Podcast: Play in new window | Download
It’s ok to not feel amazing in your marriage all the time. This is real life and sometimes things happen.
Someone gets sick.
Someone is tired.
Someone was selfish.
Someone wasted away their entire Saturday watching superhero movies and didn’t feel like being an intentionally seductive tigress.
(This last one was definitely me).
Your spouse is wonderful, but even in the best marriage, there will be moments of the negative side of the wave. And that’s ok.
That’s normal.
If you’re a 2 out of 10 normally and on the best days you’re a 4 out of 10…
I want you to get to a 9 out of 10 and the bad days are just a 7 out of 10.
So, get your marriage to a better spot but when you’re up there in your healthiness, expect waves.
Also, if you want to work with Belah to get your marriage healthy (up your marriage to a 9 or 10), find out more by getting on a call with her or a member of her team to see if it’s a good fit.
Fill out an application here: delightyourmarriage.com/cc
transcript
0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. Hi there and welcome. This is Bella. And I want to thank you for jumping in with me today. Today I want to talk about the up and downs of marriage. And yeah, kind of give you a normalized picture of it and maybe re align some expectations. So before I do that, though, I’m excited to share that I’ve opened up Clarity Calls again. So if you are at a spot where you need some change in your marriage, but you’re really not sure where to go from here, I invite you to fill out an application that really helps us to know if you’re the right fit for clarity call, and yeah, so so if you fill that out, then we can review it and get you the help that you need. So go to delight your marriage.com/cc for clarity call, and you can fill out that application. And the sooner you do that, the sooner you can get help and get your marriage transformed. So let’s go ahead and dive in what happens a lot, I think is we expect life to be very stable, and things to just basically be even every day. And the thing about humans is that we’re not that stable, we’re not that steady. We kind of go up and down with all sorts of things in our lives, you know, whether it’s our situations, or the people that were closest to or the events that happen in the world. I mean, it’s natural for emotions to rise in the good times and go a bit lower in the bad times. And what I want to invite you to know is that’s okay. It’s okay to have the painful emotions. And that’s not something you have to run away from. It’s not something that you have to be scared of. You can spend some time grieving the fact that the world isn’t where you wish it was, in many respects, you can have some time grieving about different areas of your life, maybe your sex life isn’t where you wish it was. And that’s okay to grieve that.
3:00
But don’t stay there. Don’t stay there. If this is an area of your life that
3:05
you should change. Ask God to find out if this is the season to change it. If you’re feeling discontentment around your marriage is right now the time to change it is right now the time to ask for help and get in a program and get things changed. Or is now not the season. And the season is to be grateful for what you have, and move forward in where you are right now. I don’t think God wants us to fix everything in our life all at once. And so I would invite you to listen to your emotions. But don’t be led by them. They might be something that you are happy. They’re telling you things but don’t let them take over. So when I talk about waves, so let’s think about your marriage on a zero to 10 scale. And let’s say sometimes you’re at a two out of 10 when you have this big argument and a huge, just distance. And let’s say when things are really good, and you just feel like you’re connecting and jiving, it says six out of 10 and so the wave is from two to six. Well, my work for you would be to get you to the low points or a seven and the high points or a nine or a 10. And that’s that’s what I would like for you. So yes, there will still be waves even if your marriage increases, but they’re not going to be as dramatic. They’re not going to be as dramatic. Now one thing about waves is we are lucky As Christians to build our house on the rock, to build our house on the rock, so when the storms come when the waves come, we have an anchor. And it’s not our spouse, our anchor can’t be our spouse. Like, it’s pretty cool when your marriage gets really awesome. And they’re this phenomenal support to your life. But you can’t get there by desperately grabbing onto your spouse, they’re not steady, they’re not stable. They’re not. They’re humans. They’re broken. And so God is, he is that rock. And, you know, a lot of times people feel distant from God. But there’s a few important ways to get close to him again. And they require time with him. And you’ve got this incredible Bible, that gives you so much insight about who God is. And if you’re extremely intellectual, there’s lots of apologetics. That’s the term used to people, basically defending the truth and validity of the Bible. So if you’re, you know, intellectual, and academic, and go research some of that stuff, so you can enjoy the Bible. But if, if you’re just like, Listen, I want to experience the man, Jesus Christ, he’s in those pages. Spend time get a system in place where you are every day in the word that doesn’t have to be all you know, all day, every day, it can be literally a 10 minute, flip through of Matthew and just start reading some of those parables and some of the stories, you will fall in love with him in a real way. You know, one thing that I do is I write out the scripture that really sticks out to me. And then I’ll just write my prayers about that scripture God helped me to do that helped me to be that kind of person, in a daily way, in, in my relationships in my, with my relationship with my husband, and I remember I was doing an interview once. And the woman said, what, what do you do to grow? Trying to think in, in your relationship with Jesus? Or maybe what do you do to grow in your relationship with your family? Yeah, I think that’s what it was. How do you grow in marriage? And what I said was, I read the Bible, and have sex with my husband. And that’s true, I don’t do a lot of reading of marriage resources, I just don’t. Because I want to kind of have a fresh perspective for you when I speak to you.
8:05
And I want it to come out of experience and working with my clients and what I’m seeing and what I’m learning. And I certainly, you know, I read all the time, but they’re not marriage books, specifically, because I think I can have a fresh perspective when I’m drawing in, you know, psychology and self help mindsets, and all these other ways. And that can help you more. So, I mean, read the Bible and have sex with your husband, that will really help to stabilize the waves. What I find is really fascinating. When I work with husbands, or when I get emails, or what have you is for men sex can even just lower their anxiety and lower their stress. And yes, make them feel loved. And I think so often for women, we’re just like, what, how could that even be correlated? And I get it. I get that that seems like that doesn’t make sense. But we have to trust them. They’re not they’re not men that are jerks and me and in pigs and they’re just not they they just want to be loved. And as women we want to be loved to we want to
9:38
enjoy the the good things that a marriage can be. So as you have these waves you know, I want you to really be prayerful about what season you’re in.
