The longer you are married, the easier it is to let things come in between you and your spouse. When you first get married, you are ready to take on the world together. You make decisions together, you dream together, you are romantic with each other, continually pursuing each other. You can’t imagine anything coming between you and the most crucial person in your life.

But something happens.

Kids come along, and they have enormous needs that won’t go away.

Aging parents step in, and now you are taking care of them. Or parents who step into issues within your marriage. Or, if your spouse struggles to leave their family of origin and cling to this new family.

And your career starts to pick up. For many, the career catches them off guard because now they begin to feel affirmation, accomplishment, and people are noticing them in ways they didn’t have before.

Slowly, you stop pouring energy into your marriage because it feels more natural and comes easier to throw yourself into work and your kids.

But make no mistake, that path leads a ton of regret.

So, think of this post as a car dashboard telling you when to get your oil changed. Here are nine ways to know you need to spend more energy and time on your marriage than your job or your kids.

You check your email and text messages during dinner. The dinner table needs to be the time of day when you turn your phone off. Whoever emails you or texts you during dinner can wait. If not, don’t eat dinner. It is easy, though to have your devices at the table.

Interestingly, parents complain about their kids bringing devices to the table, but guess who did it first? Parents.

At our house and on date nights, we have a no devices rule. If you need to bring out a device, ask the other person if that is okay.

You can’t remember the last date night you had. The older your kids get, the harder it is to get time together with your spouse. A lot happens, and a lot needs to happen.

But you need to schedule a time for you and your spouse to be together. To have time to talk, process, share what is going on, get feedback, pursue each other.

This needs to be one of the things that are blocked out on your calendar each week. It doesn’t have to be expensive or a major production, but it does need to be consistent.

A few rules for this time: plan it, no electronics, have the goal be a connection with each other.

You are quick to say “yes” to your kids, sleeping with you at night. This is not the same thing as feeding a baby at night, but many couples to be kind to their child or do not have to say no to their spouse about sex, allow kids to overrun the bedroom. If this is happening, something deeper is going on that needs to be addressed.

Every night we have a child who wants to sleep in our bed, on our floor for one reason or another. If they show up at 3 am, that’s different than 10:15 pm. But communicate that there are places where kids don’t get to be, they won’t end up in counseling because of this.

Your bedroom has a TV in it. One of the best ways to kill your sex life in marriage is by putting a TV in your bedroom. Whenever I meet with a couple who is frustrated about their sex life, they often have a TV in their bedroom. If you have a TV in your room and a great sex life, great, but you are the exception.

A TV is a distraction (it also keeps you from getting great sleep).

PDA. One of the most significant signs that your marriage needs to attention is a lack of public displays of affection. Affection is the barometer of your marriage.

The older you get, the easier it is for this to slip. You stop holding hands, kissing, hugging.

The moment you look up and realize that your PDA is low, you need to give your marriage some attention.

Your weekends and evenings are taken over by your kids. Life is busy with kids: projects, sports, scouts, schoolwork, and plays. But when you begin to realize that you don’t have friend time, hobbies, you are running from one thing to the next; it is time to pull back and reevaluate. You don’t have to be in everything or be at everything.

When you hear a wife refer to her husband as one of her kids. This is a big one.

When a wife does this, underneath is disdain and disrespect of her husband. I’m not saying he doesn’t act like one of her kids, because he might. But this is one that tells you a lot about where your relationship is.

You are more open with someone at work than you are with your spouse. You spend a lot of time with people at work, and often, they are easier to talk to than your spouse. Slowly, during break time, lunch, or working late, you begin to share things with this person that you don’t share with your spouse.

You begin to get emotionally connected in a way that is incredibly dangerous to your marriage.

You see your spouse as getting in the way of your dreams. This a touchy one but an important one.

When you start in marriage, you are your spouse’s biggest cheerleader, standing in their corner (or at least you should be). Over time though, you can find yourselves pursuing different dreams, different lives. Slowly, the people closest to you seem to be inhibiting you from your goals instead of helping you to get there.

