If you're married, you don't need a best friend of the same sex. It's nice to have one, but you don't need one over your spouse.

Some people spend so much time developing "best friends" that they leave their spouses in the dust, so to speak, and that's totally out of order.

Your relationship with your spouse is the one you need to be working on.

If your spouse is not free to correct you, then you have a problem. You're supposed to be helping each other develop God-like character. And I don't care how holy you think you are, you're not there yet. We all have stages of growth that we have to go through.

Now in a lot of cases, the commitment in an intimate relationship is one-sided. The other person is acting like, "It's all right for me to correct you, but you'd better not try to correct me, because I'm all that and more. I'm already there. I don't need any help."

But we all need help—especially men. (I'm sorry, but if you don't like that, you'll have to talk to God, because He's the One who said men needed a helpmeet.)

A lot of men have a hard time accepting help from women because they haven't gotten rid of the world's ideas about what to do, where to do it, and who to do it with! How can the world tell you what to do? The world has no idea what it's talking about.

If the world knew how to be happy, Hollywood personalities wouldn't have so many spouses! It would work the first time.

No one wants to get divorced, remarried, divorced, remarried, and so forth. People do that because they are looking for someone to treat them right and with whom they'll be happy.

So it's evident the world doesn't know how to find happiness. Yet we look at movies and think," That's the way I'm supposed to do it."

No, that's entertainment. That's just for enjoyment. It's not for you to live your life by.

Hollywood doesn't have a clue, because Hollywood didn't create you. God created you, and He has the answer to anything and everything you'll face in life.

All you have to do is open yourself up to Him, believe His Word, accept it, and do it.

Source: Marriage and Family by Deborah Butler
Excerpt permission granted by Word Of Faith Publishing