Dearest daughters,
The role of intimacy in marriage is vital, and therefore our perspective of it shapes everything.
If intimacy is only about procreation, then it becomes a duty. If it’s only about personal pleasure, we become self-centered and hedonistic. But if intimacy is an essential element of uniting a husband and wife—body, soul, and spirit—then we begin to see it rightly: essential to love, to unity—and yes, meant to be mutually pleasurable.
To experience the fullness of love, and even creativity, human beings need spaces where guarded self-awareness ceases, where the rational mind becomes silent, places where we can freely give and receive without calculation. We may enter such spaces standing before the waves of the ocean, or in surrendered prayer, or in the wordless babble exchanged between a mother and baby. And we should enter such a place in the deepest connection between husband and wife. I would like to explore how intimacy can be one of these sacred “spaces” and how it plays this unifying role within marriage.
From the very beginning God treated physical union as something sacred. Before sin ever entered the world, He designed marriage and said the two would become one flesh. And then Scripture adds that they were naked and were not ashamed. From these passages we may infer that physical union existed in paradise before the Fall. It was not an afterthought, a concession to human weakness. It was an original component of wholeness and life.
I think many Christians avoid this topic because the world has distorted it so badly. But if we allow the world to do all the talking, then the world will do all the teaching, and our children will learn the world’s viewpoint whether we intend it or not. Sexuality and the sexualization of the body, divorced from any God-given design, is everywhere today: billboards, checkout aisles, social media feeds. So to counterbalance that, we must actively inform our children and ourselves about what a Christ-centered physical relationship looks like.
As you may remember, I spoke with each of you about beginning elements of this even when you were young. And the more children I had, the more I did that. My goal was not to burden you, but to open a door early for conversation in the appropriate place. I wanted you to know where to go with your questions before someone or something else answered them poorly.
I told you that the physical dimension of love is like a fire, and I asked you:
Is fire good or bad?
You agreed that it could be either. Fire gives life—the sun on our gardens, the warmth of a hearth, cooked food. But outside its place, it destroys, leaving homes in ashes and rubble in its wake. It can decimate a forest or cause a nuclear explosion.
Scripture says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled” (Heb. 13:4). Not ignored, not worshiped, but honored, inside its design—and marriage is all about design. It is one of the strongest bonds on earth when it is patterned after the biblical model.
So let’s be clear. As Christians, we believe sexual intimacy belongs in only one place: within a committed, lifelong covenant between an adult man and an adult woman. But once that bond exists, what then? Does God’s word further define the design for how we should approach marital intimacy? It certainly does. The heart of that design is perhaps best summed up in the Golden Rule and in the second great commandment: our deepest joy and security are found not in grasping for our own needs, but in seeking the good of the other.
Male and Female
The beauty of the male and female relationship lies in difference, not sameness. God said male and female He created them, in His image (Gen. 1:27). It is the two together that reflect Him most completely. Differences expand empathy, layer dimensions and bring texture to care. They teach us to love someone who doesn’t experience the world in the exact way we do.
Now, the following observation is general, not absolute, but it is common enough to be worth noting: Men tend to have a steadier physical drive toward physical union and climax. Women tend to experience desire more in an ebb and flow, in seasons affected by cycle, pregnancy, nursing, exhaustion, or emotional climate. For many women, this same ebb and flow often applies even within a single encounter; desire builds gradually, in waves.
Both patterns are normal and have their benefits and drawbacks. These different responses to physical need and attraction are another way of adding dimension to the relationship and teaching us to understand outside of our personal sphere of experience.
Without understanding each other, men may feel constantly rejected and women may feel constantly pressured.
How to approach these differences is addressed in Scripture with a principle that must be applied to intimacy just as to the other facets of Christian living: “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others” (Phil. 2:4). Scripture also tells us, “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and the wife to her husband” (1 Cor. 7:3). Paul goes on to say that the body of each belongs to the other. This giving ought to be viewed as an adventure of discovery!
Marriage becomes the place where selfishness either dies or lives miserably. The healthiest marriages keep asking the questions:
What brings you joy? What is your need? What can I do to give you love? When both parties adopt this attitude, the warmth of love will flow naturally and joyfully.
Knowing—Yada
There’s something beautiful in the Bible’s language on this topic.
The Hebrew word yada means “to know.” But it doesn’t mean intellectual or analytical knowledge—it means relational knowing, experiential knowing.