If you find yourself nodding your head to any or all of these, it isn’t hopeless. It just means that your marriage needs more attention than you and your spouse are giving it.

Relationships are hard work whether that is at work, home, the PTA, the baseball field.

In work, we leave one job because of that jerk boss or that obnoxious co-worker, but then, guess what happens at the new job? There’s a problematic person there.

We get married, and it becomes hard, so we wonder what’s wrong. Did I marry the wrong person? Why are they so complicated?

You didn’t marry the wrong person.

Do you know what a difficult marriage tells you? That you’re married.

A few things happen when disagreements and fights happen (maybe you can pick up where they occur in your life):

Some will have trouble with irritation and anger and perhaps nitpicky and critical.

Or have problems with ulterior motives, martyrdom, and manipulation.

Or they may have problems with narcissism, arrogance and being superficial, always keeping things on the surface.

They might have problems with moodiness and massive mood swings, and feeling above the common crowd or the situation.

Or they have problems with human interaction and shyness (so they prefer it on text, email or social media).

Or they doubt your sincerity; get anxious about the stability of the relationship.

Some struggle to keep their commitments in relationships and dislike talking about anything uncomfortable, so they change the subject or make it about something else.

Some struggle to handle their anger or their negative emotions and take responsibility for them.

And some will struggle to say what they need and want.

The reality is all relationships are hard.

The problem in our culture though is that we judge the health of a relationship based off of how easy it is.

But one thing separates healthy couples and healthy people: they know how to fight well.

So what do they do? Seven things:

1. They listen. Most of us are not very good at listening to another person. We are busy dismantling their argument in our head and getting ready to one-up them and win.

This might help you win the argument, but you will destroy the relationship in the process, or at the very least, damage it.

So listen, take a breath and then respond.

2. Fight for oneness. Scripture says that a married couple becomes one. This means when you make decisions when you seek a resolution of an argument you are looking for what will make you one.

Fighting for oneness takes away the power of having “a side.”

Some ways that couples don’t do that is through shaming their spouse publicly or privately, using their kids as leverage or involving another family member.

These all destroy oneness.

The most common place this comes up is the area of making a decision or “breaking a tie.” For Katie and I, we ask ourselves, “what’s the best decision for our us as a couple or our family?” This immediately changes the discussion.

3. Understand how your spouse best communicates. We know that people hear things differently from us or communicate differently, but unhealthy couples don’t apply that to their lives.

Healthy couples know: does my spouse needs space? Do they process things mentally or verbally? Do they need to talk about things right away or later? When is the right time to discuss something?

4. See things from their perspective. Going along with how they communicate, is doing what Brene Brown calls “getting curious” and asking questions.

5. Understand what you’re fighting about. Have you ever argued with someone and then thought, wait, what are we fighting about? It’s more common than you think in relationships.

The other side of this is whether or not you are fighting about what you’re fighting about. Most often, something happens that triggers a memory, a past relationship and we lash out at that, but take it out on the person in front of us. It is essential to know when that is happening.

I heard an older pastor one time say to write down everyone that has ever hurt you. He noted that the list would not be as long as we expect it to be. But that we are making the people in our lives now and in the future pay for what someone did in the past.

Going right along with knowing what you are fighting about is being specific. In tough conversations, be specific about what happened. If we aren’t exact, it makes it harder for people to hear us.

The reason being specific matters is often, we are unaware of how powerful our fears of intimacy and connection are and how powerful those longings of intimacy and connection are.

6. Give grace to your spouse or the other person. Don’t try to win that doesn’t move a relationship forward. Don’t yell or put your hands on them.

According to multiple studies, do you know the number 1 way to build trust in relationships? Asking for help. This is the act of giving grace and being vulnerable in a relationship.

7. Married couples: Connect physically, even if you don’t feel like it.

When you argue in relationships and fight, you are exposed. You are vulnerable. In marriage, connecting at this moment somehow is essential.

