“We love each other, but it is so hard to talk about our sex life.”
“We have a happy marriage, but our intimate life is a source of pain, frustration, and disappointment.”
“We have had some physical challenges that have affected our sex lives, and we don’t know how to overcome them or talk about them.”
“There’s been a lot of damage that’s happened in our marriage, and we’re having a really difficult time being intimate with one another, not just in our sexual relationship, but overall as well.”
“Sex is going fine, but we have always wanted our intimacy to be great. We could use some help with how to get there.”
Maybe you picked up this book because these words describe how you’re feeling about your sex life. Or maybe you’re just looking for ways to make things more fun! You may be searching for answers. Genuine intimacy in marriage is like a beautiful masterpiece. For thousands of years, it has been rendered in paintings, music, and sculpture. Like a fine artist, creating that kind of beauty in the marital relationship usually takes practice and dedication. Within these pages, you will find some direction to help you learn the art of marital intimacy.
It’s been said that when sex is good, the influence sex has on how satisfied partners are in their relationship is 15–20 percent. But when sex is not going well, the influence swells to 50–70 percent.1 This highlights the importance of dealing with the very real challenges that come up in the sexual relationship. But what is a fulfilling sexual relationship? Over the years, we have talked with many married couples in the ministries we have led about their sex lives, both about the fun and joy they are experiencing and the problems that have caused anxiety. In the midst of meeting these kinds of needs in our ministry, Jennifer became a marriage and family therapist and a sex therapist. In both of these areas, in our professional and ministry lives, we found that many couples were having challenges in their sexual relationship, but that the resources for help from a biblical view were scarce.
The good news is that God has a beautiful plan for creating and maintaining a great sexual relationship in marriage. When you look at the Scriptures, the words God uses to describe sex include passion, burning, honor, pleasing, satisfying, and intoxicating. God is very sex positive. Though many of the Bible verses on sexuality are about the many different ways people can sin sexually, for a married couple, the Bible shows us how to honor one another in the sexual relationship and how to enjoy the intoxicating pleasure of sexual intimacy. When we look deeply at the descriptions of the sensual relationship between the beloved and the lover in Song of Songs, we find a beautiful, romantic, and erotic picture of what God intends for your marriage.
Things may be going well in this part of your marriage. As a couple, you are a great intimate team. This book may help you explore new ways to deepen that intimacy. For others, you may look at the picture painted in Song of Songs and feel you are starving for that kind of intimacy—starving for someone to hear you, someone to care, someone to understand, someone to want you, someone to touch you. An incredibly common refrain we hear is “We just aren’t close,” “He/she doesn’t really get me,” “We live like roommates,” and “We rarely touch.” Married couples are often looking for a starting point to deepen their intimate connection, to create one they feel has never been there, or to repair one that has been severely damaged.
So together we will focus on intimacy—the kind of intimacy God intends when two of His children marry. Yes, we’ll be sharing a lot about sex, but sexual intimacy truly resides within the quality of overall intimacy in marriage. But what exactly is intimacy?
How’s Your IQ? Your Intimacy Quotient
God created us to be intimately connected. In Psalm 139, God expresses His intimate knowledge of us when He describes how intimately He knows us, saying that He knows our thoughts, discerns when we lay down, and created our innermost parts. Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls us beloved, tells us that we are engraved on the palm of His hand, reminds us that He carries us close to His heart, and says, possessively, “You are mine!” (Isaiah 40:11, 43:1, 49:16).
God also created us to be intimately connected with others and to enjoy sexual intimacy with our spouse. The reality is that people can have sex and not feel intimate. That is not God’s plan. The very words used by God in the Bible for sex connote a deep and intimate knowing of one another (for more detail, see chapter two, So What Does the Bible Say About Marital Sex?). For many, they need to feel intimately and emotionally connected before they can really enjoy sex. For others, having sex is the sine qua non, the indispensable ingredient, of marital intimacy. Having the experience of that skin-on-skin loosing of the self within the other in the midst of orgasm is what makes them feel intimately bonded with their spouse.
