Love, Sex, And Attraction - What’s It Doing To Your Marriage?

How’s your love life in your marriage? How’s your married sex life? Are you having sex outside of marriage? If so, why?

How do you view love, sex, and attraction? Is it just a primal desire, or is it connected to real love — true love?

How’s your physical attractiveness? Are you still working on it, or have you let yourself go? If you have, why? Let’s talk about love, sex, attraction, and why all of this matters.

SONG OF SOLOMN - WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT

I read Song of Solomon every year, have studied it extensively and here’s my take:

The book is very descriptive about sexual attraction. The man says, “Your two breasts are like two fawns, like twins of a gazelle” (Song of Solomon 4:5, NCV). He calls her “a locked garden” (4:12), she invites him to “come into his garden and taste its choice fruits” (4:16), and he answers, “I have entered my garden, my sister, my bride” (5:1). Later he compares her body to a palm tree and says, “I will climb the palm tree and take hold of its fruit” (7:7–8).

We don’t have to pretend we don’t understand the poetry. It is sexual. Actually erotic.

In the original Hebrew, the word translated “garden” really does mean a garden or enclosed place, but here it is clearly being used as an intimate picture of the woman’s sexuality. The fruit, fragrance, breasts, entering, tasting, and physical longing are intentional. God put a book in the Bible that openly celebrates attraction, desire, touching, longing, and sex.

But notice where that desire lives: inside love, exclusivity, and belonging. “My lover is mine, and I am his” (Song of Solomon 2:16, NCV). This is not pornography, anonymous sex, fantasy about strangers, or using another person’s body to make ourselves feel powerful, masculine, desirable, or important.

LET’S TALK SEX

It is desire directed toward the person you love and have chosen. Do you do this?

Many times men who become consumed with pornography, affairs, or sexual attention are trying to satisfy something deeper. There can be insecurity, rejection, loneliness, shame, or past wounds underneath it, especially since childhood.

Sex can become a way of saying, I’m still desirable. I’m still a man. Somebody wants me. But not every sexual struggle is trauma. Sometimes we simply keep feeding desire until desire begins controlling us. The Apostle Paul said, “I will not let anything make me its slave” (1 Corinthians 6:12, NCV).

Are you enslaved toward gratification? It has a way of destroying your self-esteem.

SEX IN MARRIAGE - WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING LIKE THESE DAYS

And married couples need to hear something too. We are all going to age. Hair changes. Bodies change. Wrinkles come. Nobody stays 25. But aging and stopping caring are not the same thing.

I’m going to take a risk of offending some people.

I think marriages can suffer when one or both spouses stop taking care of themselves and stop making an effort to remain attractive to the person they married. We all age, but aging is not the same as giving up. Attraction matters. Caring about your health, grooming, appearance, weight and sexuality can be one way of saying, “You still matter enough to me that I want to make the effort.”

And one of the first things that often disappears in a struggling marriage is sex. Why? Sometimes it is health, hormones, medication, exhaustion, children, work, resentment, or unresolved conflict.

WHY WE STOP SEX

But sometimes we simply stop pursuing each other. We stop flirting. We stop touching. We stop dressing up for each other. We stop telling our spouse that we find them attractive. Two lovers slowly become two roommates or just kind of friends.

Song of Solomon will not let us reduce marriage to raising children, paying bills, maintaining a house, and sleeping beside each other. These two people notice one another. They speak admiration. They pursue. They touch. They desire. They are having sex.

The book also repeatedly says, “Do not awaken or excite my love until the right time” (Song of Solomon 2:7, NCV). In the original Hebrew, “awaken” means to stir up, arouse, or excite something into activity.

SEX OUTSIDE AND INSIDE OF MARRIAGE

This should give us a powerful lesson: before marriage, be careful what you continually stir up. Inside marriage, be careful that you don’t let it completely go to sleep.

Sex is not the foundation of marriage, but God clearly designed it to be an important expression of intimacy, affection, pleasure, exclusivity, vulnerability, and belonging. Sex should live strongly in a marriage.

CONCLUSION

So ask yourself: Have I stopped pursuing my spouse? Have I stopped caring about attraction? Have you read a book on marriage sex lately. Check out “Married Sex” co-written by bestselling author Gary Thomas and licensed professional counselor Debra Fileta.

Have resentment, stress, pornography, insecurity, familiarity, or neglect stolen something God intended to be good?

The goal is not to stay young. The goal is to never stop saying through your actions, “You still matter enough to me to make an effort, and I’m going to make an effort.”

LORD, help us honor the desires You created without being controlled by them. Help those struggling with lust, pornography, insecurity, wounds, or selfishness. And help married couples continue pursuing one another, caring for themselves, speaking attraction, showing affection, and protecting the intimacy You designed marriage to have. IJNIP, amen. ♥️

(Our favorite past time - snowboarding)