Okay ladies and gentlemen if you are married, you’ve gotten the hang of living together and all the excitement of marriage and being newly weds is either long gone or is wearing off. You’ve got kids to deal with, or life to deal with. Well one of the biggest aspects of marriage is intimacy, and sadly that is something that tends to slack over time. I know, crazy, right?! Well things get old and you get stuck in a rut. But intimacy is one of the most important aspects in a marriage and letting that go has detrimental effects on a marriage. 

I want to be very clear, intimacy does not always mean sex. I will be using intimacy in the full sense of the word; “close familiarity or friendship; closeness.” There are four types of intimacy; emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual. A marriage needs to be solid on all four aspects of intimacy. This is why you spend the time dating and getting to know one another. It doesn’t mean you can suddenly stop maintaining that close friendship once you get married.

You need to find out what intimacy means to you as a couple. How do you strengthen that connection between you two? Is it talking? Is it cuddling? Is it a hobby you share? This is where the love languages come in really handy. If you know each other’s love language, then chances are, you know what feels intimate to you two. 

Naturally in this conversation of intimacy, we ought to talk about the physical aspect. Sex is an extremely vital component of marriage and should not be overlooked. It is designed by God for a husband and wife to be joined together as one. It is a powerful symbol of God’s sovereignty and love in our lives. It is a way for husband and wife to be brought closer on not just a physical level, but on all levels of intimacy. It should be a special and sweet thing.

I see it so often joked about when a wife denies her husband’s advances for this reason or that, or her putting conditions on their intimacy. Like if he does the dishes and puts the kids to bed, then she’ll comply. This is wrong for many reasons, first being that intimacy is not nor should it ever be a reward for good behavior nor should it ever be a duty out of obligation. This ruins the beauty of intimacy. It makes it into a chore rather than a blessing. Don’t ask me why people make TikTok’s about it either, I think that’s the most stupid thing to just air your dirty laundry like that. Yet somehow every now and again I see a video come across my feed that makes me want to shove Love and Respect or the 5 Love Languages through the screen.

The Bible is very clear on how a husband and wife should treat this subject. 1 Corinthians 7:3 states “The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs.” This is not meant to be a chore or an obligation. But rather an act of love and fulfillment. If one or the other of you are feeling unsatisfied, then perhaps there is a lack of initiative and love being shown in other areas of your life? 

I encourage you both to assess your current intimacy life. Do you feel like you are unloved or unfulfilled? Let’s say her love language is acts of service but he never does anything for her without being asked, this will definitely cause her to feel unloved and therefore not interested in returning advances. Are you two neglecting the three other aspects of intimacy? Talk with each other and tell each other the areas in which you feel unloved. This will dramatically improve your intimacy across the board.

I’m working on reading through Love and Respect currently and it is blatantly obvious to me just how many arguments in a marriage can be boiled down to a couple key ingredients; Is she getting the love she deserves and him the respect he deserves? Are you both looking for ways to fill each other’s love tank? Are you properly communicating instead of speaking in “code”? If you are not doing one of these things, problems will arise. Is this the perfect formula? No. Are there other problems in a marriage? Yes. I’m talking about general cases here. But just start with the basics and then you can unwind the details. It’s easier to handle things one problem at a time, and usually they start translating into making the other problems a quicker fix. 

It’s topics like this that compel me to read marriage books now, before I’m married. So that I have a full tool box walking into a marriage. Not to mention they are useful tools for any relationship. One day, when I’m married and I see something like “The Crazy Cycle” (Love and Respect) starting to present itself, I will be able to recognize it and have the foreknowledge to de-escalate and or prevent it from becoming a never ending cycle. I am fully aware that arguments and issues will still occur. I am not naive. But because I am not naive, I am doing what I can to prepare myself for those situations. Reading marriage books allows me to see the inside picture of what a marriage looks like so I’m not walking into one blinded by love. I’d rather be fully aware of the potential risks of joining my life to another’s because I don’t believe in divorce.

‘And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.’ Ephesians 5:21-26,28,31-33

‘Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. ‘ 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

‘The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ‘ 1 Corinthians 7:3-5