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Belief systems are as important, perhaps more important, to sexuality as any other area of life. Developing a shared belief system is central to super marital sex. This is why marriage offers a unique opportunity for intimacy, for it provides the time and opportunity for spiritual growth through life changes.

I ask my couples to find a belief system that they can share actively, either by going to a church, synagogue, or other place of worship or doing volunteer work or other activities that make the belief system come to life. While therapists seldom discuss such issues with their patients, I find this one of the most if not the most productive area for improving intimacy.

This sig has been one of the most rewarding and one of the most difficult for the couples. “I have been a noninvolved Catholic all of my life. I don’t know what I can do about it now,” said one husband.

“I’m a cultural Jew,” answered his wife. “I don’t believe in institutional religion.”

I asked this couple to talk things over together for a while, perhaps on their walk. To achieve super marital sex, you need a commonly acted open belief system, a transitional life philosophy that binds you together beyond problem-solving and day-to-day living and loving. Talk to a rabbi, a priest, or clergyperson you can both relate to. Do not neglect this part of your relationship. Retrace together the origins of your “life philosophies.” These philosophies are related to the couples’ love maps.

To help with this, I suggest a once-a-day mutual prayer during which both partners sit or kneel silently and listen together, receive together a sense of connection, a sense of oneness. It is nonpeti-tionary because it is not a way of asking for something, but a way of tuning in to the connection between the relationship and the universe. It allows for a quiet, steady time together that may help in the development of a strong mutual belief system, even if the religious backgrounds of the spouses are very different.

A recent study by Patricia Weenolsen of Seattle University suggests that we are constantly re-creating the relationship between our inner selves and our outer world. She discovered that people fell into four categories regarding this issue. One group focused on the idea of a supreme being and cosmic purpose. A second stressed a cosmic purpose of transcendence, a spiritual view of life not associated with a deity. A third group ascribed the meaning of life to an individual goal for living, such as making a certain amount of money. A fourth group focused on individual goals of a more general nature, such as being happy or loving. I have used this framework to help some of the reluctant couples begin their discussions about “the meaning of life.” In the order of the examples of Weenolsen’s categories, are you cosmic-specific, cosmic-general, individual-specific, or individual-general in your view of the purpose of life?

“It was so awkward at first, but after a while, it was almost magic, almost mystical. We could feel it together,” reported one wife. “It wasn’t like religion, or just a ritual. It was ours. I guess we were both cosmic-general and didn’t know it.”

The husband reported, “I thought it was really proselytizing at first. I thought you were selling the church, passing the plate. But it turned out to be something very special to us. We don’t really have a common belief system like you said, but we are closer. That quiet time is special. There is no other word for it, just special.”

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