A HUSBAND AFTER GOD’S OWN HEART.

CREATED FOR INTIMACY.

How would you define intimacy? If you’re like most men (including yours truly), you would probably define intimacy as sexual intercourse or lovemaking. Well, you would be at least partially right. God did include physical union as part of the marriage package as we see in the Scriptures: “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

But intimacy for a couple can and should be much more than merely sexual, as important as that is. At this point most men, in a state of utter puzzlement, will ask the question, “Well….what else is there besides sexual intimacy?” Again, while this is important, it’s just a part of intimacy. Let’s look now at some other aspects of intimacy, which all work together to make a more pleasurable marriage.

1. Intimacy is a close friendship. Did you have a close buddy in high school or college or d you have a longtime workmate who was or is so close to you that the two of you could talk about anything? That’s the kind of intimacy you should have with your wife, because intimacy includes friendship. Maybe you already have this kind of close friendship with your sweetheart. If you do, you know that it’s great, isn’t it? And you probably also know that you shouldn’t take it for granted, and that you should continue to nurture that closeness with your most intimate friend-your wife.

But maybe you don’t have this kind of friendship-intimacy with your wife at this point in your marriage. You might have been great friends at one time, but in the busyness of life, your friendship has wanes. Many marriages do go through such “dry” periods. But those dry spells don’t need to last. Do you desire to regain that friend you once had in your wife (and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t)? Well, there’s hope! Read in and pray that one day God will develop in your heart of a friend, that one day in the not-too-distant future your wife could say of her relationship with you, “This is my beloved, and this is my friend” (Song of Solomon 5:16).

As I’m writing this, I’m having another thought I can’t resist sharing. I’m thinking that this type of friendship-intimacy is also what we should desire to have with God. We need to have such a close relationship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ that, like Abraham of old, we too are a “friend of God” (James 2:23). That, my friend, is the ultimate intimacy!

Now, back to your marriage…..

2. Intimacy is a mood. We might even call it a feeling, an attitude, or a state of mind. The mood of intimacy usually expresses itself in a place. This place could be anywhere. It can be any place where you and your wife are able to focus your attention exclusively on the other. That place can be the breakfast table, where you and your honey share a quiet dinner after the kids are in bed; a corner booth at your favorite restaurant, where you both enjoy each other and a bottomless cup of coffee; a tree-lines street or a beach or a park where that two can savor a stroll at sunset.

I hope you can see why building a friendship with your wife would encourage this attitude or mood of intimacy. Personally, I’m always concerned about couples who never seen to be or want to be alone. They are constantly doing things with others. Dinners, plays, concerts, and outings, even vacations, are always enjoyed in the context of a group.

Intimacy, however, is private shared, and privately developed. It is a state of mind that binds you and your wife together. It was that state of mind that promoted a desire of intimacy in the first place. Your goal is to grow to the place that, no matter where you are, your intimate friendship makes you feel as if it’s just the two of you who are alone together. If you desire this brand of closeness, then you must start building or continue building a best-friendship with your wife. Then I guarantee that both you and she will constantly be thinking of each other, and eagerly awaiting your private times together!

3. Intimacy is understanding. How do you get to know him or her. The more you know your wife as a person, know her thoughts, and know her dreams, the more intimate your understanding of her will be. Elizabeth and I have been married for a long time (not let’s see…..is it 37…..or 38 years?). Spending that many years around another person gives you a pretty good insight into that person’s inner life, and I think that I can truthfully say that’s the case with Elizabeth and me. But I can also truthfully say that over the years it’s been a constant battle for us to make sure we stay connected because, like every couple, we’ve both been growing, maturing and changing.

Unfortunately, that’s not true about many couples. They have not attempted to stay involved in each other’s lives-to continue learning about their spouse. And I know, because I’ve done a lot of marriage counseling through the decades as a pastor! A deeper level of intimacy may have been present at the beginning of the marriage, but slowly, overtime and in the flow of the busy-ness of life, and due to unintentional neglect, that intimate communion was lost. Thirty or 40 years later the product is a marriage made up of two complete strangers living under the same roof, with very little in common.

These are the couples you see in a restaurant eating their entire meal in total silence. What a sad scene! And what’s even more tragic is knowing that this estrangement could have been avoided. So please, don’t let life and all it’s distractions keep you and the love-of-your-life from continually-on a daily basis-re-acquainting yourselves with each other’s growth and development. This kind of intimate understanding will definitely foster the final type of intimacy in your marriage-sexual intimacy.

4. Intimacy is a close physical relationship. We’ve been talking about intimacy created through the development of a deep friendship with your wife. Every good marriage must be a friendship between two people who are willing to sacrifice for the other person. You as a husband must think as much of your wife as you think of any friend. And you must have as much interest in her as any two best friends have in each other.

But marriage is more than just being good friends. Much more! Guys can be friends, and so can sisters or two women or a group of women. In every good marriage, however, the husband-and-wife friendship goes one significant step further and goes on to nurture a close physi relationship that fulfills each other sexually, goes on to be a never-ending, fresh surprise j to each other sexually, goes on to enjoying one another as if you were still newlyweds.