3 Tips For Reviving Romance In Marriage
Relationships evolve and mature, which means that courtship and marriage are different experiences for couples. Dating couples and married couples do things differently—the way they spend/budget money, organize their schedules, navigate their careers, and build their legacy, to name a few. Personally, I appreciate and enjoy the shifts that my relationship with Jenny have gone through from our our 4 months of dating, to our 8 months of engagement and now into our 12 and a half years of marriage. We’ve lived in 3 countries, brought two amazing and energetic boys into the world and made our fair share of life-altering decisions.
But if there’s one thing that I don’t want to change all that much is the playful romance of courtship and the intense feelings of engagement. Am I just a sucker for romance? Should we heed to the words of long-time married folks who tell us that we can’t expect the intensity of those feelings to last in marriage?
I don’t know if I buy into that. A marriage with scheduled sex and weekly date nights is definitely helpful for a couple buried in their careers, maintaining a home and keeping up with the ever growing list of things to do for the kids, but couples would do their marriages well by reviving romance. By reviving the priority of romance that once flowed through our love-struck veins, we can reverse the dulling effect that marriage was never intended to have.
“By reviving the priority of romance that once flowed through our love-struck veins, we can reverse the dulling effect that marriage was never intended to have.”
Let these Scriptures sink in:
Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
(Prov. 5:18-19)
How beautiful are your feet in sandals,
O noble daughter!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a master hand.
Your navel is a rounded bowl
that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
encircled with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are pools in Heshbon,
by the gate of Bath-rabbim.
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon,
which looks toward Damascus.
Your head crowns you like Carmel,
and your flowing locks are like purple;
a king is held captive in the tresses.
How beautiful and pleasant you are,
O loved one, with all your delights!
Your stature is like a palm tree,
and your breasts are like its clusters.
I say I will climb the palm tree
and lay hold of its fruit.
Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
and the scent of your breath like apples,
and your mouth like the best wine.
(Song of Solomon 7:1-9)
Here are three tips:
“When we look upon our spouses with desire, words of empowering affection follow.”
1. Look upon your spouse with desire. This might be hard, especially if you’re looking at a slobbering mess. But start by focusing on something small that’s attractive and desirable and let it grow. Maybe you both will have to burn the old worn-out t-shirts and PJs and be more intentional about looking attractive and smelling good (yes, men, women are profoundly turned on or off by our smell). And the beauty of this is that it spirals upwards—when we look upon our spouses with desire, words of empowering affection follow, which leads me to the second tip…
2. Speaks words of desire to your spouse. Our hearts tend to go in the direction that our mouths are talking, and so do our marriages. Verbalizing our compliments grows two things: (1) our spouse’s connection to us and (2) our connection to our spouses.
3. Be romantic physically and emotionally. Men and women predominantly have differing views of romance. If you ask men and women, “What is something romantic that you want your spouse to do for you?” Men tend to focus on physical connection and women usually desire emotional connectedness. Romance needs both, so have fun with both.