Why do married people get relational intimacy and sex, and we don’t?
Can we just put the question out there?
Maybe you love being single, and your life has been the grandest of adventures. However, even for the most fulfilled of singles, this discontent creeps in from time to time; the thought we are missing out on something even more wonderful than all of this – Marriage.
Marriage. The fulfillment of all your heart’s deepest longings. The ultimate satisfaction and joy on this side of Heaven. The only way to real and abundant life.
As you were reading that (I hope), you were shaking your head. You know it’s not true. Why, then, do we feel so deprived, as if being single is somehow a lesser existence? Why do we try to encourage single adults with empty promises like “God has the right person for you, just be patient and keep waiting on Him!” As if marriage is His perfect will for our lives, or better than being single?
Two very important people would likely disagree; Jesus and Paul.
John Piper does an amazing job opening up the words of Jesus in Matthew 19 – here’s an excerpt from his article on it:
When Jesus was teaching about marriage and he told his disciples there is no back door — once you walk in, you are committed for better or for worse till death separates you: no back door — the disciples were stunned that Jesus shut the back door of marriage. And they said, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matthew 19:10).
Then Jesus said something even more amazing: Not everyone is able to enter this relationship with such a high demand. And then he uses the word “eunuch” to describe different kinds of people who don’t enter marriage. Here is what he says in Matthew 19:11, “Not everyone can receive this saying” — this high expectation of marriage without a back door — “but only those to whom it is given” — in other words, only divine grace. “For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it” (Matthew 19:12).
And then, Paul:
…those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that …
32 I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. 33 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. 35 I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
…he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.
39 A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 40 Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is….”
In our culture, we want to caveat Paul’s words. “Well, he didn’t REALLY mean…Surely, he meant that the best thing for us is to get married. Truly, He would have told us today that God’s best plan for us is to get married and have children. Being single isn’t a sin, obviously…but ideally, He would prefer to have us be married.” Why do we do that? We flip his words upside down. All of a sudden, marriage is the ideal and singleness is the concession.
Instead of taking these men at their word, we try to fit them into the frame of what our culture says about marriage. We’ve made relationships about romance instead of sanctification, and in doing so, have ripped the heart out of marriage and the joy out of singleness.
A married friend said this to me recently; “Marriage is a part of one’s discipleship. When we elevate it and idolize it, it becomes something we can no longer talk openly about.”
Buying into the lie that marriage is supposed to satisfy and fulfill us will discourage us if we are not married and disillusion us if we are. Paul tells us we are happier single, spared from a great deal of worldly trouble that could otherwise befall us. What if we dared to believe him?
That being said, as single adults, we have valid, painful longings for intimacy. Most of us don’t want to die a virgin. For some reason, that feels like missing out. But here’s the thing – what if sex isn’t really what we want?
Hear me out.
Union between a husband and wife is as real as anything between two humans can be. However, it is not ultimate reality. All we are, and everything we know as life on earth, are shadows and metaphors for something greater, eternal, and more tangible than our shadow-brains can comprehend. Whatever we experience here, whether love, sex, food, or friendship – and the longings we experience from the lack of these things – the Ultimate Reality and fulfillment is Him.
So, let’s ask the question; those of us who could die single…are we really missing ultimate joy?
Entertain the thought for a moment – I’ll seek to convince you of this in the next blog – that anything a husband and wife can find in each other is just a picture, a glimpse, a shadow…of something you are meant to have with God Himself.
“You’re crazy.”
Yeah, probably. But read the next one, and then let me know what you think.
-A
Mismatched Miss 