The Three Loves

Understanding the Relationship of Love and Intimacy

Behold the word love! For that word armies have marched, fortunes have been squandered, and perfectly normal men and women have made total fools of themselves, often in front of complete strangers. Preachers preach about it. Singers sing about it in every possible language, and with every possible rhythm. It has inspired operas and rock songs, poems and graffiti, little notes and long novels.

Love has cured people and, some would say, killed others. Love composes the theme of thousands of movies and television shows. Yet much of our acting and singing, writing and even some preaching comes from confused and disappointed hearts.

In marriage the confusion continues. Do we marry for love? Is love important? In Fiddler on the Roof, the superb musical about a man of tradition and the pressures that threaten his traditions, Tevye asks his wife, Golda, “Do you love me?” Now, they have been married for twenty-five years, and this is the first time the subject has come up. Their marriage was arranged by their parents. They did discover, when they thought about it, that they really did love each other. Love was alive, though the word was never spoken.

Can we develop the kind of intimacy a marriage needs without love? It isn’t likely, for love is the substance of all true intimacy.

To help us understand the link between love and intimacy, I want to give you three different expressions of love to consider. Each is vital to an intimate marriage, as you will see.

The Fence

Intimacy needs protection, and that is what this love gives it. Love as a fence is a love that has nothing to do with attraction, or liking, or sex, or feelings, or even getting anything in return. It is a love of decision and commitment. “That’s not very romantic,” some of my readers might be thinking. Exactly. Romance has its place, and a great place it is. However, couples don’t sustain their marriages, exclusively, by romance. Love as a fence promises to love, no matter what happens, no matter what changes. Such love protects intimacy.

Love like this is in rare supply in these days of disposable marriages and temporary commitments. In the United States we have had, for years, something called a pre-nuptial agreement. Couples who choose one of these weird arrangements preplan what they will do with their assets if (when?) the marriage fails. Fence love will have nothing to do with such planning.

When I was a boy I remember hearing a cowboy song called, “Don’t Fence Me In.” That could be the theme song for many modern marriages. True love, intimacy-building love, says, “We want a fence around this relationship. Let’s build it with vows and keep it strong through unselfish sacrifice. Let’s promise that nothing, and no one, will ever come between us.”

What about all the couples who have taken such vows and still have unhealthy marriages? Marriage vows do not create some kind of magical force field around a married couple. This isn’t Star Trek we’re talking about. Vows alone can never prevent marital failure because promises mean nothing without actions. A man and woman must live their vows. A favorite song writer of mine, Don Francisco, describes this dedication beautifully and powerfully:

So you say you can’t take it, the price is too high
The feelings have gone, it seems the river’s run dry.
You never imagined it could turn out so rough,
You give and give and give and still it’s never enough.

Your emotions have vanished that once held a thrill.
You wonder if love could be alive in you still.
But that ring on your finger was put there to stay,
And you’ll never forget the word you promised that day.

Jesus didn’t die for you because it was fun.
He hung there for love because it had to be done.
And in spite of the anguish His work was fulfilled,
Because love is not a feeling, It’s an act of your will.

Don understood that the power to keep promises comes from God. He has been making promise breakers into promise keepers for centuries.

Within the protection of promises intimacy grows securely and authentically.

The Friendship

A question. Did you like each other before you decided to marry each other? Most people do. In other words, they marry a friend. As our son and daughter-in-law’s wedding announcement read: “Today I will marry my friend; the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, and love.”

Friendship develops intimacy. Most couples began their friendship before marriage. The question is, have you continued to develop it within your marriage? Couples who do not keep their friendship in good shape find their marriages become empty. It’s like the difference between a living garden and a dead one. When you walk in a living garden your soul feels refreshed. Let that garden die, and walking through it will depress you. Marriage without continued friendship is the same.

On a visit to Northern Ireland I had the privilege of meeting an old saint, James. He and his wife, Sophia, had served God in Africa for almost forty years. Sophia had died some years before I met James. As he told me of their life together he paused, looked into the distance, and said, simply, “I liked that woman.”

You expected him to say he loved her, didn’t you? He could have, surely. Yet with one profound statement James painted a lifetime of friendship. I could picture them enduring the difficulties of Africa together– laughing, crying, talking, listening– glad to be together whatever happened.

Friendship is the common ground of our marriage relationship. We build it from all the shared joys and sorrows of a lifetime. Friendship mostly develops through the ordinary days and times, not the unusual ones. Companionship lies at the heart of it.

Couples get busy. Life is complicated. Demands are many. That puts great strain on their friendship and without constant care and planning, common ground will disappear. When that happens, one, or both, will be tempted find their friendships elsewhere, and often their intimacy, too. Simply put, without common ground we have nothing in common.

The Fire

At the very center of an intimate marriage, protected by covenant love and enriched by friendship, there lives an expression of love so intense, so involving, that we only safely experience it within the protection of a covenant. When a husband and wife give themselves to one another in mutual, satisfying sexual surrender, they celebrate their intimacy. We will devote a whole section to this important topic later in our series. For now, let’s just remind ourselves of some significant truths.

• God created both man and woman with the ability to give and receive sexual pleasure. We are designed to arouse and to be aroused. Therefore, our sexual relationship should bring pleasure to both husband and wife. The Creator never intended sex to be a pleasure for one (usually the husband) and a problem, or pain, for the other.
• Giving sexual fulfillment to our spouse is both a delight and a duty. A delight, because making love with our spouse stirs us, touches us, and releases us in ways that nothing else can or does. A duty, because we sometimes need to make love when we do not feel like making love. We need both understandings to develop a healthy sexual relationship.
• Like the rest of marriage, developing mutually satisfying sexual love means that a couple adapt and adjust to each other. Sexual gratification is a gift they give and receive. They learn how to do that in each stage of their marriage but never let the fire die because of neglect or distraction. They are the keepers of the flame.

In the sequel to George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, he describes a feeling that many married people will understand:

“She is immensely interested in him. She has even secret, mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man.”

The woman he speaks of is Eliza. The man is a stuffy professor named Higgins. Many husbands and wives want what Eliza secretly wished for. They long for times to forget other roles and responsibilities, if even for a few moments, and just be lovers.

Here’s a true story. A husband and wife climb into bed. The wife snuggles up to her husband, hoping to arouse his interest in making love. But the husband, a workaholic, lays there, hands behind his head, eyes focused on the ceiling, puzzling over some work-related problem. The wife has had it! She pokes him in the ribs to get his attention, then exclaims, “Kick your company out of bed, Mr. Managing Director. It’s just your wife in here!”

Keep the fire alive. Celebrate your intimacy.

Three expressions of love– a fence for protection, a friendship for development, and a fire for celebration. God is the author of them all. Would you ask Him to make you a lover, in all three ways. If you do, intimacy will thrive.

Think, Act, Pray:

1. In your opinion which of the three loves is most vital to a marriage?

2. Is it possible for a marriage to be satisfying if any of the three expressions of love are missing? Why or why not?

3. If you have a friend who wants to develop the friendship expression of love in his or her marriage, what advice would you give?

Trust is essential for Intimacy. Read about it in the next article, Trust