Marriage and Intimacy: 30 Days of Abstinence

In March I connected the 30 Day Sex Challenge with Orwell's image of the repression of desire in 1984. There are other more fundamental theological issues at stake as well. My question now is: If that is not the way to go, where do we go since failed marriages are a massive burden on our entire society and our churches? If the church is about relationships with each other and God, then it seems reasonable to hold marriages to the fire as the idealized vision of what a covenanted relationship should be. But they are not. Marriage is not doing well, and Christians are not helping marriage get any better.

Money, kids, and sex are the three main causes of divorce typically in that order. True intimacy is about how honest a couple is and how willing each partner is to change with their partner over time. Evolution needs to happen for the couple (as adaptation to change). Too often, the evolution happens when one partner adapts to new circumstances and biology as a matter of course, but the other refuses to adapt. Change then needs to occur as a matter of choice, and not as a matter of mutual necessity. That creates the burden of "work".

I would like to think of it in a different way similar to the pattern of spiritual development that Diogenes Allen outlines in Spiritual Theology. There, the goal of spirituality is to commune with God directly. But to do that, one must work through various indirect means to God such as nature, each other, and Scripture. Part of the discipline is to cultivate an habitual presence of God in one's life. I would like to see more couples also experience the habitual presence of each other.

I have never been one to say that marriage is work. Some people often get rather testy when I mention that marriage should not be work, but a mutual adaptation to new vistas of life. Life might create work for both of you, but your relationship should not be part of that work. Settling with the idea that your relationship is something that needs perpetual work is simply not satisfying to me, and I am not sure there is a good reason why that should persist for anyone. The goal in all relationships is for them not to be work, but a "habitual presence". If you are not used to this, it might take discipline and training to get there, but it is clearly a worthy goal.

At the risk of "TMI" my wife and I are often simply too sleepy during the week that I cannot see much success with a "sex challenge". We have jobs and two little toddlers who absorb our energy along with church work among other things. But what makes our relationship strong is that we find many ways to be intimate beyond the bed and that's why we are doing so well. My sense is that it is this kind of intellectual and emotional intimacy of which many couples are deeply deprived.

Got a better idea.

30 Days of Abstinence

Couples will engage each other in prayer and guidance where the couple increases emotional and spiritual intimacy with each other. The following guidelines should be observed:

1. Each must be open about:
   • each other's desires from each other,
   • each other's desires they wish to give to each other,
   • each other's desires for their children,
   • each other's picture of what the household will look like in a few years.
   • and how God was either present or absent in each other's life for a given period of time and why.
2. Do it all while being abstinent from any sexual intimacy beyond hugging.
3. Hug each other at least five times a day.
4. Never go to bed angry at each other or the kids.
5. Keep individual journals that reflect on these questions.
6. Each week summarize your personal journals and share it with your spouse.
7. Let your spouse read what you wrote, and then reflect it back to you.
8. At the end of the 30 days express a desire that you would like to receive from your spouse and a desire that you would like to give to your spouse. Go on a date – just the two of you. And act on those desires for each other.

My intuition is that a lot of people make incorrect assumptions about their partner, and the "work" happens with a discernment process that lacks direction. If both partners understand each other's assumptions about the world, life, money, children, careers and yes, sexual desires; and if each are willing to adapt to each other, and adapt to the world as a couple, and do so on a continual basis in order for the presence of the spouse to be habitually present even if not physically present, many marital problems will be resolved. These are questions that need to be addressed while a couple is engaged to be married as well.

Why don't we do this at our churches and see what we can do to strengthen the families in our congregations?

Related posts:

1. secular assertions against marriage equality