Told to Enjoy Her

It surprises some men to find that God, in the middle of a warning about the forbidden woman, turns and tells a husband to delight in his wife. Solomon writes, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth, and be intoxicated always in her love." God is not squeamish about a husband's desire. He made it, and he means for it to have a home.

The tragedy of pornography is that it trains a man to want a thousand strangers and to grow bored with the one woman he vowed to cherish. It splinters desire into something restless that no image ever satisfies. What Solomon describes is a settled and repeated joy in one person over many years, the opposite of that restlessness.

If your wife has become ordinary to you while pixels feel exciting, the appetite has been bent, and it can be straightened. Ask God to give you fresh eyes for the woman across the table, to make her lovely to you again, to teach you the unhurried pleasure of loving one person well. That prayer honors both her and the God who gave her to you.