AmericanThinker.com is my favorite political website. I was surprised and pleased to read there a completely apolitical article on Stress and Marital Intimacy.  Here is the link.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/stress_and_marital_happiness.html

Read the article if you like, it is good, but that is not what I wanted to write this post about.  The comments are interesting but there are two comments that you HAVE to read.  They will both make you cry but for different reasons.  I copy and paste them here now.

Posted by: FulghumInk
At the risk of sounding high-minded-and I certainly don’t mean to be, my precious wife and I had been together since the seventh grade. When she walked into our homeroom class, we made eye contact. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. We were with each other almost every day. I could easily write a book about her-about us. Obviously, having been together since the seventh grade, we have been through a lot.

We went through junior high school, and senior high. I went into the service after I graduated from high school and served in the SE Asian “conflict.” My precious wife to be went to college. We wrote almost every day. Sometimes I could call her, and talk to her. Through it all, our hearts grew stronger in our resolve to be together.

When I came home, my heart went into unbelievable orbit as we ran to each other at the airport. She came with my parents who loved her as her own daughter. She loved them as if they were her own parents.

My precious wife had graduated from college when I started after having served 4 years in the Air Force.

We were married after I had two years of college behind me and she was a school teacher. Being a school teacher was a passion with her from the time she was in elementary school according to her, and her mom and dad. She would line her younger brothers and sister up to “teach” them, God only knows what!!!

I graduated from college, went into marketing, and built my own company. Along the way we had two private little miracles who are now grown, happy, and very successful.

After 29 years of marriage to the love of my life, my precious wife found out that she had a rare form of leukemia. After an 18 month brutal fight under the wonderful care of Duke University Medical Center she won the race, and crossed the finish line. She is now with our Lord and Saviour who loves her even more than I do. “In His Loving Care” is what is written on her marker.

WE now have two beautiful granddaughters. When I went to see my first granddaughter after she was born, my son and iI just looked at each other without saying word. We held each other tight in each other’s arms. With eyes full, he said, Dad, she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I told him, “I know, son.” I hadn’t even seen her yet, and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was a bittersweet moment for both of us.

Why all this? Well, I have some simple advice for couples of all ages. I hope you don’t mind. When you get up in the morning tell each other that you love him/her. Before you go to bed at night, tell each other that you love him/her. When you are sitting at the table to have dinner, take a look at each other, tell each other that you love him/her. Why? Because all that matters is love. True love. One true love.

One day one of you will not walk in the door. It doesn’t matter what your schedule is.

In some of the oddest moments, the empty chair across from you will be a testimony to the blessings in life that are really important.

And here is the second one.

Posted by: ferdinand
I have never shared this with anyone outside of a professional environment. I do not know why I am doing so now except this is such a weight, I cry out in silence most days. This article speaks the truth.

My son is six. He represents the product of the last time my wife and I were intimate.

We have been married 19 years. I can count, on my hands, the number of times we have been physically intimate. I am not a handsome man. My wife is no longer a comely bride. There is no physical or emotional bond left between us. I live in a prison of duty, where age and disuse have overcome youth and exuberance.

Without going into the details, this is a crushing, devastating, debilitating, depressing, and staggeringly destructive fact of my life. There is no passion. There is no touching. There is no emotion save private desperation. It reaches from inside my marriage and has starved every personal and social connection I ever had. The personal isolation is complete.

Help from faith-based corners exascerbated the problems. We have been left even further separated and impoverished by our experience with godly professionals. The money is the least of the harm. The additional guilt and shame have remained long after the invoice was paid.

We no longer attempt a cure. We do not speak of it. We do not address it. We have faded into a silent partnership of communal domestic life without any personal communication beyond that necessary to navigate through another day.

I fear and expect this is a life sentence.

These two posts are perfect illustrations of a truth I have tried to communicate to my own children.  One of the typical inclinations of youth is to rush into marriage.  Many of these marriages don’t end well.  So here it is.  MARRIAGE AS AN INSTITUTION HAS A PROFOUND CAPACITY FOR PRODUCING AMAZING HAPPINESS BUT ALSO THE DEEPEST AND BITTEREST SOUL-CRUSHING MISERY.  And it is the SECOND point that has to be shouted from the treetops.  I say that because a young person who is “in love” is often deluded into thinking that the “in-loved-ness” is all there is and will ever be.  Walter Wangerin, in his excellent marriage book “As for Me and My House”, argues that to some extent this is a necessity because if we all knew ahead of time how hard marriage is then none of his would have the courage to do it.  Perhaps.
So what is a young person to do?  How are they to know?  There is a lot to say here but I will sum it up in one sentence.  YOUNG PERSON - if you are advised by reasonable persons in your life…your parents, your pastors, your close friends, your marital counselor…that your relationship should be dropped…then do yourself a favor and listen.
It might just save you some soul-crushing misery.
Seth
PS   Thank God, I am blessed to have a wonderful wife.