Intimacy Uncovered: The Conversations Every Marriage Needs :: [Ep. 261]

Intimacy Uncovered: The Conversations Every Marriage Needs :: [Ep. 261]

Today we tackle the often-avoided topic of intimacy in marriage. Understanding intimacy and its importance can be vital for a healthy relationship. This episode delves into personal stories, biblical insights, and practical tools for couples facing intimacy challenges.

We will provide clear guidance on how to recognize when intimacy is suffering and actionable advice on how to address these issues. From understanding God's intention behind intimacy to offering practical steps for restoring closeness, this episode is packed with wisdom you'll find invaluable.

We are hitting the following:
• Defining intimacy in marriage 
• Recognizing the emotional aspects connected to intimacy 
• Facing barriers that hinder marital intimacy 
• Discovering God’s design for sexual intimacy 
• Practical steps for restoring intimacy and emotional connections 
• Preparing to support friends facing marital struggles

Come listen now to glean helpful info! 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Overview
• 2:13 Preparing to Help a Friend in Crisis
• 4:59 Our Mission for Healthy Marriages
• 27:40 Diving Into Intimacy: A Sensitive Topic
• 50:09 Equipping You to Help Friends
• 16:11:59 Barriers to Satisfying Intimacy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. Our mission is to help couples develop biblically healthy marriages through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. We desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

Speaker 2: 0:22

We are David and Tracy Sellers and, like like you, we've made vows to keep.

Speaker 3: 0:27

We're in the 12th part on how to help a hurting marriage, and today's topic, tracy, is a touchy one Intimacy, the conversation so many people need to have. When it comes to helping a hurting marriage, this topic is one that sticks out like a sore thumb. We'd almost like to pretend that it isn't there, but you know what it is it's an underpinning of every marriage. We're going to break this into three sections. The first one is to equip you on how you can walk beside your friend in their struggle.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Number two we're going to talk about why God even created this often fought about issue in marriage.

Speaker 3: 1:04

And then, finally, we'll look at the barriers to a satisfying intimacy in marriage and how we work through those barriers. We hope this will be a very practical time for you to put the right tools in your toolbox so that you're equipped, so that you're able to step back from the emotions that broken intimacy creates and see the bigger picture for your friend's marriage, and maybe even for your friend's marriage and maybe even for your own marriage. This is the second to last broadcast in our 13 part series on how to help a hurting marriage, and it's no coincidence that we didn't talk about this very important topic much earlier in the series, and that's because when someone comes to you hurting, this can feel like the most burning need.

Speaker 2: 1:43

We understand this is what you're going to run into as well. Many times when couples come to see us, intimacy is at the top of their list. They want to cover that thing first, and for good reason, because there's all kinds of things that cause that pain, anything from infidelity to pornography addiction to just no warmth between us. The hurt that these things cause tends to loom bigger than we feel we can even handle. We want immediate resolution, or sometimes we just want out of the pain.

Speaker 3: 2:10

So when someone comes to the hurting marriage, you've got to start at the heart level, not the physical level, and most of the time by the time we've worked through the heart level issues that a couple is experiencing. A lot of times the sexual issues have already been resolved. Now a little disclaimer. Times the sexual issues have already been resolved. Now a little disclaimer about today's broadcast. Sex is an unisolated topic that we are intentionally isolating. There are many foundational topics, so go back and listen to some of the earlier broadcasts. Take notes if you need to, because everything we've talked about till now has bearing on intimacy in a marriage, from purpose to covenant versus contract, to our roles, to forgiveness, to the idols we have in our heart and more. You've probably heard us say this before, but it's worth repeating.

Speaker 3: 2:52

Intimacy in your marriage, your friend's marriage, is the thermometer, not the thermostat, of the relationship. So what's happening in the bedroom or not happening is like a gauge of what's going on where no one else can see inside that person's head and heart. Intimacy is such a private thing in marriage that typically doesn't get talked about until the rumblings underneath the happy veneer create a major earthquake. Most of us don't bring this topic up with a friend when it seems like our spouse and I are just two ships passing in the night. We don't raise the red flag when schedules get full and we don't have any surplus. Most of us don't speak up about sexual addiction or perverse thoughts until they've taken us down a dead-end road. We don't say anything about the hatred in our hearts that's preventing sexual union. It's not until the ground cracks and threatens to swallow us that we begin to take action. Sadly, when most people get to this stage, their hearts have already hardened to the point that they're not actually asking for help. They're asking for a way out.

