Not long ago a woman was complaining to me about her husband when she suddenly interrupted herself and said, “You know I should probably be more intimate with him…We’d probably get along better and it probably would help me from being stressed out. But it’s hard.”
“There’s a reason intimacy is supposed to exist between married folks,” I said. “It ain’t about some dude, your husband, getting his jollies. It’s about solidifying your union and creating a bond (a soul-tie) that only the two of you share. There’s a beautiful thing that two people have when they are intimate, especially when they are married.”
“You may want to consider trying and seeing what happens,” I continued. “Who knows, you may actually like it?”
To which she responded, “You’re probably right.”
I hope I was able to help. More and more I hear from married women who have sworn off sex as if it were something bad, like too much cake and ice cream. I hear them blaming everything plus their husbands as to why they have chosen to be this way. On the other side, I’m hearing from an equal number of married men who are bewildered and exasperated, running around like desperate men inside their own marriages, desperate for love from their wives. I repeat, desperate for love from their wives — having no desire to go anywhere but home to their marriage beds. Not understanding why their wives appeared to love them more before marriage than once the vows were taken. Part of the vows (depending on the ceremony or depending on whether you were truly paying attention to the “for better or worse” part) is that you give yourselves to one another in marriage. There are things that make marriages work, that sustain them over the years and through the rough patches. It is the getting through the rough patches together that often create the fertile ground for the good times. But sexual intimacy is one of the first things to go when things get tough.
A pastor once counseled me with these words, “The challenges that come once you are married come to make you two stronger together — not tear you apart.” After communication and genuine TLC, sexuality is pretty high up there as a critical ingredient for marital health. Sitting up in a house as roommates sharing kids is no different than roommates or housemates or business partners sitting under the same roof with shared ideas and investments. Shared investments neither foster nor nourish love. In fact, shared investments alone usually are the source of most conflicts between people, married or not.
Husbands Don’t Always Want To Do It Either
Believe it or not there are days when your husband wants nothing to do with you, as well. But they are days. Not months. Not years. I’m not suggesting you do something you can’t bring yourself to do, but also understand if you are married you committed to serve and love your spouse and vice versa, not yourself. You owe it to yourself for the sake of your own sexual health to consider working it out with your husband. Or, if necessary, seeking the assistance of a counselor. As an aside, I hope you loved yourself first before ever saying, “I do.”
Invest In Yourself By Investing In Your Marriage
This marriage stuff isn’t hard. It just takes work. And sometimes the work is hard, takes patience and certain degrees of mutual selflessness. It isn’t child’s play. So if you’re playing games, male or female, please stop. What you invest into, grows (for better or worse). What you ignore and neglect, withers and dies.
Love one another.
BMWK — Are you investing in your marriage?