How Do I Stay Attracted to My Aging Spouse?
00:00:00.000 | How do I stay physically attracted to my aging spouse?
00:00:08.840 | The question comes our way from an anonymous older man who listens to the podcast.
00:00:13.200 | "Dear Pastor John, most men marry in their youth when our wives are young, vibrant, physically
00:00:18.740 | fit and at their most physically beautiful.
00:00:21.560 | The passing of time inevitably ushers in wrinkles, sagging skin, sunspots, cellulite, etc.
00:00:27.560 | As aging husbands, how do we remain physically attracted to our spouse?
00:00:31.720 | Should we work at this?
00:00:33.140 | Is it disingenuous if it's forced?
00:00:36.000 | Or is this attraction something that should naturally die off over time?
00:00:40.480 | I don't think so.
00:00:42.000 | However, if I can be fully honest, it often feels like I am brainwashing myself.
00:00:47.620 | How would you counsel me?"
00:00:49.160 | I want to say some things from the Bible and then perhaps from my own experience.
00:00:57.360 | But first, a brief word just by way of preface.
00:01:01.440 | I think it'll be obvious why it's relevant, but I'm calling it preface anyway.
00:01:07.020 | It absolutely must be said, it seems to me, that we live in a sex-crazed culture.
00:01:15.840 | Views of beauty are exaggerated, distorted, artificial, disconnected from the reality
00:01:24.240 | of true inner beauty.
00:01:27.100 | Anyone who watches television or movies will almost certainly have a distorted view of
00:01:33.960 | beauty and sexuality in our age.
00:01:38.040 | One way to say it is that sex is vastly overrated.
00:01:45.080 | One of the reasons this happens is because, in fact, in our own bodies, the voice of sexual
00:01:55.000 | desire is very loud.
00:01:58.440 | And the culture we live in creates an echo chamber where that loudness is so great, it
00:02:06.600 | virtually drowns out other wonderful voices that are much more important, more precious,
00:02:14.960 | more lasting, more essential to our humanity and God's glory than the voice of sexual
00:02:21.800 | desire.
00:02:23.200 | Jesus Christ was the fullest, richest, deepest, most complete human being who ever existed,
00:02:32.480 | and he never had sexual relations with anyone.
00:02:37.700 | There are other dimensions to our nature which are infinitely more precious and more crucial
00:02:44.620 | to our humanity than the screaming force of sexual impulses which silence other voices
00:02:53.200 | and deceive us into thinking that this impulse must be gratified.
00:02:59.520 | So all that, just by way of preface to say modern men and women almost inevitably have
00:03:09.320 | absorbed distorted, deceptive, disproportionate views of sexuality, and that affects our marriages
00:03:18.880 | and our growing old together.
00:03:21.840 | So what does the Bible say?
00:03:23.760 | Let me give you two texts and put them back to back, one about the wife of our youth and
00:03:32.880 | one about the wife of our aging.
00:03:37.400 | Proverbs 5, 19, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful doe.
00:03:47.200 | Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight.
00:03:52.440 | Be intoxicated always with her love.
00:03:56.400 | Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of
00:04:02.080 | an adulteress?"
00:04:03.080 | Well, that's pretty clear.
00:04:05.960 | Yeah.
00:04:06.960 | "Sexual desire is a good thing.
00:04:12.600 | God made it.
00:04:13.600 | It belongs in the covenant of marriage, and in that place of God-sealed commitment, it
00:04:22.920 | can be fully enjoyed for His glory."
00:04:27.640 | Now here's Malachi 2, verses 13 and 14, and he's asking the question and answering, "Why
00:04:36.400 | does the Lord no longer regard our offerings?"
00:04:40.080 | And here's what he says, "Because the Lord was witness"—this is in the past now—"The
00:04:46.400 | Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless,
00:04:54.880 | so she is your companion and your wife by covenant."
00:05:01.520 | So time passes.
00:05:04.440 | She changes.
00:05:06.400 | You change.
00:05:08.200 | And these men said, "I'm going to get another woman, younger, better skin, better breasts,
00:05:16.120 | better legs, more desire," and they leave.
00:05:21.600 | And God hates this.
00:05:23.960 | And the way Malachi underlines the evil of it is to say three things about her.
00:05:31.480 | One, "She is your companion."
00:05:35.920 | Two, "She is your wife by covenant."
00:05:40.880 | Three, "God was witness to this covenant."
00:05:45.880 | And I want to argue that God as witness, marriage as covenant, wife as companion, have
00:05:53.720 | explosively powerful, beautiful implications for affection and attraction as we grow old
00:06:03.840 | together, if those realities sink in to us as they ought.
00:06:09.360 | And to that end, here's another text.
00:06:12.080 | Proverbs 20, 29, "The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old
00:06:20.120 | men is their gray hair."
00:06:21.920 | Now here's the point.
