I first heard about the 72 Hour Club through Fancy Little Things on Facebook. Curious, I clicked around until I found the description. I thought it sounded like a great idea, but I thought to myself, “I don’t need to worry about that. We have a great sex life.”
At the time, my husband was an electrical engineer with the Air Force and I was a stay-at-home mom to our only child, who is now 10 months old. We had a great relationship, one marked with complete openness and honesty, especially in our sex life. We both shared an attitude of willingness to work on areas of our relationship where we were feeling unsatisfied.
Our lives were not too busy. We went to church and a small group every week. We were trying to save money and get out of debt, so we stayed home a lot and hung out with each other. Finding time to be intimate wasn’t really an issue.
Or so I thought.
Inspired by the 72 Hour Club, I started paying more attention to how long it had been since we had been intimate and I realized that we were not intimate nearly as often as I thought we were. Even though we weren’t super busy, my husband usually wouldn’t try to initiate intimacy until we were in bed, when I was usually tired and I really didn’t want to do anything. Being open and honest, I would tell him I was tired and didn’t feel like it, and we would go longer between encounters.
I was definitely surprised to realize this and decided to be intentional about changing it.
My 72 Hour Club journey hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be, but it has changed my perspective. I don’t say “no” to my husband as often as I did before. Instead, if I’m tired, I just tell him that he’s going to have to work to get me in the mood, and he is more than willing to oblige. I have tried to be more intentional about initiating intimacy more. I dress myself up (or down J) and tell him ahead of time that I have something special planned for when our son goes down for a nap (because I have far more energy midday!). He gets excited, we make time for it, and everyone is happy.
The biggest thing I have learned from being a part of this club is that I can’t just let myself fall into a lazy routine. I need to be purposeful about being receptive to his needs and satisfying them (even when that is more often than every 72 hours). I don’t want him to always have to be initiating. I want him to know that I desire him, and I want to keep our marriage, including our sex life, alive and vibrant.
I have also learned that I cannot be complacent about our marriage. I might think everything is coasting along just fine, but coasting is not what God wants for our marriages. He doesn’t want us to be merely making it from one day to the next. He wants our lives to abound – to abound in love, life, and happiness. One vital way to make our marriages abound is to take good care of our sex lives.
I think that we as wives often underestimate this aspect of our marriages. A wife might feel that her husband does not deserve intimacy unless he steps up his game and earns it, but this mindset is wrong. Husbands do not need to earn sexual intimacy from their wives, just like wives should not need to earn emotional intimacy from their husbands.
If you are unsatisfied with your marriage, take the 72 Hour Club challenge.
If you are perfectly satisfied with your marriage and you don’t think it could get any better, take the 72 Hour Club challenge.
You may be surprised at how much your marriage can improve, just like I was.
Julie Orfield is a stay-at-home wife to an Air Force veteran and mother to a bubbly, bouncy 10-month-old boy. She and her family currently reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has always had a passion for writing. Her first calling and passion is as a wife and mother, and she enjoys writing, reading, and crafting. Visit her personal blog at He’s Not Finished with Me Yet.
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