Just like every piece of paper needs margins around it, we need margin in our personal lives. A little space to just be together with no agenda, no pressure. That unscheduled white space is where intimacy grows. Where the important conversations happen.
The margin we need for our marriage mostly that looks like margin in our calendar. If there is literally something on the calendar every day and every night of the week- especially activities that take us out of the house and sap our energy- then we have a little less emotional and physical energy for each other. Maybe a lot less.
The amount of margin each person and couple can vary. We all have different levels of busy-ness that we can handle before we hit meltdown mode. But for us, there’s an easy way to tell that we’ve eaten into our margin: We have no time, for you know, our alone time. Our sexual intimacy can be the first to get cut. When we’re too busy, we start to lose that time to build emotional bonds. We get a drive-by, passing-through-the-night marriage. How is you spouse doing? Oh, I’m sure he’s fine. Yeah, we’re both fine.
A healthy sex life is built on trust and a strong emotional and spiritual intimacy. Knowing, and being known. And that kind of intimacy can’t be rushed or scheduled into 15-minute blocks. It takes breathing room. Space to have the hard conversations. So when we notice our sexual intimacy rhythm start to take the hit, we know we need to do some rearranging and some re-prioritizing. Find some margin for just us. Time to reconnect and dig beneath the surface. Are you really just fine? Are we okay?
God designed physical intimacy in marriage as a unique way to express our love and stay connected. But we lose out on that gift when we don’t have the margin to build it, or enjoy it!
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