Why Women have a Hard Time getting Married

Let’s think about the Biblical concept of marriage for a minute:

God tells us, in Genesis 2:18, 20–24:

18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”

20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.

22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

23 And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Paul makes the point of Genesis 2:18 clear to us in 1Corinthians 11:8–9:

8 For man is not from woman, but woman from man.

9 Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.

So, marriages form when a man decides that he needs a woman for a helper (Genesis 2:23) and a woman decides that she wants to be a man’s helper (1Corinthians 11:9).

Both ideas have to be in operation. If, either the man does not recognize his need for the help of a woman (Genesis 2:23), or the woman does not want to help the man (1Corinthians 11:9), a marriage between them is doomed to failure, unless one of both of the partners have a change of heart.

So, this is a foundational concept. If a man or a woman does not understand the primary purpose of marriage, they will probably be unsuccessful at marriage, because they will spend their time ignoring God’s purpose for marriage in favor of doing that which the current culture tells them to do or that which they want to do.

Regardless of race, creed or color, a woman can find someone to marry, provided that she actually wants to be a wife, since it is not good for single men to be alone and all single men are in need of wives.

But many unmarried women that are chronologically mature and finished with their education may desire to be MARRIED, but they do not actually want to be WIVES. Their objective is NOT to HELP a HUSBAND, but rather, to BE a HUSBAND, or at least, a CO-HUSBAND.

These women have a unisex view of marriage, and statistical analyses indicate that it is becoming more and more difficult for women holding this view to find men interested in marrying them.

Here is a relevant excerpt from my sermon of 8/2/2009.

My son and I were discussing his future family plans a few days ago, and I told him, “The best thing that you could do to make your life better is to construct a family in which your wife’s major responsibility is to take care of you and your children as opposed to working outside of your home.

When both you and your wife are in the workforce, you are two people living in the same place doing the same thing. That inevitably creates competition, and the last thing that you want when you come home from work after having competed all day is more competition.”

“Think about it this way”, I told him, “Once you get married, each day you have three things to do. First of all, you will have to work to support your family. Secondly, you will have to meet the emotional needs of your wife. Thirdly, you will have to meet the emotional needs of your children.

Your wife will also have three things to do. She will have to take care of your home. She will also have to take care of your emotional needs. In addition, she will have to take care of the unique physical and emotional needs of your children, and remember, that when your children are growing up, their physical and emotional needs cannot be scheduled. She needs to be available to meet their needs when your children have them, not when she has time.

So each of you have three things to do every day, and your limiting factor is time. A limiting factor is something that you only have so much of and you can’t get more of it.

You have to prioritize your activities based upon your limiting factor. But, understand what prioritization means. We only prioritize when we don’t have enough resources, meaning time in this case, to get everything done.

Here’s an example. Suppose I go to Wal-Mart to buy milk and eggs. Do I have to prioritize, meaning, do I have to decide which one to get first? No, because Wal-Mart has both milk and eggs, and is open twenty-four hours. I can get each of them anytime. No prioritization is necessary.

Suppose, however, that your mother wants a certain supplement along with the milk and eggs, and they only sell it at the Health Food store, which is closing for the day in an hour. Now, I will prioritize and get the supplement first, because the Health Food store is closing and Wal-Mart is not. The fact is that the store is closing, thus my limiting factor is the time that the store will remain open.

Now, you want your wife to take care of her three responsibilities, your house, your children and you, and her limiting factor is time. Now, add a job outside of the home to her schedule. What will this job require? Time.

Since she can’t get more time, now she will have to prioritize to try to get everything done. Since she has four things to get done, the house, the children, you, and now the job, how will she probably prioritize?

Well, she has to go to work to keep the job.

She has to take care of the children, because they’re immature, and can’t take care of themselves.

She has to take care of the house, because she’s not going to want Child Protective Services to take the children away because they are living in a filthy house.

Husband, you have just gone to the bottom of the list. By the time she gets to you, she’ll be too tired and will have run out of time to take care of her responsibility. After all, time is the limiting factor.

When you get prioritized down in her list, you will become dissatisfied, and what will happen when you try to discuss your dissatisfaction with your wife? The discussion will become competitive, because competition inevitably arises when people are doing the same thing in the same place, and you two are doing the same thing in the same place.

Can you hear the discussion? Why is your job more important than hers? If you want her to prioritize you higher on the list, you’ll have to help her and do more around the house, since she’s doing your job by working and bringing in money?

But, remember, the reason that you married in the first place is because you needed your wife to help you, not the other way around. Husbands need a wife to help them; to be one flesh with them.

And it is interesting that when wives don’t have time for their husbands because of this competition, other women magically come along that don‘t want to compete with their husbands and do have time for them.

Men get married because the recognize that they need a wife; remember that the reason for the marriage in the first place is that the man needs female attention (Genesis 2:18, 20–24).

Most married men that have affairs do so because they need female attention, the wife that is designated to give them attention is too busy, and there are so many women that are willing to fill in for her and give her husband some attention.

Now, the other woman may not be as good as the wife, but a man that needs female attention may not care; a hungry man will eat out of a garbage can rather than starve to death.

Did you know that, when you look at the numbers, the skyrocketing divorce rate in our country coincided with the influx of women into the workforce in the 1980s? Why? The limiting factor in marriage is, and is always going to be, time.

So, son, pick a wife the same way that you would pick someone to be the vice-president of your company. You don’t want someone to compete with you. You don’t want someone that wants your job, but rather, you want someone that wants the job for which you are hiring. You want someone that realizes that you need help and is willing to provide it.

You want someone to be your wife, to be the mother of your children, to take care of your house, your children and you, and to be available to meet your children’s and your physical and emotional needs and when you and your children have them.

If you fall in love with a woman that wants to be the President of the United States, vote for her, but don’t marry her. If you marry her, you’ll have a President, not a wife, and you’ll have someone to take care of the United States of America, but not you and your children and your house.

Now don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that women shouldn’t have careers if they want them. Sir, I just want you to understand that if you marry a career woman, after the wedding, there is an excellent chance that you will still need a wife. ”

Genesis 2:24 tells us:

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

One of the most destructive things to marriage that a married couple can do is to compete with one another. God tells the husband and wife to become one with one another and meet one another’s needs.

Attention, Marriage, Time