Sex is the Answer, Right?

Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. Therefore his servants said to him, “Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm.” 1 Kings 1:1-2

I’ve written about this before, but it’s a lesson worth repeating. Back when we were first married, whenever my wife had a bad day at work, I’d try to comfort her the way I wanted to be comforted when I had a bad day. I tried to express love to her the way I wanted it to be expressed to me. This led to some frustration and confusion because physical intimacy never helped – which didn’t stop me from trying. Thankfully, a couple of years into marriage, I encountered a book* that explained to me that my wife has different needs than I do. Like most men, I experience love through physical intimacy. Like most women though, that’s not her love language. This explained my previous confusion – It would have been as if when I had a bad day, she tried to help by cleaning the house. I realized that if I wanted to communicate love to my wife, I had to learn to speak her love language.

Though it doesn’t necessarily involve healthy behavior, today’s passage is about King David’s love language. In the story, the king, now old and frail, caught a chill that couldn’t be warmed with clothing. So, to make him feel better, his attendants brought him a beautiful young woman. It’s an odd remedy until one looks back over David’s life, seeing that he had an appetite for beautiful young women. In his suffering, those around David tried to comfort him with what they knew had comforted him previously. It’s a bizarre passage, but it reveals that David’s servants knew how to speak his love language.

If I can look past the weirdness of the story, there’s a lesson to be learned. We all have our own needs – our own way that we receive love, which is likely very different from those around us. So, if we’re married and if we desire to express love to our spouse, we must first learn his or her love language.

Honestly, I had to ask. And my wife didn’t immediately know what to tell me. She had to think about it, going over a list, and only then recognized her needs. Knowing how she receives love, if I want a healthy marriage, I must now regularly choose to meet those needs. This isn’t natural for me, because it’s not my love language – I don’t care about cleaning the house. But, if I want her to know that I love her, I must recognize that she cares about a clean house. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense to me. I just need to recognize that it’s her love language.

*His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley, Jr.