The Pure Bed's Blog

3 Things We Think Married Couples Must Know

thepurebed — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:26:00 +0000

In no particular order, here are three issues we look forward to blogging more about in 2012! Of course, when we talk about sex, it is in the context of marriage between one man and one woman.

1. Orgasm isn’t less important than intimacy. God made orgasm the physiological high-point of sex when he created the sexual response cycle to build to that end. We don’t need to diminish its importance to exalt the importance of emotional/relational/spiritual closeness. These things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Perhaps the better message is that we should learn one another’s bodies so that lovemaking is an exercise in service resulting in pleasure with climax as a natural end. If a spouse decides they don’t need to orgasm on a particular occasion, fine. It’s not compulsory…except for when desired! I Cor. 7:2-5

2. Having more sex doesn’t make us want to have more sex. Having more good sex helps us want more sex. Know one is anxious to re-experience a bad or even mediocre meal. If the sex is lack-luster, poor or painful, why would we want more?

Also, exercise, a balanced diet, having a strong marital relationship and healthy bodies help us to have a healthy libido.

3. Porn is NEVER a benign stimulant to our sex life. Porn disrupts the plan of God for the sacredness of sex in our married lives. Porn is commercialized denigration of womanhood as well as an inaccurate portrayal of manhood. And porn is a way of experiencing sex without intimacy. The images and offerings of porn are a contradiction to intimacy.

Intimacy is an intense focus on and into our mate. Porn requires we an outer focus. Those who take seriously the ‘one flesh’ principle of Genesis 2:24 can never be dismissive of the importance of intimacy during sexual relations.

It’s important that we be thoughtful about the role and impact of sex on our marriages. We diminish them at our own peril.

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Filed under: Marriage and Life, Sex and Faith, Sexual Behavior, Sexual Health

Thank You!

thepurebed — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:41:54 +0000

2011 was an extraordinary year for us on many fronts. We had our best sales year. We were able to minister to married couples in churches, small group meetings, special marriage events and online.

We give our God the glory. And we are thankful for you.

We are so very thankful to you for your support. Whether you follow and/or retweet us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook, subscribe to our newsletter at ThePureBed.com or our blog, purchased from our store, joined the discussions at our forum for husbands, joined one of our Choices events, THANK YOU!

We desire to take our celebration, advocacy and support of marital intimacy to another level in 2012. We look forward to two book releases, more online events and one-on-one interactions with couples. Our store will be reorganized to provide more product information. And we look forward to doors opening of which we have not even conceived.

Our most important mission is your [prospective] marriage. Marriage is the cornerstone of every strong community. Our houses of state can do nothing if our individual houses are faltering.

Thank you for helping us lift marriage and, in most instances, to lift God through our discourses. Thank you. Thank you. Thank YOU!

Filed under: Marriage and Life, Product Highlights, Sex and Faith, Sexual Activities, Sexual Behavior, Sexual Health

Scheduling Sex: Make Your Own Special Effects

thepurebed — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:33:59 +0000

Your life can be…hectic. You have children, a job(s) or business, and a multiplicity of responsibilities. It’s not happening spontaneously. Too often, it’s barely happening at all. Sex.

The prevailing myth is that sex in a marriage is somehow made better by spontaneity. That’s a media driven expectation accompanied by a soundtrack of crashing waves and fireworks painting a night sky.

Get over it. Your life is not a movie with manufactured special effects.

The truth is that most things essential to our lives need to occur at regular intervals and we manage our lives around them–eating, sleeping, showering. We do these things at fairly set times.

Shouldn’t something as essential to the life of our marriage as sex likewise merit a set time?

If the concern is that scheduling sex makes it mundane or removes a spark, let us assure you nothing could be further from the truth. By scheduling it, you signal its priority and allow yourself the opportunity to adjust your activities accordingly–as with eating, sleeping and showering.

When both spouses anticipate the event, they can be more thoughtful about their contributions to it. When both spouses KNOW it’s going to happen, they can better collaborate to ensure it happens.

Share tasks to help preserve one another’s energy.
Be playful, flirt throughout the day in phone calls, texts and what not.
Develop a plan for what you will “give” your mate when you make love.
Prepare yourself and your environment for the intimate acts that will occur. [i.e. clean your body and your bedroom.]

What’s special about sex is not that the moment ‘sneaks up’ on us but that it is a sincere and thoughtful expression of our love and desire for our mate. Sex is the most apparent manifestation of two becoming one.

Spontaneous sex isn’t off the table. But you won’t have the feast or famine thing going on either.

Agree to mark the calendar for the next two weeks with ‘ML’ (Make Love). Schedule sex. Then make your own soundtrack. Make your own waves. Make your own special effects!

Visit us at ThePureBed.com for your married couples intimacy needs!

