Life, Marriage and Intimacy Will Always Have Some Risk

I’ve been contemplating some changes in some tech tools I use to run my business. It feels risky.

I’m mitigating the risk by doing research and talking to people who have more expertise than me, but ultimately I know I can’t remove all the unknowns.

There is always going to be some risk. Trading a known (a tool with which I am familiar) for an unknown (a tool that comes with a new learning curve but may be better for me) is causing me some trepidation. I have to decide if the investment is worth working through the risks and the unknowns.

And so it is with life and marriage.

We can mitigate risk, use our best judgment and strive to make well-informed decisions. But if we think we will get to a point where there is no risk, we ironically risk even more. If we wait until there isn’t even an ounce of uncertainty, we will wait indefinitely. And if we stay in a comfortable place, possibly because we don’t want to rock the boat, then we may risk missing out on the positive that could happen if we do rock the boat.

The “what ifs” aren’t just about what could go wrong; the “what ifs” also encapsulate what could go right.

If there have been sexual struggles in your marriage, I know it can be risky to deal with those or even to shed light on them. 

Maybe the struggles have been building for a long time. Or maybe they are just starting and you sense they won’t go away on their own. The struggles may be fueled by issues between you and your spouse. Or they may be hidden in the crevices of your heart and past—open wounds, skewed messages, and misunderstood experiences that have taken a hard toll on sex in your marriage.

It all feels risky to start to peel back the layers, doesn’t it?

You don’t know what you’ll feel. You don’t know how your spouse will react. Or you have a pretty good idea how they will react, and it feels cumbersome and nerve-racking to embark on such an encounter.

I don’t know your situation, and certainly I don’t want to insinuate that there is anything easy about looking at something risky and moving forward anyway.

I’m not particularly enjoying the anxiety I’m feeling about switching to a different tech tool for my business, so far be it from me to say the much more consequential risk of addressing sexual struggles should be taken lightly.

Even so, I keep coming back to this.

Life, marriage and intimacy will always have some risk.

I’ve known couples who ignored sexual struggles for years, much to the detriment of their relationship. When they do finally push past the risk and start to work on healing the damage done, they often say they wish they would have done it sooner.

Are there guarantees things will go well and sexual intimacy will be restored in your marriage? No. There are no guarantees. There’s that risk we’ve been talking about. What is guaranteed if you do nothing is that the status quo of struggles will likely continue.

Rarely do sexual struggles solve themselves.

Is there risk that you will shed light and your spouse won’t embrace your vision on improving the sexual connection in your relationship? Yes. There definitely is that risk.

And I wish there wasn’t. Oh how I wish there wasn’t.

I’m kind of in the camp, though, that a person bringing up a topic that needs to be addressed can at least know they did their part in trying to move the status quo from unhealthy to healthy. That may feel like little consolation, but I think the alternative doesn’t feel great either—pretending as if something is no big deal when indeed it is a big deal.

As for me and my tech tool dilemma, I know I need to make a decision. I’m leaning toward making a change in tools, even though I can’t completely shed myself of all the risk. I also can’t lose sight of the fact that once I make a change—even if I know it is for the better—there still will be a fair amount of work to get the most out of the new tool.

That’s how risk works. There may be challenges or rewards (or both!) on the other side of the risk, but we never know unless we step in that direction.

As it is with business tools, it also is with life, marriage and intimacy.

For more reading, you can cruise through my list of past posts, as well as my page with a bunch of posts on orgasm.

Copyright 2020, Julie Sibert. Intimacy in Marriage Blog. Links may be monetized.

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