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- As I worked with women on their marriages,
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you know, it was like, "Hey, Lucille, can I talk to you?"
And I would sit down and say,
"Yes, you know, what's going on?"
What really would be upsetting to me is women would say,
"Oh, we stopped having sex."
Like at first I was just shocked
'cause it's not something I ever heard about.
And I thought that that happened
when you stopped being married.
But then I realized, no, people are married
and they're not being intimate.
And I was like, "Whoa, this is unbelievable."
And so I just kept talking to more and more women about it,
and I got to the bottom line of.
Most of the time it was
because they were having intimacy struggles,
and I just knew I needed to write a book about that.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music continues)
I am Lucille Williams.
I'm an author.
I wrote "The Intimacy You Crave:
Straight Talk about Sex and Pancakes."
(dramatic music)
I've been working with families in the church setting
for over 25 years.
My husband's a pastor.
Why should someone take sex advice from a pastor's wife?
That's quite a good question.
Because in the church, we talk a lot to young people
and we tell them, "No, don't do this.
Stay away from this. Stay pure.
You know, run from all this."
But then when people get married, we don't say,
"Okay, now knock yourself out."
We don't say that.
And so when you have a pastor's wife
that's saying, "It's okay.
It's all right to do this.
It's okay to enjoy your physical relationship."
I think it matters to people.
(dramatic music)
There was one Sunday morning where I was sitting down
with this little girl.
She was in a small group that I was leading.
And the question was, "When was the last time you felt joy?
When was the last time you were happy?"
And all the kids had different answers of course,
but this one little sweet little girl,
who was about six years old,
looked at me and she said,
"I haven't felt happy in a really long time.
My parents are going through a divorce
and I just don't feel happy."
I was like, "Oh."
And so it just gives me a passion to help the family
because when you work with kids,
the best way you can help a child is to help their parents
and to give their parents tools to thrive in their marriage.
Because when a couple is thriving in their marriage,
the kids feel secure and they have a happy home to be in.
(dramatic music)
I'm on a quest to help people safeguard their marriages.
And to me, the best way to safeguard your marriage
is to, in your mind, if you're married,
to always be willing to have some physical fun
with your spouse.
(dramatic music)
If you know you're gonna be physical with somebody,
you don't wanna get mad at them.
If you put in your mind,
"Okay, I'm always going to be willing
to have physical enjoyment with my spouse,"
if that's just part of your DNA
and you know on a daily basis
that that is gonna be a standard you're going to hold to,
then if you start fighting with them, you're like,
"Okay, I need to fix this quick
because if I'm gonna hold to my standard,
I'm gonna want to want to be with them.
And if I'm mad at them,
I'm not gonna wanna be with them."
You're gonna shift your thinking.
You're not gonna let little annoyances
get in the way of enjoying your spouse.
When you see something on the floor,
you're not going to be (grunting).
You switch it to, "Thank you God for a man
who can leave their socks on the floor."
Because really, so what? There's socks on the floor.
You know, people get all caught up about things
that just make you mad.
So if you know you're gonna be physical,
then you're gonna be looking for good.
You're gonna be fixing conflict really fast.
You're not gonna let bitterness take its root.
As soon as bitterness takes a root in a marriage,
oh, it's hard to get past that.
But if you're continually every day fixing the problems,
treating them the best you can,
looking to solve disagreements as quickly as possible,
and if your goal is to want to be physical with them,
then you're gonna fix all the problems
that come up every day.
You're not gonna just put it on the back burner and go,
"Oh, no big deal.
We'll worry about that later."
No.
Because if one of you wants to get physical that day
and you've got this grudge,
then you're not gonna want to.
(dramatic music)
In the Bible, it talks about two become one,
that two become one flesh.
And I think that that is referring
to the union of husband and wife.
And it says a cord of three strands isn't easily broken,
and that's true.
And when people get married, they're bonded to each other.
But I think sometimes what people forget
is we need to be two separate individual people
that want to be together.
If we are getting married and we think that the other person
is going to fulfill all of our desires,
"They're gonna make me happy.
They're gonna give me all the things I need."
And then you go into marriage thinking,
"Oh, the idea of marriage is to get what I need from this.
And you know, we're one flesh,
so you need to give me what I need."
And I don't think that's the case at all.
God talks about us being individuals.
We're individual people who choose each other.
We're a whole person.
We don't need our spouse to be whole.
The whole idea, "You complete me,"
I don't really buy into that.
I mean, we can feel that way.
When we fall in love, we feel that way.
