Intimacy is Tough

Chuck Swindall wrote this:

“There were two porcupines living in Alaska. It was very cold. To keep warm, they decided to draw close together. But when they did that, they needled one another. So they pulled apart. But again they got cold. And so they moved close again, and they got needled. Poor porcupines! They were continuously either cold, or else needling one another.”

So much for intimacy between porcupines. But isn’t that the way it is with people too? Alone, we are miserable, lonely, empty; so we get married. But together, we needle one another, aggravate and hurt one another. Like one guy said, “Women! You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.”

The result is that half of all marriages fail and end up in the divorce courts. Most of the rest experience disillusionment, sadness, and hurt; yet they endure despite all that. They endure, not because they experience a good marriage, but because they tough it out and won’t give up.

But is that the way God intended marriage to be? No! Not at all! Doesn’t God want us to be able to draw close and be warm and comfortable? Yes! Absolutely!

That is exactly God’s purpose in writing Genesis 2:24-35:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

Yes, we are to live together in perfect peace and unity – and with intimacy. That is God’s plan and His will.

Let’s look at what happens in a typical home: The husband comes from a big family that is easy going and rambunctious. He always thought the bedpost was a convenient place to hang his underwear. She comes from a quiet, orderly home. She just assumed that everyone picked up their own underwear. You have guaranteed conflict in this match-up, and these are just over petty differences.

We haven’t even mentioned finances, sexual frequency or responsiveness, distribution of household chores, spiritual issues like where we go to church, and child discipline issues. Or, what about the big one – Where do we spend Christmas? Do we spend it at your Mother’s house or at mine?

It’s funny – when you get married, you only have to satisfy one person. Why isn’t it easier? We stand in bliss at the altar promising to love and cherish till death do us part, and within months we are singing the words to that old country song:

“Why don’t we get along? Everything I do is wrong; Tell me, what’s the reason I’m not pleasing you?”

How sad, but how often true. And it isn’t surprising. We come together with built in, ready-made incompatibility. We have different backgrounds, different ideas on how things should be done, and we are by design created differently. Our bodies are built differently for different functions, and we even think differently. Yet we are expected to join together in marriage and live intimately till death do us part.

It takes a lifetime of work adjusting to one another, but the blessing of an intimate marriage is worth the effort. What is necessary is summed up in Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” We will be talking about how this is done in the next few blogs.