Speaker 2: 3:55

That might very well be where you come into this equation. For your friend, you had no idea what was happening behind closed doors. Sometimes we just don't. You thought they were a great, happy family and now you hear it was all a farce. Neither your friend or her spouse see any hope on the horizon. Well, that's how John and Jenny came to us in their darkest hour. We didn't see it coming, and neither did anybody else. Sexual sin had broken their home, just like it has so many others.

Speaker 2: 4:22

But I love how God works. He made room in both of our family's schedules to be able to meet right away the very day that affair was brought to light. Even though their world was crashing down around them, they still held out hope that God might be able to put this relationship back together. You probably heard that God is the God of miracles, but, man, when you see it happen, it is powerful. Over the seven months that we met with this couple, when you start with purpose and you build from there, god does amazing things. And you might meet with your friend for that long, longer than you thought, or you might just have one moment to speak the truth that they need to hear before they begin to break away from their covenant. Either way, don't miss this first point today on Vows to Keep Radio. God will perfectly position you at just the right time, give you just the right words to say. But here's our challenge to you Be ready for it. Gather truth, put it into action in your own life. That's how you can best be prepared.

Speaker 3: 5:18

So our conversation to you today is kind of like a Paul Timothy thing. Paul knows his young protege is going to need to be well-armed with truth so that he can speak it at just the right time. In 2 Timothy 2, starting in verse 2, Paul writes this preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They'll turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths. But you keep your head in all situations. Endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Speaker 3: 6:10

Timothy was working with people who were liable to forget about God and disregard how he had instructed them to live their lives. Does this sound familiar? In the last days, people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, without self-control. That's us, that's your friend. God was building his church through people like Timothy. God is building his church's eternal kingdom through people like you. Still today, Eternity is built in those little moments, those conversations that you never saw coming, and that is why we have to be prepared.

Speaker 2: 6:52

You know what, though, david? So many of us wish this conversation just would never even come up in the first place. We started this series with purpose. Have you ever asked yourself if this causes so much trouble in a marriage, why in the world did God even create it in the first place? Wouldn't it just be easier if it disappeared? Sometimes, and the hardest thing we had to talk about is what's for dinner, I think the intimacy in a marriage is a lot like Legos.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Okay, cut me some slack here. I'm a mom of three kids. We have a lot of Legos in our house. I think it's a good analogy. Consider this the first time a toddler-aged kid sees a box of Legos, they expect that box actually contains a toy like that cool picture on the front. So imagine a four-year-old's disappointment when he opens the box to find these hundreds of seemingly random pieces of plastic instead of that spaceship that was shown on the box cover. Culture may have given you a picture on a box one of bliss, exquisite pleasure and oneness. Perhaps your friend is surprised, even disappointed, to find that sex isn't the ready-made gift that they were anticipating. It takes investment, effort and a bit of creativity to make it work If we follow the master's plan, something pretty awesome is possible.

Speaker 3: 8:03

Most marriages experience some obstacle to physical intimacy. It's differences in desire, sometimes it's medical issues, sometimes it's someone recovering from sexual abuse, involvement with porn or just a poor body image, to name a few of those issues. I'm sure you've had occasions, as have we, when you've asked God, wait, isn't this supposed to be a gift? With all due respect, god, I think the gift you gave me is broken. The Lord is asking you and I to view sex as a gift of creating, just like those Legos that Tracy was talking about. The joy is found in building, sometimes even making mistakes and redoing things from scratch. Regardless of the frustration that you and your spouse may face in physical intimacy, the Lord invites you to build something far more precious than just a few moments of physical pleasure Unselfishness, grace, forgiveness, unconditional acceptance. Each of these can be developed while seeking the Lord, through the challenges that you might face in the bedroom. The gift of intimacy does require some effort, but it's designed to last and to grow more satisfying as the years go by.

