Week 7…. Intimacy and Family Life

Our discussions this week focused on Sexual intimacy and fidelity.  Both topics are ones that I felt fairly sure of and comfortable with.  I do not feel any need to elaborate on these in my blog.  However one thing that seemed to become clearer to me this week was something that we have talked about each week since the beginning of the semester.  That is of family systems and boundaries.  We have studied and talked about this a lot but I really liked the analogy of the picket fence, especially as it relates to the boundaries of the husband and wife relationship. 

A picket fence has a very specific design. It is clean, white draws a clear line yet is still open to others.  This type of fence has a clear understanding of where to enter and exit the yard that it is around.  The actual design of a common picket fence has pointed tops on the pickets, which make it very uncomfortable to sit on.  This makes so much sense that this type of fence would be used to symbolize the boundaries of a marriage. There is no “sitting on the fence” when it comes to boundaries in a marriage. We need to be on one side or the other when it comes to knowing when to allow others in or not.  It is important to have this kind of fence around our marriage so that we can have the interaction with others, including our children and extended families but also know when to keep things between husband and wife.