00:06:24.080 | Youth and age have different splendors, real splendors, but different splendors.
00:06:31.760 | There's a strength and a beauty at age 25, but there's also a glory and splendor at age
00:06:37.800 | 75.
00:06:39.960 | The potential for this season of splendor, this aging season of splendor to awaken affection
00:06:48.000 | and desire, I'm arguing, is very different, yet very great.
00:06:54.240 | Here's two more texts.
00:06:56.240 | 2 Corinthians 4, 16, "Though our outer nature, our outer self is wasting away, our inner
00:07:04.640 | self is being renewed day by day, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for
00:07:10.040 | us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look," here's the important part, "as
00:07:16.440 | we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen."
00:07:24.280 | So we look not to the things that are seen.
00:07:28.920 | Our focus is not on the wasting away of our outer beauty and strength.
00:07:35.160 | Our focus is on the unseen.
00:07:38.280 | The emphasis of the text, of course, is on future glory, but I'm arguing it also applies
00:07:42.800 | to inner glory.
00:07:45.020 | We don't just look at the things that are seen, we look at the things that are unseen,
00:07:49.320 | future glory, inner glory.
00:07:51.440 | And I'm saying that this focus has a remarkable power to cause even the weakening outer person
00:08:00.120 | to be cherished, desired, touched, embraced.
00:08:06.320 | Here's 1 Peter 3 to the wives, with huge implications for husbands.
00:08:12.560 | "Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair, the putting on of gold jewelry,
00:08:20.120 | the clothing that you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden, unseen, the hidden person of
00:08:28.600 | the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's
00:08:36.160 | sight is very precious."
00:08:38.200 | There is external beauty that is perishable.
00:08:43.240 | There is internal beauty that is imperishable.
00:08:48.000 | The world gets Peter's emphasis exactly backward, and we get sucked into it as we watch and
00:08:56.160 | watch and watch.
00:08:57.160 | But my point is, if women are to prioritize inner beauty over outer beauty, then we men,
00:09:06.300 | we husbands, should grow in our capacities to see and cherish and be moved by, deeply
00:09:15.240 | moved by, physically moved by that inner beauty.
00:09:21.840 | So here's my conclusion.
00:09:23.920 | As our bodies move from the passing splendor of youth to the different splendor of age,
00:09:33.520 | we should become better at what we should have been good at all along, namely, instead
00:09:41.200 | of our outer appearances dominating the awakening of our affections, inner realities should
00:09:51.200 | more and more dominate the awakening of our affections.
00:09:57.380 | And I would put no limits on what those affections or desires might be.
00:10:04.920 | If a husband considers the glory of his marriage covenant, if he considers the wonder that
00:10:13.640 | God is a glad witness to his covenant and its keeping, if he considers that this woman
00:10:20.680 | is God's gift and is his companion for life, and that she is a fellow heir of the eternal
00:10:27.840 | grace, and that her aging is a ripening for the glory of the kingdom where she will shine
00:10:36.200 | like the sun, I bear witness, Tony, I bear witness that such amazing considerations from
00:10:46.240 | deep within the aging soul can create perceptions of delight and desire for an aging wife that
00:10:56.760 | most twenty-somethings cannot imagine.
00:11:02.260 | So out of this aged mouth, face to face with this once glamorous, now glorious companion
00:11:15.120 | come these words, "I love you.
00:11:20.200 | You are my treasure, my crown, my life companion.
00:11:26.880 | I cherish you.
00:11:28.800 | I have no eyes, no heart for any other, old or young, of all the women in the world.
00:11:38.280 | I chose you.
00:11:40.060 | I choose you still.
00:11:42.400 | I want you.
00:11:44.320 | You are precious to me.
00:11:46.120 | I want to be with you, near you.
00:11:49.560 | I want to touch you and hold you.
00:11:53.440 | You give me pleasure.
00:11:57.100 | God has been very, very good to me that I could call you mine."
00:12:03.920 | If that comes from the heart, I don't think a woman would want you to say any more about
00:12:12.400 | her looks.
00:12:14.240 | Really God-centered and countercultural.
00:12:16.200 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:18.280 | And thank you for listening along.
00:12:19.960 | Be sure to subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app or on YouTube for
00:12:23.920 | our archive of episodes or to send in a question of your own.
00:12:27.880 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:12:32.400 | Well is God's God-centeredness precious to you?
00:12:36.160 | This is one of those dividing lines when it comes to theological convictions.
00:12:40.380 | Do we see and love the fact that God is God-centered?
00:12:45.400 | That's the topic next time and I cannot think of a more important topic to address in the
00:12:49.800 | podcast.
00:12:50.800 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:51.800 | We'll see you on Wednesday.
00:12:52.640 | God bless.
00:12:53.140 | [End]
00:12:55.140 | 1. What is God-centered?
00:13:00.140 | [BLANK_AUDIO]