Before we thrust ourselves into such a sensitive but important topic, let me tell you a story. It all begins with a young 17-year-old boy, with an eyebrow ring and an intense love for soccer, and a 16-year-old girl, who believed in love and dreamed of happily ever after.
This is where our love story began. Our sex story however, (although very much a part of our love story) took 10 beautiful years of waiting & dating, a rose gold ring, 15 months of planning and a magical wedding surrounded by our beloved friends and family before we became one on our wedding night.
When my husband and I met 10 years ago, he had recently finished reading the book, ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’.Finding himself in a spiritual pickle on whether to pursue a relationship in light of what he had read, he prayed and sought wise counsel. The Lord answered His prayers with the following verse (Hallelujah!) “’At last!’ the man exclaimed. ‘This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh. She will be called ‘woman; because she was taken from man’. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one.”Throughout our dating relationship and now in our married relationship, this verse has served as such a beautiful reminder of God’s intended design for marriage and for the creation of something exquisitely beautiful that is to be shared between a husband and wife.
Genesis introduces us to many firsts. Two in particular matter to this blog post.
- The first explicit attribute we learn about God is that He is the Creator (Gen 1:1), which implies that there is a purpose for what He creates. God created and designed marriage and sex.
- Everything He created is good. Over and over again,Genesis 1 makes it clear that creation is good: “And God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). In marriage, sex is meant to be experienced without fear, shame, or regret and is both good and beautiful.
“Now Adam had sexual relations with his wife Eve and she became pregnant”. This is the New Living Translation of Genesis 4, but I am particularly touched by the King James version of this verse. It says “Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived…”. He KNEW her. In Hebrew,‘yada’ is the word for knowing: to know, to be known, to be deeply respected. To know transcends the physical, to know is true sacredness and oneness. Whisper these words out loud. Hear and feel the magnitude of them. TO KNOW, BE KNOWN AND DEEPLY RESPECTED. Marriage is about KNOWING and BEING KNOWN, and sex is about KNOWING and BEING KNOWN.
What a gift, what a pleasure, what an honour it is for me to be the one who gets to know, be known by and deeply respect and be deeply respected by my husband. The one who gets to delight in him.
If sex is about intimate knowing, then sex in marriage is all about connection. Connection is all about being willingor courageous enough to be vulnerable with another, a willingness to allow yourself to be known and to know the other. Sex is the most tangible experience of intimacy and connection that we can experience in marriage. And as a relationship counsellor and connection specialist, I place huge value and importance on inviting sexual and emotional intimacy back into the marriage bedroom, or any room of the house that tickles your fancy for that matter!
When a couple experiences difficulties with sex, they really need to be considering CONNECTION. How comfortable, willing, and available are they with connection? How comfortable and willing are they with being vulnerable with their spouses? What ways can you invite various forms of intimacy and connection (other than sexual intimacy) back into your marriage? In what ways could you enhance your connection physically (non-sexually), emotionally, spiritually, socially, intellectually?
The Bible encourages sexual intimacy between husbands and wives, sex is a way to cement the bond in marriage. In making love with one another, a special connection is shared in a way that no one else gets to experience with you, and this brings a sense of closeness that we all desperately need in all seasons of marriage. Sex is about pleasing one another and this value beautifully represents the way marriages as a whole were intended for serving each other. In Christian circles sex remains a sensitive, maybe even taboo topic to discuss. There are many young brides and wives who are longing for more intimacy and feel they have no one to share with.
I am a relationship counsellor passionate about connection, a woman and a Christian wife, and even I prolonged finishing this post because of its sensitivity and vulnerability. But God knows my heart for relationships and life enhancing connection is greater than my fear of what others will think of me sharing this.
My 7 sexy tips for naked bodies & naked conversations are in no way a one size fits all for every newlywed. But my prayer is that you will find something here that speaks life into your hearts and bodies and encourages you to take leaps of faith starting today to re-invite much needed naked bodies and naked conversations into your marriage.
- Intimacy begins on a HEAD level.
We all want to feel interesting to our spouses. We need to be curious about our spouses. Think about when you started dating, you wanted to know your person’s favourite colour, favourite movie, favourite ice cream flavour, top destination on their bucket list and pretty much everything else about them too! We need to invite more of this curiosity back into our relationships,especially when we’ve been together for a long time. The more interested we are and the more interesting we feel, the more inclined we are to share intimately on a HEART level. To connect on a heart level is to share your feelings, desires, yearning, fears and vulnerabilities and to experience belonging, safety and empathy in return. The more ‘head’ and ‘heart’ intimacy we experience, the more comfortable we feel with BODY intimacy - like sex and affection. Because of the courage and vulnerability experienced in sexual intimacy, often a decline in sexual intimacy between couples is indicative of gaps in their ‘head’ and ‘heart’ intimacy.
I recommend that couples introspect on their tolerance for head, heart and body intimacy. The wonderful news is that the more we stretch and use our intimacy muscles,the stronger they become.
- Sex is important - it is a God-designed and God-given gift to your marriage.
I find that some of the most predominant complaints for couples in counselling are not a lack of desire to be intimate with one another but rather a lack of time, feeling tired after work, not being in the mood, and generally experiencing disconnection in their marriage.Over time this increases the distance between the couple, increases insecurities, heightens levels of loneliness and a feeling of unbelonging. Sex is a way of serving one another and giving of yourself to another. For this reason, it is essential that you have something to give.You cannot give from an empty up.
