It’s the new year and everyone’s setting goals. Goals for weight loss. Goals for time management. If you want to read about those goals, you’ll have to read someone else’s blog. This is a marriage blog. So, what kind of goals might a couple set for their marriage? Getting out of debt? Praying together daily? At the end of the year I wrote a Facebook post of my 10 Best Memories of 2017. Bob set of goal of trying to do something that would make my Top 10 List in 2018. He’s already working on it!
One thing you don’t usually see an article on is setting a goal for sexual intimacy. (You can do that?!?!?!) Recently, I’ve read two excellent books on marriage. In To Have and To Hold, Byron Weathersbee points out there are 168 hours in a week. The average couple spends one or two of those hours in sexual intimacy—but those one to two hours are completely dependent on the other 166.
What happens in the other 166 hours that impacts the last two? In Blueprint for Marriage, Gary Overholt recommends setting daily, weekly, and longer-term goals and disciplining yourself to do them.
Overholt says 10 minutes a day is a good discipline to establish for non-sexual physical closeness with your mate. This time should include physical touch, being together in close proximity, and simple conversation. He notes that when husbands look at this as a time to give to their wives relationally, wives become more secure and more willing to initiate sexually.
He also recommends setting an intentional, scheduled, weekly, sexual encounter. We will add that it should be something mutually enjoyable. About now the wives are all saying, “You can do that? It seems like it takes the romance out!” I know. I thought that, too. Overholt assures (and Bob verifies) men do not feel this way about it. Ladies, you can ask your own husbands what they think. Overholt says, “As a long-range benefit, sex becomes more physically stimulating for the wife, and sex becomes more relationally stimulating for the husband.”
Finally, take a quarterly, bi-annual, or annual retreat away from the pressures of everyday life. Ask Grandma to watch your kiddos or trade babysitting with a friend. If you can’t afford to go away, do something special at home. Spend time in planning, dreaming, problem solving—and the bonding gift of sex that God gave to be enjoyed within the security of a covenant marriage.
What doesn’t get planned and scheduled won’t happen in your busy life. (Now I’m sounding like the other blogs.) The urgent will trump what’s truly important. Here’s some good news to kick off your new year: However healthy your marriage is right now, it can get better. But that will take some planning, committing, and discipline to carry your plans out. Are you willing to do that for a better marriage in 2018?