"Oh, you complete me.
I've been looking for you my whole life and all of that."
But you know, later down the road,
it's the ins and outs of marriage.
It's the conflict you need to resolve.
It's the bill that didn't get paid.
It's who forgot to do this, you know.
He trips over your shoes, that happens at my house.
And you got to resolve those things.
So yes, the two become one, but it's two separate people
who get filled from God, not from each other.
You get filled from God and then you pour on each other
what God has filled you with.
My mother used to always say to me,
"I better not catch you kissing any boys."
And so I always looked at any physicalness
with a boy or a man that that was wrong
and that was guilt provoking,
and it was shameful to want to have those kind of desires.
But God made us for connectedness.
That was normal.
I didn't know that as a kid.
I thought those desires were bad and wrong.
And even when I got married, I thought it was wrong.
Even after getting married, I thought, "This wasn't okay."
But I mean, it was part of marriage,
so I felt like it was okay,
but there was guilt that went along with it,
and that's not a good thing in your marriage.
And about five years into our marriage,
my husband and I both became Christians,
and then that was when I realized that God says, "It's okay.
It's okay to have sex.
It's okay to enjoy that part of your life.
It's okay to enjoy that part of your marriage."
I didn't know that.
Before being a Christian, I was like,
"Okay, it's fun and I like it."
But I walked away with a sense of guilt,
like you're not supposed to have a good time in that area.
But then the more I got to know God,
the more my sex life got better.
And the more I enjoyed
and the more I allowed myself to just fall into that
and just fully be okay with it.
And so the closer I got with God,
the better our physical relationship got.
(lively music)
Sometimes people hold to the belief that God is against sex,
and he's not.
That is just so unfounded.
God created sex.
He's the one that that's the way you have children.
That's the way you connect.
It says right from the Garden of Eden
that Adam and Eve were together and they weren't ashamed.
They were naked and they were not ashamed.
Who wrote that? God wrote that.
God's the one that created it,
and yet we think that somehow God is against sex.
I remember my husband became a pastor about midlife.
And there was someone who...
He owned restaurants.
And there was someone
who used to come to our restaurant all the time
and he said, "I'm gonna be moving on from this
because I'm becoming a pastor.
I'm a pastor now."
And the guy said, "Oh, well, there goes your sex life."
And we just kind of chuckled because it's like,
"No, not at all."
That's just just an ignorant belief.
If you study your Bible, throughout the Bible,
there's stuff that you don't wanna read with your grandma.
I mean, it's there.
From Genesis to Revelation,
there are multiple verses about sex.
If you just Google sex in the Bible,
you'll get a whole list.
I mean, Song of Solomon is our, you know, biggest example.
I mean, it's imbibe lovers.
I mean, lovers and fruit and all these erotic things,
it's in the Bible.
If you read it and you really look at what it says,
you can't help but blush.
There's a lot of things in there
about intimacy and connecting.
And if you really dig in,
the Bible will be your manual for intimacy.
So, God's not afraid to talk about sex.
God's not afraid to give us information about sex
in the Bible.
And we shouldn't be slow about reading them
and letting them sink in and letting God guide us
in that area, like all the other areas in our life.
In churches, one of the things everybody knows
is you just don't talk about sex.
If you want to get a whole room of people going (gasping),
just use the word sex and you get a reaction in the room.
And that's really sad because we talk about marriage.
And the thing that is most distinctive in marriage
is that you're physical with that person.
You can do everything else with anyone else,
but that intimacy is only for your spouse.
So if we're gonna have strong and healthy marriages,
we need to help people keep their intimacy strong
and keep their connection strong.
(dramatic music)
A lot of times kids in the church,
when they first hear about sex,
it's from a friend who slipped up
with their boyfriend or girlfriend,
and that's the story they hear and what happened.
And that's just not the way God designed it.
I mean, it's supposed to be magical and mystical,
and it's one of the most wonderful things
that as humans we can experience.
And when you're married
and you're vowed to be with that person
and you know they're committed to you,
that makes it just trust.
Without trust in a marriage, the intimacy is gonna wane.
It's not gonna be as good.
We need to have a foundation of trust
and just being able to be with each other
and having trust that that person
has your best interest at heart,
that's when we can fully embrace our relationship.
(dramatic music)
Communication, good communication,
is critical in a marriage.
Everybody knows that.
People say marriages will rise and fall on communication.
What we forget is it doesn't matter what we say to someone.
What matters is what they hear.
'Cause you can say loving things,
but if they're hearing criticism,
it doesn't really matter what you said
because this is what they heard.
