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Marriage

Pursue Intimacy With Reliable Results

Pursue Intimacy With Reliable Results

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Intimacy can be quite an enigma. People want, need, and even crave it. But genuine, complete intimacy can trigger feelings of fear and shame. One minute a person can be desperate for it. The next minute a person can be desperate to escape from it. Frequently both happen at the same time.

Every relationship can tolerate a particular level of intimacy, depending upon the emotional and spiritual health of the two individuals. An excellent goal for marriage is to find that optimal balancing point and seek to grow it over time. The optimal point balances the individual and the relationship needs.

Marriage can become a disappointment when people expect too much or expect too little from it. How can you tell if your expectations are harming your relationship?

People Who Under-Pursue Intimacy Expect Too Little

They have many of the following characteristics:

  • Move away from their partner
  • Avoid healthy conflict, lack sufficient interest in their partner, and pursue alternative interests
  • Do not try hard enough to make the relationship work, at least less hard than their partner
  • Use a passive approach by cultivating indifference
  • Value their partner less than self or others
  • Focus on or expecting too much from self and too little from partner or God
  • Are comfortable with distance: prefer to live like a roommate
  • Stay in the relationship because of feeling bound by duty and obligation
  • Have given up or are about to give up
  • Have betrayed their partner or are about to

They need to find a way to expect more from their partner.

People Who Over-Pursue Intimacy Expect Too Much

They have many of the following characteristics:

  • Move toward their partner
  • Pursue conflict even when unhealthy, lack enough personal interests, and avoid healthy separation
  • Try too hard to make the relationship work, at least harder than their partner
  • Use an aggressive approach by cultivating entitlement and demanding needs be met
  • Value their partner more than self or others
  • Focus on or expect too much from partner and too little from self or God
  • Are uncomfortable with distance: prefer to spend a lot of time together, at least more than partner
  • Stay in the relationship because of the expectation of receiving a payback
  • Feel jealous or insecure

They need to find a way to expect less from their partner.

Can a Person Under-Pursue and Over-Pursue Intimacy?

Yes. In fact, this could be a sign of a healthier relationship. As you learn how to find an optimal balance, you might shift from one side to the other. The goal is to find the optimal amount of pursuing. But the ideal level of intimacy can be a moving target. Many factors make for an ever-changing environment in relationships: aging, life experience, spiritual growth, awareness of needs. That is why it is necessary to evaluate your progress every so often. I recommend at least once a year.

In an unbalanced marriage, husband and wife can both under-pursue, both over-pursue, or they can pursue opposite strategies at the same time. If you can become more aware of your pattern of how you pursue intimacy, you can be intentional about improving it.

I designed a set of 52 questions to help couples work on finding their balancing point. I’m making the questions available as a deck of cards. The deck is currently going through testing. I’m looking for 3 couples who can try the questions and provide feedback. Even if you are single or with someone who won’t answer the questions with you, you can still participate in the test. Contact me if you are interested.

Read more about finding balance.
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Be Close And Feel No Shame

Be Close And Feel No Shame

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To be close to someone requires that you reveal who you are. Unfortunately, because of the fall, we can experience shame by believing that we are ugly (deformed) in some way, even though God never intended us to experience this.

Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:25 NLT

That sums up the primary goal of marriage. Can you reveal who you are and what you really want, without hesitation or embarrassment? Can you do it with someone of the opposite sex who might not understand you so well?

You can be rejected and feel ashamed at the same time, but you don’t have to. If someone chooses to reject you, your response might range from indifference to depressed, to feeling deeply ashamed.

There’s no greater stress on your soul than feeling ashamed. To feel humiliated is to believe that your greatest desire will never be fulfilled. It happens when you honestly admit what you want more than anything while simultaneously accepting that the culmination of your desire is impossible, and therefore, something must be hopelessly wrong with who you are.

Freedom Enables Closeness

Freedom allows for longing to grow. When you have freedom, you can be aware of what you want and be allowed to pursue it.

Control is the opposite of freedom. It has to do with insecurity which can originate from the belief I am not worth being pursued. When you feel unattractive (whether by physical appearance or within your being), it’s tempting to force closeness (to prove worth) or distance (to avoid feeling worthless) in relationships.

