01/01/2026
Intimacy in Three Movements: Knowing, Revealing, and Caring
A Hebrew Vision for Healthy and Mature Relationships
By Dr. Richard Marks
Copyright © RelateWell Institute. All rights reserved.
In our English vocabulary, we ask the word "intimacy" to carry an enormous burden. We use it to describe emotional closeness, vulnerability, s*xual union, trust, deep connection, and much more, yet we rarely pause to define what we actually mean. The result is that intimacy becomes a vague aspiration rather than a concrete relational practice. We long for it, pursue it, and feel its absence, but we struggle to understand how to build it or sustain it.
The Hebrew Scriptures offer us something far more substantive. Rather than reducing intimacy to a single concept or feeling, the biblical narrative reveals intimacy as a way of relating, a series of interconnected movements that, when practiced with maturity and character, create the conditions for deep, enduring connection. Three Hebrew concepts in particular illuminate this vision: Yada (knowing), Sod (revealing), and Sakan (caring). Together, these form a holistic framework for understanding what true intimacy looks like and how it develops.
At RelateWell Institute, we've observed that when these three movements are lived out through the character qualities of Humility, Respect, Empathy, and Goodwill, what we call the HREG framework, intimacy becomes safe, sustainable, and life-giving. Without HREG, even well-intentioned attempts at intimacy can deteriorate into dependency, manipulation, or emotional exhaustion. But when these movements are grounded in mature character, intimacy flourishes in ways that strengthen rather than deplete us.
What's particularly striking is that these three movements aren't limited to romantic relationships. They form the foundation for all meaningful human connections, in marriage, parenting, leadership, pastoral ministry, and friendship. When we understand intimacy through this lens, we discover that the same character-based practices that deepen marital connection also transform how we parent our children, lead our teams, and shepherd God's people.
Yada: To Know Deeply
Intimacy Begins with Relational Knowing
The Hebrew verb yada means far more than intellectual awareness or surface-level familiarity. It conveys personal, experiential, and deeply relational knowing. Throughout Scripture, yada describes a kind of knowledge that involves presence, attentiveness, emotional engagement, and ongoing responsibility. This is not the detached observation of a researcher studying a subject; it is the immersive knowing of someone who enters another person's world with curiosity and care.
When Genesis tells us that "Adam knew Eve," it's describing far more than a physical encounter. The word points to comprehensive knowledge, encompassing emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical domains. It suggests a knowing that engages the whole person: heart, mind, body, and will. This kind of knowing takes time. It cannot be rushed, manufactured, or downloaded. It develops through consistent presence, patient attention, and genuine curiosity about who the other person truly is.
The Character Foundation of Knowing
Yada requires humility because deep knowing begins with the recognition that another person is not fully knowable, predictable, or controllable. The moment we assume we have someone "figured out," we stop truly seeing them. Humility keeps us curious, open, and willing to discover that there is always more to learn, even about someone we've known for decades.
Yada also requires respect because to truly know someone is to honor their complexity, dignity, autonomy, and boundaries. Respect recognizes that knowing another person is a privilege, not a right. It means we don't demand access to every corner of their interior world simply because we want it. Mature knowing listens more than it assumes, asks more than it tells, and creates space for the other person to reveal themselves at their own pace.
Without humility and respect, knowing becomes intrusive, controlling, or presumptuous. We begin to treat others as objects to be analyzed rather than persons to be honored. We categorize, label, and reduce them to predictable patterns, missing the fullness of who they are. This isn't intimacy, it's intellectual colonization.
With HREG, however, knowing becomes the foundation upon which all other forms of intimacy are built. It creates a relational space where both people can be fully themselves without fear of being diminished, dismissed, or defined by the other's limited perspective.
Yada in Marriage: The Lifelong Journey of Discovery
In marriage, yada is never complete. Your spouse is not a static entity to be fully understood and filed away. They are a living person who continues to grow, change, and develop throughout life. The husband who assumes he knows everything about his wife after ten years of marriage has stopped truly knowing her. The wife who believes her husband is entirely predictable has ceased to see him with fresh eyes.
