Therefore a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
GENESIS 2:24
Some time ago I taught a workshop at a pastor’s conference entitled “How to Be the Husband of a Happy Pastor’s Wife.” In my talk I shared a number of ways that each man could cultivate a more meaningful relationship with his wife. When I was through with my presentation, I opened up the meeting for discussion. Was I ever surprised as the majority of the questions asked were about sexual intimacy! Frankly, I was totally unprepared as the questions about sex started rolling in. I speak on and answer questions on this most personal aspect of the marriage relationship all the time, but my message to these men had nothing to do with the subject. Their line of questioning was a complete curve ball!
With the memory of that workshop in my mind, I come to this chapter in our book and can declare with confidence that intimacy in marriage is an issue that most definitely needs to be addressed! A right perspective on this area of our lives is important if we want to be a husband after God’s own heart.
Created for Intimacy
How would you define intimacy? If you’re like most men (including yours truly), you would probably define intimacy as sexual intercourse or lovemaking. Well, you would be at least partially right. God did include physical union as part of the marriage package, as we see in the Scriptures: “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
But intimacy for a couple can and should be much more than merely sexual, as important as that is. At this point most men, in a state of utter puzzlement, will ask the question, “Well…what else is there besides sexual intimacy?” Again, while this is important, it’s just a part of intimacy. Let’s look now at some other aspects of intimacy, which all work together to make a more pleasurable marriage.
Intimacy is a close friendship. Did you have a close buddy in high school or college or do you have a longtime workmate who was or is so close to you that the two of you could talk about anything? That’s the kind of intimacy you should have with your wife, because intimacy includes friendship. Maybe you already have this kind of close friendship with your sweetheart. If you do, you know that it’s great, isn’t it? And you probably also know that you shouldn’t take it for granted, and that you should continue to nurture that closeness with your most intimate friend—your wife.
But maybe you don’t have this kind of friendship-intimacy with your wife at this point in your marriage. You might have been great friends at one time, but in the busyness of life, your friendship has waned. Many marriages do go through such “dry” periods. But those dry spells don’t need to last. Do you desire to regain that friend you once had in your wife (and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t)? Well, there’s hope! Read on and pray that one day God will develop in you the heart of a friend, that one day in the not-too-distant future your wife could say of her relationship with you, “This is my beloved, and this is my friend” (Song of Solomon 5:16).
As I’m writing this, I’m having another thought I can’t resist sharing. I’m thinking that this type of friendship-intimacy is also what we should desire to have with God. We need to have such a close relationship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ that, like Abraham of old, we too are a “friend of God” (James 2:23). That, my friend, is the ultimate intimacy!
Now, back to your marriage….
Intimacy is a mood. We might even call it a feeling, an attitude, or a state of mind. The mood of intimacy usually expresses itself in a place. This place could be anywhere. It can be any place where you and your wife are able to focus your attention exclusively on the other. That place can be the breakfast table, where you and your honey share a quiet dinner after the kids are in bed; a corner booth at your favorite restaurant, where you both enjoy each other and a bottomless cup of coffee; a tree-lined street or a beach or a park where the two of you can savor a stroll at sunset.
I hope you can see why building a friendship with your wife would encourage this attitude or mood of intimacy. Personally, I’m always concerned about couples who never seem to be or want to be alone. They are constantly doing things with others. Dinners, plays, concerts, and outings, even vacations, are always enjoyed in the context of a group.
Intimacy, however, is private, privately shared, and privately developed. It is a state of mind that binds you and your wife together. It was that state of mind that promoted a desire for intimacy in the first place. Your goal is to grow to the place that, no matter where you are, your intimate friendship makes you feel as if it’s just the two of you who are alone together. If you desire this brand of closeness, then you must start building or continue building a best-friendship with your wife. Then I guarantee that both you and she will constantly be thinking of each other, and eagerly awaiting your private times together!
Intimacy is understanding. How do you get to know and understand another person? By spending time with him or her. The more you know your wife as a person, know her thoughts, and know her dreams, the more intimate your understanding of her will be. Elizabeth and I have been married for 50 years. Spending that many years around another person gives you a pretty good insight into that person’s inner life, and I think that I can truthfully say that’s the case with Elizabeth and me. But I can also truthfully say that over the years it’s been a constant battle for us to make sure we stay connected because, like every couple, we’ve both been growing, maturing, and changing.
