let your husband love you .. .7 years later

a look back at the blogpost that started my online writing life

Seven years ago, I was sitting on our couch in my parents’ basement, a few weeks after we moved in with our three year old and five month old boys and I wrote a blog post that went kind of crazy on the internet. My husband had been working three jobs and lost two of them in the same week, forcing us to violate our lease and move into my parent’s house. Every twenty something’s dream, am I right?

We were both immeasurably stressed and our marriage was about as strained as it could get in a situation like that. Zach was feeling insecure and embarrassed about not being able to provide for his family. I was in the thick of the postpartum emotional rollercoaster and caring for a rambunctious toddler and a colicky, never happy baby, all while trying to build my blog and bring in some income for our family.

This particular day, when I sat on our couch and typed out, through tears, the blogpost I titled, Let Your Husband Love You, I was missing my husband and feeling guilty for how I’d been treating him. He would come home tired to a tired wife. His first instinct was to come straight for me, hug me, kiss me, and tell me how much he missed me and loved me and how pretty I looked. My first instinct was to shove a baby in his arms, roll my eyes at his words of affection, and reject any and all physical touch. I targeted all of my discontent and insecurities straight at him and was cruel, cold, and unloving. There was no compromise, no meeting him half way. I just rejected his expressions of love over and over again.

So I wrote that post in a moment of clarity and while I would definitely say things differently now, it was genuine and heartfelt and I meant every word. Then the post went insanely viral, I became the target of many a christian-women-are-the-worst forum rant, and quite literally, overnight, had hundreds of thousands of people sending me emails, commenting on my life, asking for my advice, telling me to kill myself, or thanking me for writing words that helped their marriage.

It’s funny now when I think about it; that me with my six years of marriage experience wrote something that helped anyone. Six years is a long time when you’ve been married for six years, but when you’ve been married for twelve and a half, six looks a lot like you’re just getting started.

In the seven years since that post hit the viral interwebs, our marriage has ebbed and flowed in the most beautiful, difficult ways. We love each other more deeply, understand each other more intimately, and are more committed to our covenant than we ever could have imagined at the time.

When you get married, you kind of think that the act of marriage, the ceremony, the legalities, the document signing, the changing of the name, is the tightest you can tie the rope that binds you to your spouse. There’s a finality to it - “this is it. this is forever.” But it’s only the beginning. The ropes that tie the two of you together will loosen and tighten with the circumstances that pull at them. For us, the ropes almost broke a few times after that post was written. There were times when I would look at the man I loved and had chosen to build my life with and thought, “now I understand why Christians get divorced.” And there were times where trauma and deep, unspeakable pain pulled us immediately and forcefully to each other in a way that can’t be explained with words. There were times when I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. But most of the time, we have been the only other person in the world who knows the other’s soul as deeply as we know our own.

When I look back and think about the wife I was when I wrote Let Your Husband Love You, I just want to give young Kristen a hug and tell her that she’s doing a good job, albeit messy, and laying the foundation for a lifetime of commitment and sacrificial love. I had never heard of the enneagram or read a marriage book or researched how to love your husband well, I just knew him. I knew what he needed. I knew what he was feeling. I knew how he was suffering. And I knew I needed to make the choice to love him in a language that he would understand, even if it meant setting my own needs aside.

That’s not a popular take, especially now, but still seven years ago. I was shredded online for suggesting that I should treat my husband with the same kind of love and respect I ask from him. I was told I was setting the women’s rights movement back and blog posts were written about the kind of sexual life we probably have. There were even a few psychologists who tweeted and wrote long essays about what kind of mental health issues Christian women like me have. It’s funny to me now, because Zach and I have anything but a traditional complementarian marriage. I work, he homeschools the kids, we submit to each other, and have never ever done the “if we can’t agree on a decision, the husband decides.” thing. (not that there’s anything wrong with that, we just don’t adhere to that take on submission)

But for some reason, a woman choosing to love sacrificially is seen as a sad and oppressive thing. As if me choosing to love my husband by letting him love me comes at the expense of my needs and my joy. But when you love someone, and you enter a covenant with them, and you make the decision to share your life, your heart, your body, your mind, your soul, with them, that requires sacrifice that is wide and deep. And I just don’t think letting my husband love me will ever be a bad thing. I am as pro equality for women in the body of Christ as a person can get and sacrificial love has absolutely nothing to do with conservative or progressive takes on scripture and marriage. It’s just what we’re called to do. It’s how we’re all called to love each other, married or not. I’m not a doormat (lol at the thought) and my husband isn’t either. We just understand that marriage is a dance that requires partnership, focus, and practice.

I let my husband love me and he lets me love him and together we love our children and the world around us, as Jesus has taught us to do. Seven years later, that looks a lot different. I don’t have to force myself to let him hug and kiss me, I welcome it because I love him and I want him to feel loved. I don’t scoff (as often haha) when he compliments me because I know that he really does think I’m beautiful. I don’t just yell at him all the things that I need, I ask him what he needs too. We’ve taught each other how to love each other and in that, we’ve built a partnership rooted in respect and affection and commitment and a love that reaches past romance and good feelings. It’s a love that we step into every day. We choose it every day. We love each other with choice and action, with Christ as our foundation and our only example.

So now, letting my husband love me really just looks like me receiving his love openly and trusting him fully. I trust that he loves me. I trust that he wants to love me the way I receive love. I trust him with my heart, with my mind, with my body, with my family. I trust him to love me the way that Christ has called him to love me and in that trust, I can accept his gestures of affection without cringe or hesitance or suspicion. I just … let him love me. And he just … lets me love him. And together we’ve built and are still building something really beautiful.

And that’s the update. Seven years later and I still live that let my husband love me life and I hope I always do. Cause being married to him is real nice.