Since it's almost Valentine's Day, I wanted to share something with you from my heart. I try to keep it light-hearted on this blog and sometimes I can be a little silly, but don't be fooloed, the intimate relationship I share with Big A is very important to me. Because there was a time when I wanted nothing more than for him to be out of my life.
We call year six of our marriage The Bad Year. I don't know how it spiraled down so quickly, but I think we just pushed a lot of issues aside for the first five years of marriage, and when the going got tough in year six, everything surfaced all at once in one, big huge explosion.
It was bad.
I really thought I hated my husband, and I'm pretty sure he felt the same way about me.
In retrospect, I see that we had no communication skills whatsoever and very high expectations of what marriage should be like. I also had a very strong flight reflex. When I was uncomfortable or upset, I'd take the kids to my mom and dad's house rather than deal with the pain I was feeling. Even though I vowed that divorce wasn't an option in the beginning, I started to change my mind and threw the word around whenever things didn't go my way. I withheld myself from him in every way because I didn't feel loved. I was stressed with two kids, the house building process, and a husband who worked too much.
On Big A's part, he took his provider role very seriously. This led him to work two jobs, plus do work on our house to save money. This also led him to make some decisions without asking me, which hurt me and made me feel undervalued. Plus, as the child of divorced parents, he had a lot of misconceptions about what his role as a husband was.
I remember the day when the spiral started. We were attending a college friend's wedding and since my parents volunteered to watch Bubby and Sissy, we reserved a very fancy hotel room for the night. But it turns out, due to a misunderstanding that completely blew up, we didn't need a fancy hotel room at all. After a screaming match, we fell asleep, on opposite ends of the king-sized bed. After returning home, I told him I was withdrawing half of our savings and taking the kids to live with my parents unless he agreed to counseling. After some deliberation he said okay.
I went into counseling expecting her to tell me how right I was. How if he didn't change, we needed to get a divorce. Thankfully, she didn't take anyone's side. And she told us flat out that we wouldn't be getting a divorce.
"No one has cheated. No one has been abused. No one has gambled all your money away."
And she also told us one of the best pieces of marriage advice I had ever heard.
"Even when you feel like you hate each other, you still need to be intimate. Once you stop being intimate, Satan crams all sorts of temptation into that void. Keep having sex."
Well, I wasn't about to keep having sex with my husband. He was wrong and didn't deserve me. Besides, I was pretty sure I hated his guts.
But this passage kept popping into my mind.
1 Corinthians 7:3-5. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Somehow, we mustered up the will to take the counselor's advice. It was definitely a challenge because we didn't even want to be around each other.
We made it through counseling with better communication skills and hope that we would survive. I saw something beautiful happen in our intimate life too. I had always thought of sex as a want, not a need. And I certainly never thought of the spiritual value in that connection. However, in that low point of our marriage, when we weren't connecting in any other area, being together intimately allowed us to still show love to each other, validated why God brought us together in the first place and gave us a reason to keep trying to make things better. We needed that.
Thankfully, we haven't had another bad year. In fact, we've had several consecutive good years since then. It was a turning point.
And I have never looked at sex the same way. Not only is it my responsibility as a wife, but it's my ministry to my husband. I try to put the same care and attention into it as any other ministry. We still argue and still give the silent treatment, or have times when we just cannot find the energy to be together, make no mistake. But I try not to let intimacy be the first thing that goes when life gets hectic.
So I just wanted to share our experience. I know every marriage is unique and every problem warrants a different solution, but this has worked for us.
Hope you all have a Happy Valentine's Day! Most likely, we'll be staying in, taking care of kiddos and dreaming of the day when we can leave the house without a winter coat!
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