This will be harder for a married couple than you think because you feel exposed. The reason this matter is often, we are unaware of how powerful our fears of intimacy and connection are and how powerful those longings of intimacy and connection are.

On Sunday, Katie and I taught together at our church on what goes into a great marriage or relationship.

The exciting thing is that the Bible has a lot to say about great relationships and unhealthy ones. What makes a great relationship is a few simple things.

Over time, a couple begins working against each other. And that is because of what authors call the love bank (I’m not sure who coined it first).

The love bank is like a typical bank, one you make withdraws from and deposits into.

In each relationship you have, there is a love bank. Warm feelings, connection, good experiences together, needs to be met, love being communicated adds to the bank. Harsh words, showing and expressing love in ways that don’t make sense, selfishness, pride, those are all withdrawn from that love bank.

In every relationship, we are continually making deposits or withdraws. We are also asking ourselves, how much does this person have in the love bank with me?

Those closest to us (family, kids, parents, spouse) we often take for granted and think we can make more withdraws than deposits. Over time, this will lead to resentment, bitterness, and anger. A person who feels like they have too many withdraws will begin to withhold love, protect themselves and look out for themselves. I can’t blame them, and it makes sense since we look for safety and security in every relationship. But to have a great relationship, both people must stay on top of where they are in terms of their love bank balance.

There are two ways that Katie and I shared to do this: understanding your spouse’s (or friend, boss or co-worker, or child’s) love language and knowing their top emotional needs as laid out in the excellent book His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage (we can’t recommend this book highly enough).

According to the author of His Needs, Her needs, the top emotional needs are:

For men:

• • Sexual fulfillment
  • Recreational companionship
  • An attractive spouse
  • Domestic support
  • Admiration

For women:

• • Affection
  • Conversation
  • Honesty and openness
  • Financial support
  • Family commitment

Why do you need to know these?

We will often show love to someone based on how we receive love or how we like to give love. Women will show affection to their husband because they want affection. But for men, affection is connected or equal to sex (it isn’t that way for women). Katie shared on Sunday that a woman has to feel close to have sex and a man has sex to feel close. That’s an enormous difference.

Here’s what I’d encourage you to do if you’re married: Sit down with your spouse and have them list them in order of importance their emotional needs and then talk through how to meet those needs in your marriage. Don’t get defensive; listen to them.

If you’re single or dating, two things: Know yourself, how you are wired and how that impacts relationships you are in. Two, understanding what these are for the opposite sex helps you to know when you’re ready to get married. Too often we think we’re prepared to get married if we reach a specific financial place, we find someone who wants to marry us or we’re a certain age. While that matter, but there is more to marriage than that and deciding that you are ready and willing to serve another person and meet their needs is an essential but often overlooked aspect of that decision.

Every week in your church, the people sitting in the seats have longings and desires for their lives and relationships.

They want to feel more purpose, more connection and in each relationship they have, they are looking for closeness. Many times as pastors, we miss this and end up answering questions and speaking to struggles they don’t have.

When it comes to marriage and dating, they are looking for connection and intimacy. Intimacy doesn’t equal sex, which is an important distinction as we think about preaching.

They look to fill those in all kinds of ways that are destructive and ultimately leave them empty. That person at work they opened up to, the porn they looked at, the clothes they bought. All of these things were to feel connected, to feel close and it left them wanting more because it can’t satisfy that longing.

Our culture and the church have tried to step in and speak to this, but often the church and the culture end up telling lies about sexuality and intimacy.

3 Lies the Culture Tells us about Sex

The first lie our culture tells us about sex is that sex is just physical.

On the surface, this sounds right. After all, for many men, it seems like it is just physical. And yet, there is a closeness after sex that is hard to explain if sex is only physical. And we know this, we know that something more is going on.

This is why we struggle to tell our spouse about our sexual past and how many people we’ve slept with, we struggle to let go of the shame of abortion, sexual abuse or addiction. This is why whenever I meet with someone, and they ask me, “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?” almost 100% of the time it is sexual.

