Our marriages can be places where walls can come down...where TRUE intimacy can occcur...if only we are willing to be vulnerable. I'm not talking about just sex here. True intimacy is allowing your spouse to see every part of you, and allowing them to do whatever they will with that information. But we will only allow intimacy when we TRUST our spouse with our hearts.
Openness and trust comes at a price. Many of us have past experiences that cause us to build a wall around our hearts, and our emotions. We don't want to be open or transparent. We're afraid that if we are that vulnerable, our spouse will mistreat us (maybe we've had some experience with hurt in that area, perhaps?). So how do we allow our spouse to penetrate the walls we've built, and let them in? Can true intimacy occur without our spouse having access to our hearts?
Shawn Stoever and Greg Smalley remind us that Criticism is one of the killers of transparency. If our spouse can't trust us with their deepest secrets, hurts, feelings, etc...then they most definitely will not open up.
We need to therefore remind ourselves to 1) have a constant attitude of appreciation for our spouse, and 2) show actions that back up our love and devotion to that person. If walls are still present, we have to be careful not to bombard those walls...but to lovingly show ourselves as trustworthy, so that the walls come down.
