Do you have any deal breakers when it comes to men? Have you thought about what you will and will not tolerate for the rest of your life as someone’s wife?
When I was single, I wrote a list of deal breakers that I was not willing to put up with when it came to courting a man for marriage.
At the top of that list was if he was not a Christian, I would not be interested no matter what. Another one of my deal breakers was that I did not want a man with kids, I was not interested or ready to be someone else’s mother that was not my biological child. The list goes on, but there were very specific things I did not want to deal with or physical traits that I did not want my future husband to have or not have. Did I get everything I wanted in my husband based on that list I created? Yes, I did!
Habakkuk 2:2 says “write the vision and make it plain…”
and I did just that. I had too many bad experiences with choosing men because they were interested or available versus thinking about what I really wanted in a husband. These bad choices actually helped me to craft a very detailed list because I certainly knew what I didn’t like or want in a man. This deal breaker list was a protection mechanism to prevent me from making poor decisions when I would meet men. I also wrote down things that I did want in a husband and if a man didn’t line up with this list, I knew he wasn’t for me.
Now you might be getting spiritual and thinking, ‘What if God told you to be with a man that had traits you didn’t want?’ I’ll be the first to say that God wants to not only help you get married but to stay married. He doesn’t want you to get married and struggle with a husband that doesn’t line up with anything you’ve ever wanted. This leaves too much room for temptation outside of your marriage. Plus, God gives us free will to choose who we decide to marry and He also says He will give us the desires of our heart in Psalm 37:4.
If you’re a Christian and led by the Holy Spirit, I believe that your desires line up with the desires God has for you because He’s the one that put them there to enable you to meet your husband and recognize him.
You might be thinking, how superficial should I be with my deal breakers? The first two I had were pretty important life changing deal breakers, being saved and not having kids. But what about how your future husband looks? Do you care if he’s tall, short, overweight, etc.? It depends, if you marry a short man and then you see an extremely attractive tall man checking you out when you’re out with your husband, how are you going to feel? Probably like you got the short end of the stick, pun intended, and this could cause you to struggle in your marriage if you were never truly satisfied with the man’s height to begin with.
This is something that can never change and if it’s an important factor to you for your level of attraction to a man, then it’s your deal breaker. You can’t compromise and settle just to get married because these seemingly little things can cause serious marital problems in the long run that you couldn’t even imagine right now.
Attraction is a very important factor in a marriage and you should absolutely be physically attracted to your future husband.
If you’ve never thought about or wrote down your deal breakers before, I would highly recommend doing so and praying over it. Deal breakers are items that you know you will not be able to tolerate in a man for a lifetime. Whether it’s his personality, appearance, past baggage, way of being, biblical doctrine, etc. It’s something you know would make you completely unhappy or unattracted to him that you won’t be able to overlook even with the passage of time.
Consider this, if you did settle and at some future point in your marriage came across a man that had the traits you originally desired that your husband lacks, how would you feel? It likely won’t be anything good and this could cause marital problems which is why having deal breakers is so important. It’s really for your protection and will help you to get what you want without wasting your time on men that aren’t for you.
You might be thinking, what if he meets everything but one item on my list? One little compromise could lead to a myriad of problems in your life. This is something you have to pray about and bring to God to see if it’s something He wants you to deal with. You need to be led by the Holy Spirit in whatever you do and you have to be honest with yourself. In a multitude of counsel there is safety, Proverbs 11:14. I would advise you to be very careful of who you’re seeking counsel from as well because some people with ulterior motives or jealousy could lead you astray.
If you want to know how to hear from God about your future husband, I wrote a section in my book on this topic that will be extremely helpful to you. Whether or not you hear from God on a regular basis, you’ll definitely have some important takeaways after reading this section. I was one that heard from God about things quite often and accurately, but I always seemed to have trouble hearing properly about the topic of my future husband.
I learned it was because I had too much ‘self’ involved, wanting to hear from God when He wasn’t speaking about it and getting inaccurate ‘prophecies’ about the wrong men. Until one day, God spoke and the prophetic word I received was spot on! My husband is now proof of this. I talk more about this in my book, so you’ll definitely want to read it!
Finally, meet and marry your husband God's way. Marriage preparation and Godly relationship advice for Christian women. Order the book here: Irresistible: The Ultimate Guide to Marriage Preparation.
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