God says He “knew” (yada) Abraham (Gen. 18:19). This relationship was obviously not physical since God is a spirit, but this word implies that it was nonetheless deeply, intimately personal. For Scripture also tells us that Adam “knew” Eve his wife, and as a result, she conceived. This is the same word—yada.
So physical intimacy in marriage is meant to express a kind of knowing that goes deeper than thoughts, words or compatibility points. It is a knowing that involves the whole person—body, soul and spirit.
Many women (and men) live very much in their headspace—thinking, analyzing, worrying, organizing. But intimacy pulls you out of analysis and into presence, nudging you into the world of the heart by acts of love. If you try to think your way through lovemaking, nothing works! But if you respond, give, receive, laugh, and learn—true unity unfolds.
Scientifically, the hormone oxytocin is sometimes called the “love cocktail.” It’s released during intimacy, when we feel warm, bonded, safe, and at peace. It’s also the hormone flowing through a mother’s body as she breastfeeds her baby. And remarkably, it’s also the very hormone that initiates and sustains labor—the same hormone that brings a baby into the world and then helps the uterus contract to prevent hemorrhage afterward. So the same hormone present in the ecstasy of lovemaking is the hormone that brings new life to birth.
But an equally fascinating fact is that the antagonist to oxytocin is adrenaline. Adrenaline is the hormone of anxiety, fear, and stress—the “fight-or-flight” response. When adrenaline rises, oxytocin is suppressed. Labor can stall. Milk struggles to flow. Emotional and physical connection can feel distant. But love casts out fear, anxiety, and worry, just as fear drives away love and bonding. Not only our minds but also our bodies are designed so that love, safety, and peace open us up, and fear shuts us down.
It is in love that we bring new life to birth, whether that’s the life of a baby in the womb or the life of intimacy within a marriage. Fear constricts. Love releases. Biologically, spiritually, and relationally, we were designed to flourish in love.
Especially at the beginning of marriage, don’t try to be professionals. Awkwardness can be part of bonding. No checklist ever made a marriage warm. Laugh at your blunderings; it is the medicine that heals, and the stories that you’ll remember together forever.
Beyond Words
I once learned about a study involving nonverbal autistic young adults and a dance instructor. They communicated only through mirrored movement and shared rhythm while brain activity was being monitored by electrodes. As their bodies moved together, their brain patterns began to align—rising and falling in emotional harmony without a single word being spoken. This dance became unspoken communication and shared emotions. The dance became a form of communication unavailable to them through verbal language. It revealed something deeper than speech, a shared communication and emotional rhythm carried through the body itself.
Out of Headspace and into the Heart
The body can communicate what the mind cannot. This dynamic is key to understanding what intimacy in marriage can be. In affectionate touch—initiating, reflecting, responding—and most of all, in getting outside of the rational, self-aware headspace, a husband and wife begin to move beyond guarded self-awareness and into shared rhythm of the heart. Physical closeness fosters emotional and spiritual alignment—a connection deeper than words. Over time, this shared rhythm unites not only body, but heart and mind.
What some call “sweet nothings” are not nothing at all. They are the small murmurs, nonsensical phrases and gestures that hold whole worlds of meaning, a squeeze of a hand, a breath, a turning toward or away. This is the language of two hearts babbling feelings too deep for ordinary words, endlessly communicating from within. Sometimes a “sweet nothing” can mean everything!
The two become one flesh in ways that thought and conversation alone cannot accomplish. Intimacy plays a vital role in this part of God’s design!
What It Points To
Scripture tells us that marriage itself is but a picture of a greater reality. It reflects Christ and the church, self-giving love freely received and returned (Eph. 5:22-33). So intimacy trains the heart to forsake selfishness. It’s not performance or technique but mutual giving, both in the ways that come naturally and in the ways we discover from our different counterpart. It’s in the times that we crave it, but also in the seasons where we allow love to be awakened for the pleasure of another.
Love often.
Love from the heart.
Look for the other’s joy.
It is the hearth that warms a marriage, the sunlight in its garden, the warmth that awakens yet to be discovered seeds buried in the soil of your soul.
So don’t neglect it. Scripture even gently warns married couples not to withdraw from one another for long, because this bond protects tenderness and unity and guards against temptation (1 Cor. 7:5). Let it remain an adventure, early and late in marriage, full of laughter, gentleness, and learning one another. Let it lead you out of mere connection of the mind and into love that communicates through body, soul, and heart.
With all my love,
Mom
Thank you
I love this💛