Marital intimacy requires ongoing curiosity. What brings your spouse joy today may be different from what delighted them five years ago. The wounds that once defined their responses may be healing, creating new capacities for trust and vulnerability. Or new seasons, career transitions, health challenges, the empty nest may reveal dimensions of their personality you've never seen before.
Yada in marriage means asking questions you think you already know the answers to. It means paying attention to the slight shifts in mood, energy, and interest. It means creating regular space for conversation that goes deeper than logistics and task management. It means resisting the temptation to finish your spouse's sentences or assume you know what they're thinking. The most intimate marriages are those where both partners remain students of one another for life.
Yada in Parenting: Seeing the Child Before You
Perhaps nowhere is yada more critical, and more commonly neglected, than in parenting. Too often, we parent the child we expected, the child we wish we had, or the child we remember being, rather than the actual child standing before us. We project our own experiences, fears, and dreams onto them without taking the time to know who they truly are.
Biblical parenting begins with humble, respectful knowing. It recognizes that even though we gave birth to or are raising this child, they are not ours to script or control. They are image-bearers of God with their own temperaments, strengths, struggles, and callings. Our job is not to mold them into a predetermined shape but to know them well enough to steward their development wisely.
This means observing how your child processes emotion, are they internal processors who need time alone, or do they need to talk things through immediately? It means noticing what genuinely motivates them versus what you wish motivated them. It means recognizing that discipline strategies that work beautifully for one child may be entirely counterproductive for another, because they are different people with different needs.
Yada in parenting also means staying curious as children grow. The child you knew at seven is not the same person at fourteen. Adolescence especially requires parents to resist the temptation to rely on outdated knowledge and instead pursue a fresh understanding of who their child is becoming. The most connected parent-child relationships are those where parents remain humble learners throughout every developmental stage.
Yada in Leadership: Understanding Those You Lead
Effective leadership is impossible without yada. Leaders who don't genuinely know their people, their strengths, limitations, values, and aspirations, inevitably lead through assumptions, projections, and one-size-fits-all approaches that leave people feeling unseen and underutilized.
The best leaders I've worked with are insatiably curious about their team members. They ask questions. They observe patterns. They pay attention to what energizes people and what drains them. They notice when someone's engagement shifts, and they create space to understand why. They resist the temptation to reduce people to their job descriptions or their most recent performance review.
This kind of knowing requires time, one-on-one conversations that go beyond task updates, team environments where people feel safe bringing their whole selves, and attentiveness to the unspoken dynamics that reveal what people genuinely care about. Leaders who practice yada don't just know their team's skills; they know their stories. They understand the experiences that have shaped them, the dreams that drive them, and the fears that sometimes hold them back.
Yada in leadership also means having the humility to recognize that you don't fully understand the challenges your team faces, especially if you're several levels removed from front-line work. It means asking "What am I missing?" and "What don't I see from my position?" and listening to the answers. The most trusted leaders are those who know their people well enough to lead them wisely.
Yada in Pastoral Ministry: The Shepherd Knows His Sheep
Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me" (John 10:14). This is yada at its most profound, the knowing that creates safety, trust, and flourishing. Pastoral ministry that lacks yada becomes programmatic, transactional, and ultimately ineffective at shepherding real people through real struggles.
Too many pastors know their congregants as attendance statistics, giving units, or volunteers filling necessary roles. They can recite theological positions but can't name the specific burdens their people are carrying. They preach generically because they don't know their flock specifically. This isn't shepherding; it's religious management.
Biblical pastoral care requires the hard work of knowing. It means learning names and remembering them. It means asking about the job situation someone mentioned three months ago. It means noticing when someone who's usually present has been absent and reaching out to check on them. It means understanding the unique spiritual formation needs of different people rather than assuming everyone grows the same way.
Yada in pastoral ministry also means having the humility to recognize that you cannot deeply know everyone in a large congregation. This is why healthy churches develop systems of care, small groups, pastoral teams, lay shepherds, that distribute the work of knowing across many people. The senior pastor may not know every member intimately, but someone should. No one in a healthy church should be unknown.
