01/16/2015
The Secret Ingredient of a Successful Marriage
What is the secret, mysterious ingredient necessary for bringing together a couple’s disparate personalities? The cementing ingredient is the ultimate in intimacy: physical intimacy.
Physical intimacy is meant to be enjoyable. Thousands of years before Maters and Johnson and the woman’s liberation movement, the Jewish tradition recognized the importance of women gaining as much pleasure from physical intimacy as men. One of the obligations of a Jewish husband is to give his wife physical pleasure.
But intimacy is more than just momentary pleasure. Judaism views physical intimacy as the ultimate vehicle to express emotional intimacy, to create closeness. Therefore Jewish law limited it to framework where emotional bonding is essential. A person engaging in casual expressions of this most personal aspect of life must become desensitized to the emotional dimension of the experience. This desensitization cripples one emotionally and spiritually. When people thus crippled get married, they have difficulty reawakening their sensitivity and achieving true intimacy.
The complete commitment and emotional closeness of marriage allow physical relations to be the most intense, potent, and powerful experience possible. Such an experience is possible when we conserve and reserve all of our sexuality for our spouse.
People were created in such a way that they are meant to be sensitive to every sight, to the slightest touch. Every interaction between husband and wife is meant to be meaningful, even a hand brushing a shoulder. By directing this intimate side of ourselves to one person only, we preserve and enhance it. Sharing this experience with others, whether through speech, dress, or action, dilutes its power. It’s a sad truth that we are the most overexposed generation in history.
Since physical relations play a significant role in the cementing of a marriage, it is of paramount importance that they are always meaningful and enjoyable. One of the most commonly encountered problems in marriage is boredom with physical intimacy, which inevitably creates tension and can contribute to the souring of a relationship. Dr. Domeena Renshaw, head of the Sexual Dysfunction Clinic of Chicago’s Loyola University states that 80 percent of the divorces in Western society come about because of dysfunction within the couple’s intimate lives. Furthermore, 50 percent of the couples who remain married have problems in this area. Familiarity breeding contempt is certainly a significant factor in these problems.
The most natural solution to such a situation, in order to invigorate the relationship, is a temporary cessation of physical contact. (this does not mean emotional distance.) Researchers experimented with this concept and found that it worked beautifully- in the lab. As soon as the couple went home, though, their self-imposed separation agreement didn’t work. They began to find exceptions to the rules they’d created, which brought about confusion, tension, and misunderstanding.
Jewish tradition avoids such ambivalence and ambiguity by employing an objective physiological factor- menstruation- to determine the times of physical closeness and separation. This Divinely ordained system, called “ taharat hamishpachah” ( family puritt), mandates a complete cessation of physical contact between husband and wife during the time of the woman’s menstrual cycle ( a minimum of five days) and for seven days following the cessation of bleeding. The woman checks to ascertain when her period has ended and continues to check that there is no bleeding during the subsequent seven days.
The guesswork is removed; the subtle pressures are eliminated. The onset of the me**es signifies a change in status in the relationship, during which time husband and wife are not permitted to have physical relations with one another: they don’t sleep in the same bed together, nor do they touch each other. Because it is total, the separation enhances physical intimacy when they join together. The goal of this system is to increase awareness and appreciation of physical expressions, making every touch count. Even a good-night kiss should not be a perfunctory ritual, but an expression of love and desire.
Too often, a couple uses physical expression to hide the lack of emotional connection underneath. The physical distance mandated by taharat hamishpachah enables the couple to focus on other methods of interaction. The distance gives them space to communicate on a different level and to be friends with each other. This emphasis on communications then carries over into the time when there is no separation, creating emotional intimacy. Couples who follow this Jewish law find it the glue that holds their relationship together, even when they observe no other Jewish law.
The period of separation also gives us an opportunity for individually, a period of privacy within the total togetherness of marriage. And it reflects respects for the woman’s biological well-being. A woman’s vaginal discharges are slightly acidic and serve as a natural barrier to infection. During her period, this discharge shifts to alkaline, and the natural barrier is lost. It takes about a week for the normal acidity to be restored. The uterine channel is also in a vulnerable state, having shed the protective uterine living, and it takes seven days from the end of menstruation for this lining to re-form. Thus, research has shown, a woman is more susceptible to infection during her period and for the seven days following.
Dr. Alexander Gunn, a renowned British researcher, published the following: “Jewish principles which require couples to abstain from in*******se for a certain number of days after the end of menstruation may be playing their part in protecting the woman. The cells on the surface of the cervix are known to be most susceptible to damage just after menstruation.” This explains another study which has shown that women who observe taharat hamishpachah are twenty times less likely to suffer from cervical cancer than women who do not observe these laws.
But the separation, ultimately, is a means to end. It is intended to build emotional closeness between husband and wife so that when they do come together physically they can express this closeness to the utmost. Marital relations are a physical culmination of a relationship which in its totality should be loving, caring, and emotionally fulfilling.
At the end of seven spotless days the woman bathes thoroughly so she can immerse in the mikveh, a collection of natural waters. The immersion is not intended to cleanse. Rather, the woman, passing through these waters, once again changes her status and joins her husband intimately.
The symbolism of the mikveh is multifaceted. The mikveh waters are called mayim chayim, “living waters.” Water sustains all life; from the rain on the crops to the water in our cells, we are all nourished by water. Thus, at the moment when a couple can renew physical relations, the woman passes through the mikveh as a kind of rebirth. And because the mikveh also symbolizes the rivers of Eden, it serves as a reconnection with the ultimate Source of life and with the spiritual perfection symbolized by the Garden of Eden.
When the woman returns home from the mikveh, she and her husband rejoice in each other and their renewed physical contact. In fact, having martial relations is termed the “ commandment of joy.” After the separation, this reunion is intended to be a loving, passionate expression of the couple’s feelings. It is the wedding night all over again, a rediscovery of each other. With such a cycle of physical separation and reunion, bound together with the thread of emotional connection, a Jewish couple has the key to the golden chain that has enabled the Jewish people to survive through the centuries.
Tourists to Massada, the mountaintop desert fortress in Israel where a group of Jews made a last-ditch effort some two thousand years ago to resist the Romans, are often amazed upon seeing the several ancient mikva’ot that were built by these desperate and beleaguered Jews who, despite their dire circumstances, observed taharat hamishpachah. But it should come as no surprise- the observance of tahrat hamishpachah is central to being Jewish. The act of faith embodied in the wife using the mikveh in order to rejoin physically with her husband is the most powerful ritual in Judaism, because it is the factor that has bound the Jewish family together through millennia. And the Jewish family is the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
