(The content of this post is taken from various notes and texts I’ve written over the years for sermons and conference material. For this post, I used AI to bring it all together as a cohesive introduction to the series.)
On our wedding day, 25 years ago, Amélie and I stood before our family and friends and made promises to one another.
Like most couples, we entered marriage with anticipation. We loved each other. We wanted to build a life together. We imagined companionship, closeness, shared dreams, and the joy of knowing and being known by another person.
A few years later, our communication did not always sound quite as poetic as our wedding vows!
We would sometimes communicate via email to help break the ice when there was tension. It would help each of us express ourselves without interruption.
I remember a specific time when my email to my wife and her response back to me were raw and vulnerable. Some of the images we used were not flattering, but they spoke to the depths of what we were feeling.
There we were.
I felt rejected, mistreated, and shut out. Amélie felt unloved, unimportant, and emotionally distant from me. We were both hurting. We both wanted the other to move toward us. We both believed we had already tried. And we were both convinced that the other person was the one creating the distance.
Neither of us was saying, “I no longer want intimacy with you.”
In fact, the intensity of our words revealed the opposite. We were upset because intimacy mattered to us. We wanted to feel close, loved, heard, and understood. But instead of clearly expressing those deeper desires, we experienced them through frustration, accusation, withdrawal, and self-protection.
That is often what intimacy looks like in a real marriage.
It is not only found in romantic evenings, meaningful conversations, shared laughter, or physical connection. It is also found, or lost, in the awkward moments when two people feel hurt, misunderstood, and uncertain about how to reach one another.
One of the greatest differences between marriages is the intimacy a couple cultivates.
Intimacy is more than simply being together. Two people can share a home, a routine, a bed, and years of history while remaining emotionally distant from one another. We can talk regularly without ever getting to the heart of what is happening inside us. Even sex, although it can be a beautiful expression of intimacy, does not automatically create it.
True intimacy is emotional, spiritual, and physical. It is the experience of being deeply known while also seeking to know the person we love.
And it does not happen by accident.
Intimacy is precious, difficult to cultivate, and perhaps even harder to maintain. Even when we experience it, we cannot assume it will remain. It must be pursued, protected, and continually renewed.
Sometimes it feels as though intimacy is always trying to slip away. We think we have finally nailed it down and it escapes us again.
Life becomes busy. Responsibilities multiply. Conversations become practical. Disappointments remain unresolved. We become distracted, tired, defensive, or afraid. Without realizing it, the space between us begins to grow.
This is part of the paradox of intimacy: we deeply desire it, yet we also fear it.
We want to be known, loved, understood, and accepted. We long for a connection that feels beautiful, deep, and almost heavenly. But intimacy also exposes us. It reveals our insecurities, weaknesses, wounds, expectations, and disappointments. It asks us to surrender control and allow another person to see what we would sometimes prefer to keep hidden.
Intimacy draws us in with promises of joy and connection, yet the road toward it can leave us confused, vulnerable, and discouraged. It comforts us, but it can also hurt. It gives life, but it requires courage.
Still, the rewards of intimacy—the joy of being known, the security of being loved, and the strength of facing life together—far outweigh the risks involved in pursuing it.
Our Longing for Eden
Our hearts are wired for connection.
We long for a unity that goes beyond physical proximity. We want to know our partner and to be known by them. We want our individual lives to become part of something shared without losing the uniqueness of who we are.
This longing is reflected in the biblical picture of marriage and in the poetic celebration of love, beauty, intimacy, and sexuality found in the Song of Songs. Beneath our desire for intimacy lies a deeper longing for Eden—a world without fear, shame, hiding, or suspicion.
We chase versions of this longing in love stories and fairy tales. Perhaps that is one reason romantic films remain so compelling. They awaken the hope that somewhere there is a relationship in which we can be perfectly known, completely understood, and endlessly desired.
They offer us a glimpse of Eden.
But intimacy cannot be cultivated within a fairy tale. It must be built in the middle of real life.
Marriage unfolds through work, children, financial pressures, changing bodies, household responsibilities, family complications, disappointments, wounds from the past, and the ordinary exhaustion of daily living.
The beauty of real intimacy, however, is far deeper than the superficial perfection of a romantic story. Fairy tales may awaken desire, but lasting intimacy is created when two imperfect people face the tensions of real life together.
It is there that we begin to create our own small glimpses of Eden—moments when the distractions are pushed aside, the pressures briefly lose their power, and the world narrows down to you, your partner, and the moment you are sharing.