Sod: To Reveal and Confide
Intimacy Grows Through Trusted Disclosure
The Hebrew word sod refers to confidential sharing, trusted counsel, and the kind of inner-circle closeness where sacred things can be spoken. In Scripture, sod often refers to the intimate counsel of God or to the trusted circle of advisors with whom a king could talk freely. The concept implies that something valuable and vulnerable is being entrusted, not exposed, exploited, or carelessly handled.
This distinction is crucial. Revelation in the biblical sense is never reckless self-disclosure. It is relationally earned and carefully held. It happens in relationships where safety has been established, where confidentiality is honored, and where what is shared will be received with care rather than judgment.
The Character Foundation of Revelation
Sod depends fundamentally on empathy, the capacity to receive another person's inner world without immediately correcting, minimizing, fixing, or distancing ourselves from what we hear. When empathy is absent, people hide. They learn to present edited versions of themselves because the whole truth feels too dangerous. But when empathy is genuinely present, people risk telling the truth about their fears, longings, regrets, and hopes.
Sod also requires goodwill, the settled intention to use whatever is revealed for the other person's benefit, never as leverage, currency, or ammunition. Immature relationships collect information about others to use when convenient. Mature relationships steward vulnerability as sacred trust. They protect what has been shared, honor the courage it took to share it, and refuse to weaponize it later during conflict or disappointment.
Where sod is honored, intimacy deepens. People feel known not just factually but emotionally. They experience the profound relief of being fully seen and still entirely accepted. But where sod is violated, where confidences are betrayed, where vulnerability is mocked, where what was shared in trust is later used against the person, intimacy doesn't just stall; it collapses. And rebuilding it becomes exponentially more difficult.
Sod in Marriage: Creating a Sanctuary for Truth
The health of a marriage can often be measured by what spouses feel safe revealing to one another. In thriving marriages, sod creates a relational sanctuary where both partners can bring their full truth, their doubts, desires, disappointments, and dreams, without fear of contempt, dismissal, or relational consequences.
This means a wife can share that she's struggling with attraction to a coworker, not because she intends to act on it, but because she needs help navigating a vulnerable moment. It means a husband can admit he's terrified about a career decision without being told to "man up" or having his competence questioned. It means both partners can acknowledge when they're feeling distant, overwhelmed, or even ambivalent about the relationship without the conversation immediately escalating into crisis.
Sod in marriage requires both partners to receive vulnerability with empathy rather than defensiveness. When your spouse risks revealing something difficult, your first response should not be self-protection or problem-solving but compassionate presence. "Thank you for trusting me with this. Tell me more." This creates the safety that makes ongoing revelation possible.
The violation of sod in marriage is devastating. When confidences are broken, shared with friends, family, or used as weapons during arguments, trust collapses. Spouses learn to hide, to edit, to protect themselves. The marriage may continue, but intimacy dies. Restoring sod after violation requires not just apology but demonstrated trustworthiness over time and often professional help to rebuild what's been broken.
Sod in Parenting: Earning the Right to Know
Many parents demand revelation from their children without creating the conditions that make it safe. They want to know what's happening in their child's life, who they're talking to, and what they're struggling with, but they haven't earned the right to that knowledge through empathetic, non-reactive listening.
Sod in parenting means creating an environment where children feel safe bringing their full truth. This doesn't happen through interrogation or surveillance. It occurs when children learn over time that when they share something difficult, a failure, a fear, a mistake, a question about faith or s*xuality, they will be met with empathy before correction, curiosity before judgment, and support before consequences.
I've counseled countless young adults who learned early never to tell their parents the truth because the response was always shame, panic, or immediate problem-solving that dismissed their feelings. These parents wonder why their adult children no longer share their lives. The answer is simple: sod was violated repeatedly during the formative years. Trust was broken. Children learned that revelation was unsafe, so they stopped revealing.
The most connected parent-child relationships are those in which parents consistently demonstrate they can handle their child's truth without falling apart, overreacting, or making it about themselves. When a teenager can say, "I tried alcohol at a party and I'm scared I liked it too much," and receive a response that balances concern with empathy, that's sod working as it should. The child has revealed something vulnerable, and the parent has stewarded it with wisdom rather than weaponizing it.