So we can say things,
but then we need to check back and say,
"What did you hear?"
And then let them tell us back.
It's like the ordering, when you go through a drive-through,
"Hi, I'd like some fries."
"Okay, you want fries? Do you want anything else?"
"I want a Coke with it."
"Okay, what do you want with the coke?
You want a Coke with ice or no ice?"
You know, they repeat it back to you.
And we forget as couples that that's a really good tool.
You say something and then ask,
"Okay, what did you hear me say?"
And oftentimes, my husband and I
still get caught up with that.
I'll say something and he gets offended, and I'll be like,
"What did you just hear me say?"
"Well, you said this."
"No, I didn't say that."
"Yes, you did. Okay, well say it again."
"Okay, well, this is what I said."
And then he doesn't hear me.
And then we go back and forth.
"Well, this is what I said."
"Well, what did you say? This is what I heard."
And even after all these years of marriage,
we still have those conversations.
But you need to check back and go,
"Okay, what did you hear?"
There was one time I asked him,
I was feeling really insecure one day, and I said,
"Do you love me?"
And he said, "I come home, don't I?"
I was like, "Well, yeah, of course you come home.
Your garage is here.
You love your garage, where are you gonna go?"
And so, I was kind of hurt, but I didn't say anything.
And so, I let days go by.
I think it went up to about two weeks and I finally thought,
"I got to ask him about this
'cause this is really just gnawing at me."
And so I went back to him and I said,
"You know, I asked you if you love me
and you said you come home.
And that really hurt my feelings."
He said, "Honey, you don't understand."
He goes, "There's lots of things I could do.
I want to come home.
Every day, I can't wait to come home to you.
I want to come home."
And I was like, "Oh."
That was one of the best compliments he'd ever given me.
He was telling me how much he loves to come home to me.
You know, again, it's what you hear,
not what is said a lot of times.
(playful music)
Is sex that important to a healthy marriage?
That I say yes.
(typewriter clanking)
When I write about intimacy and sex,
I will often use euphemisms instead of the word sex.
Because just to say sex over and over and over,
it's so much easier to say shrimpin' the barbie,
or baking the lasagna, or you know, polka dancing,
or whatever you wanna call it.
(lively jazz music)
Making bacon, basket making, baking the potato,
bedroom rodeo, washing clothes, sweaty yoga,
jousting, buttering the biscuit, playing poker,
joint session of Congress, churning butter,
moving furniture, matrimonial polka,
driving Miss Daisy, monster mash, interior decorating,
parallel parking, monkey business.
(Lucille laughing) (lively jazz music)
you know, as I reread my own materials,
sometimes I really blush.
I'm like, "I can't believe I wrote this stuff.
What did I write here?"
(live jazz music)
(cork popping)
(air whooshing) (dramatic music)
You know, orgasms are a part of sex.
It's just part of the sexual encounter.
And you know, sometimes couples don't understand
the way the other person works.
I mean, our bodies are different.
And a lot of times we approach our intimacy thinking,
"Well, this is what I would want."
But what they want is different than what you want
because what a woman wants and what a man wants
are completely different things, because we're different
and our bodies are designed differently.
Usually what a woman wants is gentleness,
and feeling cherished, and loved,
and just delicateness.
That's usually what women want.
Not always.
Some women, you know, maybe are a little different,
and that's okay too.
But men, usually what makes them happy
is responsiveness from their mate.
We think as women that they're fine.
As long as they're getting sex, then they're happy.
No, if they don't feel like you're responding to them,
they're not being fulfilled.
And women forget that sometimes.
Like they wanna know,
that he wants to know he's making you happy.
And if that's not happening, he doesn't feel fulfilled.
You know, we think men walk away from the bedroom
and they're just always fulfilled.
No, they're not.
If we're not responding to them, they're probably not happy.
So, their level of happiness
is based upon their wife's level of happiness.
And so if you express to them that you're happy
and you respond to them,
that's what's going to give him the biggest charge.
If a wife is not satisfied, I put that on her.
I don't put that on him
because he's only doing what you're responding to him doing.
Like, you have to let him know.
If you're not letting him know what you like,
there's no way he can know because every woman is different.
And a lot of times with women, every day is different.
What worked on one day is not gonna work on another day.
And guys don't get that.
Like men, their bodies are pretty standard.
Sometimes women will say, "Oh, he's boring.
It's the same old thing."
Well, if it's the same old thing for you,
then change it up because you're there too.
You can't put the finger on him.