Unfortunately, that’s not true about many couples. They have not attempted to stay involved in each other’s lives—to continue learning about their spouse. And I know, because I’ve done a lot of marriage counseling through the decades as a pastor! A deeper level of intimacy may have been present at the beginning of the marriage, but slowly, over time and in the flow of the busy-ness of life, and due to unintentional neglect, that intimate communion was lost. Thirty or 40 years later the product is a marriage made up of two complete strangers living under the same roof, with very little in common. These are the couples you see in a restaurant eating their entire meal in total silence. What a sad scene! And what’s even more tragic is knowing that this estrangement could have been avoided. So please, don’t let life and all its distractions keep you and the love-of-your-life from continually—on a daily basis—re-acquainting yourselves with each other’s growth and development. This kind of intimate understanding will definitely foster the final type of intimacy in your marriage—sexual intimacy.
Intimacy is a close physical relationship. We’ve been talking about intimacy created through the development of a deep friendship with your wife. Every good marriage must be a friendship between two people who are willing to sacrifice for the other person. You as a husband must think as much of your wife as you think of any friend. And you must have as much interest in her as any two best friends have in each other.
But marriage is more than just being good friends. Much more! Guys can be friends, and so can sisters or two women or a group of women. In every good marriage, however, the husband-and-wife friendship goes one significant step further and goes on to develop into a passionate physical union, goes on to nurture a close physical relationship that fulfills each other sexually, goes on to be a never-ending, fresh surprise to each other sexually, goes on to enjoying one another as if you were still newlyweds.
Exactly how can you keep this intimate passion burning for the life of a marriage? To repeat, it all starts with the fuel of a faithful friendship, mutual respect, and clear communication. And now, we add that it also requires a decisive commitment to stand watch over the fire of sexual intimacy—to stoke it, to rekindle it, to do whatever it takes to keep it burning…even if that means going to the mall! (I once heard a speaker say, “If you want to have sex with your wife, you have to be willing to go to the mall with her!”)
Created Differently
God created man and woman in His own image, and both bear the creative workmanship of an all-powerful God (Genesis 1:27). Also, men and women who are Christians are viewed as spiritually similar, as one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). But when it comes to anatomy and physiology, God, in His great wisdom and for His own good reasons, wired men and women differently. Part of this difference is because of the different roles men and women are to fulfill in a marriage. The man is to provide, and the woman is to nurture. The man is to give strong, protective leadership, and the woman is to support and sustain life and living.
All this to say, the many issues and problems that have their origin in our physical differences also extend to sexual intimacy. That’s why my pastor friends had so many questions. Men and women think and act differently about many issues, including sex.
My personal opinion as to why sexual intimacy is such a problem for married couples is that one or both partners fails to understand, or seriously consider, or refuses to accept that there are differences. This lack of understanding leads to faulty reasoning like, My wife should respond the same way as I do when it comes to sex. Then when she doesn’t, we wonder, What’s wrong with her?…and…well, you know the rest. So I repeat, take the time to better understand your wife and male/female differences. It will make a big difference! I know we’ve looked at this verse before, but it again reminds us of what it means to be a husband after God’s own heart:
Husbands, likewise, dwell with [your wife] with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7).
As this scripture teaches us, the wife is “the weaker vessel.” This points specifically to her physical abilities. Generally speaking, women have less stamina, less physical strength and energy than men. And you as the husband who desires to live with her “with understanding” need to care enough to discover how you can give honor to the differences between you and your wife. You need to learn how to live with those differences and how to love and accept every one of them. Intimacy at all levels, and especially at the physical level, begins with understanding that you and your wife are different. Then your next step is to apply the following guidelines for greater enjoyment of intimacy.
