WE PREPARE THEM FOR MARRIAGE. BUT DO WE PREPARE THEM FOR INTIMACY?

For more than 40 years, I have worked with women and couples, and there is something I am becoming increasingly concerned about.

We spend enormous time and care preparing a young couple for marriage. A kallah learns the halachos from her kallah teacher. A chosson learns from his chosson teacher. This preparation is essential.

But then the wedding takes place.

And suddenly, two young people are expected to know how to create an intimate relationship, not simply how to observe the halachos surrounding it, but how to communicate, how to understand one another, how to become comfortable with their own bodies and each other’s, how to talk about pleasure, disappointment, desire, differences, expectations and vulnerability.

Who teaches them that?

Too often, nobody does.

And when young people have questions they are embarrassed to ask…or questions their teachers were never trained to answer, they go where information is readily available: the internet.

Sometimes, unfortunately, that means pornography.

Pornography doesn’t teach intimacy. It doesn’t teach tenderness, communication, respect, patience or emotional connection. It presents a distorted performance and calls it sexuality. And when that becomes someone’s education, those images and expectations can enter the marriage with them.

I don’t believe the answer is to criticize our kallah teachers or chosson teachers. This is an opportunity where I can step in. They are doing the job they were trained to do.

I believe we need to add another layer.

For some time, I have been working with kallah teachers to help them move beyond teaching alone and develop coaching skills so they can remain a resource during that critical first year of marriage.

But I have also come to realize that there is another need.

After the kallah and chosson have completed their traditional preparation, I would like couples to have the opportunity for an additional kind of preparation, separately, one on one, that does not replace their teachers, their rabbanim or their halachic guidance, but adds to it.

A safe, private and appropriate place where a couple can receive real-life education about intimacy before they are left to figure it out for themselves.

We need to be able to discuss subjects that may feel uncomfortable or even taboo, because avoiding those conversations doesn’t mean the questions disappear.

It simply means our young people may look somewhere else for the answers.

My goal has never been to make our community less modest.

My goal is to give couples the knowledge they need so they can build marriages that are more connected, more loving, more intimate and more likely to last.

I believe we can do better than telling a young couple what is permitted and then hoping they somehow figure out the rest.

We can teach them.

We can prepare them.

And perhaps, by doing so, we can save marriages before they ever need saving.

— Sarah
The Secrets of Jewish Women