So you can see how togetherness and separateness can be in conflict in marriage. Freedom allows your spouse to feel their desire to be with you. It allows both of you to be who God created you to be.

Love and Respect Enable Closeness

The desire for acceptance and the likelihood of experiencing shame promote defensiveness. But the resulting distance produces loneliness which isn’t good either (Genesis 2:18).

Love and respect affirm a person’s identity. They are the antidote to shame, so without them, shame is certain. Love and respect can’t be faked, so you must cultivate them genuinely.

Genuine togetherness occurs when both husband and wife desire to be together. You can encourage a desire for closeness by focusing on the positive qualities of both you and your spouse. You are both made in God’s image, so even when you might not be able to see positives qualities, they exist.

Separateness Enables Closeness

God didn’t make a husband and wife to be together 100% of the time. To be literally one would make the need for two obsolete. Instead, “one” means to function as one–to be on the same team. Members of a volleyball team would be much less effective if they were joined at the hip (too close) or if they played independently of each other (too separate). Their effectiveness increases as they cooperate but perform distinct functions. The strongest team will have diversified (not redundant) members who function together to achieve a purpose greater than they can achieve apart.

Marriage is more challenging than volleyball. It’s easier to be on the same team in volleyball because the skills required are fewer and simpler. The playing field is divided into two parts. The opponents are clearly visible. The objective is in plain sight.

When you lose sight of the purpose of marriage the team analogy becomes less understandable, but it’s no less valid. Conflict in marriage will increase to the degree the team objective is lost. The conflict often results from one or both people wanting too much closeness or too much separateness. A person’s expectations can become not only unhealthy but also impossible to fulfill.

Every relationship has an optimal amount of closeness which can vary depending on the season of life. Paradoxically, knowing how to be skillfully distinct (separate) allows for being the closest possible without feeling ashamed.

You can live knowing you are beautiful today for two reasons:

  1. You are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27).
  2. God reformed you into a new creation without sin (2 Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 4:24).

For these reasons, you can draw close to God without experiencing shame (Hebrews 4:16) and then also draw close as husband and wife.

For further learning, consider what is the objective of your marriage. How can you support each other on the same team? Ask God to help to see and affirm the positives in your spouse.

Read more about what it means to be a new creation.
Read more about being separate and together.
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Build A Better Marriage With 3 Skills

Build A Better Marriage With 3 Skills

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Marriage is a high potential relationship. With its high reward comes a high risk of making a mess of it. Even though an awesome relationship is hard work, there are a few skills that will help you succeed.

Marriage requires many skills but the three I want to share encompass them all. The three skills are developmental. Meaning, being skilled at #1 makes #2 easier, and being skilled at #2 makes #3 easier. These skills are overlapping in the sense it is possible to be working on all three skills at the same time.

Marriage Skill #1: Thriving As An Individual

The prerequisite for a healthy marriage is to be a healthy individual. This skill prepares a single person to be a married person.

When just beginning to learn this skill, two individuals are not mature enough to sustain a healthy relationship. After all, if you can’t manage yourself, how are you going to take care of someone else?

Each person needs to be able to function as a whole person even when their partner isn’t functioning well. If too much pressure (the expectation that needs will be met) is applied to a spouse, the resulting conflict can be explosive enough to destroy the relationship. This collision is set on a course when two people meet, fall in love instantly, only to find out later they didn’t know what they want in life.

The more you know who you are and what you want from life, the easier it is to be happily married. The one exception to this rule might be that you must want to be married more than you want to live like you are single.

When you are secure enough in who you are, you can be flexible enough to find a way to stay married and pursue something that fulfills you as an individual.

Marriage Skill #2: Cooperating As A Team

The prerequisite for fruitful marriage is to be a team player. This skill prepares a married person to accomplish more with their partner than they can accomplish alone.

When just beginning to learn this skill, a couple cannot work well together. To cooperate as a team requires developing a high level of intimacy. To build this skill, the couple must learn how to be close without losing all they gained as individuals. This involves knowing how to communicate and resolve conflict while maintaining individual boundaries.

