It’s here! The 29 Days to Great Sex!

Every day in the month of February I’m going to post a new tip–some long, and some short–about how to make sex stupendous in your marriage. Whether you just need a few extra tips, or whether you’re really struggling in this area, this month is going to have lots of practical advice and inspiration and encouragement for you. Each day will have a little exercise you can do to make your sex life wonderful–or to just get you going in the right direction.

For today, let’s start with the very basics: what is sex really about?

Back in the 1980s, Tim Lahaye wrote a book called “The Act of Marriage”, which talked all about how to make sex great. (I guess back then that was as close to the word “sex” as you could get in a title for a Christian book!) But I think the phrase “the act of marriage” is an important one, because it does illustrate something significant: Sex is the acting out of everything that marriage is. We become vulnerable with one another. We become naked with one another completely–and that means real intimacy, not just physical intimacy. We cherish each other. We protect each other. But we also have a ton of fun with each other!

Think about it: in marriage, we are fully committed to one another for life. We love each other and we cherish each other. We laugh together and we cry together. And in sex, we also do all of those things and express all of those things, because sex is  uniquely created to do that.

So we’re going to spend this month figuring out how to make sex–the ultimate act of marriage–live up to its potential!

God made sex to feel great, but He also made it to be a deeply intimate experience.

Do you remember when you were a little kid in church and you heard the preacher read the verses in the KJV, “And Adam knew his wife Eve, and they conceived a son…”? Chances are you giggled and elbowed your friends, because we all thought the Bible translators were just trying to be polite. But they weren’t. The Hebrew word used for sex there literally is the word “to know”. And it’s the same word that David uses of God when he says, “Search me and know me…” All of us were born with a deep hunger for spiritual connection, whether we pursue that in God or not. But God uses the same word to describe the way we join together with our spouse. It’s deeply intimate.

So sex is great on many levels: spiritual, emotional, and physical.

But while sex is supposed to be great, what if that’s not what you’re experiencing?

I read this quotation on Twitter recently:

In other words, so many of us are having sex before we’re committed for life. The problem with that is that it makes sex all about the physical, and not about the spiritual or emotional connection. And then, because sex has come to mean mostly pleasure, it can lose its ability to really cement us together in other ways.

That’s problem one. Problem two is that when we do finally get married and commit to someone, we almost stop having sex. Or at least we have it rather infrequently. In surveys I took for my book, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I found that 40% of couples made love less than once a week. We’re just not connecting that often.

God made sex to feel great, but He also made it to be a deeply intimate experience. 

(Click here to tweet this quote)

The “act of marriage”, that act that can be so wonderful, and so fun, and so significant, often isn’t even happening.

Or maybe for you it is happening, but it just doesn’t feel that great. You can’t figure out what all the fuss is about, and you’re worried that it was created for everyone but you. Or you’re haunted by your past–maybe stuff that you did breathlessly in the backseat of a car, or something that was done to you by an uncle, or a baby-sitter, or a date. Or maybe your husband just seems absent when you make love–like he’s thinking of anything but you.

And that intimacy just isn’t there.

This month we’re going to walk through these issues and uncover ways to find the true freedom that sex is supposed to be! Because sex is supposed to be great:

We’re going to start unpacking how we can increase the connection and the laughter during sex for the first week or so, and then we’re going to look at specific strategies to make the physical side of sex feel amazing.

So here’s  your first Great Sex Challenge:

Rate your sex life on each of those three areas: the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. And, if your husband’s up for it, ask him to do the same. And, if you’re up to it, say this as a prayer, or just journal it if you’re not religious:

Now actually picture what a great sex life in each of those areas would look like. Picture yourself enjoying each of those three areas. You don’t have to understand how you’re going to get there yet. That will come! The important thing is that you see that this was the way it was meant to be–and it was meant to be that way for you, specifically, too. Whether you have major hangups, or lots of hurts, or fears or doubts; or whether things are just mediocre; or whether your marriage has scars; sex is supposed to be a big positive in your life and in your marriage. That is God’s plan for you. See it. Picture it. Believe it! If we can all start having a very positive and excited attitude about sex, sex would likely improve astronomically already.

And now, over the next month, we’ll look practically at how we’re going to make it a reality–by ramping up the physical fireworks, the emotional connection, and spiritual intimacy!