V
VeritasLuxMea
Guest
I posted a thread a while back about the lack of fulfillment in my married sex life, I spoke of how there just wasn’t enough of it. There still isn’t enough, because enough for me is A LOT. 
p) But it has gotten a lot better!!!
I’m not trying to teach anyone anything here because we are not marriage experts at all, lol… but I would like to share a perspective and something that we think we learned during this experience.
While we were talking about this, we realized that we were approaching sex from 2 different angles. No pun intended.
For me, the husband, part of my desire for sex was a desire to become more intimate with my wife. During it and afterwards for a day or a few days, I felt “closer” to my wife, more “intimate.” Thus all the other aspects of marriage came easier to me at these times. I would always endeavor to do all the things that a good husband should do even if a good amount of time went by without sex - mostly non-sexual intimate acts, but those things were so much easier to accomplish when we did have sex recently.
For my wife, sex felt more like a culmination of the intimacy we already shared in other ways. If I was doing all of those aforementioned “things that a good husband does,” mostly related to non-sexual intimate acts, then she felt closer to me. And if she felt closer to me, she desired sexual intimacy more.
**
The problem**: I wanted the sex first in order to feel close, whereas she wanted to feel close first in order to have the sex. Which sounds like a paradox!
The fix: though it wasn’t always comfortable, we both had to reach out and meet each other in the middle. I had to choose to commit to those non-sexual intimate acts more often, even when it was tricky for me to do so. She had to choose to commit to sexual intimacy even when she wasn’t too interested in it. We had to make “the decision to love” every day.
The result: since we put this into practice, we are having way more intimacy (both sexual AND non-sexual) than we have ever had before. It has been an amazing revelation. We feel like we’ve gained great insights into the meaning of marriage. We have both made sacrifices, and because we have made sacrifices, we have an abundance that we have never had before.
Since then, we’ve taken to applying this concept to other areas of our lives, beyond just intimacy. I’m not going to go into the specifics, but we find that it works for us nearly every time. We die to ourselves, to reach more fulfillment in “us”, just as paradoxical as the way that Jesus’ death opened us to everlasting life. But it convinces us more and more that man and woman were made for each other, that marriage truly is a sacrament.
I apologize for being overly wordy! But we hope that this idea might help another couple out there.
p) But it has gotten a lot better!!!I’m not trying to teach anyone anything here because we are not marriage experts at all, lol… but I would like to share a perspective and something that we think we learned during this experience.
While we were talking about this, we realized that we were approaching sex from 2 different angles. No pun intended.
For me, the husband, part of my desire for sex was a desire to become more intimate with my wife. During it and afterwards for a day or a few days, I felt “closer” to my wife, more “intimate.” Thus all the other aspects of marriage came easier to me at these times. I would always endeavor to do all the things that a good husband should do even if a good amount of time went by without sex - mostly non-sexual intimate acts, but those things were so much easier to accomplish when we did have sex recently.
For my wife, sex felt more like a culmination of the intimacy we already shared in other ways. If I was doing all of those aforementioned “things that a good husband does,” mostly related to non-sexual intimate acts, then she felt closer to me. And if she felt closer to me, she desired sexual intimacy more.
**
The problem**: I wanted the sex first in order to feel close, whereas she wanted to feel close first in order to have the sex. Which sounds like a paradox!
The fix: though it wasn’t always comfortable, we both had to reach out and meet each other in the middle. I had to choose to commit to those non-sexual intimate acts more often, even when it was tricky for me to do so. She had to choose to commit to sexual intimacy even when she wasn’t too interested in it. We had to make “the decision to love” every day.
The result: since we put this into practice, we are having way more intimacy (both sexual AND non-sexual) than we have ever had before. It has been an amazing revelation. We feel like we’ve gained great insights into the meaning of marriage. We have both made sacrifices, and because we have made sacrifices, we have an abundance that we have never had before.
Since then, we’ve taken to applying this concept to other areas of our lives, beyond just intimacy. I’m not going to go into the specifics, but we find that it works for us nearly every time. We die to ourselves, to reach more fulfillment in “us”, just as paradoxical as the way that Jesus’ death opened us to everlasting life. But it convinces us more and more that man and woman were made for each other, that marriage truly is a sacrament.
I apologize for being overly wordy! But we hope that this idea might help another couple out there.