Functioning as an individual is different than as a team. Teamwork requires knowing how to work together with different personalities and abilities. The overall marriage objective might not be clear. This will take time to define and negotiate.

Marriage Skill #3: Accomplishing A Mission

As you become proficient in skills #1 and #2, you are more ready to pursue objectives together. With less energy needed to be a healthy individual or couple, you can devote your energy reserves to pursue a purpose that requires two people.

While there are many ways to complete a mission together, a popular one suited for marriage is raising children. If you find your relationship struggling since you started having children, chances are you need to become more experienced at the first two skills.

By now you might have realized that all three skills compete for attention. To build a better marriage requires investing in the right skills, in the right balance, at the right time. Following are some examples to help you understand how this can be challenging, but not impossible.

Tom and Sarah are 16 years old. When they become pregnant, they must devote an enormous amount of energy to their child (#3). While a baby is a high priority, for their relationship to work, they must also build in time to continue growing into adults (#1) and time learning to manage stress and having fun as a couple (#2). At this young age, they experience tension between all three skills, which makes success less likely but still possible.

Steve and Amy are 29 years old. They both work and support themselves without help from their parents. They are used to spending large amounts of time socializing with friends (#1). They don’t have any children, but for their relationship to work, they must make time to learn how to be a couple apart from their friends (#2). Their need for developing couple skills applies pressure on their individual pursuits.

Mark and Mary are 35 years old. Mark wants to spend his free time going on adventures with his male friends (#1). Mary wants to spend time together exclusively with Mark at home (#2). They experience tension in their relationship because they desire different ways to focus their energies.

Becky is 40 years old. She has been divorced 2 times and has 2 children. She has been seriously dating a man for a year. She works and takes care of her children as a single mom. But most of her free time goes to her relationship. Her desire to not be alone, along with her responsibilities as a mom, gets in the way of her need to grow up (#1).

Bob and Lucy are 55 years old. They have spent the last 25 years raising their kids together (#3). Both have dreams to finally be able to put more effort into their careers. Their need to learn how to be a couple again applies pressure to their desire to feel fulfilled as individuals.

See how these 3 skills expand into 7 principles.
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Rejuvenate Your Marriage By Comparing It To A Game

Rejuvenate Your Marriage By Comparing It To A Game

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If I told you to stop playing games with your husband or wife, would that be helpful or unhelpful? It all depends on what “playing games” means.

It might mean toying with your partner. This has the negative connotation of exploiting them for your own benefit. This could mean misleading them through deceitful communication. It’s passive-aggressive at best.

However, it might mean enjoying a pleasurable activity together. This would strengthen your relationship.

As it turns out, marriage and games have much in common. Looking at marriage as a game could help you see it from a fresh perspective. You might even become more excited to play it rather than leaving it untouched on your shelf.

Following are nine qualities that games have (based on the book, The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell). See how many of them could also describe your relationship.

1-Games Are Entered Willfully

You chose to marry your partner. No one should have to say that they were forced against their will to get married. Relationships thrive on freedom and they break down when one or both people exert unwanted control over the other.

2-Games Have Goals

Just about everything you can do has some sort of a goal. If it has a goal, it has a purpose. You might think that laying mindlessly on the beach has no purpose. But resting and relaxing are beneficial purposes. Games are fun because there is a specific goal to achieve. Who can reach the highest score before time runs out?

Marriage has goals some of which include: developing closeness and intimacy, creating and raising children, enjoying all life has to offer together, and portraying the church and the image of God.

3-Games Have Conflict

Conflict helps determine what is possible and impossible as well as what is helpful and unhelpful. Conflict is an obstacle to overcome so you can claim victory. In marriage, you can receive the fruit of victory when you resolve conflict by playing well together. Fighting fair results in resolving conflict and retaining friendship.

4-Games Have Rules

No rules or spontaneous rule-making breeds chaos. Everyone loses and everybody wins. Life is meaningless without structure and rules. Imagine running a race where each person can declare theirself the winner.

Marriage has rules that define its success or failure. It’s cooperative rather than competitive. You are supposed to seek the best for the other and for yourself. Marriage is the combination of one male and one female.

