joining the 72-hour club again

This post was first published in August 2013 but is getting new life thanks to reFresh Friday.

You’ve heard of the 72-hour club, right?

I first learned about this crazy little thing last year. I read about the idea on Fancy Little Things, this notion that frequent sex with your spouse could help create a better marriage, inside and outside the bedroom. Or, as Danielle from FLT put it, the 72-hour club was

“a commitment to making sexual intimacy in your marriage a priority by engaging in sex or other physical intimacy with your spouse at least once every 72 hours.”

And when I first heard of this idea, I was exhausted just thinking about it.

Because on the very bottom of my to-do list every day is sex with my husband. It’s just really not a priority for me and, truthfully, I could probably live most of the time without it.

Not that I don’t enjoy it, but, guys, I’m tired.

But for Chris, at the very top of his to-do list every day is sex. With me.

So I understand that I just can’t ignore his list, because if he ignored mine, I’d be pissed.

And so June became the 72-hour-club month. It was summer, I had no where to go, didn’t have to spend the day wrangling 100+ 7th graders, and I figured I’d be up anyway (I stay up way too late during the summer) so why not?

Chris’ response was something a little different than “why not?”  It was louder and said with more excitement. All of the sudden I was the cool wife who agreed to have sex every three days, if not more.

Ugh.

But I also knew, and had known for sometime, that more sex was good for our relationship. I noticed soon after we got married that the longer we went without sex, the less we got along. The more often we were intimate, the more I liked him in general.

So in June, we had sex, I think, at least twelve times. It didn’t take anything away from the experience to know that it “had” to be done that night. If anything, it did the opposite and it built anticipation. I think twice we missed the 72-hour window, but we made up for it like it was our job.

And it kind of is.

We’re supposed to have sex as a married couple. God wants to bless us (with intimacy, with pleasure, with children) and he created this really fun way for us to do that. Sometimes I forget that.

Because I’m tired, the dog is already asleep on the bed, someone has stinky breath, and there’s something really good  interesting  not boring on TV.

I don’t think we’ve done it that much since our first month of marriage. Chris and I waited until our wedding night to have sex and, now nearing eight years of marriage, I can see where God has blessed us as a result of doing what He asked. Of doing the opposite of what our culture told us to do. Of doing the opposite of we wanted to do. We knew that He wasn’t asking us to wait because He wanted to keep things from us. On the contrary, He wanted to give us everything, we just had to do it His way.

So we did (with lots of grumbling, obviously). And it has worked. During June, my prayer was often to pay attention to Chris more as my husband and not just as the (really good) dad to my kids.

And it made June very interesting.

I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t a little excited for June to end though. I don’t think 72 hours is the right rhythm for our life. But it brought about some really good conversations, some honest sharing, and some focus on an area that easily gets forgotten in the daily grind (hahaha, I said “grind” in a sex post).

And it did make our relationship better.

So here’s my challenge: try it. Go read all about it at Fancy Little Things and get another woman’s perspective if you want. But really, you already know how to do it (hopefully…). Just don’t let more than 72 hours pass without being intimate with your spouse. See how it changes things.

And then come and tell me about it.

Because I’m just nosy like that.