Speaker 2: 9:14

But oh, god is so intentional in all of this. Intimacy is not something to sweep under the rug or go looking for other places to place our desires. God created this for you and your spouse, for your friend and their spouse. I love that. He designed it perfectly. I have to trust him in that.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Physical intimacy wasn't an afterthought or a mistake on his part. It has an intended purpose, several of them in fact. So let's talk turkey for just a minute before we move on. Going back to the basics right now. Number one we can clearly see that God created sex for procreation. Yippee for that right. Otherwise none of us would be here. But his intentions for intimacy don't stop there. Understanding his heart behind this is vital to making fast progress to a healthy marriage. He created intimacy for pleasure in a marriage. I don't think many of us would pursue intimacy if it didn't come with some benefit to us. I don't typically chase down raw broccoli for a nighttime snack, but gosh Cinnamon Toast Crunch hits the spot every time. So yes, it is for pleasure. That part wasn't an afterthought either. Think about that. It was God's idea from the beginning, and he shows us that so well in places like Song of Solomon and other scriptures.

Speaker 3: 10:28

Then there's a mystery that happens when we are physically one. It's called unity. Unity emotionally, unity spiritually, aided by unity physically. The two become one flesh the mystery spoken of in the scripture. But Satan twists it. He says hey, you can be one with anyone you want to Go ahead, no biggie. But true unity, the kind that God invented, is a different kind, and love knows the difference. Trust me, the heart and the life reflect it, and you feel it too. You know this is true for yourself. Amos 3.3 says can two walk together unless they're agreed? What a great question. Unity is built on this. Someone has to yield. The world doesn't define intimacy and unity as doing the things that provide love and happiness for your spouse. The world defines intimacy as receiving. Unity is hard to establish and easy to break. If there is unity and then an offense or a disrespect, we find it's broken. When unity has been broken for a long time, what do we do? Well, the same thing we do in our relationship with God. We've got to come back to repentance.

Speaker 2: 11:39

Absolutely. I'm reconciled with God when I confess my sins and ask to be made right with him. The same thing goes with David. If I'm unwilling to admit that I'm wrong, it's to that degree that I'm going to put up a wall that divides us. And here's the next thing Don't just wait for unity to happen. Plan for it. This is so important. First of all, getting your heart right with God. See, if I'm not right with God, I will almost always find it hard to be united with David. Have you ever noticed that in your own life? I bet your friend has. I have to be open and honest and humble and submissive to God to be right with God. It takes the same basic things to be united with David. If I've been treating him like another child in my household, that's when I need to change how I'm seeing him and recognize that my role isn't to mother him and therefore demean him. It's to elevate him and build him up. These are the kinds of things that break unity and that resolve unity.

Speaker 3: 12:33

If I've treated my wife as an obligation, I need to make that right to make strides toward unity. She is a gift God gave me to steward. She's where I need to make that right to make strides toward unity. She is a gift God gave me to steward. She's where I need to serve with Christ-like love. She's the one God gave me to lead and to love, and nothing says the opposite, like body language and words that say I'm put out by what I'm doing with you.

Speaker 1: 12:53

If you have a marriage question, please email questions at vowstokeepcom. Vows to Keep will respond to you via email and perhaps use it on the air. Now let's rejoin Vows To Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers.

Speaker 2: 13:06

I think you might see where we're going here. If there's anything I'm resentful about, any emotional toes that have been stepped on between us, even a misunderstanding where neither of us are actually in the wrong, but we just need to get on the same page. All of that is going to stand in the way of physical unity. But here's the kicker. That's how God designed it and I'm kind of glad he did. I'm glad, aren't you, that God made intimacy in such a way that we can't just jump into bed without our hearts being involved, even if we try to distance ourselves emotionally to just get through the physical act. That right there proves that our hearts are completely intertwined with this topic. God doesn't want us to just go through the motions next time. He wants all of our hearts to be involved in this. It was kind of a dumb moment when I realized this, but unity means we need to deal with division, so let's deal with it biblically, asking for forgiveness from my spouse where I've gone against God's word on these issues, repenting before God and asking him for help, knowing, hey, I don't have it all figured out, but I know that God does, and I'm going to trust him to help me be unified with my spouse once again, especially when getting back to unity with them begins in my own heart.

