Want to give your wife something REALLY romantic this Valentine’s Day?  Here’s some advice that’s based in hard experience, not guessing or theory.

This is a Valentine’s Day Gift that will come from your heart and directly impact her heart in a way that may strengthen your relationship like nothing else can.

Give her ALL your passwords to your profile, your social media accounts, etc.; ALL of ‘em.  Let her see what you’ve been looking at, what you been saying and to whom; be absolutely open with her about your on-line activities – let her into all parts of your life.

“That’s too hard”, you say?  “Can’t do that”, you say?  “It would cause problems”, you say? 

I say “Yes, it’s hard; but it’s not as hard as living with the corrosive influence of distrust, or divorce, or the problems of ‘getting caught’”.

Friend, if you doing or viewing something online that you have to hide from your wife, your boss, your Pastor, etc. – well, you already know that’s wrong, right?  And, with the help of our Lord and each other, we can right the wrong.

There’re a couple of scriptures that come to mind, the first one is a piece of scripture that most men love, Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”  

But your ardor for that scripture may be diminished by putting it in context:

²¹ “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  ²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

And…

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” -- John 15:15 (Emphasis mine)

So, if you’re loving her like you’re supposed too – like Christ loved you and the Church, you’re not going to be keeping secrets or hiding things from her, you’re going to be treating her, not as a servant, but like a “best” friend you can talk too and tell anything and everything; and your love is going to include sacrifice, as our Lord’s love did for us; you’re going to have to give up your behaviors and habits that you’re now hiding and do the hard work of holding fast to an honest and open relationship with your wife.

If you are struggling with viewing pornography, or just images of women, you’re not alone.  Almost all of us have had to deal with that pervasive temptation, thanks to wholesale marketing of women as “products” and almost universal (in the first world, anyway) use of women as marketing tools for other products, but there’re ways to deal with that and live without it: (a good resource is Every Man’s Battle, this link is to the Amazon “bookstore” but the book and associated study and small-group materials are available lots of places) and “opening” your computers, tablets, and smart phones to your wife is going to give you strong incentive to keep yourself clean and upright.  There’s also “accountability” software/applications that allow her or another accountability partner to get reports on the sites you’re “visiting” and how long you spend on them.

If you’ve been engaged in flirtatious or downright “romantic” online conversations with another woman or other women, and you truly want your wife to remain your partner and friend; repent of and stop the flirtation, confess to the Lord and your wife your transgression against Him and her, and give her the tools to reassure herself that you are now being “straight” with her about your “digital life”.

Give her the gift of yourself – all of yourself, and make sure the gift is as cleaned up as you can make it.

*By the way the scriptural references are for Christian Men, but this is sound advice for any man, as is the advice that you strongly consider becoming a Christian man.