Sex is powerful.

This is why Paul said in 1 Corinthians: Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

One author said, “Chances are no one told you why the New Testament urges believers to reserve sex for marriage. Here’s a shocker — the why has nothing to do with disease or unwanted pregnancy. You may be interested to know that the Bible does not say the primary, much less the exclusive, purpose of sex is to make babies. Biblical authors do not condemn sexual pleasure. God’s not worried about us having too much fun. So why all the fuss? Why would Paul instruct his Christian audience to “flee” from immorality? Here’s why: All other sins a person commits . . . Sexual sin is like no other sin. Paul puts sexual sin in a category all by itself. “All other sins . . .” Here’s the second part: All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”

Paul’s primary concern is not the physical consequences of sex.

Another author said Sexual sin is like no other sin because your sexuality bridges body and soul. Sex is a physical act that reaches beyond your physical body. Sexual sin is like no other sin because it cuts deeper than another sin. It leaves a more noticeable scar. When you sin sexually, you literally sin against your true self. Your soul self. To sin against yourself is essentially to betray and steal from yourself. Sexual sin robs you of your own future. Sexual sin undermines future intimacy. Sexual sin creates an obstacle to honesty. Sexual sin is the sin we will be most tempted to hide, the sin we will most likely try to smuggle into future relationships. Sexual sin eventually equates to self-inflicted pain.

Another lie is that sex is all about technique.

Here are a few technique ideas I saw recently on magazine covers at the grocery store 21 naughty sex tips, more sex than you can handle, 30 red hot sex secrets, the hot new sex app to tap into her desires, 60 sex tips you’ll both love, 4 sex moves that are forever 21.

And the craziest one: 102 ways to blow your own mind in bed. 102!!!

Now, technique matters.

But do you know what technique doesn’t give us? The exact thing we crave: connection and commitment. Even the baddest guy who claims not to want to settle down, do you know what he wants in his heart of hearts? Connection and commitment.

Technique tells us those things don’t matter so be a porn star in bed, drive him wild, drive her wild. And then we wonder, why am I not happier? Why am I not more fulfilled?

The other lie our culture tells us is that the most important thing about you is your sexuality.

This narrative has picked up with gay marriage. The identifying characteristic of who you are is now your sexuality, who you are in the bedroom.

With the rise of social media, more and more women feel like they need to post sexual videos and pictures to be noticed because men only want porn stars.

Do you see how we get into a mess if sex is just physical and the most important thing about you?

But unfortunately, the church isn’t any different.

A few years ago I came across an article called four lies the church told me about sex.

Any and all physical contact is like a gateway drug to sex.

Now, we know that a hug does not lead to sex and pregnancy.

The church says outside of marriage, you need to protect yourself sexually and that is well founded (and biblical) and many of us need to do a better job of that.

What this lie leads to is thinking that sex is dirty.

If you wait until you are married to have sex, God will reward you with mind-blowing sex and a magical wedding night.

I was told this again and again as a kid.

Do you know what you are guaranteed if you save sex for marriage? That you will fumble around and learn with someone that is committed to loving you forever.

Waiting to have sex till you are married will lead to many things, and they are good, but it won’t guarantee a mind-blowing wedding night.

The church says, “wait for it, wait for it. Say I do. Now do it!!!!”

Girls don’t care about sex.

This isn’t just a church thing, but all over blogs and magazines.

Men think they have to con or fight their wife to get sex. Women feel dirty if they talk about sex, think about sex or ask for advice from friends. If you are a woman and think about sex, desire sex, you aren’t a freak, you are human.

God created both men and women in the image of God, and he created us as sexual beings.

God not only created sex but also created our bodies too. Too many of us have grown up being told there is something wrong with our bodies and our desire. Now, we know in Genesis 3 that sin entered the world and tainted all of life and sex.

God created sex for our pleasure and his glory; Satan seeks to destroy it.

