Better to live in a desert, than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife. – Proverbs 21:19

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 10, 2019): Proverbs 21

Relationships are hard. And they take time to develop. It has often been noted that as we grow older, the number of close relationships that we have severely declines. And sometimes, that number reaches zero, which is a distressing societal problem. But there is also often a good reason for the decline. As children, almost all of our time, at least the time spent not sleeping, doing homework, or grounded, was spent on relationships. But as we grew up, the time that we could dedicate to relationships slowly declines. And with that decrease in time came a decline in close relationships. For many adults, the time that we spend at work and with family takes up almost all of the available time that we have. Maybe we have time for one or two other relationships, but not many more than that. And so the number of our relationships also decline.

And sometimes, we don’t even have time for those relationships. Why do marriages dissolve? The most basic answer to the question of why marriages fail is because we stop giving time to them; for some reason we no longer feel that we have to feed them and the relationship dries up. It is the ordinary course of our interactions. Relationships in our lives that we no longer feed die. And that applies to friends, spouses, and even children. Relationships are hard. And they demand our time.

Admit it. This proverb of Solomon might be one of the best known of all of his proverbs, especially by men trying to stretch out on the couch to watch Sunday Football. But there is another side of the story. No one wants a quarrelsome and nagging wife. But no one wants a quarrelsome and nagging, or a demanding, husband either. This is not an issue of gender. And the reality is that a quarrelsome and nagging spouse is often a symptom of a relationship that is no longer being fed. And the solution is to either feed the relationship or let it die.

Every relationship must be fed. And the reality as adults is that we have less time to feed the various relationships in our lives. And in the end, we have to prioritize which relationships we will feed. And while our relationship with our spouses should not be the only relationship that we feed, they should be on the top of that list. And if they are nagging, quarrelsome, or demanding, then maybe they are relationships that we have stopped feeding, and the solution is not to blame our spouse, but rather to start to feed the relationship once again.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Proverbs 22