You're there as much as he is.
So if it's boring, you got to take ownership for that.
So if a wife is not satisfied
in their physical relationship with their husband,
that's on them.
And so when you do talk to them about it,
you need to communicate that and say,
"Hey, I know this is me.
I need to figure this out,
and I'm asking you to help me figure this out,"
rather than "You are not doing what I want
and you are boring.
It's always the same thing."
You know that's not the way to approach that conversation.
The way to approach it is, "I'm struggling with this.
I know it's me.
I know I need to work on this,
but I wanna work on this together.
So, can you help me with this and can we make this better?
Because I need to communicate to you what I need,
and I haven't been good at that."
A healthy way to express how you're feeling
is "I." I feel like, and then whatever it is.
But if we say, "You did this and you didn't do that for me,
and you said this, and you don't care,
and you're being mean," and things like that,
that's not a conversation you could work with.
It's mutual respect.
You just sit down, you have a conversation.
You say, "Hey, can we talk about this?"
That's another thing.
Don't just assault them with,
"Hey, I wanna talk about this."
No, make a time to do it.
"Hey, I'd really like to talk about our intimacy.
I'd like to talk about our sex life."
And then make a time to sit down and talk about it.
And right then might be good.
They might go, "Yeah, let's talk about it right now."
"Okay, great. Let's sit down.
Let's talk about it."
And do it in a respectful way.
So when people are having struggles in this area
and they've come to me,
normally I need to just kind of coach them
with how to approach that situation.
Because sometimes with a wife,
you'll sit down with their husband
and they wanna talk about it and he's embarrassed.
I mean, you think most guys aren't embarrassed about it,
but they are, 'cause now you're talking about something
that's really sensitive to them.
This matters to most husbands,
how their wife perceives their intimacy
and their sexual relationship.
So just the thought of her wanting to talk about it
can kind of make him shy away.
So, he might make jokes or he could get mad
because he just doesn't know how to deal with it.
So you bring it up,
you let him respond however he's gonna respond,
whether it's in a negative way,
in a way that is hard for the wife to handle,
and then let him get past it and then bring it up again.
You know, "Can we talk about this?
You know, I'm not saying,
you know, I love you and I love our marriage,
and I want things to be great.
I just feel like we need to talk about this subject."
So give him time to warm up to the idea
about talking about it.
Some men want to jump right, they're fine.
"Yeah, let's talk about it.
Tell me," you know?
Because I mean, at the end of the day, a man is a man.
They don't have a female body.
They don't know how it works.
They have to learn.
And then even stranger is each woman is different.
So even a man who's experienced in that area
may not know how to have a good healthy relationship
with his wife, because every woman is different.
What one woman absolutely loves,
another one will absolutely hate.
So, you have to learn each other.
And how do you do that?
You have to work at it,
like any other part in your marriage.
You can't just ignore that physical relationship.
It takes work.
But if you do the work,
that's when the magic's gonna happen.
(singing in German)
(singing in German continues) (bottle popping)
(singing in German continues)
(singing in German continues) (fireworks booming)
(singing in German continues) (water sloshing)
(singing in German continues) (fireworks squeaking)
(solemn music)
Usually when I sit down with someone, I just say,
"Tell me what's going on.
Talk to me about what's going on in your marriage."
Inevitably, if it's a female,
they just can go on and on and on about the grievances.
(solemn music)
There was one time where I was picking up one of my kids
at the airport and someone needed to talk to me,
so I timed it with my drive
because I knew it was going to be about two hours.
And so I got her on the phone.
I said, "Okay, tell me what's going on."
And she just went on and on.
"Well, he doesn't do this and this is happening.
And he's mean about this."
You know, just on and on.
And I pulled into a parking lot and I said,
"Okay, now tell me something good about him.
Tell me what do you like about this man."
And she started naming some things off.
And each one trumped all the negative things she was saying.
"He's a good man."
"Okay, he's a good man."
"He's good with the kids."
"Okay."
"He comes home every night."
"All right."
"He works hard."
"Okay."
"He goes to church."
"All right."
"He's faithful in his small group."
"Okay."
"He serves at church."
"All right, great."
"He has a great reputation at church."
"All right, good.
Keep telling me."
And then I said,
"Okay, so you have all these grievances about this man,
but he's a good man.
He works hard. He's good with the kids.
He comes home at the end of the day.
It's like you got yourself a good man here.
I've heard a lot of stories
where they don't come home at the end of the day,
where they don't go to church,
where they're not faithful in their service for the Lord."
