Hi friends! I am so excited to announce that I am sharing my first guest post today! My friend Natalee form Kissing Often is writing about why intimacy is important in marriage. I love her website, which is all about keeping dating alive while being married. (Something that I am also very passionate about.) She has so many great ideas for creative date nights. Check out some of her ideas here. 🙂
Hi everyone! My name is Natalee and I am the founder of Kissing Often. At Kissing Often I share weekly date ideas with free printables for each date. Why? Because continuing to date your spouse even after years of marriage is so so essential to a happy healthy marriage. Today I am going to share with you a little more about exactly why I believe date night is essential and what it can create in your marriage!
So what does date night create? Well it creates a few things in your marriage. Fun, relaxation, much-needed alone time, intimacy, and many, many more things. What I really want to focus on is intimacy. Now, before you start blushing let me explain something. Intimacy is more than what happens in the bedroom. Intimacy comes in a few different forms and it’s important we recognize all those forms to keep our marriages happy! You’ll see what I’m talking about as you continue reading {insert winky face}
I am going to be totally honest here and share why I am so passionate about intimacy in all its forms. I grew up as a Christian and in the church. Intimacy, when it was talked about, was referred to as forbidden to anyone other than a married couple. And that is something that I have come to recognize as beautiful, however, at the time I had a serious misunderstanding of what intimacy was. When intimacy is talked about in church service it is usually (at least in my case) referring to sex and only sex. Growing up with this constant initiative put in front of me, gave me the idea that sex was the only form of intimacy that there was and it was strictly reserved for married folk. Let me clear something up real quick. I am 100% still a believer in Christ and am in no way bashing the church and the concept of sex being reserved for marriage. I am however saying that I had a skewed view of what intimacy was based on my own interpretation of things at the time.
Moving on to my dating life, I still had this skewed vision of what intimacy was and felt SO guilty even thinking about being intimate with a person. Let’s be real here peeps, when you are engaged to be married to a person this is a HUGE thing that you think about! Even still I felt guilty. It wasn’t until my sweet fiancé and I were doing our pre-marital counseling that I got a glimpse of what intimacy really was.
So, yes. Intimacy is sex, of course. That is physical intimacy. But there is actually more to intimacy that just the physical. Intimacy is also emotional. There are more ways than just sex to be intimate with your sweetheart! Being emotionally intimate is JUST as important as being physically intimate. Let me explain. Your spouse is your best friend, your life partner! You are doing life together now and in order for that to work well, you have to communicate. But not just communicate, you are sharing your innermost feelings with this person! They need to know what you’re feeling and thinking. You have to be honest and open with your sweetie. And you need to be comfortable doing so.
It takes a lot to do this with a person, believe me. Lots of tears were shed when (by me haha) when I shared things with my sweetie. By sharing you are giving your spouse your trust that they will never use these things against you! You’re giving them your heart. And that can be hard. But it is so important. When you can emotionally confide in your spouse, about anything and everything, magic happens in your relationship. What kind of magic? Now that is hard to describe. It’s just…simple. There really is no words to accurately describe the joy that comes from this. Marriage is never easy, but making sure that you take care to recognize all forms of intimacy makes things less stressful. Because marriage is work and it is hard, this form of intimacy becomes crucial.
Learning this made me truly appreciate intimacy in all its forms and the beauty of it being reserved for marriage. Now of course there is physical intimacy which everyone thinks of when you say intimacy. This combined with being emotionally intimate makes beautiful things. I don’t feel like I need to go into too much detail of what physical intimacy is. I think y’all kiiinda get the picture there. What I really wanted to get across was that there is more. You have to remember in your marriage that not only is this person your spouse, but your friend! I don’t know about you but I love talking to my friends and hanging out with them. My ultimate friend though is my hubby. He knows things about me my friends don’t. He’s my favorite person. And that, my friends is a beautiful, set apart, bond that no one else gets to experience. Just you two.
So don’t neglect constantly growing closer with your friend. Have conversations throughout the day. Text funny jokes, Send silly pictures. Write letters if you are separated by distance. Go on dates! A date is probably the most beautiful, perfect picture of these two types of intimacy working together in one. When you go on a date, you are spending that quality time with your sweetie. Talking, laughing, enjoying each other’s company. And then you know how a lot of dates end…{wink}. You’re getting both forms of intimacy all in one convenient package! (This is why I am so passionate about dates and why I started my site).
Thank you all for taking the time to read this! I really do appreciate you all. I wish I could hug all of you just for reading my words. Since I can’t, please accept my virtual hug!
Kisses!
-Natalee
Natalee is the founder of Kissing Often and blogs at http://www.kissingoften.com where she shares weekly date night ideas complete with free printables for each date. At Kissing Often everyone is passionate about keeping the love alive in marriages and relationships. Natalee loves creating inexpensive, easy, at-home dates to share. She hopes it is a place where others can come to find inspiration and keep date night fun and easy.
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