9:58
Now a lot of people Maybe you’re in the season, if you have tiny, tiny kids, and you just barely have time to breathe much less, make love and you’re just exhausted all the time. I’ve been in that spot, yes, with tiny kids, but also with health challenges and energy crises, you know, just not having that or being in transition or moving or, you know, seasons come. And it is, it can be so frustrating. And then on top of that, I have to make love to my husband. I mean, that’s, that can be a wife’s perspective, my invitation is to fight against that perspective. Because it’s not a godly perspective. This is who God made your husband to be. And you get to prioritize it. And when we get when we truly do prioritize sex, it starts being something that we enjoy. And we love and we get to get pleasure from but a lot of times, the first motivation comes from us desiring to love our husbands Well, and that’s okay. That’s okay, that that’s your first motivation, it doesn’t mean you’re less of a 21st century feminist woman know, you are powerful by loving your husband, well, in sex, even when you’re not aroused, even when you’re not particularly excited about it get started. And then the feelings join you, then the arousal begins, you you can by an act of the will start. And from there, your body response. The other thing that I think is helpful, is sex doesn’t have to look like whatever thing everyone thinks it has to look like, it doesn’t have to be penis in vagina every time. It just doesn’t. And that’s not the highest form of sex. A lot of times, I think it actually came from Freud. Sigmund Freud when he said that, that I think he actually did say that that was the highest form of sex. And he also talked about female orgasm and he said, the clitoral orgasm is lesser than the internal orgasms of like, you know, when he’s penetrating her an orgasm, and that’s just not just not true. Who made that up? Okay. A gentleman who lived a long time ago, who was not a woman and couldn’t experience these things for himself. And there, no, there’s, there’s not a hierarchy of sexual experiences, you get to enjoy all of them. And so whether that means, you know, let’s say you have some health challenges, and it’s painful for you to do, even intercourse, that’s okay. You guys can have intimacy without coming inside of each other, that’s okay. Just having a good attitude and enthusiasm and, you know, touching each other and letting each other touch themselves and maybe using an intimacy toy, you can go to covenant spice.com. And that’s a Christian sex toy store, which I think just has a lot of helpful things that may be enjoyable for both of you. But intimacy doesn’t have to stop because of the certain season you’re in. Or the emotions you’re recently having or the, the way your hormones seem to be imbalanced. And that’s okay. Also just a little resource around hormones, imbalanced. I’ve had some people who are post menopause doing bio T bioidentical hormone replacements, and they’ve had really good results. So that might be something to talk to your doctor about. But, but yeah, so that’s, that’s really what I want to encourage you to do is, is have your stability on the rock of Jesus, and do what can encourage your spouse to feel loved. without strings attached, but that’ll teach you what you need to know about marriage and intimacy is, is standing on the rock and getting your fulfillment from him.
14:33
And pursuing a passion because that’s the thing God wants your life to be more than just your marriage. Marriage should be a vehicle for you to do the things God wants you to do in this life. Like I really excited that I get to work with a lot of pastors and a lot of even marriage counselors and a lot of people who adopt children like these are incredible, even missionaries, you know, these are incredible things that God has called these people to and when they have a healthier marriage, they’re able to help people more, they’re able to love people better. So, you know, figure out your season, figure out if this is the time that God wants you to work on your marriage. If so, get on a call with me, delight your marriage comm slash CC. And we’ll go through that application. And we’ll find out if you’re the right fit, to have that call, either with me or someone from my team. And we’ll figure out how to how to get you help and see if your situation we can help and have helped people in the past in those ways. And if this isn’t the season for that, decide that you’re going to be content. Until you get to that season, there’s a there I think there are seasons of contentment that we need to really embrace. There are seasons that we really do need to work on things like our marriage, but there are seasons also that I think we just need to accept and be okay with what God has brought to us and really let it go. And think like, maybe God wants me to focus on this passion right now. And that’s why he’s given me extra space to do that. Maybe God wants me to work on my marriage right now. And he’s going to give me extra space to do that now. So I want to leave you just with an understanding of the waves in marriage are okay? The waves in your emotions are okay. You can be kind to yourself and gentle with yourself if those are things you’re feeling. And let me pray for you. Father, I lift up this person who may be scared of the unsteadiness they feel who may be scared that they’re not. They’re not you know, they’re not doing what you want them to. I pray God that you would lead them in direct them in the season they’re in. If it’s time to work on their marriage, give them the courage to go for it. If it’s time for them to feel gratitude about everything they’ve been given, and let that take its course and all the ways in their life, God give them the grace to see that, that they’re not seeing how awesome their life already is. Or if there’s other areas of their life, they need to really put their focus on. And I pray for them to understand their spouse, to the degree that they want to love them well in the way they receive love. So God, I also ask Lord, that You would increase the level of connection they have with their spouse that if it’s low, to at a 10, God, you’d raise it to a four out of 10 was six out of 10 to an eight out of 10 it would just grow. Give them the grace to see how to do that. In Jesus name. Amen. So if you are feeling as I wrap up here, if you’re feeling lonely in this journey with your spouse, and you really need help to change it, I’ve got several programs and I’d love to hear your story to see how to help you change it. So go to delight your marriage.com/cc and this may be the perfect spot for you will kind of vet you out and and find out if this is if this is the right movement for you. God bless you. I look forward to talking to you next week.
18:41
Goodbye