Valuable culinary lessons to help your marriage grow in sexual intimacy
Rather, I've listed below six dining metaphors that are useful for considering and improving the sexual intimacy in your marriage.
1) Fast Food
Amid the chaos and demands of daily life, sometimes quickie sex is all you’ll have the time and energy for, but you can’t live on that alone. It’s unhealthy and costly in the intimacy department. Sometimes you need to set aside an hour or two just to focus on finding pleasure in one another. When it comes to sexual intimacy, there is no substitute for time.
2) Fine Dining
Upscale restaurants pay a lot of attention to the way your meal looks on the plate. Appearances do matter and can leave a lasting impression. How much effort do you put into your “presentation” at bed time? Brush your teeth, comb your hair, strategically add a dab of perfume or cologne, wear something to bed your spouse finds appealing and that makes you feel sexy. Make your bedroom appealing with candles, nice music, and luxurious sheets. Going the extra mile in preparation tells your spouse that you love them and desire them.
3) A New Cuisine
It’s fun and exciting to experience a great new restaurant. Similarly, there’s a new kind of sexual energy and focus that is available with a change of venue. If you haven’t done so recently, book a hotel room or a mountain cabin for a weekend. It will give you time to focus exclusively on each other, without the normal pressures of home, and allows you plenty of time to enjoy each other sexually. And the change of scenery can help break you out of a sexual rut, giving you the freedom to experiment and change things up a little. I don’t know exactly why, but there’s just something different about sex when there is a number on the door. (If a hotel is out of the question for budgetary or child care reasons, pick a new room of the house as a change of venue.)
4) Fasting
While regular and frequent sex is an important part of a healthy marriage, it's possible to use prescribed periods of abstinence (5, 7, 10 days or whatever you mutually decide would not be unhealthy) to create and build sexual anticipation. The idea is to rev up non-sexual intimacy, to give all your attention to expressing love and desire without sex. Go ahead and tease and flirt. Talk about how much you miss the pleasure, and plan what you will do when it’s all over – it’s all part of the build up to breaking your fast.
5) Binging
In the opposite vein, I have also seen regular “sex challenges” on various marriage websites that dare couples to go for 3, 7, 10 or even 30 days of sex in a row. However long you choose to binge on each other, the goal is to make sex a priority and then to use the time to learn about your self and each other sexually. I have seen many testimonies of the positive, rejuvenating impact such a challenge have on marriages.
6) Junk Food
Face it, we are surrounded by things that are sexually unhealthy. The media and entertainment industries rarely portray married sex as fulfilling and exciting. Instead they glamorize randomly “hooking up,” sensationalize and normalize extramarital affairs, and portray marriage as an out of date and irrelevant institution. Modern technology grant easy access to things like pornography, chat rooms and a vast array of other marriage-destroying opportunities. Just don’t. Even things as “harmless” as Facebook and romance novels can do damage. When it comes to your marriage, keep the sexual junk food out!
What other dining metaphors can you come up with? Share them in a comment.
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Great post! The metaphor I might add is: location, location, location. Although this one might take a little strategic planning if you've got younger children, still worth the effort. We eat all over the house; sometimes standing in the kitchen, sometimes in the living room, sometimes in the dining room and even sometimes in bed. Sometimes we start in the kitchen and end up on the couch or in the dining room. It can be the same way with sex.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Robin, for adding your metaphor! Good one!
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ReplyDeleteVery well written. It is important to keep life interesting in the bedroom. Just like we get bored with eating the same food all the time the bedroom can become just as boring and more of a chore rather than a joy if it is not enhanced. All those ideas can SPICE things up! :)