Some of you might remember those sweet times when your mother would caress you when you felt badly or gave you a back rub when you were sick in bed. Perhaps, you were a young boy starting your season in track and field, and you were sore from practice, when your dad would massage your tired leg muscles. If you didn’t receive such nurturance from your parents, you probably remember that too. These memories (or lack of them) underscore the importance of touch in communicating love and caring.
Our bodies, in particular our layers of skin, represent an amazingly complex array of receptors for warmth, pain, and tactile sensitivity which, from our earliest years, have mediated pleasure and comfort as well as provided a warning system for detecting physical threats. We are, indeed, “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psa. 139: 13-14). If we know what kind of stimulation gives us the best pleasure and how that ideal stimulation may vary, depending where on the body it’s given, we are much closer to knowing just how exquisite communicating love can become….which, ultimately is its purpose.
Unfortunately, most of us do not know our own bodies very well, least of all the bodies of our marriage partners….even if we think we do. This leads, not only to frustrations in the sexual relationship, but also, more generally, in communicating love though the medium of touch. Our culture, along with our assumptions, conditions us to believe we should intuitively know what our partners want, without asking or openly experimenting.
Men, in particular, find it emotionally threatening if their wives do not find pleasure in their sexual touch. They often feel like failures in that regard and see it as questioning their masculinity. Not surprisingly, there’s a relatively high occurrence of impotence among men when they become riveted on their “performance” instead of focused on their partners. Much of this occurs because, not only do they fail to learn first what their wives enjoy, but they also fail to appreciate the power of mutual touch in everyday life.
That power is compromised when about the only time a husband touches his wife is when he’s interested in sex. Wives have confided in counseling that they feel “used,” that touch is, for their husbands, just a tolerable means to an indulgent end. How sad that touch has been reduced, in their minds, to merely a prelude to physical gratification. On the other hand, when a wife pushes away her husband because she’s “in a business mood” without letting him know the conditions under which she would be more receptive to his touch, she’s teaching him to associate touch with humiliation and rejection. Not exactly a recipe for success either.
So, what’s the answer? When Jesus delivered his remarkable soliloquy on marriage in response to the Pharisee’s cynical question about divorce, He reminded them of God’s original purpose in establishing the marital union (Matt. 19: 4-5). He said that God created them male and female, and for that reason, the two shall become one flesh. Remember God originally created Eve because it was not good for Adam to be alone, meaning without finite human companionship. So, Jesus’ phrase, “becoming one flesh” is not limited to sexual union, but rather applies more generally to the union of body, soul and spirit of both partners—a total unity, a complete companionship. In other words, emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy. Take one away and you seriously compromise the others.
The wife often yearns for emotional intimacy, which, in rich supply, renders her welcome to sexual union. The husband, on the other hand, more often desires sexual union, without which emotional intimacy is but a cruel temptation. Of equal concern, though, is the fact that neither tend to consider these two dimensions especially important (or, sometimes, even relevant) to their spiritual needs. But all three were meant by creation to be blended together. When one is missing, true unity is lost.
Touch, today’s focus, is the sensual language of intimacy. It can convey love often more powerfully than words. But to fully understand the effects of touch, you must know the tactile sensitivity of your partner. You must be able to “map” the kind of touch your partner prefers on each and every part of his or her body. And it’s best to start with the “non-erogenous zones” first, i.e., the head (beginning with the face and then the scalp), shoulders, arms (upper and lower), hands (top and palms), back (upper and lower), legs (upper and lower), and feet (top and sole).
Try this sensate mapping exercise: Each partner is to sit facing one another in a comfortable position, with one (the initially designated “receiver”) sitting quietly with closed eyes and the other (the initially designated “giver”) ready to apply each of eight types of touch, beginning with the face. These include first vigorous circular and then back and forth movement of the hands using the fingertips, followed by a light gentle touch using the same sequence of two movements; this is followed again by, first, the same two vigorous and then two gentle movements, but this time using the palms of your hands. The partner on the receiving end of these eight different combinations will indicate which type of touch produced the greatest pleasure.
Once this is understood, husband and wife are to switch roles and then repeat the entire sequence. Apply this procedure on only one body part per sitting. Over a period of weeks, you’ll progressively cover every part of each other’s bodies. You will discover, perhaps to your surprise, a wide variation of preferences, each depending on the part of the body you are doing the exercise. When you’ve concluded this exploratory journey, you will know (not guess) what kind of touch your partner likes best in each area. Having learned this, when you touch, say, your partner’s arm in the way you know he or she enjoys most, you are non-verbally saying “you are so important to me that I have made the effort to remember what you like”. This is another way of saying “I love you” in powerful tactile terms.
Once you’ve mastered this physical understanding of non-erogenous areas of the body, you can then move on to exploring different types of sexual touch. The very interest you each show in knowing each other’s bodies creates a strong bond of mutual service of one another’s needs and desires. And then you will be better able to discern God’s blessing in effectively blending your tender conversation with actions that truly reinforce your words.
When that happens, you’ll at last experientially understand what Jesus meant by marital unity; a spiritual unity that does not separate emotional intimacy from physical union, but rather joins them in a statement of unparalleled love.
