3. Your Heart
At the end of the day, the best thing you can do for your sexual relationship is to get your heart right. Sometimes a lack of attraction in marriage has absolutely nothing to do with the person standing before you, and everything to do with your own heart.
Ongoing attraction has far less to do with the desirability of our spouse and far more to do with the condition of our heart.
Maybe you’re holding on to bitterness or resentment. Maybe your spouse is doing something that’s bothering or hurting you, but rather than communicate, you’ve chosen to hold back. Maybe you’ve allowed the seed of unforgiveness to take root in your heart. Maybe your sexual history is creeping its way in and having a negative impact on your intimacy. Or maybe you’re playing the comparison game, holding your spouse up to a measuring stick of something—or someone—else, by which they were never meant to be measured.
Is anything inside of your heart keeping you from feeling a meaningful attraction toward your spouse? If so, it’s time to recognize it, acknowledge it, and then take the necessary steps toward overcoming it. Even in the bedroom, this kind of attitude will be the only thing that can take your sex life from me to we.
From Infatuation to Adoration
On the day of your wedding, you will find yourself at the absolute peak of infatuation. You might find yourself disappointed at the imagery that it’s only downhill from there. But that’s absolutely not what I am saying. The fact that infatuation fades is only disappointing for those of you who believe infatuation is the best of all emotions in marriage. I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Not even close.
If infatuation is fueled by the mystery of the unknown, adoration is fueled by the intimacy of the known.
The best is yet to come. There’s something far more significant than infatuation: adoration. If infatuation is fueled by the mystery of the unknown, adoration is fueled by the intimacy of the known. It’s the beautiful connection between two people who know each other deeply and love each other still. It’s the indescribable feeling of having your heart, mind, spirit and body on display, yet knowing that you’re loved fiercely. It’s being aware of the flaws within your spouse, yet choosing to love anyway. Adoration isn’t fueled by emotion; it’s fueled by choice. And no matter how exhausted, disappointed, frustrated or insecure you are, adoration always makes a point of raising the needs of your spouse higher than your own. It always chooses one thing and one thing alone. It always chooses marriage.
My prayer for each of you reading this book today is that God will move you past the superficial emotion of infatuation and challenge you to live in a place of deliberate adoration. And that in the process of bettering your sex lives, you will find something even more valuable: the bettering of your heart.
This article is an adapted excerpt from Debra Fileta’s new book, Choosing Marriage: Why It Has To Start With We > Me, and was used by permission. Choosing Marriage is available May 1st, wherever books are sold!
This article about attraction in marriage originally appeared here.
