Laura’s Strengthening Marriage Blog

CHECK OUT THE TWO NEW VIDEO CLIPS

I had the opportunity to be a guest on KJZZ TV “The Home Team” show with host Julie de Azevedo Hanks on Monday, July 7, 2008. We had a great discussion about the female sexual response, and I shared six ways couples can strengthen their marriage sexually.

You’ll find the following two video segments from this show by clicking on the links. Feel free to leave a comment and share these clips with friends and family.

VIDEO CLIPS

Pt1 - 8Ts of the Female Sexual Response
Laura helps couples strengthen their marriage sexually as she discusses the 8 Ts of the female sexual response with Utah’s KJZZ “Home Team” host Julie de Azevedo Hanks.

Pt2 - 6 Tips to Strengthen the Sexual Relationship
Laura shares 6 tips to help couples strengthen their marriage sexually. Thank you to Heidie and Chris, the brave couple, who were willing to share their story and their successes.

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I will be a guest on the Home Team “You and Me Monday” show with host Julie de Azevedo Hanks on KJZZ TV channel 14 (Salt Lake City, UT) on Monday, July 7 from 9 - 10 a.m. to do a segment on sexual intimacy in marriage.

They have asked me about inviting a couple (or a woman) who has read and benefited from my book, and/or that has worked with me through phone consultations to join us on the show to share their experience.
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Check out the newly posted radio show podcasts on the new Podcast Page. These are FREE audio podcasts from Laura’s radio show segments with Dr. Liz Hale. Dr. Liz and author Laura M. Brotherson discuss the delicate subject of sexual relations in marriage with both candor and reverence.

Some of the many topics discussed in the podcasts include:

• Preparing for a positive honeymoon experience
• Teaching children about sexual intimacy
• Pornography’s effect on marital intimacy
• Reasons to make love
• How to bring up the topic of intimacy with your spouse
• How to answer what’s okay and what isn’t questions
• Why you were attracted to your spouse and how it can lead to your healing and wholeness
• Focusing on ourselves to improve our relationships
• Sex after childbirth
• Female sexual desire issues

Enjoy these podcasts and have fun strengthening your marriage! Read the rest of this entry »

Few things are more enticing than chocolate—especially around Valentine’s Day. But the sweetness fades and the residual calories remain. Give your sweetheart something different this year. What’s better than chocolate you ask? How about something from the heart.

A friend recently asked me to write “a prescription” for her husband to provide more of a certain loving behavior to help her stop eating chocolate so much. I promptly wrote out the prescription on a napkin and handed it to her with a smile. The husband later told me he was happy to oblige. I started calling him her chocolate substitute!

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Keeping the passion alive in your marriage is closely connected to keeping the passion alive in your own life. Ryan found himself drawn to the adrenaline-like energy of an old friend, because that passion and aliveness was missing within his own soul. If he is not careful he will mistake the attraction for something other than a yearning to come alive within himself.

Nourishing our own aliveness is the best source of keeping the passion alive in our lives, and in our sexual relationship with our spouse. Energy is contagious and has the power to deaden or enliven those around us.

How enlivening it is to come home each day as an ever-growing person. How enticing to come home to a spouse who is new and different every single day. I often marvel at how much I learn and change while my husband is away at work. I wonder how he will ever catch up on my newness and the mysteries that lie within me, or how I will catch up on his. It’s a good thing we have forever to discover each other’s mysteries! Read the rest of this entry »

She wrote: “I remember one evening when I could see in my husband’s eyes that he was not exactly ‘in the mood.’ The cares of the day and the weight of work pressures were heavy on his mind, not to mention the fact that he was just plain tired. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I was seeing my husband the way he usually sees me, in a ‘pre-interested-in-sex’ state of mind. It was a weird sensation to be on the other side of the coin. It was a strange new concept to imagine my husband not being automatically ready for sex. That’s when I realized that if there was going to be any ‘intimate activity’ that night then it would take some effort to help him shift gears from thinking ‘sleep’ to thinking ‘sex.’”

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Men need foreplay too. Foreplay is something that helps prepare the mind and body for sex. Sometimes women like to think that they have the corner on the market when it comes to needing some help to shift from daily cares to more sensual activities. But as evidenced by this couple, it was the husband (not the wife) that particularly needed some foreplay to get his mind headed in the right direction.

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The mechanics of “having sex” are fairly simple, but really “making love” and developing a good intimate relationship takes some time and effort. Movies, pornography and other media tell us that sex is–or should be–easy, which is a set up for problems in a real relationship. For those who have ingested pornography, it’s difficult to have a healthy and accurate perspective of sexuality, and to separate fantasy from reality.

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The following writings were sent to me by a man who has spent many years in a sexual desert in his marriage. He has agreed to let me share some of the heart piercing and profound reverie he has had regarding the intimately starved marriage in which he is living. This stuff is the sacred ground of the soul. What an awesome and humbling thing it is to glimpse into the soul of another.

He has graciously consented to let me share these personal writings in hopes that it may bring hope to others who find themselves in similar situations. His hope is that through his pain maybe he can be an instrument for good somehow.

I hope these writings will be received by you in the manner in which they were written. I know his words profoundly affected me. These writings and the many others like it are the reasons I see it as such a high priority to strengthen marriages sexually.

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In recent months I’ve begun to use the phrase “involuntary celibacy” to describe my current sexual status. I keep the phrase (and the truth behind it) mainly to myself (and my journal) with an occasional exception, when I find a listening ear.

It’s really quite tragic. But the term is rather fitting, since I have about as much of a sex life as a typical priest. I like to joke to myself that the difference between me and a priest is that the priest wears a collar. But it’s also that the priest entered his lifestyle willingly. On the contrary, part of the reason I married was because I knew I couldn’t bear to be celibate. What a sick twist of fate. Read the rest of this entry »