mary was left quietly desiring while stewing over her losses. The truth is, Mary had redefined love to a need and that is when things went very wrong in her heart. Note Paul Tripp's chart above

Desire - Mary had a legitimate desire for love.
Need - Somewhere along the way, her desire for love morphed into an insatiable need.
Expectation - Because she had redefined love from desire to need there was an expectation placed on Bill's behavior.
Disappointment - Though she did not know it, she set herself up for disappointment. There is no human, no matter how hard they try, able to perform adequately for another. We're all sinners on our best day. (Unfortunately, Bill was a jerk and never tried to love like Christ.) Mary was more concerned about what she was not getting and responded to Bill's sin with her own sin.
Punishment - Her self-inflicted disappointment turned into retaliation. She punished Bill by her anger as well as other means.

Both Bill and Mary were idolators in their own unique ways. Bill didn’t really care for Mary and Mary was hurt because she was not getting what she believed she deserved. The big “need” in their lives was mutual repentance, but they were not about to live out that kind of humility when we first met.

They said they loved each other, but after spending a few minutes with them in counseling it was apparent that they did not. Bill loved Bill and Mary loved Mary.

They were bitter and angry toward each other. The good news was that after 21 years of marriage they decided it was time to get some help. In the midst of a lot of bad decisions, going to counseling was one of the bright spots in their marriage.

Self-defeating complaining

Mary’s complaint was that Bill had not been meeting her expectations, though she did not say it exactly that way. What she said was that Bill was lazy, passive, non-romantic, selfish, harsh, critical, and angry.

She also said she was tired of being nice to him. Then she shared over a dozen instances of Bill’s selfishness to prove her point.

When she was done, Bill was completely slunk down into his seat with a "white towel surrender" look on his face. He seemed defeated, disinterested, and disheartened.

I wondered to myself how much anger was simmering just below the surface of Bill’s facade.

Later in the counseling I found out that he had been angry and disappointed in his wife for many years. Though he had been passive, lazy, and most of the other things she had mentioned, he added that her attitude also contributed to the problems in the marriage.

He was right.

Though he was not saying that Mary was at fault for his sin, he was saying that she did not help matters by her angry attitude. Isn’t that the way it is when two people are stuck in dysfunction?

I’ve never met a couple, including me and my wife, where one person was completely innocent, while the other was completely guilty. Just admitting this can have a huge impact on any marriage.

Who fired the first shot

With over two decades of marriage under their belts, no one really knew how the dysfunction began. Truthfully, for the purposes of counseling, it did not really matter who fired the first shot.

For Bill and Mary, it seemed as though blaming each other was the only thing that mattered. They seemed more interested in validating their positions and winning their arguments rather than seeing things from God’s perspective.

They spent most of their time blaming each other, while affirming their own rightness. That kind of I'm-right-you're-wrong sparring had nearly pushed God out of their marriage.

Rather than spending time blaming each other, it would have been better if they self-assessed their personal culpability that contributed to the dysfunction of the marriage and then repent to God.

Mary seemed to believe, by her words and actions, that if she repeatedly reminded Bill of all of his errors, he would change. Rarely is anyone motivated to change by nagging, complaining, or accusing.

It certainly is not how the Savior approached us in our sin:

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? – Romans 2:4 (ESV)

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. – Ephesians 2:8 (ESV)

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8 (ESV)

Any of us could look into our past and find reasons to support why we are disappointed with others. Genuine Christian maturity is less interested in who did what wrong, while choosing to be more interested in how to respond humbly to God.

Bill and Mary were more interested in being right than being humble and they grew more angry, bitter, and unforgiving in the process.

When there is a sighting of Calvary

In time, Mary began to understand what she was doing to herself and to her husband. She came to realize that while her desire for a wonderful marriage is a godly desire, her method for acquiring a godly marriage stunk.

Quite simply, she forgot the Gospel. She forgot how God brought her to Himself.

God did not bring Mary to Himself by being critical, harsh, angry, blaming, and unforgiving. The way the Father won the heart of Mary to Himself was through love, grace, mercy, kindness, patience and, above all else, forgiveness.

When Mary was reminded of the Gospel during our counseling together, God mercifully turned the light on for her. She got it. She understood the Gospel–or you could say that she re-understood the Gospel.

Rather than applying the Gospel to her salvation, she began to apply the Gospel to her sanctification. Though the Gospel affected her the day she was saved from her sins, she was beginning to understand how to apply the Gospel to her everyday life, especially her marriage.

Mary understood that it was possible for her husband to change and that she could be part of his change process, but she needed to change first.

She began to think about how God's kindness led to her repentance. She further realized that she was not modeling before her husband what the Savior had modeled for her (Romans 2:4).

Mary began to address her sin issues. When she did, she was initially discouraged because she was unaware at how much she had been sinning against her husband.

The more she went to God regarding her personal sin against her husband, the more she began to experience a freedom from those sins that were previously controlling her.

Mary also came to understand that what she wanted in her marriage was not a bad desire and that she should not give up on her desire. However, she also knew that she could not sin when she did not get what she wanted.

Reflectively, she saw that her marriage problems compounded when she began to sin in response to her husband's sin. As she said later, “My desire was not wrong, but my attitude stunk.”

Identifying the ruling motives of the heart

Mary blamed Bill for what she could not have. She accused him of withholding the thing she needs. The implication was that if Bill would have acquiesced, by giving her what she expected to get, then she would have been happy again.

What she did not understand at the time was that her desires for the relationship were not what was robbing her of her happiness.

The loss that she was experiencing was her idolatry. She was mad because her idol had been taken away from her. I asked her to repeat after me: I would be happy if _________ .

My question to Mary was essentially, “What would make you happy? She quickly answered by saying that if Bill would love her the way she wanted to be loved, then she would be happy.

That is idolatry.

The one and only right answer to the question, “What would make you happy?” is “God.” That was not the case for Mary, which is why she had an idol lodged in her heart.

Whatever you believe will make you happy is your “god.”

If God’s grace cannot trump our lost expectations then our expectations are greater than God’s grace and something has displaced God from the center of our lives.

Mary repented to God and restored her relationship with Him. He became the centerpiece of her heart and mind, which played out in real, practical, and measurable ways. It was more than just intellectual ascent.

The more Mary humbled herself before God, through repentance, and began to lovingly pursue Bill, the way Christ pursued her, the more Bill began to change. In time their marriage was restored to a godly marriage and God granted her the desire of her heart.