One of my blogging friends, Amber Salhus, wrote a post earlier in the week called Why it Takes Courage to Seduce Your Husband. It’s a great read and you can find it here:

http://ambersalhus.com/why-it-takes-courage-to-seduce-your-spouse/

Amber is a great writer. She’s witty and has an engaging style of connecting with her readers. The premise of her post seemed to be that as married couples, it gets harder and harder to engage in pursuing the  passionate piece of marital oneness and that this is an important piece worth pursuing. She closes her post with this:

 Intimacy in marriage needs to be sought after and fought for and protected, and when it is, seduction won’t be lacking. Real intimacy requires give and take. It requires reciprocation. It requires being present. It requires honesty. It requires vulnerability. But mostly it requires courage.

I read Amber’s post to Will while we were traveling this weekend, and it definitely sparked some conversation. He remembers that I did pursue him sexually when we were newlyweds much more than I do now, 30 years into our marriage. Amber and her husband have been married for 13 years.  Our story carries a little more baggage with it than theirs does, so we’ve struggled in some areas they didn’t. But there are some things I can tell you at the age of almost 54 that I think contribute to this conversation.

Will and I met when we had both just turned 19. We dated for six years before getting married, and we laughed in the car today about the fact that I honestly thought that if I could sleep in the same bed with him every night for the rest of my life, I’d never have another problem in the world. I actually thought this. Oh, young love. We were married two years before we tried to start a family, and my first two pregnancies ended in miscarriage. Sex took on a whole new meaning. My third and fourth pregnancies were normal, and we had two little girls almost two years apart. I had another miscarriage in between girl number three and girl number 4, so all in all I had three little girls in four years plus 3 miscarriages. I spend about 7 years in the cycle of trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, miscarrying, nursing or trying not to get pregnant. In the end, I had three girls under the age of 6 and I was exhausted.

I remember saying to Will, “Please do not touch me. I have had little people touching me all day long and I cannot stand another human needing physical contact.” This went over really well for our marriage and the intimacy piece.  Seducing my husband? More like running from him!

It did get better, as everyone said it would, and when the girls were a little older and went to bed at a reasonable time, I think we got back on track. Things had changed, though. My C-section scarred body didn’t look quite the way it used to. I wasn’t in the greatest of shape. We didn’t have a lot of money, and finding time to exercise was hard. Will was working hard at his career, and with everything going on with the girls, we still struggled to really make emotional connection, which I needed to want to be physically intimate. It’s intriguing to me that men need to have physical connection in order to feel emotionally connected, while women need to feel emotionally connected in order to want physical connection.

Even now, to think about seducing my husband feel scary and vulnerable UNLESS, I feel emotionally connected to him. If he has been pursuing my heart and I feel heard and understood by him, I feel confident and secure as a woman and wife and want to connect with him physically. If, on the other hand, we are apart emotionally and I feel distance and misunderstanding, nothing in me wants the physical piece.  It’s like the Catch-22 of marriage. You pursuing  me emotionally allows me to feel confident pursuing you physically. This is a pattern of connection that we really try to stick to. Of course, we mess up and one or both of us falls off the truck. But at least after 30 years of marriage, we know what to do to get back on the right path.

Here’s what works for us:

Will tries to stay connected to my heart and mind. He attempts to listen to me, even though I have a tendency to use too many words. He pursues me romantically sometimes with flowers or cards, which I know he doesn’ think should be that big of a deal. He does it because it’s a big deal to me. He’s willing to listen to me and will initiate some quality time way together occasionally, which I love.

I try to connect with him physically when I can tell he needs me to. After being together this many years, I kind of know his patterns and because I care about him, I care about the things that matter to him. I know he can feel apart from me emotionally when we have not been together physically.  It’s just how God made him. His primary love language is non-sexual physical touch, though he would tell you that sexual physical touch is right up on his list too. Naturally, physical touch is my lowest love language, so I have to work harder at this. He enjoys quality time, and that is lower on my list too. It’s been a journey figuring out how to express love to each other when our love languages are so different. (Mine are words of affirmation and acts of service, by the way.)

I agree with Amber. It does take courage to seduce your husband. And it probably takes courage for your him to seduce you. It feels scary and vulnerable. Take courage. It was God’s idea, and He gives it to married couples to enjoy.

Enjoy away friends!

If you’d like to read more of Amber’s blog you can find it her http://www.ambersalhus.com                                                            She’s a blast and you’ll enjoy it!

*photo credit Danielle Elder