And so I had to point her to, "You have a good man here."
And then I'll always ask, "What's your sex life like?"
And oftentimes it'll be, "Oh, I cut him off.
That's what I use for control,"
or, "Oh, that stopped,"
or on this particular airport conversation,
it was, "Well, I have this issue and I need to have surgery.
And so it's painful, so we just don't have sex anymore."
I'm thinking, "Okay.
Maybe this man's a little frustrated."
And I said,
"Well, do you think maybe you could get that fixed?"
And she said, "Well, I could, but why does it matter?"
And then we had to have a conversation about,
"You're married.
That's part of being married."
I think people get married and they forget.
You didn't just commit to be with this person,
you committed to be with them physically.
You made a vow.
You stood before God.
You stood before people.
You said, "I do."
It's not just that you're gonna in the marriage.
You're also committing to a physical relationship
with this person.
If you don't want to have a physical relationship
with your spouse, don't get married.
Just have friends.
But to get married to someone
and then not have a physical relationship with them,
that's torture.
That's mean.
Because if you're gonna follow the Bible,
the Bible says you're only allowed to have sex
with that one person,
but you don't wanna do that in your relationship,
then what are you doing to that person?
To me, that's one of the meanest things you can do
to another person.
And so sometimes, years into the marriage,
people forget about that commitment.
"Well, I don't like it anymore.
It's not interesting. It's this."
And they get so complacent about it.
It's like, "Wait a minute,
like you need to fix this."
And I remember I said to this lady, I said,
"Can you have this surgery?"
"Well, it's gonna cost money."
"Well, I think if you have a talk
with your husband about it,
maybe he'll be fine with laying out the cash for this."
And she was like, "Oh, you think so?"
I'm like, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure."
And so by the time we got off the phone, she said,
"Okay, thank you.
You know what?
I'm gonna talk to him about having that surgery."
(solemn music)
One of the worst culprits in women being free
in their physical relationships with their spouse
oftentimes is past sexual abuse.
So many women have sexual abuse in their past,
and it's a tough thing to get past.
And I think the first step is to recognize it.
When you recognize that,
"Okay, this is triggering some things in me
and I've got some baggage here with this,"
you need to recognize it and call it out.
"Okay, this is what happened to me and I need to face it."
And a lot of times it means getting some help,
getting professional help, because that's real.
I'm not gonna just gloss over it and go,
"Oh, just forget about it and just move on."
No, that's part of who you are.
That is part of your past.
And it's hard, and it's painful,
and it's difficult to get past, but it's worth it.
Because if we as women let sexual abuse from our past
stop us in our present,
now the abuser didn't just mess with us as kids
or whenever that happened,
but now we're allowing them to mess with us now.
And I know it's not a light subject
and I know it's not an easy road, but it can be tackled.
And you could say, "Okay, what do I need to do to get help?
What do I need to do to get past this?"
And then recognize that, "Okay, I'm married now.
This is a different situation."
Sometimes it just means in your brain going,
"Okay, this is my husband and it's okay."
And then just trying to get past that.
But if it's ever stopping you,
then you need to look into doing the work
of being able to get past it.
(solemn music)
When we get married, we bring all of our past with us.
I know for my husband and I, we both had a lot of baggage.
(solemn music)
Sometimes people get married and they're not recognizing,
"Man, I've got some baggage that I need to address."
And you don't recognize that.
But no matter at what stage in your life you get married,
you are bringing baggage.
He's bringing baggage, she's bringing baggage,
and now you're trying to put it all together.
So instead of it staying separate,
now you've got hers, his,
and now you've got your whole heap of baggage
right in the middle of your marriage.
And we need to slowly,
sometimes a little bit more aggressively,
unpack that baggage.
Sometimes you need to find a counselor
and get some therapy, because things will come out.
(solemn music)
When you're a single person,
you just kinda deal with it yourself.
But when you've got another person there all the time
and you're having to interact and do life with them,
now all of the stuff that you dealt with on your own
is now going to be poured out on somebody else.
And you've got to unpack those things together.
(solemn music)
One of the biggest intimacy blockers is body image,
especially with women and sometimes men too.
But with women, what we tend to do is we look at ourselves
and we're like, "Oh, look at that.
Look at this.
Oh, my stomach's not flat enough.
Oh, my thighs are too big"
or, "My legs are too skinny."
We focus in on all of those things
that we have a hard time with.
When you're thinking about getting intimate with someone,
you need to throw those things out the window
because men, they're not looking at that.
They're looking at what looks good to them.
