The Importance of Non-Sexual Touch

According to Gary Chapman’s best-selling book, “The Five Love Languages” physical touch is one of the ways in which we express love to one another. To us, as guys, this sounds great. We all tend to think that sexual intimacy not only fulfills this role of expressing love, but is something to enjoy as well.

Unfortunately, our wives don’t see it that way. To them, sexual expressions of love are pretty-much one way; that is, them expressing love to us, but not receiving it from us. Part of that is because we’re the ones with the strong sexual desire. So, to our wives, our sexual encounters aren’t about us expressing our love towards them, as much as they are about us having our needs be satisfied by them.

Another part of this problem can be that most women don’t receive enough sexual orgasms to really believe that when they have sex, they’ll have an orgasm. There are a number of reasons for this, both emotional and physical. Some common ones are:

• Lack of sexual frequency – The less frequent, the harder it is for her to have an orgasm
• Lack of sufficient stimulation – When it’s over quick, she doesn’t get enough stimulation to have an orgasm
• Emotional hurts – Whether we realize it or not, we’re pretty good at unintentionally hurting our wives
• No emotional connection – For a woman to have an orgasm, she needs to have a solid emotional connection with her husband outside of the bed
• Not feeling loved – Yes, for her, it’s not the sex that makes her feel loved, sex comes out of feeling loved
• Tiredness – By bedtime, most women are exhausted. They don’t have the emotional or physical energy to invest in lovemaking
• Lack of romance – This ties in with “not feeling loved.” When romance is lacking in the marriage, she feels like sex is a chore, not a joy
• Poor self-esteem – A woman’s self-esteem affects her ability to enjoy sex. If she’s self-conscious about being overweight, she won’t want to be seen, even though you want to see her. If she’s feeling bad about herself, she’ll feel as if she can’t be loved.

This list is by no means complete, nor is it intended to be. These are just some of the more common reasons why a woman won’t receive a sexual orgasm. Okay, so what does that have to do with touch?

Since men have such a strong sexual desire, when we touch our wives, there are pretty much always some sexual thoughts running around someplace in our minds. Our original intention may not have been sexual, but the act of touching her often brings about those thoughts. We typically follow them, to see where they might lead.

The result of that is that our wives think that every time we touch them, we’re just after sex. While I’d have to say that there is some element of truth to that supposition, it’s actually blocking non-sexual intimacy in the marriage.

There is nothing wrong with sex playing a major role in the marriage; it should. But, sex shouldn’t be something that puts our wives on guard, it should be something that we enjoy together as a couple. If touch leads to sex, that’s not a problem; but if it doesn’t lead to sex, that shouldn’t be a problem either. Physical touch, whether sexual or non-sexual is an important part of maintaining emotional intimacy in the marriage.

Our wives need to learn that just because we touch them, that doesn’t mean that we’re expecting to jump in bed (or the sofa, or the kitchen table). They need to realize that touch, in and of itself, is an important expression of love.

Okay, so we beat on our wives for their wrong attitudes, right? Wrong! The only way that our wives are going to be able to accept touch as an expression of non-sexual love is when they can experientially see that our touch doesn’t mean “sex.” In other words, we’re going to have to show them. We’re going to have to start touching them, in ways that aren’t sexual and without sexual goals. That’s the only thing that is going to make it so that they don’t think every touch is about sex.

It’s only when our wives can accept our touch as being about something other than sex that they can begin to accept it as being an expression of love. So, give her lots of non-sexual touch, so that she can begin to receive that type of expression of love as well.

• Hugs
• Backrubs
• Foot rubs
• Lightly touching her back or the back of her neck
• Cuddling in bed
• Cuddling on the sofa

You get the idea. Of course, those things can and sometimes do lead to sex. But, the point is that they don’t have to. That’s the point that you need to get across to her. But first, you need to get it across to yourself.

What’s Her Romance Language?

Have you ever done something that you thought was supremely romantic for your wife, only to have your great romantic act ignored or even refused? It’s probably happened to all of us at least once or twice. 

There might be a number of different reasons why that happened; anything from it being the wrong time of the month to you having done that particular act too many times in the last month. Regardless of the reason, it always bothers us; the rejection of our act of love makes us feel as if we’ve been rejected.

Don’t let yourself get caught up in that feeling of being rejected; it’s dangerous! It will kill your desire to continue being romantic faster than anything. When it happens, just realize that there’s probably something else which is causing her to act that way, something that has nothing to do with you.