Speaker 2: 14:16

I hope, as you're talking with your friend about these things, that they're starting to have an open dialogue with God about this. I hope you are as well. It's always great to get a refresher, to get back to the basics and get our hearts right before God. So when you do that, or when your friend does that, encourage them to take a special time away. Do the same thing with your spouse. Get practical about it. Find a B&B, book it, get the babysitter, find the finances and make it happen For David and I. Unity is in all the little things throughout the days and months, but it can be especially building to our marriage to have a concentrated time away. I hope you've experienced this in your own marriage and I encourage you to encourage your friend to take that time away with their spouse as well.

Speaker 3: 14:58

God also gives intimacy with our spouse as a way for us to remain pure Great Bible verses that speak to this but also so that we would be able to tell the truth about the purity of God's love for us. Think about it God's love for us is not faked, it's not an imposter. It's a representation of an authentic love that is understood over the long haul of marriage. It's not something that a single encounter could replicate, and that's exactly how it's intended to be A love and intimacy built over a lifetime with one person. By design, it all represents that authentic covenant that God has with us, that he wants us to have with our spouse. We forget these things when our glaring emotions are capturing our attention.

Speaker 2: 15:45

So give your friend a little homework assignment, and let me recommend that you do it as well. Dig into God's word on this, this mystery that he set up from the beginning of creation, a beautiful one that, when understood, begins to heal hearts and clear the air. And then, finally, here today, on Vows to Keep Radio, we're going to get into our next point the barriers to satisfying intimacy in marriage, and really how to work through them.

Speaker 3: 16:11

The first barrier to a wholesome, God-honoring sex life in marriage is substitutions, Not just the presence of the bad, it's the absence of the good. I mean that many marriages substitute that intimate opportunity for time spent watching YouTube, time spent flipping through social media, time spent watching sports, basically ignoring what God asks you to do for your marriage, Spending that time doing something which isn't necessarily bad but is not fuel for their marriage for the long run. This denial, this substitution, is a conscious decision. It's meant to appear passive, but make no mistake, it's not. People's schedules and finances reflect their real priorities and their words. They often conflict with that.

Speaker 3: 16:57

The thermometer of intimacy points out where there is a disparity between the two. The less of a disparity between the words and the actions, the more the thermostat and the thermometer match. So the solution First, I have to ask myself what things have I made too important that are preventing intimacy from being a priority in our marriage? And then boldly take this list to my spouse and ask them what they would add to this list. Ask your spouse humbly what things are made so important that they are preventing the intimacy inside of our marriage.

Speaker 2: 17:35

But who really does this? Who is actually going to follow through on this? Seriously, david and Tracy yeah, we're actually serious. Sometimes we have to get to the most desperate state in our lives or our marriages to realize that God's word has been true all along, and doing what it asks is the smartest thing we could ever do. That's the wisdom God's word is talking about. To be humble is to be wise, because you have to be humble enough to be teachable. Learn wisdom by reading God's word and doing what it says. Listen to Proverbs 11 too. When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.

Speaker 3: 18:09

This won't be an easy conversation for your friend to initiate with their spouse, but if only they could see the other side of it, if they could see how this would soften the heart of their wife, the unity that would bring to the relationship. There are some other substitutions that are also pretty obvious. Things like pornography, self-pleasure, emotional affairs, physical affairs. And people doing this think this is just going to be passive. This won't hurt my marriage. How wrong they are. But at the point you're probably talking to someone about this, the hurt in their marriage, the pain of this substitution, is probably very clear. They realize it wasn't passive, it's killing their marriage. Now what? This is where you have to help them to understand God's word, saying something like okay, friend, your sins, they're going to have consequences. Don to understand God's word Saying something like okay, friend, your sins, they're going to have consequences. Don't be naive about that. But don't listen to Satan. Satan would convince you that a confession of a sin like this would be the death punch to your marriage, but God says otherwise. Listen to 1 Corinthians 7. It says the husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife doesn't have authority over her own body, but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. You see, god gives us the directive to be sexually united, because the threat is real. The solution is for both people in a marriage to be obedient to God's truth. Obedience, independent of the other person's obedience, is still something that helps tremendously.

