Technology in the bedroom

- Do you check your e-mails, Twitter and Facebook as soon as you get into bed at night?

- is this the last thing you do before going to sleep?

- and/or is it the first thing you do in the morning?

- do you roll over and reach for your phone or tablet as soon as you finish making love?

- or, even worse, have you ever done this while making love!

If any of the above apply to you, then maybe you need to consider banning technology from your bedroom.

We have never had a TV in our bedroom, in the view that the bedroom should be a calm and restful place for cuddling, connecting, talking, making love, sleep and prayer, but we have fallen prey in recent years to the insidious creep of mobile technology into every aspect of our lives. So we are now banning our iPads and iPhones from the bedroom too.

One of Satan's strategies for keeping us from closeness to God, and from our spouse, is to keep us too busy to find time to really focus on Him, and on our spouse. So make your bedroom a haven where you focus just on each other and on Him. Take time to connect, emotionally and physically, and to focus intimately on each other before making love, and take time to cuddle and bond afterwards, and then fall asleep together in each others' arms.

In the early years of our marriage, C used to like going to bed much earlier than me, while I enjoyed staying up to watch TV. This definitely affected our sex life negatively. Either we ended up not making love as C was asleep by the time I got up to bed, or she would get upset if I jumped up straight after making love to go back downstairs to watch TV. We have since learned to adjust both our schedules, so that we go to bed together, and so that after making love we fall asleep together. On weekends, C likes to sleep in later than me, so I tend to get up and spend time with the kids, but a favorite thing is then to sneak back into bed as she is waking up, for a spot of slow, soft, sleepy morning nookie.

A firm boundary for Christian marriage is not to allow a third party into the marriage bed. Adultery, emotional  affairs, threesomes and porn are all obvious examples of allowing a third party into your marriage, but to my mind Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media apps can become problematic too if they bring your friends into your bedroom and start to take precedence for your attention when you should be focusing on alone-time with your spouse.