The Makings of Intimacy
Intimacy, for a Christian couple, is not something that just happens. As we’ve seen, intimacy possesses multiple facets and is multi-layered. It is hard work. The Fall and our resultant sinful nature has left us flawed with fears, bitterness, and selfishness. Therefore we must seek God’s help if we are to enjoy true and fulfilling intimacy in our marriages. God’s kind of intimacy requires that you…
Make sure you offer your wife a biblical love. You can’t change the world’s thoughts about “love.” To the world, love is romantic feelings, physical attraction, lust, and sex. But for a Christian man, a husband after God’s own heart, love is different. We’re to show a biblical kind of love. What makes biblical love different? One marriage counselor defines biblical love in this way:
A selfless and enduring commitment of the will to care about and benefit another person by righteous, truthful, and compassionate thoughts, words and actions.8
True biblical love is a selfless commitment of one’s body, soul, and spirit to the betterment of the other person. It is a love with actions, not just words. And this, husband, is the kind of love we are to offer our wives. If you routinely and repeatedly demonstrate your love by the words you say and by your actions, the intimacy God intended will be forthcoming. No wife in her right mind could resist a husband who is giving this kind of love—Christ’s love (Ephesians 5:25). She will freely share all with a husband whose chief goal in life is to sacrificially love her as Christ loved the church.
Make a covenant with your eyes. A covenant is a serious commitment a man after God’s own heart makes with God. And that is what is needed if we are to keep ourselves pure for our wives. Job did just that when he said, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I look upon a young woman?” (Job 31:1).
It’s no secret that men can easily become sexually stimulated simply by looking at a woman. Therefore it’s important that we monitor the “eye gate.” You and I are in no way planning to commit adultery with our body, but…we just might be committing adultery with our eyes. Jesus spoke about wandering, longing gazes at any woman other than your wife in Matthew 5:27 when He said, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” As one scholarly source explains,
Jesus indicated that the sin [of adultery] described in Exodus 20:14 lies deeper than the overt act. “Whoever looks” characterizes the man whose glance is not checked by holy restraint, and who forms the impure purpose of lusting after her. The act will follow when opportunity occurs.9
Friend, realize that intimacy means mutual purity. Your wife is to be keeping herself pure for you. And God is asking you to do the same for her…and that purity starts with your eyes. So…make a covenant with your eyes!
Make your wife’s body the standard. Like it or not, you and I are a product of our culture and of the Fall. We are affected by the sex-crazed society we live in. So much of what we see has sex connected with it. “Sex sells” is Madison Avenue’s motto. As a result, we come to view the women in TV ads or the “cover girls” on the checkout-stand magazines or the nicely dressed women at the office as “the standard” for women. Then we come home to a wife who’s had two preschoolers hanging on her all day long. She hasn’t had one minute to herself, let alone time to change out of the sweats she was wearing when you left for work earlier that morning. Upon looking at her and seeing she doesn’t measure up to our “fantasy,” we can be tempted to become discontent. That’s the moment we must look to God for His help in resisting the temptation to “deal treacherously with the wife of [our] youth” (Malachi 2:15).
Husband, God says that your wife is to be your standard! “She is your companion and your wife by covenant” (verse 14). Do you remember your marriage vows? They probably went something like this: “In sickness and health, for better or for worse, till death you do part.” In your marriage vows, before God and to your bride, you made your wife your one and only standard. So by remembering daily and recommitting daily to those vows, you will ensure that your wife, not some “fantasy model,” is your model. Hers is the perfect body. Hers is the only body God says is yours to enjoy. God warns and admonishes us husbands with these words:
Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well…. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth…. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love (Proverbs 5:15,18-19).
How’s Your Heart?
Right now I think we need a heart checkup, or a marriage checkup. I’m not going to ask the obvious question—“How are you doing in the Intimacy Department?”—because if you are like my pastor friends, there are issues and areas that need some work. But don’t be discouraged. Your marriage is no different than mine or all the other guys you know. No marriage is all that it could be. Why? Because you and I are not all we could be in our spiritual growth and maturity. And that’s the challenge!
Your marriage, like mine and others, is always in need of “fine tuning.” People change. Marriage partners change. The family makeup changes. And the marriage must adapt to the changes that are occurring in the two people that make up that marriage. Your ability to adapt to the ages and stages of marriage will ensure that intimacy in all its glory will always be there. Ask God to open your heart to changes that you need to make in your life that will encourage and enhance intimacy with your wife.
