Couples that avoid hurt from happening (or the hurt that has already happened) are preventing intimacy from developing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one really enjoys being hurt, and being hurt is a part of all close intimate relationships. It’s going to happen. The difficulty is in viewing pain as though it is a gift, not the plague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pain is not fun, but neither is numbness. I don\u2019t know about you, but when I leave the dentist after getting a shot of Novocain, I cannot wait for it to wear off. The feeling of not controlling half of my face is miserable (not to mention drooling and talking like there’s a boulder in half my mouth). People were not made to be numb, we were made to feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mary Oliver penned this beautiful line, and it speaks well to the realities couples face: \u201cI was once given a box full of darkness, it took me many years to realize that this too was a gift.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pain shapes our lives either in our acceptance of it or our refusal to experience it. Creating a space for hurts to be a welcomed guest in your marriage will serve you well.\u00a0A noble calling for every marriage would be to create and live out a relationship that engages the hurt, and heals the pain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Develop guidelines for how you’ll address hurts in your relationship. Setup a regular time to “clear the air” together, and keep short accounts. Find intentional ways to ask for and offer forgiveness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
______________________________________ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Couples that avoid hurt from happening (or the hurt that has already happened) are preventing intimacy from developing. No one really enjoys being hurt, and being hurt is a part of all close intimate relationships. It’s going to happen. The difficulty is in viewing pain as though it is a gift, not the plague. Pain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[26,281,86,282,29],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-couples","tag-conflict","tag-forgiveness","tag-grace","tag-hurt","tag-intimacy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n