Ice Cracking: A Deconstruction of Intimacy in Marriage

The lake freezes in mid-winter.  The icy sheet looks solid.  If you walk on it, you’ll get far enough thinking that all is well.  And then you hear it.  Pop!  Crack!  The ice is cracking.

It starts off with sex becoming less frequent.  It’s not that either spouse thinks the diminishing frequency of sex is healthy.  It has more to do with a cultural expectation that the quality and quantity of sex naturally diminishes.  It also has to do with the passive acceptance that exponentially increasing responsibilities displace opportunities for sexual intimacy.

In time, spouses adapt to a marriage where sex occurs monthly rather than weekly.  Couples will continue to complain and justify how ‘the other’ is the problem.  Intimate connection will be replaced with masturbation, pornography…and/or chocolate.  The attention of opposite-sex coworkers and acquaintances begin to appeal to us more.  Before you know it, a husband or wife is sharing intimate details of their sexual troubles and yearnings with someone other than their spouse.  And ‘the other’ in whom they are confiding is slowly (or not so slowly) drawn into a pseudo-intimate relationship…acting as a cheap and insubstantial surrogate for a sexually absentee spouse.

The ice is cracking.

Sex isn’t the most important thing in a marriage.  Sex is an important thing in marriage.   If the previous two statements seem contradictory to you then think about heat.  Yes, heat.  Heat isn’t the most important thing in life.  Heat is important.  It’s important situationally.  It’s important for cocoa, winter days, baths and cooking.

When a couple underestimates the power and purpose of sex, they begin that long dangerous walk onto a thin icy sheet.  Confiding intimate personal information to others while withholding your truest feelings from your spouse, spending undisclosed time with opposite sex friends, imagining what it would like to not be married and growing resentment toward one’s spouse…is the ice cracking?

If you are close enough to dry land, you can just turn around and walk back to save yourself.  In other words, open up lines of communication.  Become transparent and work hard to restore a sense of intimacy to your marriage.  Sometimes, we are too far out and need help.  Counseling has to be an option for the couple who acknowledges they lack the tools to fix what may be broken.

Some will say that diminishing frequency of sex means there is something else wrong in the marriage.  Maybe.  Or it may just be that sex is the one area in our marriage that few people speak to us positively about.  We hear it’s suppose to be bad and behave accordingly. 

Whatever the circumstance that got you on to the ice…get off!  (Did I just say that?)

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