Common Responsibilities of Husband and Wife

§  To abide in love and faithfulness. Sex is not the consummation of marriage; love and faithfulness is. Wear your wedding ring at all times.

³ Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. ⁴ Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and men. PROVERBS 3

²¹ Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for the Messiah… ³³ Each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. EPHESIANS 5

§  To be sensitive to each other’s needs. Husbands and wives have different needs. In Dr. William Harley’s book His Needs, Her Needs, wives listed five of their primary needs as follows: attention, conversation, honesty and openness, financial commitment, and family commitment. Husbands listed five of their primary needs as follows: sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, domestic support, and admiration. What men listed as most important to them is what women listed as least important.

³ The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴ The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. ⁵ Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Lucifer will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 1 CORINTHIANS 7

§  To make parenting a shared activity between them. Husband and wife must combine their talents in loving, serving and giving importance to their children (even the children born out of wedlock) as prized gifts from God. No business, employment, household chore, hobby, community or church activity must be allowed to compete for their time with each other and with their children. In the first place, no one will want any one of them to find fulfillment of his or her personal needs elsewhere, in somebody else’s embrace, because it will hurt.

¹⁵ Didn’t God make you one body and spirit with her? What was His purpose in this? It was that you should have [godly offspring]. MALACHI 2 tev

Stanford University found in 1985 that children in single parent families in the United States are twice as likely to develop serious psychiatric illness and addictions later in life. Fatherless homes account for 63% of youth suicides; 90% of homeless/runaway children; 85% of children with behavior problems; 71% of high school dropouts; 85% of youth in prison; and over 50% of teen mothers. Most victims of child molestation come from single-parent households. Single mothers often become lonely, afraid and exhausted. They spend less hours with their children and more hours at work to augment the family income.