Sod in Leadership: The Circle of Trust
Effective leaders understand the difference between transparency and appropriate disclosure. Not everything should be shared with everyone. Sod in leadership means creating trusted circles where difficult truths can be spoken, where doubts about strategy can be voiced, where concerns about team members can be processed, where the leader's own struggles and limitations can be acknowledged.
Leaders who try to maintain a facade of unwavering confidence and competence cut themselves off from the very feedback and support they need most. They end up isolated, making decisions without adequate input, and modeling a version of leadership that's ultimately unsustainable. The healthiest leaders I know have built a small circle of trusted advisors, mentors, peers, coaches, with whom they can be fully honest about their uncertainties and inadequacies.
Sod also applies to how leaders handle what team members reveal to them. When an employee shares a personal struggle, a mistake, or a concern about the organization, how that information is handled determines whether further disclosure will occur. Leaders who gossip about what they've learned, who use vulnerability against people later, or who violate confidentiality except when legally or ethically required, destroy trust not just with the individual but across the entire team.
The best leaders create cultures where appropriate levels of sod can exist throughout the organization. Team members feel safe raising concerns. Mistakes can be admitted without fear of career-ending consequences. Diverse perspectives can be voiced without political risk. This doesn't mean everything is shared with everyone; healthy boundaries and confidentiality remain essential, but it means that revelation appropriate to the relationship and context is safe.
Sod in Pastoral Ministry: The Sacred Trust of the Confessional
Few professions carry the weight of sod as heavily as pastoral ministry. People entrust pastors with their deepest struggles, marital infidelity, addiction, abuse, faith crises, and mental health challenges. How pastors steward this revelation can literally determine whether someone continues in faith or walks away entirely.
Sod in pastoral ministry means creating multiple layers of confidential space. The counseling office must be a place where people can bring their whole truth without fear that their confession will become sermon-illustration material or prayer-chain gossip. Small groups need to function as trusted circles where vulnerability is honored rather than exploited. Even casual conversations must be held with the understanding that a pastor is never "off duty" when it comes to protecting what's been shared.
I've seen pastoral ministries destroyed because sod was violated. A pastor shared someone's struggle from the pulpit (even anonymously, but recognizably). A church leader discussed a counseling situation with their spouse or friends. A staff member used information learned in pastoral care to make decisions about someone's ministry involvement. In each case, trust collapsed, people left, and the ministry's ability to create safe space for revelation was severely compromised.
The flip side is also true: pastors need their own sod. Too many pastors have no safe place to be fully honest about their own doubts, struggles, or frustrations with ministry. They maintain a spiritual facade that eventually cracks under the pressure. Healthy pastors cultivate relationships with mentors, counselors, and peer groups outside their congregation, where they can bring their full truth and be pastored themselves.
Sakan: Caring and Responsible Involvement
Intimacy Is Proven Through Action
While knowing and revealing are essential, intimacy remains incomplete without sakan, a Hebrew concept that reflects attentive, responsible, and beneficial involvement in another's life. Sakan moves intimacy from the realm of feeling and knowledge to that of action and commitment. It asks not only What do I know about you? or What have you entrusted to me? But How do I now live responsibly toward you in light of what I know?
This is where intimacy becomes tangible. It's one thing to know that your spouse struggles with anxiety; it's another to adjust your communication patterns to reduce unnecessary stress. It's one thing to know your friend's story of childhood neglect; it's another to consistently show up in ways that communicate they are valued and not forgotten. Sakan is knowledge and trust translated into faithful, caring action.
The Character Foundation of Caring
Sakan embodies goodwill in motion. It resists indifference, passivity, and emotional disengagement. It doesn't simply observe needs or acknowledge struggles; it responds. It shows up. It follows through. It acts with the other person's well-being genuinely in mind, even when doing so requires personal sacrifice, inconvenience, or discomfort.
