Teaching about Physical Intimacy

Physical intimacy is an important element of married love, but more is required to achieve a pure love.

President Spencer W. Kimball taught: “Your love, like a flower, must be nourished. There will come a great love and interdependence between you, for your love is a divine one. It is deep, inclusive, comprehensive. It is not like that association of the world which is misnamed love, but which is mostly physical attraction. When marriage is based on this only, the parties soon tire of each other. There is a break and a divorce, and a new, fresher physical attraction comes with another marriage which in turn may last only until it, too, becomes stale. The love of which the Lord speaks is not only physical attraction, but spiritual attraction as well. It is faith and confidence in, and understanding of, one another. It is a total partnership. It is companionship with common ideals and standards. It is unselfishness toward and sacrifice for one another. It is cleanliness of thought and action and faith in God and his program. It is parenthood in mortality ever looking toward godhood and creationship, and parenthood of spirits. It is vast, all-inclusive, and limitless. This kind of love never tires or wanes. It lives on through sickness and sorrow, through prosperity and privation, through accomplishment and disappointment, through time and eternity”

 President Kimball also explained, “The Lord organized the whole program in the beginning with a father who procreates, provides, and loves and directs, and a mother who conceives and bears and nurtures and feeds and trains. The Lord could have organized it otherwise but chose to have a unit with responsibility and purposeful associations”

Our ultimate goal within our family should be to prepare our sons and daughters to be worthy of the great blessings the Lord has promised them if they are true and faithful. One of the greatest responsibilities a person ever takes upon himself is that of preparing a child for these eternal possibilities.

There are many things we can do, of course, but there are three very important ideas that relate particularly to giving your children an eternal understanding of the role of human intimacy:

1. Teach your children what a righteous parent is, by example and precept.
2. Teach your children the roles that God has ordained for men and women to fill in this life and throughout eternity.
3. Teach your children to use their procreative powers in the way God has commanded so that they can establish righteous families here and be worthy to lead families in eternity

Obeying the Lord’s counsel on intimacy helps us have a happy marriage.