Invest In Your Marriage

When was the last time you invested in your marriage?

Maybe date night?  Gifts?  Vacation?

That was a trick question, because I’m actually not talking about date night :)  I’m not talking about gift exchanging or vacation, because at the end of the day, you can go to dinner with your dad.  You can go to a movie with your brother.  You can buy gifts for your neighbor and you can go on vacation with your sister.  The only thing that sets your marriage apart from all other relationships in your life is intimacy.

Think about that.  Let it sink in for a moment.

Those of you who share my LDS faith, I’d like to shed light on the concept of intimacy and the way it is discussed (or more commonly not discussed) within our faith.

Consider the temple. From a very young age, we learn of the temple.  We hear testimonies of temples, we sing songs of the temple, we learn lessons and make goals to one day attend the temple.  We understand the sacredness of the temple and we do not share the activities that go on inside the temple; however, the beauty of the temple, the blessings of the temple, and the reasons we should keep ourselves worthy of the temple are all common discussions in our culture.  We know from a young age, the temple is beautiful and talking about it s normal and comfortable.

What if, just what if, the temple was never discussed?  What if we didn’t bear testimony, what if we didn’t sing songs or learn lessons about the temple?  What if we didn’t study temple-related scriptures or attend temple prep classes? If you had never talked about the temple, what would your first experience with the temple had been like?  And what would your relationship with the temple had become thereafter?

Intimacy.  In most cases, intimacy and sexuality are not discussed.  The topics are uncomfortable and even taboo for some.  If you’re like me, you learned about your body and a little bit about sex at maturation day in 5^th grade and no one openly discussed it with you past that point.  You lived your teenage years learning about and conceptualizing sex based on Hollywood and discussion among your peers.  Somehow you made it through your teenage years and into your adult life and the time came for you to get married.  Maybe someone had “the talk” with you at that point, but chances are, you went into your marriage with little to no knowledge about the world that was now open to you.  What was your experience like? How did that experience affect your relationship with intimacy thereafter?

Here’s the thing.  We need to talk about sexuality.  Just like we talk about the temple, the morality of our families and especially our children depend on our discussions of sexuality.  We cannot expect our children to have the ability to respect their sexuality if they do not understand it, and they will never morally understand it without our ability to be knowledgeable, understanding, and open about it.

And we cannot be knowledgeable, understanding, and open about it if we are uneducated ourselves.

I am very passionate about what I do. I create a safe, appropriate, comfortable environment for women of all ages and relationship status’ to learn about their bodies and how to better their sexual health and enhance their relationships.  We do not discuss personal intimate activities, just as we do not discuss the sacred things that go on inside the temple.  But we learn about the divinity of our bodies and how they work and I am amazed by the little things I am able to teach women that make a world of difference in their relationships.  Truly, I believe I am increasing anniversaries and decreasing divorces!

So I’ll ask again, when was the last time you invested in your marriage?  What is it worth to you? 

Leave the kids with your husband and come join me.  You’ll be glad you did :)