Immature intimacy seeks closeness without responsibility. It wants the benefits of connection, comfort, validation, and affection, without the weight of commitment. Mature intimacy, by contrast, accepts responsibility without sliding into control. It recognizes that to care for someone truly is not to manage their choices or fix their problems, but to remain faithfully present and actively engaged in their flourishing.
Sakan also requires ongoing respect and humility. Respectful care honors the other person's agency and doesn't impose "help" that hasn't been requested or welcomed. Humble care recognizes that we don't always know what's best for another person and remains open to learning how to serve them well rather than assuming we already know.
When care is offered this way, it becomes the visible fruit of intimacy. It's the evidence that knowing and revealing have not been merely emotional experiences but transformative relational commitments.
Sakan in Marriage: Love Made Visible
In marriage, sakan is how yada and sod become incarnate. It's the practical demonstration that you've been paying attention and that what your spouse has revealed to you matters enough to shape how you live.
Sakan in marriage looks like remembering that your wife processes stress through physical activity, so you take the kids for two hours on Saturday morning so she can go for a run. It looks like knowing your husband feels most loved through acts of service, so you handle the task he's been dreading, even though words of affirmation are what speak to you. It looks like understanding that your spouse needs transition time when coming home from work, so you don't immediately bombard them with problems or demands the moment they walk through the door.
Sakan also shows up in the challenging moments. When your spouse reveals they're struggling with depression, sakan means researching therapists, offering to go to appointments together, and adjusting household responsibilities to create space for healing. When they confess, they've been feeling disconnected from you, sakan means taking initiative to schedule time together rather than dismissing the concern or waiting for them to do all the work.
The marriages that last aren't necessarily those with the most chemistry or compatibility. They're the marriages where both partners consistently demonstrate sakan, where knowing and revelation translate into faithful, caring action year after year, even when feelings fluctuate, and circumstances challenge the relationship.
Sakan in Parenting: Involved Love That Adapts
Parenting without sakan is negligent, no matter how much theoretical knowledge or emotional warmth exists. Sakan is what moves parents from understanding their child's needs to actually meeting them. It's the difference between knowing your child struggles with math and actively getting them help. It's the gap between recognizing your teenager is anxious and creating structures that reduce unnecessary stress.
Sakan in parenting means being present, not just physically in the house, but emotionally available and actively engaged. It means showing up to the events that matter to your child, even when they're inconvenient or tedious to you. It means following through on commitments you make, because children learn trustworthiness by consistently experiencing it.
But sakan also requires wisdom and restraint. Some parents confuse caring involvement with controlling involvement. They use their knowledge of their child to manipulate, micromanage, or remove all obstacles from their path. This isn't sakan; it's anxious overparenting that actually hinders development.
Mature sakan in parenting respects the child's growing autonomy while remaining actively engaged. It might mean letting your teenager experience natural consequences while staying emotionally present to help them process what they're learning. It might mean supporting your adult child's decision, even when you disagree with it, because caring for them now means respecting their agency rather than controlling their choices.
The most potent form of sakan in parenting is often the quietest: consistent presence over time. Being there for dinner. Showing up for conversations. Remaining engaged even as your child pulls away during adolescence. Following through on discipline with both firmness and compassion. This steady, faithful involvement communicates something words alone never could: "You matter enough for me to stay engaged with your life."
Sakan in Leadership: Servant Leadership in Action
Leadership without sakan is merely management, or worse, exploitation. Authentic leadership involves caring responsibility for those you lead. It means using what you know about your team to create environments where they can flourish, address obstacles to their success, and invest in their development even when there's no immediate return for you.
Sakan in leadership seems to notice when a team member is overwhelmed and redistributes work rather than just pushing them harder. It looks like knowing someone's career aspirations and creating opportunities that align with their goals, not just your organizational needs. It looks like remembering that your employee mentioned a sick parent and following up weeks later to ask how things are going.
The best leaders I've observed practice sakan by making themselves accessible, following through on commitments, and taking responsibility for their team's well-being, not in a paternalistic way that strips people of agency, but in a way that creates conditions for success. They remove barriers. They provide resources. They offer coaching and feedback. They advocate for their people in rooms where decisions are made.
