You know the sexual connection with your spouse is waning a bit. Maybe you haven’t had sex in a ridiculously long time. I am not downplaying audacious struggles that thwart intimacy. Lord knows, there are plenty of those that take a toll on marriages. BUT many marriages aren’t navigating horrendous reasons for the sexual discord.
You could be having sex. You just aren’t.
Sex has fallen by the wayside.
Yes, I know. Life got busy. You got tired. The kids are draining you. Little heathens. The bank wants your mortgage payment every month. Stupid bank. The dog needs to be walked. Your calendar has been hijacked by… well… everything. You can’t find your keys. You’re out of milk. Again.
While there are some super cool things to being a grown-up, adulting is also a hard gig. And in the process, we can lose sight of the person next to us in the journey.
A life worth savoring means building authentic relationship with the people who matter most to you — the people you are actually doing life with, including your spouse, who stood at that altar with you as you both vowed to be lovers and vowed to be friends.
If sex has become lackadaisical in your marriage, are you ready to change that trend for the better? Want some motivations? Below are some worth pondering.
Motivation #1. Strengthening Your Relationship
This motivation seems super duper obvious, right? Sadly, though, too many marriages relegate to existing, rather than strengthening. We become numb to not only the lack of attention we pay our marriage, but also to the distance such laziness creates.
Oh sure, it’s rarely intentional, this slow drift into mediocrity. But when sex goes by the wayside in a marriage, the entire relationship tends to follow suit.
So no surprise that the flip side is also true.
When we take the time to nurture sex, address our sexual struggles, and savor sexual pleasure with our spouse, the positive residual effect is palatable. As I have often said, couples feel deep connection after making love. Coupoare gentler with each other and more willing to extend grace.
If you want to guard against division in your relationship, an ideal place to bolster that hedge of protection is in your bed when you make love. It is a spiritual salve or “glue,” as some like to call it. And along the way toward nurtured sexual intimacy, my hope would be you discover how fun sex can be with the person you married.
Motivation #2. Improving Your Health
I could say the research is “just in” on this, but truly the research has been in for quite awhile. Sexual intimacy in marriage is good for your health. All these cool things happen when you make love to your spouse, including the release of oxytocin (known as the “love” hormone that aids in two people bonding). Dopamine and epinephrine (adrenaline) also increase. Research also shows that healthy sexual intimacy is good for your immune system.
So suffice to say, a vibrant sexual connection with that person you love won’t only benefit your relationship. As individuals, you also will have a greater sense of wellbeing, improved optimism, and more energy.
In other words, this motivation for better sex in your marriage may well lead to more motivation in other areas of your life. When a husband and wife make love and enjoy sexual pleasure often, they tend to be healthier people all the way around.
Motivation #3. Pleasing God
I believe we serve a generous God. He could have made sex only for procreation or reduced it to nothing more than mere duty, but instead He created it to be a phenomenal pathway to physical, spiritual and emotional oneness. And He says sex isn’t optional in marriages where a husband and wife could be having sex on a regular basis. He implores us to enjoy the gift He has given us in sexual intimacy, because it was part of His design for marriage and it is indeed one of the few things that sets marriage apart from all other relationships.
And God asks us to face and deal with any sexual struggles — major or minor — because He knows it is difficult to sustain a marriage void of sexual intimacy that could be happening but isn’t.
1 Corinthians 7 tells both a husband and a wife to not withhold from each other indefinitely. In Proverbs, we get this powerful encouragement where a husband is told to delight in his wife’s breasts. The entire book of Song of Songs is this sensuous description of passion between a husband and a wife. God designed orgasm for both a husband and a wife.
It pleases God when you make love in your marriage, and that pleasing should be a motivation for us.
Motivation #4. Equipping You for Other Roles.
Want to be a better parent? Better volunteer? Better neighbor? Better worker? You’d be wise to enjoy sex in your marriage as often as possible.
If you think you can thrive to your fullest in all those other roles when you are careless with your role as a husband or wife, you may be fooling yourself. Sometimes we get priorities mixed up, and a prime place this happens is when we put every other relationship above the one we have with our spouse.
Things become a bit skewed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from people who say their spouse is all about being an amazing volunteer at church, but when it comes to ministering and worshipping in the bedroom—that seems to always fall perpetually on the bottom of the “to do” list.
Motivation #5. Setting a Good Example for Your Kids
If you have kids, you know they are learning about marriage from you. No, they are not privy to seeing you have sex, but they should be privy to seeing appropriate displays of affection between the two of you.
When was the last time you passionately kissed your spouse in front of your kids? What about holding your spouse’s hand or resting your head on their shoulder? What about a long hug? And when was the last time you said, “Time for you kids to head to bed. Mommy and daddy want to spend some time alone with each other.”
All those displays of affection that kids can see are generally a natural outflow of the passionate connection you foster sexually within the privacy of your relationship, and vice versa. So if you are motivated to set a good example for your kids, you will take to heart what it means to nurture sexual intimacy in your marriage.
All of the above are a lot of motivations, right? But I’m wondering if you can pick at least one? Are you motivated to finally improve sex in your marriage? Take a humble look at what it will take to start making positive changes today in the way you and your spouse connect sexually.
Prince Victor Matthew
Comments
Post a Comment