I was having breakfast with some friends this morning, and one of them voiced some frustration he was feeling in his marriage. His wife was upset, because she didn't think he spent enough time with her. Most of his time that is not spent with her is either because of work or ministry. I tried to look at both sides simply thinking "if she needs more time with you, then she needs more time with you." Then, there was the part of me that thought "hey, he isn't out drinking or doing anything crazy; he is doing ministry work." So it left me with a few questions;
1) Can your mate want/need TOO much of your time? What time commitments/limits are reasonable in a relationship?
Your spouse or significant other can
want too much of your time, but can never
need too much of your time. If it is a genuine need, then there is no way around it unless it's being caused by a resolvable issue, and if it's a genuine need then there's no such thing as too much because your family is your first line of ministry.
(Although God does sometimes ask people to go into lines of ministry where they have to commit the wellbeing of their family to God's care in faith because they won't be able to be there like they normally would if they weren't involved in that particular ministry. Take Reese Howells, for example, who had to send his children off into another country for their education because God had called him to a particular work and required that Howells commit them to His care. This is the exception rather than the rule, however, and no man or woman should think that the more obvious work of the ministry is more of a ministry and important than the less visible spiritual and emotional needs of their family.)
There's a difference between
needing and being
needy, however. If a spouse starts becoming needy/clingy, something is up and they are feeling insecure about something. It could be A) something is awry with their walk with God and they aren't depending on Him for their sense of worth... and/or B) something that one of you is doing is undermining their sense of security in the relationship.
I think that talking with your spouse and finding out
why they are acting the way that they are, whether by gently asking them, or by observing what they say and how they act under different scenarios, is the best way to go about figuring out how to handle it, and can help you figure out whether the spouse is being needy, or actually has an unmet need. I think it would also pay dividends to carefully examine when the last time was that your spouse seemed happy and secure in your love and time spent together, and closely examine the time since then to see if you've started, stopped, or changed doing something that might have resulted in that reaction. (For example, a husband might have been in the habit of writing his wife a love note every morning and sticking it on the refrigerator before heading off to work, but his work schedule has since changed and now he has to leave earlier... being more pressed for time, eventually it just got easier not to write her a note at all.)
2) Is there a different acceptable amount of time apart if your mate is doing church related activities compared to other activities? Should there be?
While I think that a couple should endeavor to support each others ministry efforts, I don't think that there should be a significant difference in the amount of time spent apart for ministry activities versus more secular activities such as work or recreation. The only exception is if it is by mutual, happy consent, and both frequently talk about it to gauge if there needs to be more personal time together. There are a lot of ministers out there who accidentally ruined or endangered their marriages by not paying close enough attention to the emotional signs that they were unintentionally neglecting their wives.
It can get doubly tricky because some wives, in an effort to try and be supportive of their husband and his ministry, suppress voicing their need for his attention, time, and affection, until they are totally emotionally drained and have a psychological/emotional meltdown with terrible consequences for everyone involved.
