When is enough, enough?

[TJW]

I have been on the Way for 31 years now.  And, I have never heard any satisfactory and definitive answer to this question.

We say that the bible requires men to be the "provider and protector" of their wives and families.   However, my former wife and
I never really argued about the "protector" part, only about the "provider" part.

According to her, my provision was insufficient.  She wanted more.  And, she claimed the biblical right to have more.
I could find no authority who could say that a certain number of hours, a certain number of dollars, was "enough" and, whether she was satisfied with it, or not, I had then done what my "responsibility" as a Christian husband demanded.

I could also point out biblical passages which honored the woman for working and earning money, "buying her field", etc.
However, my wife argued that it was not her responsibility to work outside the home, nor to earn money at all.  There were some
biblical authorities who agreed with this, even though it is an absolute CROCK.

We say that the bible requires both people to provide regular sexual relations for each other.   My former wife considered "regular" to be twice or three times daily.  My second wife claimed that she fulfilled her part if we had sex once a year.

My third wife has not provided me any sex in nearly a year.   I would argue that this does not meet the scriptural requirements :)
however, my first wife argued that once daily didn't "satisfy" her, and that it was my responsibility to "satisfy" her.  However, I
couldn't just stay home to have sex every day, and still be the "provider".

There are many churches who observe the eucharist every week.  Some don't, having it only once a month, once a quarter, etc.
When do we do it "enough"?

How much of my income do I have to give in order to be a "good" Christian? 

There are churches which encourage members to attend every service, 3 times per week.  However, some of them only have 1 service, others have a meeting once per month.   How many times to I have to attend in order to be a "good" Christian?

I am told that I have to read and study my bible daily.   Interestingly enough, I do not read and study my algebra book, nor my basic electronics books, every day.   I haven't read either one of them in decades, actually.  Yet, my employer is not in the slightest way disappointed that I don't.  He assigns me work with confidence that I will have the required knowledge.  Yet, my church doesn't assign me any work, but is thoroughly convinced that I don't know how to do it, even though they have never put me to any kind of test at all.

[chosenone]

TJW, I feel sorry for you with your choice of wives. 
The things they said and did were anything but the way wives should treat their husbands. MY husbands ex wife said that it was the mans job to provide everything, and even when she choose to go back to work when their boys were nearing adulthood she kept all of her earnings for herself and contributed nothing towards any household bills or expenses. How she could have thought that was ok I will never know. All money is joint money and not 'mine' or 'yours'. If the couple can live on one wage and  they both agree to this, all well and good, but to demand this, and to demand that what you earn needs to increase because in her opinion it isnt enough is quite honestly appalling.

As for sex, depriving your spouse for a year clearly isn't right and is disobeying God pure and simple.

You dont need to do any of these things you mention to be a 'good' Christian. God once said something to me that may help. He said there is no such thing as a 'good' Christian or a 'bad' Christian, you either are my child or you arent.

I used to struggle with thinking I wasnt 'good' enough, and wanted to be a 'good' Christian in front of others. I strived to do what I saw others doing, to keep to the 'rules' that we believers like to think are vital , but in the end I got ill and gave up on 'religion', but not on Jesus. I didn't go to church for 10 years(shock horror ) but I got to know the REAL God in that time and not the 'religious' God that is so often portrayed.

Now I know that my relationship with Him is what matters, and not what others expect of me or what I wrongly expected of my self so that I could 'feel' accepted by God.  Guess what, we are loved adored and accepted anyway as we are right now. Reading some of the posts here on this forum would make you think the opposite,  but we need to ignore those opinions. 

Now I usually dont worry what others think or say or do. I am far more at peace in my Christian walk and I can see how many of the expectations we place on ourselves are not in fact Gods, but purely man made ones, and some are from satan.   Jesus is the least 'religious' person I have ever known. What He wants from us is ourselves, in a close relationship with Him, walking, taking, loving and laughing together. The rest follows from that.

[Cally]

Proverbs 6:26
For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread

Sometimes wives do this to their husbands too. And unfortunately, I can easily imagine where they get the idea from a lot of misandric theologies reinforce the idea.

The idea for a man to be the provider comes from the command for a husband to feed his wife as his own flesh, and I see no reason why that can't apply two ways; to a woman, her husband is just as much one flesh with her as vice-versa, and you can just as easily say no one hated HER own body, but takes care of it and feeds it. Ordinarily husbands are the ones most capable of doing the providing based on how they're designed, but that's not always true. The only way to mess up that command to husbands is to do something like buy a boat while letting your wife starve. God never condemns a man for being poor, and there's no sign of any suffering man in all of Scripture bemoaning his inadequacies as a man when he was impoverished (think the Psalms, Job being thoroughly disabled for a time).

Otherwise, it's a common belief that Adam alone was cursed to cultivate the ground which is just crazy and I'll give you a common sense argument for that if you want.

[DaveW]

Part of the problem is that churches (for any variety of reasons) do not teach what was the basic marital understanding in the first century that ALL the apostles grew up with: Sex is a woman's right and a husband's responsibility.   (and as a subset - once a day was considered sufficient) The cultural assumption was that women had a much higher sex drive than men.  (as opposed to the greek model that assumed women had no sex drive at all)

Yes, husbands are to provide for their wives: Food, clothing and sex. (as it says in Deuteronomy) But each family must decide how those balance out.

I certainly empathize with the sexual frustration of the OP.  Many nights I heard "I went 10 years without ANYTHING** and I can go another 10 years starting right now."

** She completely shut down her drive at age 12 and had no desires or feelings until we got married at age 21.

[Culsey]

You did see that movie called the Mexican with Brad Pitt right? The whole point of that movie is that the answer to the question of when is enough enough is NEVER. Not when you really love somebody. I am joyful because Jesus will never say that to me.