Healthy Marriage = Hot Sexy Times
By Noah Root
LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX!
If you are married you know all about this subject lol. You either get excited when someone brings up sex, or it puts a bad taste in your mouth (pun not intended). This isn’t an article to tell you what you may be doing right or wrong in the bedroom, rather it is more to show the relationship between how we are doing as a couple, and how our sex life is going.
So… how is your sex life? You shouldn’t have to think long and hard about that question. Our gut reaction of how our sex life with our partner is going is often accurate, but here’s the thing. Do you understand that if your answer to the question above was something like “it is not good at all”, or maybe even “what sex? It’s non-existent".
I’d like to propose that the answer to the question, “How is my sex life with my spouse?”, has a direct correlation to the health of our marital relationship outside the bedroom. This seems like such a simple concept, but I really want to dive into the details of why we need to be working on oneness outside of the bedroom in order to really improve how we interact “between the sheets”.
A little note on everything being covered here:
These are all very generalized statements, and we know that everyone's situation is different. The concepts here are simply a good place to start growing your intimacy. We do know that some situations will require counseling, or other means of intervention to move forward.
Now let’s get into it. Intimacy in our marriage does not stem from sex into the rest of our life like a lot of people may think. It is quite the opposite actually, we need to be building that intimacy between us in our daily interactions in order to make our spouse feel more safe when we get to the bedroom, and into “the act”. You know what it means for our spouse to feel more safe to be in the vulnerable space with us? It means that sex can then be more fun, hot, and even adventurous than it maybe once was. I mean come on! Who wouldn’t want that!
We’ve now established that we all would like to have a better sex life in our marriage, and hopefully we now understand the importance of our non-sexual intimacy. Let's talk about some super easy things to do in order to start building that trust and intimacy together.
The first and probably TOP activity that has helped us with our intimacy, is probably our uninterrupted time to be together, ONE-ON-ONE. When I say interrupted I mean it, no phones, no kids, no agenda. This is just time for us to be together, and talk about anything under the sun. These conversations aren’t always amazing, and light, but they are always valuable in building each other up and bonding us together.
Some examples of how to have this time together:
Going on evening walks together to talk about the events of the day, and connect while exercising together
Daily or weekly morning coffee together (make sure there is more than 20 minutes to spend together UNINTERRUPTED)
Get a hobby together (this can’t be watching tv)
Showering together (I mean we both have to do it, so why not do it together?)
The whole point in having this one-on-one time together is simply to allow us to talk about important issues, but it can also be an amazing time to talk about dreams, desires, parenting styles, or just random things that come to mind. Hopefully that all makes some sense.
The second way that we would say is super valuable in building our intimacy together is doing small things for each other that speaks to our spouse's love language.
(If you haven’t read the book “The Five Love Languages” we highly recommend it to help you learn how to love your partner best)
Here are some super simple ideas, that you can certainly tweak for your own parter:
Do a couple of his chores before he gets home from work (Acts of Service)
Buy her some flowers, or her favorite candy bar on your way home (Gifts)
Cuddle with him on the couch in front of a movie (Physical Touch)
Cook dinner together one or more nights during the week (Quality Time)
Send Him a random text of appreciation in the middle of the day (Words of Affirmation)
Again, I want to express that these are all just ideas to use as a launch pad for each one of us to express our love to our spouse in a non-sexual way. We all need to feel loved before being fully vulnerable and excited to get into the bedroom and try that new position our spouse has been wanting to try out. Remember that these lists are not to overwhelm you and make you feel like you aren’t enough. They are purely to emphasize that each and every one of us knows that we could improve in one way or another in our marriage.
Make it a goal this week to be observant of things that would make your spouse feel especially loved, and go out of your way in order to make at least one of those things happen. After this week we’d love to hear from you how it helped improve your relationship, and if there's anything specific that you tried that maybe wasn’t on our list!