If you’re a parent, you need to help your kids understand their bodies and how they were created and why that is a good thing and God’s good plan for their bodies, their sex drives and what that means. Don’t be silent on this.

When you get married, you will be able to express yourself sexually without guilt and shame fully.

This lie has created a lot of pain and frustration.

Addictions, abuse, past sexual partners, all of these collide together in your marriage bed and create havoc.

Why write a post about lies?

Many of us are unaware of lies we believe about sex and intimacy.

We get our information from blogs and movies, romance novels, what our parents did or did not tell us or what our friends have told us.

If we aren’t careful, we end up believing the wrong things and we end up missing what God has for us and how He created us.

What if I told you, in every relationship, there is one thing we all want.

One thing we all long for.

One thing we will do anything to get, and it is also the thing we are afraid of the most in relationships.

What is it?

Intimacy.

Now, in our culture intimacy is always connected to sex or means sex.

And while intimacy sometimes involves sex, it is not equal to sex.

You can be intimate with people and not have sex, and you can have sex with someone and not be intimate.

One author said the vast majority of our intimate relationships have absolutely nothing to do with sex.

Intimacy is about connection. Intimacy is being known.

Dallas Willard said Intimacy is shared experience.

And this is why I say we long for it.

But we also fear it deeply.

We’re afraid of being hurt. Intimacy means being known by someone else. Katie knows me. She knows my strengths and weaknesses, my hopes and fears. She can use that knowledge to bond with me and come closer to me, or she can use it to shame, wound and betray me.

We also fear intimacy because it can set us up for disappointment and letdown.

We fear intimacy because we’ve been hurt. We’ve been divorced; our parents were divorced, the people closest to us walked out on us.

We fear intimacy because we don’t know how to trust. We don’t want to trust.

Maybe, you use intimacy as a weapon. You learn how to open up to people in an unhealthy way to get what you want, to get a connection.

John Ortberg said, When we experience intimacy, we can take whatever life throws at us. Without it, our greatest accomplishments ring hollow. 

How do you experience intimacy?

It is close. It can’t be coerced or forced.

It is letting go of pretense and opening ourselves up to hurt, but it is also opening ourselves up to experience love and life.

The same is true with God.

It doesn’t happen from a distance, it isn’t an afterthought, and it won’t settle with being second.

And don’t miss this: intimacy takes intentionality and a single focus.

In Song of Songs 1 – 2, we meet a couple just like any other couple that is struggling with this.

He is kind of the silent type, not as verbal (like most men).

She is scared and insecure about her looks.

So, she takes a step. She lets him know of her fear. And he responds.

He speaks directly to her insecurities, and slowly they find themselves closer.

They find themselves being intimate.

Now, they haven’t had sex, they’ve only created the connection we all long for in a relationship.

To be known, to be loved and for the other person to not walk away when they find out who we are.

So much so, that in chapter 2, we see the couple laying with each other in an embrace, her in the arms of the man, feeling completely safe and secure.

The woman speaks in verse 3 of chapter 2 and tells us what the man has done for her and why she feels so safe with him.

She says he is strong like a tree. This might be physical, but also emotional. He can handle the ups and downs of life; he can handle her ups and downs.

A tree also provides shade and protection in the desert. If you’re dating, do you feel protected by the guy you’re dating? If not, leave. Husbands, your wife should feel safe and protected by you and your strength.

Here’s a simple but difficult question for your marriage: does your wife delight to sit in your shade? In your presence? Now men, before you make an excuse why it’s her fault, why wouldn’t she want to anymore?

He looks on her with love. Does she know that you have eyes for her alone? And don’t tell me, I’m just looking like women are a menu in your life. When you get married, you have eyes for one; your “menu” has one item on it.

The lack of a single focus in any relationship is one of the biggest destroyers of intimacy. Without a single focus, the other person doesn’t feel as important, isn’t willing to give themselves, to let you in, you won’t let them in because you are still looking for another in greener pastures.

This couple has eyes only for each other and this single focus leads them to intimacy, to being known, to be safe with each other.