Sakan also means caring for people when it's costly to you. It means having difficult conversations about performance issues rather than avoiding conflict. It means letting someone go when they're not a fit but doing so with dignity and support for their transition. It means taking responsibility when leadership decisions negatively impact your team rather than deflecting blame or minimizing harm.
Leadership characterized by sakan creates remarkable loyalty and engagement. People will run through walls for leaders who demonstrate that they genuinely care about their team's flourishing, not just their productivity.
Sakan in Pastoral Ministry: Shepherding the Flock
Pastoral ministry is fundamentally about sakan, caring involvement in people's spiritual formation and overall well-being. The title "pastor" itself comes from the Latin word for shepherd, evoking images of someone who actively tends, protects, guides, and cares for the flock.
Sakan in pastoral ministry means moving beyond preaching and programming to genuine care for individuals. It means hospital visits when people are sick. It means showing up at funerals. It means counseling couples in crisis at inconvenient hours. It means walking with people through seasons of doubt without trying to quick-fix their questions. It means celebrating milestones and mourning losses alongside your congregation.
But sakan in larger church contexts also requires systemic thinking. A solo pastor cannot possibly provide deep caring involvement for hundreds or thousands of people. Healthy pastoral sakan means building care systems, equipping small-group leaders, training lay counselors, developing deacon or elder care structures that distribute shepherding responsibilities throughout the church body.
Sakan also applies to how pastors care for their teams. Too many church staffs are places of burnout and dysfunction because senior pastors care deeply for the congregation but neglect those closest to them. Pastoral sakan extends to nurturing staff spiritually, protecting their time and boundaries, ensuring fair compensation, and creating work environments that support rather than consume people.
The pastoral ministries that have the most lasting impact are those characterized by faithful sakan over decades. Not flashy programs or celebrity preaching, but steady, caring involvement in people's lives through seasons of growth and struggle. This is how disciples are formed and how churches become genuine communities rather than just religious organizations.
Intimacy as an Integrated Whole
Yada, Sod, and Sakan Together
When these three movements are separated or practiced selectively, intimacy fractures across every relational context:
Yada without sod becomes distant observation. You may know about someone without ever truly being known by them. The relationship remains informational rather than transformational. This is the marriage where spouses can recite each other's preferences but have no idea what's happening in each other's hearts. It's the parent who knows their child's schedule but not their struggles. It's the leader who has performance data but no fundamental understanding of their team's experience. It's the pastor who knows attendance numbers but not actual people.
Sod without sakan becomes unsafe and destabilizing. Vulnerability without responsible follow-through feels like emotional exposure with no protective structure. People feel used, abandoned, or regretful for having shared. This is the marriage where confession happens, but behavior doesn't change. It's the parent who hears their child's pain but does nothing to address it. It's the leader who solicits feedback but never acts on it. It's the pastor who collects people's stories but provides no actual care or support.
Sakan without yada becomes misdirected and potentially controlling. Action without an accurate understanding often does harm despite good intentions. We impose what we think is needed rather than responding to what actually is. This is the spouse who serves in ways that don't land because they've never truly listened. It's the parent who pushes their child in directions that serve the parent's agenda rather than the child's calling. It's the leader who implements solutions to problems they don't actually understand. It's the pastor who offers generic care that doesn't address real needs.
But when integrated, these three movements form a relational ecosystem where intimacy can thrive:
Yada creates understanding - it establishes accurate, respectful knowledge of who the other person truly is.
Sod builds trust - it deepens connection through the exchange of what is most vulnerable and valuable.
Sakan establishes security - it demonstrates through consistent action that the relationship is not merely about feeling close but about being faithful.
This integration looks different in each relational context, but the pattern remains consistent:
In marriage, the three movements create a partnership where both spouses feel deeply known, emotionally safe, and practically supported. Romance may draw people together, but it's this integration of knowing, revealing, and caring that sustains marriage through decades.
In parenting, the three movements create an environment where children develop secure
attachment, emotional intelligence, and the capacity for healthy relationships. Children who experience all three become adults who can practice all three.