5-Games Can Be Won and Lost

Games are usually competitive, pitting one player against another. When husband and wife compete with each other, both lose. Divorce is the inevitable outcome of a competitive relationship. Show me a marriage that ends in divorce and I’ll show you a couple that excelled at opposing each other. When a couple stays together to the end, both win.

6-Games Are Interactive

The more interactive you are, the more you open yourself up to change. Just like anything you do has a goal, anything you do changes you. God made us to be always changing. Some experiences are more intense than others, allow for more exchanging of ideas, and therefore produce more change.

Marriage isn’t played alone. Husband and wife are meant to influence each other for the good. God designed each person to be attractive in their own way. Marriage encourages husband and wife to engage with each other.

7-Games Have Challenge

Humans become bored fairly easily. Once we master something, we’re ready to move on to the next challenge. God made us capable of solving challenging problems.

Marriage both has the greatest potential and the greatest challenge of all relationships. This makes marriage a high calling.

8-Games Can Create Their own Internal Value

The resources within a game are valuable while you are playing. For example, once Monopoly is over, the money is no longer worth anything.

In marriage, husband and wife develop their own sense of personal value. They can decide what is important to them. It might not be meaningful to anyone else. They might even develop their own language for communicating that no one else will understand.

9-Games are Time-Limited

People play a game usually for a relatively short period of time. The score is counted. Then the game is declared over. Marriage is time-limited too. It lasts until one person dies and moves on to the afterlife. There won’t be any marriage in heaven.

Based on Jesse Schell’s book I, I came up with my own definition of a game:

A game is a problem-solving activity that allows learning without real-world consequences.

Even though marriages and games have much in common, the above definition provides a clear distinction.

A marriage is a problem-solving activity that allows learning with real-world consequences.

This definition of marriage is general but true. If you find yourself thinking your marriage has become stale try playing games with your partner.

Read The 7 Principles To Grow Your Marriage
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Genuine Rest Keeps Your Marriage Afloat

Genuine Rest Keeps Your Marriage Afloat

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You can’t rest if you’re treading water. If you have become too tired in life or in your marriage, you might need to swim to shore. I like analogies. They’re fun to work with because they can teach an abstract idea through a concrete picture.

I sometimes use swimming as an analogy for how to develop a healthy relationship. Water isn’t a human’s natural habitat. We were born out of water and into the air. No one can last but a few minutes underwater without needing to replenish their air supply. No one can tread water forever.

Without Rest You Won’t Last Long

Swimming takes an enormous amount of energy. Relationships do too. No one will last long if they try to make it through life alone. We need other people in our lives; we especially need God.

Imagine you are swimming in an ocean with your spouse. You can’t touch the bottom. You can’t see the shore. It won’t take long for you to become too tired to remain afloat. All you can do is tread water.

If you become tired and start to go under, you would naturally reach out for something or someone to help you keep your head above water. If the person you are with is also tired, grabbing onto them probably won’t help much, at least not for very long. It’s possible it could even accelerate the problem.

A desperate person will attempt to cling to whatever is in from of them. When you cling to your spouse in a panic, you might end up pulling them under with you. Clinging to your spouse only creates a false sense of hope. If you’re both tired, you’re better off keeping your distance. Unfortunately, when you are caught up in the emotions of a relationship, it’s difficult to be aware of how dependent you are and the subsequent danger.

An Abundance Of Rest Can Keep You Strong

Thank God that we weren’t meant to experience life alone. An individual can have family and friends. But, more importantly, each of us can rely on God to keep us afloat. Each person in a marriage needs to learn how to swim independent of the other, but sustained by God at the same time. To continue the analogy, God would be like a large rock sticking up out of the ocean. If you become tired, you could take a break by resting on the rock, instead of attempting to rest on your spouse.

Psalm 62 doesn’t mention swimming, but it certainly points out that God is the only true place of rest and security:

Truly my soul finds rest in God;
my salvation comes from him.
Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

Psalm 62:1-2 NIV

God rescues us from our failing self-effort. He is the only true place of rest, energy, and strength. Because everyone else is treading water too, there’s no guarantee they will be reliable. Only God the rock is resting on the ocean floor. He is the only safe place that guarantees you will never drown.

