Along with many joys and blessings, life in a fallen world brings many sources of grief and sorrow. As we will see further in the next chapter and we touched on in the last, marriage is a source of strength and support in such times. It’s a bulwark against loneliness as well, a source of intimate companionship that, in a good marriage, is steady and reliable.
Though we rarely think about it this way, marital sex can be part of the means by which a husband and wife provide comfort to each other. This is something we find often in talking to people who have been married for a long time. Psychologists have known this for years.
This is at least part of what we find going on in one of the most beautiful love stories in the Bible—the story of Isaac and Rebekah. “Then Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:67).
We see this in less dramatic ways in day-to-day married life. Sex to alleviate anxiety. Sex even as a way to relax together and usher each other into slumber. The close physical intimacy and release that comes from sex can sometimes be like medicine. It’s one of the ways that husbands and wives help one another through the rough roads of life.
Footnotes
See for example Stephanie A. Sarkis, “5 Things They Don’t Tell You About Grieving,” Psychology Today, November 23, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201511/5-things-they-dont-tell-you-about-grief. The problem with psychological advice about this is that most don’t affirm that sex is appropriate for coping with grief only within marriage.