In leadership, the three movements create organizational cultures of trust, engagement, and flourishing. Teams led this way consistently outperform those led through command-and-control or purely transactional approaches.
In pastoral ministry, the three movements create faith communities where people experience genuine belonging, spiritual transformation, and the kind of care that reflects God's own shepherding of His people.
This is precisely why intimacy cannot be sustained by emotion alone. Feelings ebb and flow. Circumstances change. But intimacy rooted in mature character, Humility, Respect, Empathy, and Goodwill, creates a stable foundation that can weather disappointment, conflict, distance, and even betrayal when repentance and repair are genuinely pursued.
Without HREG, intimacy deteriorates into dependency, fear, or power struggles. With HREG, intimacy becomes stabilizing, resilient, and deeply human in the best sense, reflecting the image of a relational God who knows us fully, invites us into His confidence, and faithfully involves Himself in our well-being.
S*xual Intimacy: Where Knowing, Revealing, and Caring Become One
The Embodied Expression of Relational Intimacy
S*xual intimacy is not a separate category of closeness; it is the embodied, physical expression of relational intimacy. In the context of marriage, s*xuality becomes most meaningful and life-giving when it reflects yada, sod, and sakan lived out with maturity and intentionality.
Yada invites spouses to get to know one another's bodies, stories, rhythms, desires, and vulnerabilities without entitlement, pressure, or assumptions. S*xual knowing is patient and curious. It recognizes that physical intimacy is not a static script but a living conversation that evolves. It requires paying attention not just to physical responses but also to emotional state, to what brings comfort or anxiety, and to how past wounds or present stresses might be affecting the moment.
Too many spouses approach s*xuality with assumptions based on what they think they know rather than what they're actually learning in real time. They operate from outdated maps of their spouse's desires and needs, wondering why intimacy feels disconnected or mechanical. Yada calls us to remain students of our spouse's s*xuality throughout the marriage, recognizing that bodies change, desires shift, and what worked at twenty-five may not work at forty-five or sixty-five.
Sod allows s*xual union to become a place of safe revelation, where desire, insecurity, longing, pleasure, fear, and tenderness can all be expressed without shame, judgment, or dismissal. In this context, s*xuality is not performance; it is profound mutual disclosure. It's a space where spouses can risk being fully seen and fully present, trusting that what is revealed will be received with care and honor rather than critique or indifference.
This means creating an environment where both partners can be honest about what they enjoy and what they don't, what they're comfortable exploring and what feels violating to them, when they're emotionally available for intimacy, and when they need connection without s*xual expectation. It means handling each other's vulnerabilities, whether about body image, s*xual history, or current struggles, with the tenderness and respect they deserve.
When sod is violated in the s*xual relationship, when vulnerability is mocked, when preferences are dismissed, when confidences are broken, when s*xuality becomes coercive or manipulative, the damage goes deep. S*xual intimacy can continue in form while dying in substance. Restoring safety in this arena often requires significant work, sometimes with professional help, to rebuild what's been broken.
Sakan calls spouses to engage s*xually with active care, genuine presence, and deep responsibility, attuned not only to physical sensation but to the other's emotional and relational well-being. S*xual caring means checking in, adjusting to the other's needs, and prioritizing mutual flourishing over personal gratification. It recognizes that healthy s*xuality strengthens the relationship rather than draining or dividing it.
Sakan in s*xuality looks like noticing when your spouse is exhausted and offering connection through non-s*xual touch instead of pressing for in*******se. It seems like taking time for adequate foreplay even when you're ready to proceed. It looks like addressing underlying relational disconnection rather than trying to solve it through s*x. It looks like getting help for s*xual dysfunction rather than ignoring the problem or blaming your spouse. It seems like protecting your marriage from po*******hy, fantasy, or outside attractions that undermine covenant intimacy.
The Danger of Detachment from Character
When s*xuality is detached from humility, respect, empathy, and goodwill, it becomes performative, demanding, transactional, or self-serving. It may meet biological needs while leaving emotional and relational needs unmet, or worse, actively wounding them. S*x without HREG can become a place of pressure, coercion, shame, or relational injury rather than intimacy.