What do you need to do to fill YOUR love tank so that you can give your husband or wife more of yourself intimately?
Ladies in particular, after a full day at work, after the kids have gone to bed, after making lunches and dinnerand after all the household chores are finished, you will most likely be exhausted, energy levels are low, you may not be feeling very sexy and generally not be in the mood, so don’t be hard on yourself - that’s never an ideal time. But what is not ideal is doing nothing about this.
If you are feeling physically and emotionally drained from the day or week’s demands, see if there are some ways your spouses can help relieve you of some of your mom/dad duties when they get home, which might help you start to switch modes from mom to wife, and from dad to husband. Also encourage a build-up of anticipation between the two of you during the day.
Sweet, naughty messages in each other’s lunch boxes or sending a message during the day to let the other know you are thinking of them, or anticipating an evening together are some simple ways to start setting the tone. Remember intimacy is HEAD, HEART & BODY. One cannot just flick the switch for BODY intimacy (sex) if HEAD and HEART feel empty.
- Generally the hardest person to seduce is ourselves, especially as ladies. So do what you need to do to feel more in the mood, to feel beautiful and sexy. Invite more conversations about sex into your lives. It is essential that you talk about what you both like, what turns you on, what you don’t like, what you want more of. Too often the only time sex is spoken about is in the context of arguing about whether it’s happening tonight. Don’t let sex become the enemy!
Why not have a jar full of questions about sex that each of you take turns is answering over dessert at your next date night?
- Talking about date nights… Playfulness is essential for a relationship.
The playful part of our brain is where we experience pleasure and where we create and remain curious abouteach other. Invite more playfulness back into the relationship, not just into the bedroom. Pinterest is a fantastic resource to utilise here - it has an array of sexy games to print out and play at your next date night or weekend away. As couples you need time out from being ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ or ‘counsellor’ and ‘lawyer’ or whatever roles you play in your lives. If possible, use the support systems you have in place to give you space to explore being ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.
Playfulness, silliness, laughter, inside jokes, secret languages, shared activities like cooking, gyming, hiking, watching movies, reading the same book helps to build safety and encourage opportunities for bonding. The safer we feel in our relationship the more inclined we are to be generous with our time, our hearts, our emotions, our listening ears and our bodies. The play and sex parts of our brain are our more uninhibited parts of who we are. They are also often the parts that we feel shameful about sharing with our spouses because doing so requiresvulnerability, exposure, and a surrendering of control.
- “Be naked when I get home”, was a sign I saw at a restaurant. I think we could all do with hanging signs like these in our homes once in a while!
If you have children roaming the hallways of your home, make your bedroom a naked-only zone for a night a week (or perhaps even every night if you feel like it!)and do all the normal activities you might have done – watching tv, unpacking the cupboard, doing your nails, reading in bed, changing the bedding, sleeping– naked. When God created man and woman, they were naked and felt no shame. Nakedness in marriage is about vulnerability, complete transparency, acceptance, intimacy, safety, trust, comfort, on every level. Exposing yourself physically comes from feeling emotionally and spiritually safe to do so. I think marriages would benefit from more naked time. It is not possible or practical to be in the nude all day, but I do think that couples need to be more intentional about inviting the original vision ofGarden of Eden back into their homes/bedrooms, as well as inviting ‘nakedness’ back into their conversations. Emotional and physical intimacy cannot be separated.
- For couples who have not been intimate in a while, and do not know how to break through the barrier, tasting the sweet fruits of the Garden of Eden seems very vulnerable or even scary. Why not take sex off the cards?Yes you read that right, this seems counter-intuitive, but often when we place too much emphasis on sex as an act, and it has the potential to feel more like something to be ticked off the to-do list than something to be enjoyed. Sex is about connection and intimacy, remember, so it’s more important that you refocus on intimacy and affection.
Invite a play a game into your time before bed. For 3 minutes, lie in bed and look at one another, reacquaint yourself with the face looking back at you that you get to call your own. Look at the shape of their eyes, eyelashes, lines, expressions and emotions. Using no words at all, focus on your breathing, and allow your breathing to sync with your spouses’s. I find that focussing on your person’s eyes (it’s all in the eyes!) is key to inviting emotional and physical intimacy back into your shared space.
The next time, allocate yourselves 5 minutes. This time incorporate your sense of touch: kiss one another, touch one another, and stroke each other’s faces and bodies - slowly and softly, being conscious of not breaking eye contact.
Next, allocate 7 minutes to the exercise. Once again spend time looking, seeing what you see in your person’s eyes, spend time touching and stroking, and finally incorporate words of affirmation. I suggest taking turns to say what you love about the other. Don’t over think it, allow for flow. For example “I love your eyes”, “I love your smile”, “I love that you helped carry in the groceries today”, ‘I love that you are a great mom”.
The tenderness and intimacy demonstrated through eye contact, soft touch and words of affirmation are powerful ways of communicating just how much you delight in one another as husband and wife.
I pray that the Lord opens your eyes to see the beauty and gift of intimacy, that He gives you the courage to explore each other’s bodies and that you will see yourself as He sees you - worthy of intimacy, so beautiful, and so loved.