How Do You Eat an Elephant?

A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of how overwhelming it can be to face the need to work on sexual intimacy in our marriages.

When we are in a habit of withholding sex from our husbands—no matter why the habit began or whether we’ve even been aware of it—the challenge can be daunting.

The Tasks, the Mountain, and the Elephant

For some of us, it is a huge enough hurdle to learn how much our husbands hurt when we deprive them of the full freedom of the marriage bed. As soon as that hurdle is behind us, we face two major tasks:

1. Change the habit.
2. Work on the things that led to the habit in the first place (whether those are relationship problems, our own heart or sin issues, medical difficulties, the view that sex and sexuality are worldly instead of godly, or trauma.

When I came to understand the depth of my husband’s hurt, I felt like I had just crawled up a mountain. For a moment, I closed my eyes to soak in the realization that I had reached a new place, a new understanding that would be good for my marriage. I praised God for having gotten me to the top of that mountain. Then, I opened my eyes to see a whole new vista of other mountains in front of me.

It was hard to know where or how to start changing my habits or working on the roots of those habits.

As I think back on the mountain I saw in front of me, I am reminded of the question, “How do you eat an elephant?”

The answer? “One bite at a time.”

We can easily be overwhelmed by the mountain of change that dominates the view in front of us. It is a huge mountain, after all.

Just like you might eat an elephant one bite at a time, you climb a mountain one step at a time. You can work on sexual change one bit at a time.

Eating the Elephant

How do you eat the elephant of your sexual refusal?

1. Pick a place to start. You might want to pick the place that will be easiest to chew so you can begin your task with something you’re pretty sure you can accomplish. Maybe you want to start at the toughest spot so you can get it over with. My first task was to work on the area that I thought would have the biggest impact on my marriage. I began with the area that my husband had addressed the most with me—fully participating during sex.
2. Open your mouth. Take a deep breath. Breathe in the presence of God. Say grace and know that you will be blessed in the effort you are about to undertake. I sometimes think of my journey of change as taking one deep breath at a time.
3. Bite. Sink your teeth into your task by stepping out in faith and doing what is needed—even if it doesn’t make sense or you aren’t sure you bit at the right place. If you don’t take that first bite, you’re just going to be sitting there staring at that elephant on the plate in front of you.
4. Chew. Repeat the biting motion over and over until that piece has become less intimidating. I stopped chewing so many times. I would realize that I was letting my mind wander during sex, and I would have to remind myself to resume what I had been doing.
5. Swallow. When you swallow food, it becomes part of your body. Likewise, as you work to develop new habits in your sexual relationship with your husband, those habits will slowly become part of who you are. You will absorb the experiences as you retrain your mind, body, and heart to become more sexually generous.
6. Savor. Take a moment to truly enjoy each bite you swallow, each step you take, each change you accomplish. It was frustrating to get to the top of a mountain and see all the new mountains I had to climb—but I made sure to celebrate the fact that I’d gotten to the top of the mountain.

If you’re looking for more on how to actually work through this change, you may find this post helpful.

Take Heart

I know how overwhelming it can be to stare at a mountain of change that we need to climb—and with sexual refusal, the whole time we’re climbing that mountain, we need to also be working on understanding why that mountain is even there in the first place so we can make that mountain smaller.

The prospect of sexual change can be overwhelming. We can easily feel discouraged before we even try.

I found encouragement to keep going by thinking about what was waiting for me further along my journey: full intimacy.

Take heart. You can change!

Don’t look at the pile of food on your plate, the height of the mountain to need to climb, or the enormity of the task in front of you. Instead, take one small bite, one baby step, one tiny bit of change at a time.

Find encouragement in the thought of what awaits you: the feeling of being sated and no longer hungry for intimacy, the beautiful view waiting at the top of the mountaintop, full intimacy with your husband.

Be encouraged. Know that God is with you in your pursuit of full intimacy in your marriage bed.

I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13

(No actual elephants were harmed in the writing of this post. I can’t say the same for metaphors and clichés, however.)

Image courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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I've moved! While you can peruse the archives here, I am no longer posting at The Forgiven Wife.

Please join me at Honeycomb & Spice.

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  Ladies, if you're interested in joining me for a study of Juli Slattery's new book God, Sex, and Your Marriage, time is running out! Our study begins with introductions on February 26, 2023, but the study will be open to join until March 5.