However, if your wife regularly overlooks a particular type of romantic act, that should be a clue to you, telling you that you’re not speaking her language. It’s about as if you were writing her love poems, but she couldn’t read. That wouldn’t work out all that well. In the same way, speaking romance in a different language than she understands doesn’t work out all that well.

You see, each of us has our own romance language. It’s both the way that we express love and the way that we understand it. When others speak our romance language, it’s like the words have been underlined, made bold and highlighted in yellow. Finding out what her romance language is will give you a great boost up in being able to get the most impact out of your romantic acts.

When I’m talking about romance languages, what I’m really talking about is love languages. After all, isn’t romance all about expressing love? Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages” does a great job of explaining those five languages and showing us how to use them. In case you haven’t read the book yet (you should), here are the five languages:

• Words of affirmation
• Acts of service
• Gifts
• Physical touch
• Quality time

Now, if your love language is acts of service, you’ve probably been trying to be romantic to your wife by doing things for her. That’s great, acts of service is a great way to be romantic. But, if your wife’s love language is words of affirmation, you may not be reaching her as well as you want to. She probably appreciates your acts of service, but it doesn’t have the impact on her that words of affirmation will.

That doesn’t mean that you should stop doing acts of service. By all means, continue doing them. But, at the same time, add words of affirmation to your vocabulary of romance. Find ways to tell her that you love her. Even more, find ways to tell her what a great woman, wife, mother and all around person you think she is. That’s what she’s craving and that’s what’s going to do her the most good.

After all, being romantic towards your wife is all about her anyway, so you might as well make sure that you’re really focusing on her and on what works for her. You can still use the other ways of being romantic, but use them to round out the basic expression of love, which is done in her love language.

Doing this will make every romantic act you do have all that much more impact? Why? Because you’re satisfying her most basic need for love. That makes everything else look that much better in her eyes. 

Touch her Tenderly

According to Gary Chapman’s great book, The Five Love Languages, one of the ways we express and understand love is through physical touch. I think we could all say that Gary hit the nail right on the head with that one. While we, as guys, see sex as an expression of love, he goes much farther, saying that physical touch in general, not just that which happens in lovemaking is an expression of love.

Touching is such an important part of expressing our love that God gave it biological significance. What I mean by that is that God created the body to react to touch in a way that increases the felling of love.

The chemical oxytocin is released into our bodies through physical touch. While this hormone hasn’t been studied as thoroughly as the better known hormones, in the last 10 years, scientists have been looking much closer at it. Like all hormones, this one has an emotional effect as well, that of making one feel in love. So, physical touch actually increases the feeling of being in love with one another.

Granted, it takes the right kind of physical contact to produce this feeling. Hitting someone isn’t going to make them love you, no matter how much you do it; nor any other type of rough treatment either. It takes a soft, loving touch to cause oxyticin to be released.

Actually, a woman’s skin is much more sensitive than a man’s is. Therefore, the soft touch is extremely important. Many women complain that their husbands touch them much too roughly, especially touching their genitals much too roughly. While that soft touch may be annoying to you, it’s a delight to her. A perfect touch to a woman is as light as a feather.

Remember when you were a teen out on a date, and you finally got up enough nerve to put your arm around the girl? What did you do then? You probably started running your finger around in little circles on her arm, right? Well, guess what, that was the right thing to do. All you needed to do different is broaden the area, so that you didn’t rub her skin raw in that one spot (women’s skin rubs raw easier than ours does).

Touching her intimately isn’t just limited to her erogenous zones either. A woman’s whole body is sensitive to touch. My wife likes it when I touch the back of her neck lightly, or when I rub my fingers lightly across her scalp, through her hair. It almost doesn’t matter where I touch her, what matters is how I touch her.

We as men are designed to be strong and touch. Our wives appreciate that part of us, especially when it comes to protecting them. However, there’s no place for that in expressing love to her. In that case, the light touch conveys a lot of tenderness, caring and love. Someone once said, “Strength is made great in tenderness.” Well, show your strength to your wife by touching her tenderly.

The other nice thing about this is it’s a way that you can show love to your wife anywhere and anytime. While she might not feel comfortable with you kissing her in public, she probably won’t have a problem with you rubbing the balls of your fingers lightly over the back of her neck in public. So, take advantage of that and show your wife love wherever you are.