Psalm 62 ends by saying that God is powerful and kind. Cling hard to God whenever life circumstances toss you around like ocean waves. If a marriage is failing, the primary reason is usually because one or both people try to cling harder to their spouse (or someone other than their spouse) than they try to cling to God.

God means for husband and wife to cling to each other too. A lifeguard doesn’t spend all their time in the water. They keep watch over swimmers from the shore. You can be there for your spouse, at least in short bursts of energy, if you’ve had sufficient rest on the rock.

Finish reading Psalm 62.
Read more about finding rest.
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Take Advantage Of Defensiveness

Take Advantage Of Defensiveness

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Imagine a conversation caught in an endless loop of defensiveness and blame-shifting.

Person A: Why are you yelling at me?

Person B: I’m not yelling. You’re just too sensitive.

Person A: I’m not too sensitive. You don’t realize how loud you’re being.

Person B: Well, I’m not raising my voice. You’re being unreasonable. I’m only trying to explain why your vacation ideas won’t work. Why can’t you admit when you’re wrong?

Person A: Vacations aren’t about right or wrong. They are something we should both enjoy. You obviously don’t care how I feel. Now I remember why I don’t like going on vacation with you.

Person B: Fine. You’re impossible to please. You take the vacation you want and I’ll go on mine. That’s the only way we’ll both be happy.

Who hasn’t responded with defensiveness? Being “defensive” is neither good nor bad. But adding the “ness” indicates a general pattern of over-protection that prevents people from feeling emotionally close. You can guard against negativity and lies, but you can also guard against I feel shame and I don’t want to be known right now.

A Healthy Defensive Protects You From Harmful Attacks

When you feel threatened, it’s okay to throw up your defenses. Usually, it happens automatically before you’re even fully aware of the danger.

Danger can be a genuine threat that will cause harm but it can also be a false perception. If you experience a situation that reminds you of a threat you’ve had to endure, you can perceive an innocent situation at the same threat level. It’s even possible to be so worn down by stressful experiences that a person can hold onto a generalized level of fear almost all the time. Another word for this is burned-out or it could even be Post Traumatic Stress.

If you take a piece of plastic and bend it, it will start to heat up and weaken. If you do it too much, it will snap. That same thing can happen with us when we experience too much stress in too short a time.

That’s why it is so important to be patient with others. You don’t know what threats they’ve faced. You probably don’t intend to harm anyone, but your behaviors could raise someone’s threat level.

An Unhealthy Defensive Prevents You From Receiving Love

Being defensive is such a natural response that it can be difficult to realize you’re doing anything wrong. Unless there is a real threat that you know you can’t handle, defensiveness blocks you from getting what you want. The good things you want from life will come to you as you learn the right time to be vulnerable.

It’s hard to ask for what you really want when you’re afraid that you’re not going to get it. Maybe you’ve had a string of times you’ve been forgotten. Maybe you’re convinced by now that your desires don’t matter. Whatever the reason, defensiveness might serve to protect you from further disappointment, but it will also protect you from that love you desire.

Now, what would a healthier version of that conversation look like?

Person A: Why are you yelling at me?

Person B: I’m don’t think I’m yelling. Am I being too loud for you?

Person A: When you speak like that I struggle to want to stay in the conversation with you. I can’t handle it. It’s too stressful for me. I don’t feel like you care how I’m feeling.

Person B: This seems like my normal voice. I’ll try to speak more calmly. I want to plan our vacation. I have to admit though, I can’t stand the idea of laying around all week at the beach. I’m concerned I’ll be miserable and I won’t have any fun. That isn’t going to help our relationship.

Person A: Vacations are something we should both enjoy. You don’t seem to realize how stressed I am. Camping out is always so much work. It’s certainly not relaxing.

Person B: Yeah, we’re both stressed. I suppose we could split up. You could go to the beach while I go camping. But that won’t work very well because the whole point is that we need to spend more time together. What if we found a place that has a beach and good hiking nearby?

Whenever you become aware of defensiveness, look for ways to turn it around using vulnerability.

Read more about how to Improve Your Communication.
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