Matthew Kelley, in his book The Seven Levels of Intimacy, divides intimacy into seven levels: clichés, facts, opinions, hopes/dreams, feelings, faults/fears/failures, and needs. He mentions that most couples do not go below the first three levels. What researchers have found is that only 15 percent of married couples experience these deeper levels of intimacy in their marriage.2 Another 25 percent experience intimacy only during times of trial, such as illness or funerals. That leaves the majority of us sharing facts and opinions with our spouse but rarely sharing our fears, hurts, hopes, mistakes, and dreams. John and Karen Louis, in their book I Choose Us, describe this lack of deeper intimacy as the Mutual Affection phase. They describe how couples at this point are in danger of disintegration if they do not learn to stoke the fire in their marriage. We hope to help you identify and remove obstacles so that you can put more logs on and stoke that fire. We pray you will rediscover sexual intimacy from the midst of a deeper, loving connection—the unique treasure of marriage. To do this will require examining how you are doing in your overall intimacy skills, your intimacy quotient, and then improving those skills in both your emotional connection and your sexual relationship in order to reflect what is found in the Scriptures.
The Risks
The reality is intimacy comes with serious risks. What if you share the depths of your heart with your spouse, things you are feeling, fears you have, and dreams and hopes you cherish, and your spouse says, “Uh, OK …” What if you expose the sexual desires and needs you have and your spouse dismisses or ignores them? Baring yourself to someone and disclosing your vulnerable parts can be scary, especially if they do not seem to understand you or appreciate your gift of openness or your expression of need. It is an honor when your partner is vulnerable and exposes their very self to you. But remember, it is dangerous for them to do so. The word vulnerable comes from the Latin root vulner, which means wound. When you make yourself vulnerable, you are making yourself woundable. Husbands, wives, it is vital that you hear this. When your spouse shares their hurts, dreams, fears, hopes, frustrations, and joys, they are letting you into the depths of who they are. When your spouse opens their body to you sexually, they are allowing you into an even deeper, more vulnerable part of themselves. Sex is such a risky, tender area of the marital relationship. Can you imagine a more vulnerable time, when you have exposed the most private parts of your body to someone you love? And then you’re supposed to tell them what you want them to do while you are laying there so exposed? You have the power to do incredibly beautiful things in those moments or terribly destructive things. Be careful with that power and use it well.
So tread lightly and lovingly with all you learn here. Be careful that the contents of these pages are not used as any kind of weapon. Surround yourselves with help as you explore these passages; stay close to God in your time with Him, and draw near to other couples involved in your life who can help you safely navigate these waters. Take what you learn and pray about it. Meditate on God’s Word and focus on the areas you see that you need to change. Pray and allow God to work in your spouse’s life. When you put the exercises found in these pages into practice, remember they are but guidelines to steer the course; there is no test, and you will not be graded. You definitely won’t want your spouse to feel like they are being graded either. Taking this journey will be an exploration; so be curious, be loving, and be kind.
Not My Story
The reality is, you may read the words above about the unique treasure found in marriage in the sexual relationship, and you may feel sad, discouraged, angry, or frustrated. As followers of Christ, you may have anticipated marital sexuality to bring great delight, but instead it brought disappointment and conflict. Or you may be married to someone who is not a believer. This book may be a hard read. You may have gone to multiple marriage classes or retreats and walked away feeling hopeless, trampled, and completely left out of the picture every time someone taught about the sexual relationship. You may be someone who avoids reading Song of Songs because it is just too painful; it brings up everything that is not in your marriage. We hear you, and our recommendation as you seek to implement The Art of Intimate Marriage is to read slowly and prayerfully, taking each of the parts of this book to God and asking Him to work in your marriage, in your heart, and in your spouse’s heart. Like we’ve mentioned above, share what you are learning with those you trust and are close to and ask their help with the things you are seeing and learning. We can’t urge you enough to be open, be honest, and get help with how to speak the truth in love.
What Is Contained in These Pages?
Finding sexual fulfillment starts with embracing a biblical view of sexuality and then putting what you believe into practice. This will require facing issues from your family background and how experiences with sexual violations, sexual sin, or sexual betrayals influence your sexual relationship now. In many of the chapters, you will read about real people with very real problems in their sex lives and how they have overcome those challenges. Their names and details have been changed. We have also included results from several research studies Jennifer has conducted, including the personal words of many of the participants.
