Since I haven’t read Kevin Thompson’s book, my comment is entirely re his observation, above. He is spot on. During 56 years of marriage I’ve encountered a plethora of situations that have proven this to me and my wife. For instance, I love asparagus and coffee; chocolate is her favorite vegetable and she craves Coca Cola–and we’ve had some unhappy words over this.

I think that most people misunderstand the pride problem, since they imagine that a proud person is necessarily “arrogant.” But arrogance is only egotistical pride. The subtle pride of believing ones self right and the other wrong is often a mask for insecurity. John writes of the three broad areas of sin: “the lust of the flesh (sexual lust), the lust of the eye (covetousness) and the pride of life (plain old pride)” (1 John 2:16). Pride seems to be the basis of the other two.

Pride was the sin that felled Eve. Neither the beauty of the fruit nor the desire to taste it caused her to sin. But to “make one wise.” And who doesn’t wish to be thought wise? So she and Adam partook–and immediately they both felt compelled to cover with “aprons” the body parts that made them different. God gave them clothing, not only as an object lesson in salvation, but to enable them to deal with a nudity that now overwhelmed them.

Jesus died naked, a fact that the gospel writers underscore by mentioning that the soldiers divided up His clothes. He was thus humiliated on a Roman cross, paying for our shame and sin to enable us to accept our redeemed selves as beautiful in God’s eyes, and within marriage, to receive one another humbly–to accept each other’s bodies, aptitudes, cultural habits–rather than to hide in the shame that pride engenders. Only then can a couple truly become “one flesh” and “know” one another in total intimacy.