Touching Again

Every Tuesday we’ll be posting an article about restoring and strengthening marriages that have been damaged by sexual sin. Hope it’s helpful.

Touching Again

There’s more power and mystery to the sexual union than we can grasp, and while all of us recognize its power, I find a number of married couples neglect, over time, their sex life. Much to their detriment, to my thinking.

It’s a familiar story. Man meets woman, man and woman fall in love and marry, man and woman can’t stay off each other. For a while, anyway. Then any number of things happen to cool the passion: work stress, body changes, hard feelings over fights and disagreements, or the number of daily items that require attention and leave both parties tired and clearly not in the mood. So many other responsibilities and pressures that go with married life have taken their toll by the end of the day, so sex can seem like an unnecessary, optional activity.

In fact, there’s an interesting similarity to the way couples handle their sex life and their prayer life. Both, it seems, get relegated into the “optional” category. It’s as if the couple says, “We’ve got a million and one things snapping at our heels, so if we don’t get around to prayer or making love, so be it.”

But a high price is paid. Both the spiritual and the sexual bond between man and wife are critical forces that undergird and strengthen every other aspect of the marriage. Without them, even if all the “have to’s” of the day are attended to, the primary union is suffering.

Add into the mix the problem of a man’s sexual sin (if indeed there’s been such a problem) and it gets all the more complicated. A woman betrayed will often be reluctant to open herself up again, emotionally or sexually, to the man who wounded her. And the man whose gotten accustomed to sexual arousal through porn or fantasy may have trouble responding sexually to his real life, flesh and blood partner who doesn’t fit the image of the phantoms he’s been ogling. What to do?

First, recognize the importance of the sexual bond. Marriage is, after all, a sexual covenant, and Paul was both clear and practical about this when he urged, “Let the husband render to his wife the attention due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.” (I Corinthians 7: 3)

Second, begin re-investing in your sexual union, even if the re-investing stops short of intercourse. I say this because often a couple thinks that to resume sexual relations means to jump from square one right into the home stretch, which may be unrealistic. It’s the erotic bond that you want to keep alive, and there are so many ways to do so. Setting aside time for mutual hugging, massaging, light touching and gentle affection are all ways of beginning to reconnect. Then, as your comfort levels rise with each other, you can take it further. What matters is that you begin, and now.

Finally, if sexual sin has disrupted your marriage, make sure your wife knows she’s primary to you, and that what you foolishly gave yourself to can never replace her. Safety is a critical part of sex, and her emotional safety may need time to rebuild.

So invest in it, while investing in the re-bonding that is so needed ion your marriage. God created you and your beloved as spiritual, physical, emotional and sexual creatures. And don’t forget that, when looking on His finished product back in the garden, He Himself said, “That’s good.”

Take Him at His word today.

 

Comments

Donna Graeter Longenecker via Facebook | Aug 17, 2011

This was really good - thank YOU!

Elaine Heath via Facebook | Aug 17, 2011

Now there's a can of worms for ya! So much that could be said, yet better left said by the pro's right Joe ;)

Donna Graeter Longenecker | Nov 10, 2011

This was really good - thank YOU!

Elaine Heath | Nov 10, 2011

Now there's a can of worms for ya! So much that could be said, yet better left said by the pro's right Joe ;)

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