Safeguarding Your Marriage

At a Protestant summer camp I used to attend, the oldest cabin of girls had a “sex talk”  at the end of the week where you could ask your cabin leaders any questions you had about dating, sex, marriage. I remember very specifically asking, “How do you maintain your purity in marriage?” and I was met with crickets. They had no idea what I meant, because purity to them was just saving sex for marriage and then purity doesn’t matter anymore. But as I’ve continued to work on what this means, I wasn’t satisfied. We talk about how God is pure. And we’re made in His image. Well if we’re made in His image, then we should be pure throughout marriage and what does that look like to safeguard it? 

There are a few areas that need safeguarding to protect the intimacy of your marriage. The first area is through the senses. What are you watching, what are you hearing? Do those things glorify and encourage the marital relationship or are they creating lust, desires for someone else? The entire purpose of this website is to guard those senses. You can find the products you need without the visual ambush that most sex stores or websites assault you with. There won’t be any ads playing on the side bar with people moaning or pictures of half or mostly nude models. All of these assaults are designed to seduce you into sin. 

Purity in marriage can also be discussed in emotional intimacy. Are you cultivating relationships with the opposite sex and are they attempting to meet a need that your spouse should be meeting? Are you more excited to see and talk with your friend than you are your spouse? Do you feel like you have to hide conversations that you had with your friend because your partner wouldn’t understand? These are all yellow flags that could turn into red flags depending on the trajectory and gravity. Every person desires to feel a connection. Man was not created to be alone, and when we find ourselves emotionally or physically alone, doors for temptation can open that will destroy your marriage. 

Not every marriage at all times is going to be completely emotionally and mentally connected. That’s not realistic to expect your spouse to meet every single need you have. But, are you pushing your spouse away because you’re finding your emotional connection elsewhere? Do you find yourself looking for opportunities to be away from them because you’d rather be spending time with someone else? This is the problem that needs safeguarding. Your spouse should be the most intimate person to you. This doesn’t mean every thought and emotion needs to be shared at all times. What it means is that they are essentially your best friend. You enjoy their company, you enjoy hearing what they have to say, and you’re not actively looking for someone else to vent or rant to about your bad day at work, because you already have your person. Emotional cheating is a thing and will destroy the trust your spouse has placed in you. 

This can also go where maybe your spouse isn’t emotionally cheating with a member of the opposite sex, but your spouse chooses to hang out with their friends over you. They don’t prioritize quality time or date nights or time with the kids because they’re out golfing or shopping with their friends and suddenly it’s been months where they’re gone every weekend but you can’t remember the last time you had a date night. Or maybe you're the spouse that doesn’t want to spend time with your significant other. What is driving you away and what are you allowing to pull you away? What difficult conversations or emotions are you avoiding by being gone? Maybe it’s time to deal with those and take steps to rebuild trust and intimacy in your relationship. 

A final thing I will touch on about safeguarding for the good of your marriage is your fantasy life. What do you find yourself daydreaming about? When you will finally get the big, beautiful house? When your husband gets a 6 pack and finally learns how to fold the towels properly? When everyone is gone and you finally get to be alone and not have to worry about everyone else? These in passing or occasionally don’t seem all that bad. It’s a coping mechanism that keeps you safe from the negative emotions or experiences that are occurring. It can bring hope that there might be a day when you won’t have to live paycheck to paycheck and you’ll be able to take that nice vacation. But don’t let your dream life be the enemy of the good. Don’t let bitterness and resentfulness build up because you hate that your spouse made a bad investment or got fired and now you’re stressed about money and not able to meet your mental expectations for your life.

A little secret- your spouse will never measure up to the ideal scenario you’ve created in your head. So now you’ve set your spouse up to continually fail and disappoint you. People make mistakes. That’s part of being human, but dwelling on a “perfect scenario” and implementing those same standards into your marriage can be very destructive. Instead, catch yourself in your fantasy and redirect. When you catch yourself desiring for your spouse to be better at something, name something they are really good at. Every person has strengths, at least one thing that they rock at. Find gratitude in the little things and make a point to have conversation about areas of improvement. Just be prepared that they might have areas of improvement for you, so don’t dish it if you can’t take it. 

All of these things boil down to the intention of your heart. Every action is a way to meet a need. But are you trying to fulfill your need in the wrong places? Are you allowing yourself to be tempted by lust, or someone who “really listens to you and cares about you” that isn’t your spouse, or getting close to websites that stir up fantasies in your heart? Recognize what you’re doing and admit that you’re flirting a thin line with temptation. Then communicate. Let your spouse know that you’ve been tempted to pursue other emotionally fulfilling relationships, or you’ve been fantasizing about a different life. Then problem solve what needs to happen to rebuild the connection and how your needs can be better met. Better yet, before these temptations ever occur, set up safeguards to protect your and your spouses’ purity. 

Several things that James and I have implemented in these regards is that we share passwords to all accounts and technologies. We don’t put ourselves in scenarios that could be implicating. So we don’t follow scandalous people on social media. We freely share our phones as needed and don’t hesitate to provide passwords to accounts. We fast forward or don’t watch movies with sex scenes. We don’t ride in a car alone with a member of the opposite sex outside of family. We have weekly date nights to ensure we have quality time to communicate and restore our emotional connection. We don’t hide conversations or spend time with people of the opposite sex who ask us not to tell our spouse about certain things. Even situations that could be easily explained, it’s just better to be above reproach.

 I don’t want James to ever doubt that he can trust me. We do have friends of the opposite sex, we just don’t spend alone time with them and if there’s text messaging or a phone call we typically tell the other within 24 hours. Not as a rule, but as part of sharing our day. It helps to keep each other accountable and not have any surprises. Along with this are our house rules. As a sign of respect, if I’m home alone I’m not going to invite my guy friend over to hang out. Same for James. We also don’t take members of the opposite sex into our bedroom by themselves even if there are multiple people in the house. Honestly the only reason anyone would be in our bedroom besides us is to see our pet snake which we keep in there, so there isn’t a good reason for me to take a guy alone into my bedroom, which is intentional.  We also apply these rules to ourselves when we’re at our friends’ homes. This maybe isn’t what every couple wants or needs, but for us these specific things were worth making an effort to practice in order to safeguard our relationship and our individual purity.