Filed under: Marriage and Life, Sexual Behavior

3 Powerful Questions Spouses Ask Each Other

thepurebed — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:24:29 +0000

Inattention and disaffection are crippling to a marriage. Becoming “one flesh” is complicated by the exponential growth of responsibility over the years of our marriages. Before long, the urgent crowds out the important and our marriage relationship takes backseat to marriage business.

What follows are three questions that may refocus us on us by creating dynamic dialog that promotes the attention and affection we so often struggle to retain.

Question #1:

“Tell me about your day.”

When we ask our spouse to recount the events of their day, they will likely perceive interest and investment, attention. We all have a need to feel we are important to someone. And when we feel safe that someone is truly invested in us, we are more intimate with them. We are more likely to let them in…

Ask the question. Then, intently listen to the answer. Try not to multitask. Sit close. Hold hands. Focus on them. Ask brief clarifying questions. Make eye contact. Demonstrate attention and affection.

Question #2:

“Do you have a dream or goal you’d like to see realized in 2012? How can I support you?”

While marriage is a union, we do maintain a degree of individuality that is healthy and needs to be developed and fed. One of the greatest demonstrations of our love for our mate is to actively and regularly support them in their individual pursuits.

Whether our spouse wants to run a marathon or start a small business, our articulated and demonstrated support is energy to them and helps us share those dreams.

Lastly, a less frequent but incredibly affirming and substantial question is…

Question #3:

“What is one important area of our marriage you feel we can work together to improve upon? What first steps should we take?”

We don’t have to wait for our spouse to alert us to the weaknesses in our relationship. Neither should we assume we may always see what those weaknesses are. Ask.

Asking our mate to assess our marriage communicates a confidence in the marriage. It says “I’m interested and invested in us.”

By soliciting their counsel on “first steps”, we communicate a certain trust in their judgement and a respect for their perceptions. Trust and respect are critical to healthy intimacy.

Words are powerful. Creation was spawned by the words of our Creator, God. As his children, our words still form our worlds. We must use words wisely.

ThePureBed.com, your married couples intimacy store!

Filed under: Marriage and Life

The Humpty Tweet

thepurebed — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:55:20 +0000

We tweeted something earlier that struck a chord with many. The responses ranged from affirmation to inquiry to the questioning of the legitimacy of our point.

So, we thought we’d carry the discussion over to our blog to expand and expound upon what we consider to be a valid observation.

The tweet?

“Too many ‘Cinderellas’ are marrying ‘Humpty Dumpties’, wondering why they aren’t happy ever after. They #married a broken character.”

Because we have followers from many cultures and countries, we dare not assume. Here is the nineteenth century rhyme in which the character, Humpty Dumpty, is introduced to us.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

We’ll provide a brief breakdown of our quite narrow intention for this tweet. However, to better understand our perspective, you must remember that we are Christians who tweet, post and write with certain and often unspoken assumptions:

Jesus Christ is the Son of God whose death at Calvary and resurrection redeems and justifies us.
Those who believe on Christ have access to immeasurable power, including healing.
Marriage remains God’s providence and we take the “unequally yoked” counsel seriously.

For us, Humpty (meant to be gender neutral as is Cinderella in our tweet) represents a broken person who did not recover from his fall. Moreover, the help that did come to him was ineffective. He laid broken, disjointed, stuck where he’d fallen.

The brokeness of which our tweet speaks is of a spiritual and emotional nature that is so severe as to have become enduring and defining of a person’s life. They are stuck just where they’ve fallen.

What do we know of Humpty? He is broken. This is the defining, unresolved reality of his life. Whether we read it as an unresolved addiction, an issue with moral uprightness or some other issue that impacts a quality of life, if we marry someone who has emotional and/or spiritual brokeness that is pervasive, we mustn’t assume that changing their marital status will change who and what they are (character and conduct).

When someone’s life is in such disrepair as to confound the basic remedies we seek (counseling, therapy, wise counsel of others), anyone who weds them joins themselves to that brokeness and ought not expect to take a conventional marriage journey.

When we marry someone, we marry them for their better and their worse. If we marry a person with the brokeness of which we speak, we had better be prepared to get a goodly dose of ‘worse’.

Can this person be helped? We believe so. Can this person be healed? If they believe so, then yes. Should we marry with the hope that someone will get helped or be healed of their pervasive emotional or spiritual brokeness? No, not if we expect them to change as a result of being married.

We marry for who someone is, not for who we hope them to someday be. We all can be improved and have unresolved issues. But the brokeness of which we speak exceeds the need for a lifetime of development with which we are all born.

Those who do not share our assumptions will often not share our conclusions. We’re okay with this. We’re a voice…crying in the wilderness.

Are you following us on Twitter? If yes, we appreciate you. If not, here we are! What about Facebook where we often extend the conversations?

$MF Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.All the Kings horses (financialskeptic.wordpress.com)