I haven’t been good about being physically active this summer, and my arthritic knee has really been feeling it lately. The only way to strengthen it is to use it. I know that the best thing for me to do when my knee hurts like this is to take a walk, even though it will be sore for a while. Plus, I know the exercise will help me head off some anxiety and stress.
This morning I decided to take a walk. I often go to a nearby nature center. The paths go through the woods, and although I love to walk through the woods, the trails are a bit bumpy. That will be fine once I strengthen the muscles around my bad knee, but I wasn’t sure that would be a good idea today. So I laced up my tennis shoes and headed to the local leg of a glacial drumlin trail.
Walking the Trail
The trail is paved, and I thought that might be a better way to get started on restoring my knee function.
There were a few curves, as well as some places where I could choose to go off the paved trail. I enjoyed a few minutes watching the river flow. Mostly, though, I stayed on the paved trail.
At one point, I looked ahead to see patches of sunlight and shadow on the next stretch of the trail. Even in the shifting light, I knew 
that the pavement was smooth and even.
I looked ahead to see a clearing. My knee was starting to ache a little, but I knew I could make it to that clearing. I was a little slower than when I’d started my walk. With the path dappled with sun and shadow, shifting as the breeze moved the leaves on the trees, I sometimes lost sight of where I was putting my foot. But I knew where I was headed, so I kept going.
Slow progress is still progress, and I made it to my destination. I sat on a bench for a while and then finished my walk back to the trailhead.
I’ll walk the slow and even path a few more times, and then I’ll be ready to tackle the bumpier paths and trails at the nature center. I’m not there yet, but I know that I will get there.
Our Marriage Journey
It made me think about our marriage journey. In the interest of transparency, I’m going to be real and blunt.
Our sex life hasn’t been so great lately. (You probably thought we had sex multiple times a day, seven days a week, right? Uh, no.)
Over the past year and a half, our marriage bed has declined, mostly in quantity but also a little bit in quality. Our frequency is nearly what it was before I began to work on sex.
It isn’t my fault. It isn’t Big Guy’s fault, either.
His work life was eroding his self-confidence and creating a lot of stress in ways that interfered with his sex drive. Add the loss of his mom and some issues with his heart, and he was depleted of much of his sexual energy.
Meanwhile, my body decided it was time to launch into menopause. My body has struggled with sexual response (the reason for the decline in quality), and sex has seemed like an awful lot of work for such an unpredictable reward. I understood that our marriage needed sex and that I decided I should be the one to initiate while my husband was struggling—but it’s hard to do with both of us feeling kind of “meh” about sex.
The more our sex life slowed down, the harder it became to do the things that help us feel connected. It was a sort of “use it or lose it” kind of thing. The less I have sex, the less I want to have sex. The less we are in the habit of connecting, the harder it is to connect.
Recently, I’ve really been feeling the lack of connection between us—sort of like I’ve been feeling my arthritic knee when I haven’t been caring for it.
Still on the Path
Big Guy just started a new job yesterday. It’s one he is excited about and that feeds rather than drains him. Friday was his last day at his old job. With the elimination of a huge stressor in his life, his sex drive came back instantaneously. He has been rather amorous for the past few days.
But things feel weird. He is reaching out to connect sexually, whereas I find myself struggling with feelings of being asked to give him what he wants (sex) without getting what I want (emotional connection).
So here we are.
On the surface, it would be easy to say that we’re right back where we started.
Fortunately, we are not.
Our sexual journey had slowed down and our frequency had dramatically decreased, but our marriage itself has not lost ground. As we have dealt with the things that slowed us down sexually, our marriage itself continued to grow. We have not gone off our path at all, except maybe to rest together when we’ve hit a few bumps.
We continue to forge ahead.
Strengthening Our Connection
We’ve been inactive, and our connection has gotten a little rusty. We need to strengthen that connection, and the only way to do that is to connect and rebuild. For a while, things will feel a bit bumpy and weird. All the things I’ve learned over the past several years—about intention, deep breaths, what sex means for my husband and does for our marriage and for me, and more—are already helping me get moving again. I know that the more my body experiences sex, the more easily it will respond sexually.
We have a path in front of us that is paved with God’s truth and promises. We KNOW that God’s design for marriage includes a healthy sex life. At some moments, we may be taking some steps into something that may suddenly shift from light into shadow, depending on the way the winds of life blow—but we clearly see our destination, so we keep going forward.
Slow progress is still progress. We’ll rebuild the connection that has become rusty, with full confidence in where we’re headed. The more we do the things that help us connect, the easier those things will become.
Pretty soon we’ll be better able to handle the bumps and shadows that are part of life. We aren’t there yet, but we know that we will get there.
❦❦❦
I am sharing this with you partly because I try to be transparent about the fact that I am still walking this journey. I don’t have it all figured it out, and I don’t always get things right. It’s easy for me to see now that if I had been more intentional about sex even when my husband was so stressed, we would be in a better place.
Also, though, I want to encourage you. In your own journey, you may find yourself in places that seem bumpy, rusty, or shadowed. It is really easy to feel like you’re right back where you started. Remember that you are NOT there, even if you feel stuck. The lessons you have learned and the actions and thoughts you developed are still with you. They are the things that can help you see the destination ahead. Your marriage has not gone backwards because you know more than you used to about how to move forward. You know how to take steps, even if those steps are slower than they were for a while.