Intimacy in the Middle of Brokenness
We do not enter marriage as complete and perfectly healthy people.
We carry dreams, expectations, strengths, fears, disappointments, habits, ambitions, insecurities, and wounds. Marriage does not erase these things. In many ways, it amplifies them because our lives are now intertwined with someone else who carries their own complex story.
This is the reality in which intimacy must be cultivated.
The challenges are external: work, children, schedules, responsibilities, church, extended family, finances, health, and the demands of others.
They are also internal: our past experiences, personal wounds, fears, assumptions, disappointments, and patterns of self-protection.
There are spiritual realities as well. Sin bends us inward. It encourages selfishness, pride, suspicion, resentment, and the instinct to protect ourselves rather than love the other person well.
Because the obstacles can feel overwhelming, it becomes tempting to give up.
We may convince ourselves that things will never improve. We hide behind statements such as, “This is just the way I am,” or, “You knew who I was when you married me.” We adjust to the distance and stop believing something deeper is possible.
But what we do with intimacy will help determine what our marriage becomes.
We can retreat from the challenge, or we can lean into it. We can accept emotional distance as normal, or we can keep working toward something richer, safer, and more honest.
The path toward intimacy requires resilience, commitment, grace, creativity, and a willingness to transform the raw material of our lives into something beautiful.
The Intimacy We Fear
Often, we are afraid of the very thing we most desire.
Intimacy requires vulnerability, and vulnerability involves risk.
What will happen if I say what I am really thinking?
Will I be understood?
Will I be rejected, corrected, dismissed, or misunderstood?
What if my weaknesses are exposed?
What if the conversation becomes uncomfortable?
At the heart of this struggle is often a tension between pride and humility.
Pride protects itself. It insists that it already understands. It resists help, hides weakness, judges the intentions of others, and prefers independence over vulnerability. Pride would often rather have an audience than a partner.
Humility takes a different posture.
Humility remains open to learning. It accepts that there is always more to understand about ourselves and about the person we love. It recognizes that we need one another. It listens, asks questions, receives correction, and views our partner as an ally in the journey of growth and discovery.
Independence is often celebrated as strength, but marriage calls us toward interdependence. We were not created to live isolated lives alongside one another. We were created to give, receive, serve, support, challenge, comfort, and grow together.
This is why some of the most important moments in a marriage are also the most uncomfortable ones.
They are the points of tension when we must decide whether to move closer or pull away.
Will we retreat and pretend nothing happened?
Will we attack and defend ourselves?
Will we say, “Forget about it,” when what we really mean is, “I do not know how to move through this discomfort”?
Will we assume the worst about our partner?
Or will we remain present long enough to discover what lies beneath the tension?
In the email exchange between Amélie and me, the surface issue was frustration. Beneath my frustration was the fear that I was being rejected. Beneath hers was the fear that she was not loved or precious to me.
That is the deeper work of intimacy.
It requires us to move beyond the accusation and listen for the ache beneath it. It asks us to hear more than the words being spoken. It asks us to remain curious when our instinct is to become defensive.
These awkward moments are not always interruptions to intimacy. Often, they are invitations into it.
The goal is not to eliminate every tension, disagreement, or uncomfortable conversation. The goal is to learn how to navigate them without allowing fear, pride, or self-protection to control the relationship.
Intimacy grows when we choose curiosity over judgment, humility over pride, honesty over hiding, and connection over withdrawal.
Cultivating Intimacy Together
Marriage is not static.
The choices we make, the habits we form, and the ways we respond to one another will shape what our relationship becomes capable of producing and reproducing.
We are either moving toward one another or slowly drifting apart.
We are either creating a relationship where honesty, trust, grace, and connection can grow, or we are allowing distance, resentment, and fear to settle in.
The good news is that intimacy does not need to remain where it is today.
It can deepen.
It can be repaired.
It can be rediscovered.
It can grow through the ordinary practices of listening, confessing, forgiving, speaking honestly, taking initiative, remaining teachable, and learning to see our partner as an ally rather than an adversary.
The gospel does not merely save us as a theory or promise something for the future. It heals our hearts, renews our minds, humbles our pride, and teaches us how to love. It gives us the grace to confess where we have failed and the courage to keep moving toward one another.
Join me over the next several weeks as we dive deeper and explore ten principles that can help us cultivate intimacy in marriage.
Not the flawless intimacy of a fairy tale.
Not a relationship without tension, disappointment, or struggle.
But something far more beautiful: a real, resilient, honest connection formed in the middle of ordinary life.
Bien hâte de lire la suite!!!