They're looking at the what to them looks good.
When we look at ourselves as women,
we oftentimes look at what we think looks bad,
but that's not them.
That's not how men look at it.
Men look at it in terms of what is appealing to them.
And for them, what they see, it gives them a charge.
And so we're thinking they're looking
at our oversized stomach or whatever we don't like.
They're not.
In fact, they probably don't even know it's there.
They're looking at the things that are appealing to them.
And so when things get steamy,
you can't let those things get in your mind.
You just say, "Just have fun."
He doesn't care. So, why should you?
So, just enjoy yourself and have a good time.
No one is there, but you.
If you lived on an island and it was just the two of you
and you never saw another person, only him,
and he only saw you, it would not matter.
The little imperfections in your body
would never matter ever again.
So when you have that intimacy time with your spouse,
you need to look at it like an island and say,
"No one else is here but us,"
and that's stuff doesn't matter.
(solemn music)
Sometimes ladies don't wanna have sex
as often as their men do, and that can become a real issue.
I think if men can talk to them about how important it is
and what's going on in their minds,
and how it is they're having to deal with those desires,
then maybe she can understand
what's going on with him and say,
"Okay, yeah, I need to figure out
how I could make this more of a priority in my life."
(gentle music)
Sometimes the person
who doesn't wanna have sex is the husband.
And I've talked to many of these guys.
And they've admitted to me
that they've strategically stopped
having sex with their wives,
because they think she's too bossy
or she's pushing him around
and they lose attraction toward their wife.
So, wives need to be really careful
that they don't turn their husbands off by the way
that they're treating them,
because no man wants to go to bed with their mother, right?
I mean, that's just the way it is.
So, you start mothering, you know,
and by nature, that's what we do as women.
We're nurturers, we mother, we wanna care for,
but there needs to be a fine line there.
You need to be his girlfriend.
You need to be his lover, not his mother.
And when you move over to mothering, then it backs them up.
Generally, it slows them down in that area.
And there are couples where he's the one that has decided
that he doesn't want to be intimate anymore.
And I've talked to those women,
and they don't know what to do.
They feel so hopeless.
Sometimes they'll yell at them, and it's like,
"That's not gonna get you any closer
to where you wanna go.
That's not helping your case here."
And so as painful as it is,
you know, they just gently need to lovingly inquire,
"Hey, you know, what is it that's blocking this?
And how can I help this situation?"
(gentle music)
If you are chatting with your girlfriends
and you're saying negative things about your spouse,
you're not going to wanna get naked with them that night.
And if you're allowing negative thoughts
to ramble in your head all day long about them,
"Oh, why do he leave that there?
Oh, he left the toilet seat up again,"
all of those negative thinking,
it's gonna get in the way of intimacy.
There was a time that my husband played softball.
He was on a softball league.
And he'd come in at the end of the night,
he'd leave his softball bag in the middle of the kitchen.
He was tired.
He just didn't put it away.
So in the morning, I'd see it and I'd go,
"Oh, he left his softball bag.
I got to go get it,"
because I didn't wanna look at it all day.
I wanted it to go in the garage.
So, I drag it out into the garage and I go,
"Ugh, softball bag.
Why did he leave it there again?"
And then I thought,
"Okay, this isn't working.
Because now right from the morning,
now I started off this train of negative thinking."
I'm like, "I need to fix this."
I mean I could have just asked him,
"Hey, could you put your softball bag away?"
But that's even more risky 'cause let's say he doesn't.
Now, I'm gonna be madder, right?
So that wasn't my choice.
I'm like, "No, I need to fix this.
I need to figure out what to do."
So what I did is I took the softball bag when I saw it,
and on the way to the garage, I started praying for him.
"Thank you God for a man who could play softball.
Thank you God for a man who comes home
at the end of the day.
Thank you God for a man who loves me."
And then, I would just thank God,
and then I would just pray for him.
After a while, I'd see the softball bag,
and now I had feelings of endearment towards him.
My love for him would grow
at just looking at the softball bag.
And as I took it out into the garage,
I was happy to do it because I love this man
and I'm happy to move this softball bag for him.
And he didn't mean, he didn't wanna hurt me.
He just left it there because he was tired.
And so I used that to enhance our relationship
rather than let it be a negative factor.
So anytime a negative thought is creeping into your mind,
you need to turn that thought around.
"How do I need to turn this thought around?"
Because you let those negative thoughts fester
and stay in your brain
and you keep playing them over and over and over,
you're gonna kill your intimacy.