However, this work will have missed its mark if we have helped you improve the physical act of sex without deepening your intimate connection. So we will lay a foundation by looking at the overall picture of intimacy in marriage, sharing ways to resolve conflict and deepen your connection in the midst of conflict, and helping you grow in touch and affection. Then we will be ready to explore sensual and sexual touch, the necessary ingredients to mutually intoxicating sexual arousal.
We also realize we’ve missed the mark if we don’t address the distress that is caused by the very real physical and medical challenges that come up in the sexual relationship. Therefore, we will cover issues with erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, low sexual desire, sexual pain, difficulties with orgasm, and medical and age-related challenges with sexuality. The pinnacle of this journey will be practical and creative ways to make your sex life fun, romantic, and exciting (although by this point, we hope you will have already seen your sexual relationship become more thrilling, satisfying, and life-giving).
Will This Stuff Really Help Us?
That is such a valid question. God promises that when we change, it brings about refreshment and restoration (Psalm 23:3; Acts 3:19). It is also true that how much things improve in your marriage may depend on how much each person is willing to do what is needed to bring about change. However, another part of the challenge with change is that sometimes the things we use just aren’t very effective. Most of us have given in and bought that red-light special that turned out to be useless. It is usually a good idea to know if something really works before you invest too much. With that in mind, we wanted to share about some of what is behind the book that you are reading.
Our primary desire has been that anything we teach or write on marriage and sexuality be based on God’s Word. It is God who causes growth in our lives (1 Corinthians 3:7). We have therefore included a large number of scriptures throughout the book so that you can examine them yourself. We also wanted the book to contain solid, well-founded direction and information on sex. For this, we relied on established medical, psychological, and sex therapy literature as well as on the results from Jennifer’s research. In the process of her work, Jennifer has had the opportunity to conduct a few research studies. One study examined married Christian women’s experiences of shame in connection to sexuality.3 Some of the results of that study are included in the chapters of this book. Jennifer also ran a research study (a randomized controlled trial) of the sex therapy model she had developed to help Christian couples with their sexual relationships.4 One of the goals was to see if her model of treatment helped couples improve in their overall intimacy and in their marital and sexual satisfaction. The results were substantial and showed that couples improved significantly. In the professional fields of medicine and mental health, practitioners strive to provide care that has been proven to be effective—that is evidence based. The evidence-based model of sex therapy that Jennifer developed and uses in her private practice is at the core of many of the exercises found in this book. Enjoy!
So Who Are We?
From Tim: Jennifer’s got a number of impressive credentials, and this isn’t just coming from a biased husband; she’s amazing. She’s a doctor of psychology, a licensed marriage and family therapist, a certified sex therapist, a nationally award-winning sex researcher, a certified chemical dependency counselor, an international speaker, and a professor. And, oh yeah, she also has a Bachelors of Music in Musical Theater. She always jokes that her next book is going to be entitled Sex, Drugs, and Show Tunes. But on top of that, or as she will tell you, more importantly, she is a disciple of Jesus, a wife (lucky me), and a mother of four children. Those are her favorite jobs.
From Jennifer: Tim has a lot of credentials as well. Not only has he been an attentive and devoted lover through the years, and I can say that because I’m his wife, but he has supported me in all the crazy adventures I’ve had in learning to help people. Through our years together, he’s been a small group leader, a married ministry leader, a financial adviser to the ministry leadership, and a deacon. His integrity and hard work as a program manager and business owner make him a great provider. But it is his genuine love for God and his sincere determination to stay faithful to his commitment to God, to me, to his children, and to God’s kingdom that I truly love, need, and admire.
Together we have enjoyed twenty-three years of marriage and parenting four great kids. Like many of you, we have struggled to keep our marriage bed pure from anger, sexual sin, unfaithfulness, selfishness, worldliness, resentment, criticalness, and pride. There have been so many who have helped us along the way. We hope we can be one of the many for you—one of the many resources you find in your life to help your marriage bring glory to God and to help your sex life be the life-giving joy that God intends it to be.
As disciples of Jesus, we have the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of God’s loving heart through being deeply known and erotically bonded with our spouse. The Art of Intimate Marriage is designed as a road map to help you experience growth toward a more rewarding, spiritual sexual relationship. Let’s get started!