“Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well. Should your springs flow in the streets, streams in the public squares? They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers. Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth. A loving deer, a graceful doe—let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.” (Proverbs‬ ‭5‬:‭15‬-‭19‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

After God made the first woman, He brought her to the first man to be his partner, his wife. And the first man, seeing her for the first time, was so excited that he broke into song. God designed marriage to be a good thing. He created it to be good for us and glorifying for Him. Today, though, it is often treated as something less than that. Yet when we get it right, it is a still a blessing. Let’s talk about some of Solomon’s wisdom for doing that.

Romance novels are an easy sell. Women love reading them (and I suspect some men do, but they probably wouldn’t admit to it). Many are what a friend of mine once labeled “chick porn,” but most try a little harder to present love as something good and true and beautiful rather than being little more than highbrow erotic fiction. But while romance novel authors are about a dime a dozen and nobody actually knows who they are, a few have risen to the level household names whose books regularly get turned into movies. One of the most famous of the bunch is Nicholas Sparks.

Sparks has had eleven of his novels turned into movies. I’ve seen three of them. The first was A Walk to Remember. That one was pretty wholesome and featured the music of Switchfoot, one of my favorite bands. It featured Mandy Moore when she was still at the beginning of her career. The other two were Nights in Rodanthe and The Notebook. Those were much more famous than A Walk to Remember, but The Notebook was far and away the biggest hit of the three. It has been the biggest hit of any of his movies.

The last two movies there were both well-told stories, but I honestly didn’t care for either of them because they were both about women finding their “true love” and having affairs. This was definitely less pronounced in The Notebook since the main character wasn’t yet married when she found her way back to her first love, but in Nights in Rodanthe, the protagonist (Dianne Lane) was married when she found her “soulmate.”

Our culture has long glorified infidelity in the name of a pursuit of “true love.” It has long treated the marriage covenant more like a contract with an escape clause that includes all sorts of reasons that justify treating the whole thing like it is null and void. Hollywood has treated infidelity like it is just no big deal. Somewhat encouragingly, this is a point where the culture, by survey, has not gotten the message. In spite of a relentless (and alarmingly successful) campaign to weaken the institution spanning decades, we still look at marriage as something at least somewhat more sacred than the average relationship.

If you want your marriage to be something that actually lasts “until death does you part,” there’s a whole lot of work that goes into it. A significant part of that work should be focused on strengthening the two becoming one flesh part that God designed to be one of the most intimate parts of the whole experience. Solomon agrees. “Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well.”

A part of the gift that is marriage that God gave us in the beginning is that it is the one place where sexual desires can be freely and fully satisfied. There are no restraints there beyond what the husband and wife (and only the husband and wife) are both comfortable with pursuing together. This doesn’t mean that getting sex right is always easy. It takes work; sometimes hard work. But it is work that should happen together and the satisfaction of getting it right should be enjoyed together.

When things are not going the way you’d like them to go, there are not circumstances in which drinking water from somebody else’s cistern or simply a puddle you’ve found on the side of the road is okay to do. It doesn’t matter what you are feeling in the moment. It doesn’t matter what you think your needs are. Your feelings should never be your singular, let alone primary, guide in these matters, and you can convince yourself of needs that you don’t actually have. You have one cistern to drink from. Stick with that one. Period.

Besides, you wouldn’t want anything else to happen if the situation were reversed, right? “Should your springs flow in the streets, streams in the public squares? They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers.” Part of this is simply following the Golden Rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Don’t treat others the way they have treated you. Be proactive. Love your spouse as you want your spouse to love you. Learn to speak not only his or her love language, but to speak it in their particular dialect.

The intimacy you share together should be for the two of you and the two of you alone. That’s how God designed it to work. “Let your foundation be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth. A loving deer, a graceful doe—let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.”

God designed every part of marriage to be a blessing, and some parts are particularly enjoyable. He made them that way on purpose because He is a good God. It is good and right to enjoy those together. If you’re not, that’s not a time to panic or seek other cisterns. It’s a time for conversation and honesty and even outside help in the form of a therapist if need be. Pursue the good God has given you together, even in challenging times, and you will delight together in experiencing the fullness of His goodness.