Have you noticed that I haven’t said anything about your wife? I would have to say that in the majority of marriages, it is the wife who is waiting and praying for greater love and sensitivity on her husband’s part. Even if there are problems that only your wife can change, the fact is, God calls us to change ourselves and we are directly accountable to Him for doing what’s right in the marriage relationship. Scripture never calls us to attempt to change a spouse. So, what do you say to taking a few first or further steps to showing greater love and concern?
Now, I must alert you that you may find your wife to be a bit skeptical and cautious at first! This will be the case if there have been instances of insensitivity on your part. But she will more than likely (Lord willing!) respond to your God-motivated efforts. Then the two of you can continue traveling on the road of a marriage that honors God and gives you both all of the intimacy each of you desires and can handle. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It should sound great, because that’s what God meant when He created man and woman to enjoy intimacy, to become “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
1. Communicate openly about sex.
As the years go by in a marriage, the “newness” of sex can start wearing off and the pressures of life can begin building up until intimacy seems to be less of a driving force. But every couple must be careful, because the need for intimacy is still very much present, as one marriage counselor’s records show. He reports that time and time again husbands of all ages expressed that “sexual fulfillment” was #1 on their Top-Five list of “most basic needs.”10 Yet when their wives were asked for the same information, sex did not appear at all on their Top-Five list!
What this means is that you are going to have to talk openly to your wife about your ongoing needs in the Sexual Fulfillment Department. In many cases wives don’t understand the male sex drive and conclude that their husbands are like they are when it comes to the frequency of desire for sex. So the next time you’re alone together and the time is right, talk about scheduling sex into your busy lives. The talk will do both of you good!
2. Go to bed at the same time.
Sexual intimacy can become a major problem if you and your wife are operating on different schedules. For example, your job might require that you work the evening or night shift. Whatever the case, make a concerted effort to plan with your wife to go to bed together. A little thing like going to bed at the same time can make a big difference in your sex life. Intimacy doesn’t just happen. Being close physically generates feelings in both of you that wouldn’t arise if one of you is still out in the family room watching television, “surfing the net,” or poring over paperwork from the office. Don’t purposefully sabotage your sex life with late-night diversions. Make sure you fulfill each other’s sexual desires (1 Corinthians 7:3).
3. Take care of yourself.
The Bible says that “the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Corinthians 7:4). This means your body is not yours. It’s the property of your wife! Therefore you are to be a good steward of your wife’s real estate by keeping your body in good physical shape—not for your sake, but for hers. If you want your wife to be more sexually attracted to you, then do your part. Good grooming is a little thing, but it makes a big difference. Take a shower after a long, hard, hot day at the office or out in the truck.
Also, a little exercise goes a long way. You may get plenty of exercise on your job, but if you sit at a desk all day, you’re not burning many calories. If you are a little or a lot out of shape, then join a gym or purchase a few weights and use them as often as you can. Take a walk in the mornings or evenings with your wife. You’ll not only build intimacy, but by walking, you can lose about 12 pounds in a year without ever changing your diet. Losing a few pounds never hurts in the Lovemaking Department.
4. Make up quickly.
“Do not go to bed angry” is good advice for any married couple. Or, if you want it in stronger language, the Bible says, “Do not let the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). Arguments seem to fester and grow foul if they are allowed to continue. Restore that wonderful relationship with your wife by saying, “I’m sorry.” And just think of the intimate fun the two of you can have when you make up!
5. Schedule a getaway.
As I have repeatedly said, keeping intimacy alive in your marriage takes a lot of work—but it’s worth it to enjoy this blessing God has provided! One of the best ways to keep the fires of passion burning in both of you is to get away on a regular basis. If you want your wife to respond to you physically, then take the initiative. Find a place that’s not too far away and not too expensive. (You’ll want to do this again, so don’t break the bank the first time.) Find a babysitter or arrange with friends to exchange babysitting responsibilities. Getting your wife away from the distractions of the house, children, and a myriad of other things, even for an overnighter, allows for a focused time together. A getaway will rejuvenate your sex life and enhance your marriage.