Surviving the Seasons of Intimacy

Letters To My Daughters

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Surviving the Seasons of Intimacy

Guest: Barbara Rainey

From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 2 of 2)

Bob: Why does it seem like moms are often not that interested in marital intimacy? Barbara Rainey understands.

Barbara: It’s hard to have a good, healthy, dynamic sexual relationship when you’re tired all of the time. You’re being pulled in a hundred directions by jobs, and kids, and financial stresses, and everything else; and, yet, I would still say that it’s important to keep it a priority because, if you don’t, you’re vulnerable to the enemy / you’re vulnerable to the temptation to find that excitement somewhere else.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, February 7th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Barbara Rainey joins us today to talk about how she worked to make intimacy a priority in her marriage when there were six kids still living at home. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. With the season of romance and love in the air—and let me just remind some of the husbands who are listening—Valentine’s Day is coming up. You may want to put that on your calendar or on your reminder list so that you don’t arrive at that day and find yourself empty-handed. I’ve had that experience—it’s not a fun experience when that happens. [Laughter] Do you know what I’m talking about?

Dennis: No. [Laughter]

Bob: Yes; you do!

Dennis: Forty-four years; and I’m batting a thousand, Bob! [Laughter]

Bob: Are you?

Dennis: Ask her! She’s here with us!

Bob: We have an eye witness here. Barbara Rainey is joining us. Is that true? Has he never missed a Valentine’s Day? Has he always had a card, or a gift, or something?

Dennis: I’ve always shown up!

Bob: Showing up is something else! [Laughter]

Barbara: You have been present.

2:00

Although, I don’t know that you’ve always been present on Valentine’s because of travel.

Dennis: Oh, yes! That’s probably true.

Barbara: Yes.

Bob: Well, we thought it would be helpful today to discuss the area of sex, and intimacy, and romance, especially since this is something, Barbara—that you wrote about in your book that is now almost a year old—it’s called Letters to My Daughters. Chapter 6 was all about helping your daughters and other young wives understand what’s going on with this aspect of a marriage relationship.

Dennis: And, at this point, I want to read a P.S. that Barbara puts at the end of one of these letters. Now, the book has nine chapters. There’s only one chapter on sex, but it’s a long chapter; and there are like half a dozen letters that pose a question to Barbara that she answers in the book. I just want to read this:

P.S. There are additional unseen benefits to regular sexual relations in marriage.

3:00

Three little facts I learned from one of our FamilyLife Today radio guests:

Number one:

The chemicals oxytocin and dopamine, when released in the brain, increase bonding; the reexpression of love and commitment strengthens mutual affection; and there is a sense of satisfaction in keeping intimacy alive, even if the actual experience isn’t a great one. The last is my favorite, because in our marriage…

Now, this is really interesting for me to read on air; because, Bob, you know, we have people come up to us and they say: “You guys! All you do is present a perfect picture of marriage!”

Bob: Yes.

Dennis: Well, I’m about to dispel that [Laughter] in what I’m about to read that my wife wrote in this book!

The last one is my favorite, because in our marriage, sex hasn’t always been accompanied by fireworks! Among a lot of good-to-great experiences, we’ve also had some pretty lousy encounters…

4:00

Did you really write that in this book?!

Barbara: I did. [Laughter] And I can tell you still don’t like it very much.

Dennis: I don’t; I don’t. [Laughter] I complained about this when I edited it, but you didn’t take it out.

…some pretty lousy encounters…some that left us both either disappointed or hurt. That makes the chemical facts all the more important, because even not-great sex still bonds us together. Nice to know, huh?

[Laughter]

Dennis: Honestly, I really appreciate Barbara’s honesty about our marriage, because I think a lot of people out there are hurting. They think they’re the only ones that ever had a lousy encounter around the sexual relationship.

Bob: When you and Dennis, together, wrote the book, Rekindling the Romance, you talked about seasons of a marriage.

Barbara: Yes.

Bob: You talked about early love, and then you talked about, kind of, this middle season—

Barbara: Yes.

Bob: —where it just can kind of get routine.

5:00

A lot of husbands and wives, in the middle of raising kids and going through things—they hit that season and they think to one another, “This is it?” They’re frustrated and they’re disappointed. They wonder, if they switch partners, if things would get better for them.

Dennis: Or, let me tell you this—Barbara spoke to one group of women who talked about a no-sex marriage, where people just give up / toss in the towel and say, “We’re done.”

Bob: And we’ve talked to couples, who have said, “It’s been two years” / “…three years since we’ve been intimate with one another. We’re committed, and we still love each other; but we’ve just kind of given up on that area of our marriage.”

You would say to a wife, who says, “We’ve given up and we’re content, and it’s working out for us,”—what would you say?

Barbara: I would say that’s ...