Have you ever been to Santa Monica or San Francisco, CA? I grew up on the west coast and used to love going to the piers built from these great beaches and bays.

Piers are built out into the water for people to enjoy a view of the coast-line and an up-close experience of the surf without being tossed around by the waves. The pier is supported by pylons which are built deep into the ground beneath the water, allowing people fishing, unobstructed sunsets, and even a ride on a Ferris wheel. They are strong enough to hold the pier in place against constant battering by weather and tide. The surface wood of these piers needs to be treated, and scrubbed frequently to assure its lasting purpose. Additionally, truly maintaining the integrity of a pier requires that the foundations need be intimately known as well; examined and supported periodically.

Marriage is like a pier. You and your spouse came into this union with individual foundations; personal identity already built into the bedrock. The “who” of each of you provides individual foundations upon which you are now attempting to build together. That is, each spouse’s pre-marriage life experiences are buried deep into a personal bedrock of family, socioeconomics, faith, ethnicity, and a host of other components that make them an individual (mixed into this foundation can also be shame, guilt, fear, and unknown anxiety). Then, when two individuals decide to build a life, the pier of your marriage comes together in shared experiences and responsibility upon these individual pylons.

Often, the surface become the focus of marriage very quickly. The visible parts of life, takes precedent; the foundations can become forgotten. Above the waves is a life built together of common purposes and desires, under them is still what makes each partner strong or weak (sometimes needing great support).

When spouses cease to invite the other into an intimate knowledge of their foundations, the marriage will suffer. Focusing only on surface experiences and responsibilities can take valuable attention away from the needs and integrity of the individuals supporting them. Intimacy is developed in marriage by strengthening and maintaining the surface as well as the foundations; both top-down and bottom-up care is necessary.

On the surface, a couple must pay attention to daily life; needs, wants, and responsibilities. Cooking dinner together, date nights, worshiping together, or shouting at a ref during a child’s soccer game are necessary components to build top-down intimacy. You can scrub the decking and maintain the strength of connection to your partner by staying intimately aware of the here-and-now. However, just preserving the surface of your marriage in shared experience is not enough for lasting strength.

Below the surface of your partnership are two individual journeys. Intimacy is also developed by examining the foundation of your spouse, and exposing yours to your partner for examination. Knowing your spouse’s bedrock-buried foundation (even the ugly stuff) promotes connection. The difficult parts of your individual journeys provide places to gain insight and understanding of the person with whom you are building a life today. You can build intimacy from the bottom up by exposing the components of yourself that are supporting you, and thus your marriage. This exposure provides the opportunity to be strengthened where necessary and celebrated where possible. If you and your spouse are both committed to bottom-up intimacy, the top-down intimacy will benefit. Simply, vulnerability begets support, and knowledge begets intimacy.

A marriage is not just what is built together, it’s supported by each partner’s foundation. Strengthen your marriage by mutual exposure of what it is built upon. Support and celebration are waiting for you in the form of bottom-up intimacy.