I've counseled countless couples whose s*xual relationship had become a source of pain rather than pleasure, distance rather than closeness. Almost invariably, the problem wasn't primarily physical or even about differing desire levels. It was about the absence of character in how s*xuality was being approached. One or both partners was operating without sufficient humility (assuming they knew what the other needed), respect (violating boundaries or dismissing concerns), empathy (failing to attune to emotional state), or goodwill (using s*x for self-serving purposes rather than mutual flourishing).
But when grounded in HREG, s*xual intimacy becomes covenantal, an act of mutual knowing, trusted vulnerability, and loving involvement that deepens connection rather than consuming it. It reflects the very character of God, who doesn't use us for His gratification but faithfully engages with us for our flourishing and His glory.
This is the biblical vision: s*xuality as a sacred union where two people bring the fullness of who they are, body, heart, mind, and spirit, and experience profound connection because they have done the character work necessary to create a space where such intimacy is safe, sustainable, and sanctifying.
Living Intimacy as a Mature Adult
Intentionality, Maturity, and Relational Wisdom
Healthy intimacy is not accidental. It doesn't simply "happen" because two people are attracted to each other, share a biological connection with their children, work together, or attend the same church. It is cultivated through intentional growth, emotional maturity, and relational wisdom. To live out yada, sod, and sakan is to choose a way of relating that honors both closeness and boundaries, vulnerability and responsibility, connection and autonomy.
Biblical intimacy is not merely about connection, it is about how we connect. It's about the character we bring to our relationships, the care we take with what others entrust to us, and the faithfulness with which we follow through on our commitments.
To know deeply.
To reveal safely.
To care faithfully.
When intimacy is lived this way, relationships do not merely survive; they flourish. Marriages become partnerships of mutual knowing, safe vulnerability, and faithful care that grow richer over decades. Parent-child relationships evolve from dependency through adolescence into adult friendships characterized by mutual respect and ongoing connection. Leadership becomes transformational rather than merely transactional. Pastoral ministry creates communities where people experience the knowing, acceptance, and care that draws them into a deeper relationship with God.
This is the vision we pursue at RelateWell Institute: intimacy not as an elusive feeling but as a disciplined, character-shaped way of relating that reflects the heart of the God who made us for connection. It's challenging work. It requires ongoing personal growth, honest self-examination, and the humility to recognize when we've fallen short. But it's also profoundly hopeful work, because we serve a God who not only calls us to this kind of intimacy but equips us for it through His Spirit and His relational presence in our lives.
The pathway forward is clear, even when it's difficult:
• Cultivate humility that keeps you curious and teachable in every relationship.
• Practice respect that honors the dignity, autonomy, and boundaries of others.
• Develop empathy that allows you to receive others' inner worlds without defensiveness or judgment.
• Pursue goodwill that ensures your knowledge of others and your involvement in their lives serves their flourishing, not your agenda.
When these character qualities become the foundation of how we relate, yada, sod, and sakan flow naturally, we know people well because we're humble and respectful enough to keep learning. We create a safe space for revelation by receiving vulnerability with empathy and goodwill. We translate knowing and revelation into faithful care because our character compels us to act on what we've learned and what's been entrusted to us.
This is how marriages are transformed. This is how children are raised to become emotionally mature adults. This is how teams become communities of genuine trust and engagement. This is how churches become families rather than religious organizations.
May we have the courage to pursue this kind of intimacy, not as a destination we arrive at once and for all, but as a way of life we grow into more fully with each passing year. May our relationships reflect the character of the God who knows us completely, receives our whole truth with compassion, and cares for us faithfully through every season of life.
About the Author
Dr. Richard Marks is the founder of RelateWell Institute, a faith-based organization dedicated to strengthening marriages, families, and leadership through the integration of biblical wisdom and psychological insight. He holds a PhD in Counseling Psychology and has developed the HREG framework (Humility, Respect, Empathy, and Goodwill) as a foundation for emotional maturity and relational health.
For more resources on building healthy relationships, visit RelateWell Institute or contact us about FOCUS marriage intensives, RISE Leadership training, and RelateWell Conversations.
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