It'll die real fast.
(solemn music)
If we're holding a grudge,
if we have unforgiveness towards our spouse,
we are not gonna want to get naked with him,
just the bottom line.
So if there's anything that comes up,
you need to make sure you figure out how to forgive.
And what works for me is instead of keeping track
of what I need to forgive him for,
I keep a record of what he's forgiven me for.
Because we hurt each other back and forth.
I mean, I'm married almost 40 years now,
and we never stop hurting each other.
I mean, we don't want to.
You don't wanna hurt your spouse.
You don't. It just happens.
You don't do it on purpose.
It just happens.
And so when things creep in
and you need to offer forgiveness and give forgiveness,
you need to remember that you're just humans and it's okay.
Two people in a happy marriage
are two really good forgivers.
That's just the way it is.
So, I focus on when he forgives me
and I really let that sink in.
And I remember what I did
and what I needed to be forgiven for.
So then when it's the other way around and I'm like,
"Okay, I need to forgive him of that,"
I work on whatever I need to do to forgive him.
Because if there's unforgiveness,
the marriage is really gonna suffer.
(somber music)
Another blocker
is something they're either doing or not doing,
and those can sneak in.
Those are real, real sneaky.
Because my husband at one point,
he decided he was gonna let his hair grow.
I'm like, "Okay, let's see how this goes."
Well, it kept growing and growing and growing.
And next thing you know, he had a mullet and I hated it.
And I'm like, "I can work this out.
Okay, I love a man with hair.
You know, he's fine. He's great.
I can get past this."
And so I just kept in my mind just trying to work through,
but I hated him.
I mean, I don't have anything against men with long hair,
that's fine.
But as far as revving up my engines,
it just wasn't doing it.
And so, we go to bed at night
and I get hair in my face and it was just,
I was like, "Oh."
And it got to the point where he would start touching me
and I would be like this because of the hair.
And I'm like, "Okay, I don't know what to do.
Something's got to be done about this."
But I let it keep festering.
And then one day,
he asked me for one of my ponytail holders.
That was it.
In my mind, I'm like, "That's it.
I got to say something about this."
This was a tough conversation
because he was in this man group now.
We'd be out in public and guys with long hair would be like,
"Hey, cool hair."
And he was in this cool club.
And so I felt like I was taking this cool club away,
but I'm like, "Okay, I gotta do it.
I gotta talk to him."
And so I told him, I said,
"Honey, I know you love the hair, but I just don't like it,
and it makes me kind of pull away from you."
He's like, "Okay."
The next day, he got a haircut.
If they're doing something
that's repelling you against them,
you have got to say something.
If they're cologne, or their hair product,
or the type of clothing they wear,
anything that propels you away,
you got to have the conversation.
You got to go, "You know what?
This does not do anything for my engine here."
And so I recommend checking everything.
Don't let him put anything on his body
you don't like the way it smells.
Because if you don't like the way he smells,
you're not gonna want to be near him.
I've seen men with those big old long beards
or different hair on their face, and I'll ask them,
"How does your wife feel about that?"
"Oh, she hates it."
I'm thinking, "You're kind of clueless.
Because if she doesn't like it,
what is that doing to your fun time?
Like it can't be helping."
So, I mean if you think the beard is more important
than your intimate time with your wife, great.
Knock yourself out.
Enjoy your life.
But I don't think there's any kind of look or facial hair
or anything that's worth hurting your intimacy over.
And I just think that men need to ask their wives
about that.
If they don't like it, then let them speak in,
especially if it's going to affect their bedroom fun.
(dramatic music)
One of the complaints I hear from women is,
"It's just boring.
It's the same old thing every single time.
And I remember one time I was at the gym
and I was on that elliptical machine thing.
And there was a lady in front of me
and she was on the same machine.
And I always came to the gym at the same time,
and I remember looking at her in front of me thinking,
"Man, she's in a rut.
She's here every day the same time on the same machine."
And then, I went along and then it hit me,
"Wait a minute,
I'm behind her on the same machine
at the same time every day."
So if we are gonna accuse our husbands of being boring,
we have to own that because we're half of that equation.
So, you don't want it to be boring?
Do something different, spice it up, change it up.
I remember one time I got these silk sheets.
I'm like, "Oh, this will be fun."
I was out shopping.
I saw these purple silk sheets,
I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna put these on the bed.
This is gonna be great."
The problem was we were slipping and sliding
all over the place.
And we'd go to sleep and the pillows
would go flying off the bed, and we would just laugh.
So, it gave us a laugh.