You are further along than you once were, and you can get yourself moving again.
Image credits | Chris Taylor
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thank you, Chris, for your transparency. You have helped me understand some of my changes in my marriage, as well.
May the journey ahead be Joyous and filled with Peace, but mostly surrounded by abundant Love.
That sounds lovely. Thank you!
“It’s easy for me to see now that if I had been more intentional about sex even when my husband was so stressed, we would be in a better place”
Not necessarily. I’ve been quite intentional although hubby hasn’t. It’s felt pretty one-sided for a long time. While he stresses about work, I try to keep the fires burning all on my own. I’m getting tired of it.
I do think my efforts alone would have helped–although I may well have grown resentful, so who knows? We’re moving in the right direction together, and with both of us taking some steps, we should get back to normal.
Moving forward rather than backward should always be helpful. Even if it’s baby steps. That’s what I need to remember when I get discouraged.
BTW I love walks in the woods. Very relaxing, helps keep perspective in life.
Yes! I always benefit from being surrounded by nature.
Chris,
Thank you for your honesty regarding your (plural sense) lack of sex, lately. Yours (plural sense, again) isn’t anything new. It’s something nearly every couple contends with, sooner or later.
My wife went through menopause early because she was found to have some pre-cancer cells in her “female parts.” She opted for a total hysterectomy to “nip it in the bud,” so to speak. Her hysterectomy has required her to take hormones on a regular basis, ever since.
Even those ladies who don’t have to have hysterectomy-related menopause need to consider taking hormones in order to maintain their physical and emotional health. Both of my sisters-in-law openly attest to this. Both say that without their taking hormones, their lives would not be good for them, nor their families, nor friends.
Initially, her surgeon put her on some meds that followed the typical treatment post-hysterectomy. However, the doctor failed to follow-up with the needed adjustments a few months post-surgery. As such, my wife’s hormones were all screwed-up. She became moody and irritatable at the slightest provocation.
There were other, outside stresses, too. Her boss was a bully and a misogynist. He did all he could to try to make her quit. She was denied promotions because he literally said that she was too old. In one instance, the guy who got the promotion was less than 1 year younger than my wife. Our son went through a heart-breaking divorce, then lost his job. He and his 2 baby girls moved in with us. Add to that, both of our moms passed, just a few months apart.
As time wore on, she lost interest in just about everything, me, our love-life, our son and grandkids, and her job. The only thing that kept her going was that she was too close to retirement to quit her job.
I took her to our GP and she was sobbing when he walked into the room. He looked at me like I’d done something bad to her. After she explained what all had been going on, he ran blood tests. That’s when found out about all of her hormone imbalances. He Rx’ed her some different drugs and within 3 eeeks, she was a totally different woman. We sing his praises to this day. Without his help (via God’s Grace), I’m not sure my wife would still be around, today. That’s just how bad things had gotten for her and us.
Like you, my wife suffered with bad knees. She was Rx’ed oral pain meds and steroids and went through countless injections of various other kinds of steroids, directly under her knee caps. (Talk about pain!) There were 2 times (per knee) that she was injected with a substance made from ground chicken beaks! Nothing worked long-term. Finally, she decided it was time for knee replacement surgery. So, after she decided on a date to retire from her job, she set the dates for both of her knee replacrment surgeries.
The surgeries went well but, the rehabs were “hell on Earth!”. Of course, she knew going in, that rehab was the worst part of knee replacement surgery.
HRT has helped immensely, although it doesn’t do everything I wish it could. As for knees, well, I figure I will need a knee replacement at some point. I’d like to try to wait a while before I do that, though. This whole getting old gig is, well, getting old. LOL
As we often say, “getting old ain’t for sissies!”
Chris,
My wife has knee problems as well. She actually felt a lot better when she participated in aqua-aerobics. The water seems to absorb the shock that hiking creates on the knee and the she had more energy and slept better.
Also you may try low pressure yoga, which is stretching.
We aren’t teenagers, the no pain, no gain methodology doesn’t work as well as it did when we were kids. You knee aches and it is telling you something.
My wife’s schedule changed and she is unable to get into the pool 5 times a week.
As for intimate energy, by the time when we hit 50 sometimes it changes, where the man is slowing and the woman is entering the early stages of her peek. Both of us are 58 and both of us still have active jobs and mutually our energy is drained so it seems 2x’s a week is what our bodies can handle.
Yes, I’ve been looking at swimming and aqua-exercise. Bicycling is good, too, and I’m going to be looking at some yoga. At the moment, I’m doing some exercises to target the muscles that support my knee. So much fun.
haha, it seems as if the independent exercising isn’t as easy as it sounds, at least for me.
Though when there isn’t a rain or wind storm walking is good for me. But my wife’s knee doesn’t allow her the freedom of walking without pain and swelling.
The problem she faces is her knee effects the way she balances herself and now her hip is feeling it. She needs to try and change her schedule again so she can do the swimming thing again as it was the most effective way to help her knee and spark some of the energy she natural has, that isn’t occurring sitting behind her desk.