Marital Intimacy

Marriage presents many new challenges and opportunities for a couple to learn and grow from. The topic of marital intimacy is no exception to this. In my case, I have never been married. Even still, there are certain things that I have seen that have helped me affirm my belief that intimacy should be reserved for a married couple, and it can be (should be!) a tool for unity.

 

A marriage is a unique kind of relationship that introduces challenges that no other type of dynamic between people can really present. It allows an environment for physical expression of love, and this can be a very new thing for people. Just as with other topics that I have written about in the past, communication and self-awareness are extremely important in maintaining a positive relationship. Different people are used to different kinds of physical expression, and it can be easy to feel hurt if your partner doesn’t reciprocate your advances to the degree that you expect. Of course, this does not immediately mean that they don’t care; oftentimes it is just a lack of communication. People express themselves in different ways, and it is important to learn how your partner reacts to things in order to best accommodate them.

When working to build and maintain a healthy level of marital intimacy, it is very important to have a clear understanding of boundaries. We have many influences in our lives: family, friends, parents, co-workers, and even the media. It is important to maintain that intimacy with your partner by working with your partner. As you spend time with people, you are affecting your attachment to them- whether you intend to or not. Because of this, it is wise to think about how you are spending your time. While you shouldn’t isolate yourself from people, it is important to make time for your partner if you want to maintain a strong level of intimacy with them. In this case, I am speaking about all forms of intimacy, and not just physical relations. Marriage provides a place where you can build something special and unique with one person, and it requires attention to maintain. 

We may think that we don’t spend time with other friends, so we are totally safe from losing our intimacy, but the media also has a profound impact on our relationships. We need to keep in mind that establishing boundaries with media is just as important as our social boundaries. I have seen cases in my own experience of people who end up feeling more like roommates because they simply stop interacting with each other on a personal level. More often than not, this can be traced to how they treated media in their home. Spending a lot of time playing video games, sitting and watching TV in silence, and then laying in bed on your phone for an hour before you sleep; these are things that can very easily become a wedge between a couple.

Marriage itself will not solve any problems. Problems like pornography usage don’t instantly go away when you become married. In fact, they can often persist and become worse in the marital setting. Like I mentioned in the blog post last week, working on solving things together before marriage will set the tone for how the marriage will go.

I think that the key word here is dynamic. We should be prepared to adjust, adapt, and accommodate when we enter into a marriage. This is something that we all want to last, and in order to do that, we need to be ready to constantly move in order to maintain a positive balance. 

Marital intimacy seems like a wonderful gift to me; an opportunity to know someone very deeply, and to have a connection that you don’t get in any other kind of relationship. For that and many other reasons, I think it is something that is worth preparing for, and working to maintain.