It didn't exactly do what I thought it was gonna do,
but it gave us a huge laugh.
But the point is, I did something to change it up.
It turned into laughter, but that's okay
'cause laughter leads to intimacy, and that is great.
I'm a huge proponent of laughter.
But if things are boring, then you change things.
Change it up.
Bring something else into the room.
Do something different.
Whatever you wanna do, be creative.
It's okay.
Whatever you want to do is fine,
just be creative with it.
So if it's boring, that's on you.
You can't just put that on him.
I always know when a girl who's getting ready to get married
will say, "Oh, I wanna talk to you.
Can I talk to you? I have some questions."
And I could just tell she's already blushing
and I already know what she's gonna ask.
She's gonna ask, "What is okay in the bedroom?
What are we allowed to do?"
And I'll ask her, "Well, what do you think?
What do you think is okay?"
And so, I'll get her perspective on what she thinks.
And then, what I do is I'll unpack with her,
"Hey, throughout the Bible, God says,
in marriage, as long as you're married, it's okay."
Usually they want to know, "Well, is oral sex okay?"
I go, "What do you think?"
I go, "If it's okay with you and it's okay with him,
then it's okay."
And they're like, "Oh, okay."
I've even been asked about,
"Well, what about bringing someone else into our bedroom?"
Well, that's a different story.
That's adultery because you're not married to that person.
So, I have heard of women where their husbands
have brought other women home
and they wanna engage in this threesome thing,
and they're like, "Is that okay?"
I'm like, "Well, according to the Bible,
it's not because that's adultery.
So, that would be a no."
So, you and your spouse need to figure out
what's okay in your marriage,
because I don't ever wanna say,
"Well, this is what you can do,"
or "This is what you can't do,"
because it's up to each individual couple.
Some couples might find something detestable
and that's fine if they don't want to.
But then other couples
might really like to do certain things that other couples.
It's up to each couple.
So what I say, "If it's okay with him,
it's okay with you, then it's okay."
(lively music)
One of the assignments I give is to take 30 days
and always say yes to sex anytime your spouse approaches you
for sex.
I know that that's like a lot of people
just completely disagree with that,
but I believe we can always find reasons to say no.
If you're always thinking,
"Well, no, it's not a good time," or "I don't feel good,"
or I just ate ice cream or whatever,"
then you just end up saying no over and over and over
and that's not good for your marriage.
But if you know that you're always gonna say yes,
you're gonna work on your marriage every day.
You're gonna work on your own desires.
You're gonna keep yourself thinking
about wanting to be physical.
It's just a matter of training our brains.
And so if you tell yourself you're gonna say yes,
it's gonna safeguard your marriage.
It's gonna keep you at the best place you can be
in your marriage.
(gentle music)
We all have cravings.
It's part of human nature.
And when you're married, every once in a while,
you're just gonna have cravings to be with your spouse,
and it's okay to fulfill all of those cravings.
It's okay.
God says it's okay.
(gentle music)
So, there's this woman.
And she's a mom
and she has a lot of the everyday struggles and stressors.
And she decides that she wants to have this romantic fantasy
with her husband.
Only her fantasy is to have sex,
and then make pancakes together.
And a lot of people think that that's just a silly thing,
but you know, it's funny what some women would like to do.
It's very simple.
And so she tells her husband that she wants to do this,
and he is like, "Okay," but then he never does it.
And she waits.
And so she tells him again,
and he never does it, and she waits.
And then one day, the kids are gone,
and he was in bed longer than her, and she's like,
"Hey, can we do that fantasy thing that I wanted to?"
So, he finally agrees.
And so, they have a great time together,
and then they make pancakes together.
And a lot of times women are just embarrassed
to tell their husbands what their fantasies are.
They're embarrassed to even have a fantasy.
And so that's kind of a silly story,
but it's an explanation.
It's a way of saying, "Hey, it's okay."
Whatever, how silly your fantasy is,
it's okay because you're in marriage.
You can do whatever you want.
You can have fun.
It doesn't always have to be so serious.
You can have fun in your intimate relationship.
(gentle music)
I think a good healthy sex life
is critical to a good, healthy marriage.
And if that's not there,
then I don't think the marriage has everything
that God designed for marriage.
If anyone is struggling with guilt or intimacy,
the answer is to get closer to God.
Because God is not about guilt or shame.
He wants you to have a thriving, intimate marriage.
It's God will that you have
an active, happy, physical sexual relationship
with your spouse.
That is God's will in your life.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)
(lively music)