The Secret Behind Bonding With Your Spouse
The Secret Behind Bonding With Your Spouse
By Bradley Bennett
There is profound joy in becoming one flesh with your spouse. This process of becoming one can bring some of the greatest joy we as humans can experience on this side of heaven.
While this act of fusion is a huge part of marriage, it doesn’t just happen. The key to facilitating it within your marriage is understanding the secret behind bonding with your spouse.
Amanda and I have learned just how important bonding is within our marriage. Coming into marriage I knew that I wished to become one with Amanda, but I just didn’t know HOW to do it.
This confusion left us, at times, feeling less like the powerful, divine partnership God created and more like a marriage going through the motions.
We realized we needed a clear roadmap that would give us practical directions on how to really become one.
The Relationship Roadmap
If there is one thing I hope for you to understand it’s this…
Your marriage was not created to simply go through the motions. It is destined to be a divinely-appointed union with your spouse where you become one and experience life, love, and God on a level you could not on your own.
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” ~Genesis 2:24
For many, myself included, this sounds great. But at the same time, it can seem daunting when your relationship doesn’t look anything like that. Instead of one flesh, you feel like two parts trying to just hold on.
When your marriage feels like this it’s easy for specific symptoms to creep in. A few things to look for are:
- Depression
- Pain
- Anger
- Unhappiness
- Distrust
Taking your marriage from where it is right now to where you desire it to be can seem like an impossible task. It can feel like you are trying to reach a destination without any details on how to actually get there.
What you need is a clear roadmap that will help you go from where you are to where you want to be. Understanding the secret behind bonding with your spouse will help you begin the process and grow towards becoming one with each passing day.
The Process of Bonding
Bonding is the act of creating bonds, whether physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual with another person. It’s a critical part of any fulfilling relationship and as research has found, actually a core physical need all humans have.
We need to feel bonded to others. When broken down, it’s a combination of three things:
- Emotional Openness
- Physical Closeness
- Safety
The secret to bonding with your spouse lies in understanding and meeting each other’s needs.
We each have core emotional and physiological needs we desire to have met. These needs can be many things and range from security to approval. When these needs are met, we experience pleasure and feel loved. The flip side is also true, though, when our needs are not met we experience pain and feel unloved.
The difference between these needs and our physical needs, like eating and breathing, is that we can’t meet them ourselves. They can only be met through the context of relationships. We need others!
When those around us meet our needs we experience pleasure, feel loved, and begin to bond with them.
Meet The Need!
As a spouse, this should feel like a slam dunk for you! In order to bond with your spouse, you only need to have one goal: Meet The Need!
By being intentional to understand your spouse’s needs and meet them, you will help them experience pleasure and feel loved within your marriage. The power comes from making your marriage a place where you each commit to meet the need daily.
“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” ~Hebrews 3:13
Making this a daily practice within your marriage is the secret behind bonding. It checks all three of the needed areas for bonding.
Sharing your deepest emotional needs helps to promote emotional openness and vulnerability. This process helps you feel fully known.
Safety is promoted within your marriage once you begin to daily meet each other’s needs. Over time this builds trust that it’s okay to be vulnerable and open with each other. You will begin to rely on your marriage as a safe place where your needs will be met.
Begin Bonding Today
Bonding is a wonderful part of any healthy marriage. It’s the process by which we begin to become one with our spouse and grow closer to them.
The secret to bonding within your marriage lies in understanding each other’s needs and then committing to meet them daily. Once Amanda and I became intentional about this, we noticed we began to take significant strides towards the marriage we wanted.
My hope is that you would feel encouraged and empowered to begin taking steps in your marriage, too. The process of bonding with your spouse can seem confusing. I pray this has helped you gain some clarity on how you can begin doing it in your marriage.
Simply aim to meet the need daily and you will be well on your way to creating a marriage where you are bonding and becoming one flesh.
The Relationship Roadmap
If there is one thing I hope for you to understand it’s this…
Your marriage was not created to simply go through the motions. It is destined to be a divinely-appointed union with your spouse where you become one and experience life, love, and God on a level you could not on your own.
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” ~Genesis 2:24
For many, myself included, this sounds great. But at the same time, it can seem daunting when your relationship doesn’t look anything like that. Instead of one flesh, you feel like two parts trying to just hold on.
When your marriage feels like this it’s easy for specific symptoms to creep in. A few things to look for are:
- Depression
- Pain
- Anger
- Unhappiness
- Distrust
Taking your marriage from where it is right now to where you desire it to be can seem like an impossible task. It can feel like you are trying to reach a destination without any details on how to actually get there.
What you need is a clear roadmap that will help you go from where you are to where you want to be. Understanding the secret behind bonding with your spouse will help you begin the process and grow towards becoming one with each passing day.