Speaker 3: 20:02

Now the second barrier is something we actually touched on earlier, and that's not fixing what is broken in our marriage. This is probably the biggest source to intimacy problems we see in marriage. A lot of times it's division about money or parenting. The list can be very long. This is why we said this before Sex is an unisolated topic that we've isolated. So when you want to help a hurting marriage and sex is the chief complaint you have to have the wisdom to consider all the things we've covered in earlier segments in this series. Too many men see a conversation about repentance or forgiveness to be a distraction from what they see to be the most urgent issue. You've got to help them to see the bigger picture. Even if your spouse doesn't forgive and you've come to them in repentance, there's a calling to do your part and then to love them, to walk beside them, to even forgive them for not forgiving you, to love them when it hurts.

Speaker 2: 20:59

There are two sides to this coin. For example, a husband has sinned by looking at pornography. He's repented, but now comes the tough job for the wife to forgive, to be generous, to give grace, to give something that's not even deserved. That's the definition of grace To get the cycle started, the one where we both know it's broken and God is going to have to be the one that helps me be the person who makes a move to get the ball rolling down the hill. Even if your spouse doesn't repent, even if your friend's spouse doesn't repent, there's a calling in God's word to rebuke them, to love them, to walk beside them, forgive them and love them even when it hurts, and invest in them even when your emotions scream, not to the solution is a generous grace that comes from the depths of experience.

Speaker 3: 21:46

Worldly, forgiveness looks like saying the words. A God-honoring forgiveness requires a biblical understanding of how we've been forgiven by Jesus and a passion to show a Jesus-like forgiveness to someone else. Jesus never says that is enough. He never cuts us off. He never needs to get away. He never loses patience. Instead, jesus always opens his arms of love. Jesus always forgives. He always desires to build a relationship as a person. This is impossible to replicate without spending time with your Savior, often daily running to Him, and when you do this, the cycle starts. When you forgive, when you're generous, you start a cycle of unity. When you withhold, when you're watching for someone to fail, that creates a cycle of tension and skepticism. When you forgive and give generously, that creates a cycle of anticipation and encouragement.

Speaker 3: 22:48

The last barrier we've got time for is something the world gets a special kind of credit for Not understanding why God created sex. Sex is a gift inside of marriage. Many Christians get confused by the same message that Satan throws out to the world sex is about you. It's about your pleasure. As someone who wants to help a hurting marriage, you've got to be looking out for someone in this position. Someone has put their own purpose for sex ahead of God's purpose for it and it's a struggle at times to want the fruit, the physical act, more than a unified marriage that actually creates this fruit. So to help a hurting marriage, you've got to help someone see where their purpose would be just to get the pleasure, where God's purpose would be to have the pleasure be a byproduct of the unity he intends.

Speaker 2: 23:45

In conclusion, today your friend is going to come to you, probably in a little bit of turmoil, because when we aren't unified physically, like God intended, things feel pretty out of whack pretty quick. Like we said earlier, our challenge to you is to find out what God's word says about this topic. Put it into practice in your own life. That is the best way to be prepared to help a friend in a hurting marriage. Please join us next week as we conclude this series, part 13 of how to help a hurting marriage. We're going to be talking about legacy.

Speaker 1: 24:15

Vows to Keep is supported by a team which includes biblical coaches, writers and pastoral advisors. If you have a desire to serve marriages in your community, we would love to hear from you. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. As a not-for-profit organization, our commitment to Christlike marriages includes providing much-needed services, regardless of a couple's financial ability to offset the cost of Vows to Keep operations. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities, but would like to help support Vows to Keep financially, visit VowsToKeepcom and click on the donate link. This program is sponsored by Vows to Keep of Zanesfield, ohio.