On Intimacy

I'm a lucky woman.  I married my best friend, the person who knows me better than anyone. 

I thought I knew what marriage was.  I'd observed it first-hand growing up with my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends.  I saw couples raising children, washing dishes, paying bills, taking vacations, running small businesses together.  I thought that's all there was, and I was more than happy to link my life to Chris' and take part in all those things.  But there is a hidden element to relationships, something that is necessary for them to survive, and its called intimacy.  Intimacy became the surprise creamy center of my love-filled marriage.  Yes, we raise children and wash dishes and pay the bills.  That's all there.  But when you look at another couple's marriage, their intimacy is something that you can't see or feel or taste.  I think this is why we are surprised that a couple gets divorced.  "But they seemed so happy!"  "They just went on that beautiful cruise!"  "Their youngest isn't even a year old yet!"  On the outside, everything appears fine.

From the inside, I see it in the way my husband immediately passes me his pickle at a restaurant.  I feel it as his hands massage my favorite peppermint lotion into my feet at the end of a long day.  I taste it in the millions of kisses we've shared, our lips finding each other over and over. 

When we talk about relationships as though they are living, breathing things, when we say, "You have to nurture your marriage," I think we really mean you have to tend to the intimacy.  We can feed our bond, or we can starve it.  Chris and I like to spend time together.  We don't get much sleep these days, because after putting four kids to bed, it is pretty late.  Instead of rolling away from each other and turning off the light, we spend those last few hours together.  We talk.  We watch movies.  We sometimes even manage to read something together.  We light some candles and connect (wink, wink).  We trust each other.  We tell each other our secrets and frustrations.  We protect the sacredness of our bed.  I love the episode of How I Met Your Mother when Marshall says, "Yeah, I have a list of all the women I've slept with.  It's called my marriage license!"  That holds true for Chris and I as well.  But it goes further.  I am always surprised when I meet a married couple who don't share a bed.  (My first thought, no joke, is that this makes middle-of-the-night sex so inconvenient, if you have to get up, go to another room, warm up your space...)  There are times that we don't sleep together, but we limit it to one or two nights max, and usually because one of us is up with a sick kid, doing laundry and making sure they keep breathing.  Otherwise, when we are both at home, we are together.  We also try, at least once a year, to get away together.  There was plenty of time, before the kids came along, to grow closer and make time for each other.  Now that it's become more rare, we cherish those weekends to relive that simpler time.

Sometimes marriage and intimacy means that you suffer together.  When your spouse makes a bad decision, you both have to live with the consequences.  But even in those difficult times, it's important that I am Chris' wife, not his mother.  It would be all too easy to nag, to instruct, to say, "Now Christopher, I told you...."  If you are like us, especially, and married young, there's a good chance you both entered marriage before you were finished growing up (this can also be true even if you are in your 50's).  You still have to give your spouse the space to figure some things out for herself.  Just because you became one flesh, doesn't mean you share one mind.  You need to allow for, and even celebrate, each other's differences.  How could I trust my husband if he didn't find me and my quirks unique and adorable?  There should be things that only your spouse knows about you.  I very strongly believe that I should be the only person who knows when Chris needs new underwear.  There's just no good reason anyone else should be aware of that.  When you share a bed, and a home, and a life, you learn things that no one else could possibly know.

I was afraid to be vulnerable for most of my life.  Being known, all the way down to my darkest depths, was terrifying.  I was sure the person I let in would make me regret it, by telling my secrets and confirming that I wasn't loveable.  Over the past 14 years, Chris has proved time and time again that I was wrong; that he is the one person to whom I can show it all, and our love continues to grow.  The more we share, both in the day to day and of ourselves, the stronger our bond becomes, the more threads are sewn in this beautiful tapestry we are creating.  And through it all, I feel emboldened to be myself, to live the life I was born for.