With Valentine's Day right around the corner, today's meeting focused on love and intimacy. Erin started the morning out with a fun game, where each group had to craft a "love letter" using the sayings on candy hearts. Congratulations to the Moonwalker Moms for their cute and funny rap!! Lots of creativity and laughter in the fellowship hall this morning!!!!
Today's speaker presented the topics of desire and intimacy in marriage. A few of the key points made included problems with desire in marriage, desire discrepancy, and emotional/physical intimacy in marriage.
Some of the problems with desire that we face in marriage can come from family history, personal/sexual history, and marital history ( past problems that we have faced in our marriage). She also spoke about desiring God, who is our true soul mate. We need to put God first in our lives because He loves us unconditionally, knows us fully and loves us anyway, and will give us the desires of our heart.
According to our speaker, the three stages of marriage are: romantic (early/newlywed stage), power struggle (which can last for many years), and then reality (which is the beginning of REAL love and acceptance). Part of the problem with desire in the later stages of marriage is that we expect chemistry and commitment to exist at the same time, when they are actually in opposition to each other! Yes, you can have both, but it takes INTENTIONAL WORK!!! Don't believe that you don't love someone simply because you no longer feel the same desire you once had for them.
She then went on to speak about emotional and physical intimacy. Men and women are quite different when it comes to emotional intimacy. Men are motivated for independence while women are motivated for intimacy. Clearly, this can cause some problems in a relationship.
One of the issues with physical intimacy can come when a couple faces a "desire discrepancy", meaning one spouse has a high level of desire, while the other has a low level. This is common in most marriages, with the man being the high desire spouse about 2/3 of the time. Our speaker emphasized that an accurate pattern in later stages of marriage looks like this:
Arousal --- Desire---Intimacy.
So if we wait around for the desire to come, we may be waiting a LONG time!!!
In order to have a healthy sex life in marriage, we need to have open communication and compromise. The goal should be oneness and intimacy and we should expect to have to WORK at it!! Kathy's final recommendations for us included "don't wait one more day, put husband and marriage first, deepen your friendship, decide that a loving, satisfying sexual relationship is important, and take care of yourself."
If you are interested in learning more about this morning's speaker and her marriage classes, please visit her website at iwanttostaymarriedbuthow.com and/or blog at iwanttostaymarriedbuthow.blogspot.com
This blog is dedicated to the Moms of Influence group at Northbrook Church in Richfield, WI.
