Marriage: Friends with Benefits

 

For years I only read Christian Romance Novels, no secular at all. Then a couple of years ago I read my first YA novel and now I mostly read that. It kind of opened my eyes to one very important aspect to romance that too often the Christian novels shy away from…passion.

Now I’m not talking about an exact play-by-play.  I’m not into erotica. I have read secular romance novels and they mostly concentrate on her perfect chest and his big muscles and …you know. The Christian novels concentrate on a great friendship. There have been some of the Christian romances I’ve read that when the baby was born, I really could not imagine how that baby came to be. The characters only seemed, well, friendly towards each other.

The truth as I see is it is that friendship does make the best foundation for romance. You can’t build a lasting relationship on only passion and physical beauty. Physical beauty will fade and you can’t  live on the fire of passion. How will you go to work? Raise kids? Cook dinner? Fold clothes if you can’t take your hands off each other? You can’t live there but, it should be an ingredient that spices up the friendship.

So we have two wrong thoughts. One only teaches to live by passion and one that wants life to be devoid of it. I’ve heard women who have sexual baggage from how they lived prior to marriage and I’ve heard women who have hang-ups from growing up learning only that it was dirty and bad.

Anything that causes hang-ups in your marriage is not good. If you go to the Bible and read Song of Songs, it is a book of passion.  He doesn’t shy from the subject. I’m in the camp that if Song of Songs were translated literally, it would not be allowed on network television.

So I want both. I want the friendship AND I want the benefit of passion. If I had to choose, I’d pick friendship because that’s where you live most days. But passion keeps you warm at night. ;)