4 Ways To Increase Intimacy With Your Spouse
Sex matters.
It's a good gift created by God for us to enjoy and a leading indicator of the health of your marriage.
So if you want a good marriage, you need to be having sex.
My goal in this post is not to be prudish or to write for shock value, but instead to be helpful and honest about how to have a great sex life with your spouse. Below are four things I would recommend.
1. Talk about how often you want to have sex, and schedule it
One of the best things you can do for a more productive day at work as well as more enjoyable downtime is to schedule what you are going to do.
Every Sunday, Christina and I plan out what we will do each night of the week. That way when the workday is over and the evening comes, we aren't sitting around trying to figure out what to do.
If you or your spouse isn't happy with your intimacy, one of the best things you can do is talk about how often you would like to have sex and also put it on the schedule.
Now I get it, you may be thinking that this doesn't sound very romantic and takes all the spontaneity away. But neither of these things are true.
First, scheduled time together is better than it rarely happening. And, just like you look forward to other fun things you might have planned, you'll also look forward to this. On top of that, no one is stopping you from being "spontaneous" on the days you didn't plan to have sex!
Unmet expectations lead to a lot of tension and fights in marriage. But if you haven't had an open and honest conversation with your spouse about what you would like your intimacy to look like and are planning for it, you can't fault your spouse for not reading your mind.
Still not sure about this idea? Try it for two weeks and see what happens. But just be careful, you might become "boring" and stick to it when you see how great it actually works.
2. Flee from pornography
Setting aside the moral issues with pornography and how it is one of the leading causes of sex trafficking in the world, it's also the biggest killer when it comes to intimacy with your spouse.
Not only does pornography make it harder to physically connect with a human being, but it also reduces your desire to have sex when you are meeting your sexual desires through a screen.
After all, a screen is easy. You don't have to nurture your relationship with a screen. It never upsets you. You can leave it and come back to it whenever you want.
Marriage takes work. A good marriage involves serving one another, forgiving one another, and loving one another. When that happens, the intimacy between spouses often follows suit.
But when you settle for pornography, you don't have to do any of that work and it reduces your desire for sex.
If you wish you and your spouse were intimate more often, before getting upset with your spouse, quit porn. It's the ethically right thing to do and will lead you to desire intimacy with your spouse more.
If pornography is an area you seriously want to fight against. I recommend a software called Covenant Eyes. It tracks where you go on your devices and sends a weekly report to a trusted friend.
3. Play intimate games
If you want to bring some fun into your sex life with your spouse, do it! One of the easiest ways to do it is through pre-planned intimate games.
Awesome Marriage is a great resource for building a healthy marriage which includes building intimacy with your spouse. Here are two games they have created that you can try for free:
It's fun, different, and easy to do. If you want more helpful resources like these from Awesome Marriage, here is there resource page.
4. Do one thing every day to serve your spouse
Finally, one of the best ways to increase intimacy with your spouse is to help your spouse feel loved by you. The more loved and cared for they feel, the more they will want to and be willing to be intimate.
A practical way to do this is simply to commit to doing one thing for your spouse every day that you don't normally do. It doesn't even need to be something big. Small consistencies over time are what produce the biggest results.
Unloading the dishwasher, taking out the trash, or picking up a small treat from the store. Anything that isn't a chore you normally do, or even a chore you both do but you go out of your way to make sure you are the one who does it.
Your spouse will notice, will feel more loved, and will likely want to love you back :).
Intimacy is a sign of the health of your marriage, so take it seriously
Sex is not simply a bonus to being married. It is a sign of the health of your marriage. Without fail, Christina and I's intimacy always has a direct correlation to how our marriage is doing.
So talk about it with your spouse, come up with a plan, and do whatever you need to do to make sure it happens.
It's extremely unlikely divorce happens while maintaining a consistent and healthy sex life with one another.