How to choose the right person and then worship the daylights out of each other
Marriage is a peculiar proposition.
You meet one person out of approximately eight billion people and eventually decide, Yes. You. You’re the one. I would like to sleep beside you, have sex with you, share a bathroom with you, know exactly how you take your coffee, argue occasionally about things neither of us will remember three days later, and fall ridiculously in love with you.
When you look it that way, choosing wisely seems not only prudent, but the best thing for your personal safety and your sex life.
Unfortunately, we human beings are not particularly famous for making rational decisions while falling in love.
Some of us approach choosing a spouse like we’re vetting a Supreme Court nominee. We investigate, evaluate, interrogate, and quietly maintain a mental spreadsheet containing seventeen columns and a suspiciously elaborate scoring system.
Others employ a considerably simpler selection process:
You’re cute. Let’s fuck.
Also not a sound marriage plan.
Somewhere between the spreadsheet and complete neurochemical anarchy is the person with whom you might actually build an extraordinary life.
So how the hell do you recognize them?
By paying attention.
And while having as much fun as humanly possible.
Fortunately, we have already spent a substantial portion of this book assembling some rather unconventional equipment for the journey. The Erotic Four. Hot and Holy Love. The Five Steps of Worship. The Five Thieves of Love. If you’ve spent time combing through this website you’ve met all of them separately.
Now we’re going to put the magnificent little bastards together and see what happens when two people actually build a marriage with them.
First things first.
Before you can worship the daylights out of somebody, it helps enormously to choose the right somebody.
Fortunately, you’ve already met The Erotic Four.
The Erotic Four™
The Erotic Four are not four boxes a prospective partner must check while you sit across the table with a clipboard. For the love of God, please don’t do that.
The Erotic Four are four things worth paying very close attention to while you are busy falling ridiculously in love.
Physically Magnetic. You sexually desire each other with the same depth. There’s a physical pull between you that makes sex exciting, connecting, and deeply satisfying. If you’re considering spending the rest of your life with someone, hoping that physical magnetism will materialize later is one heck of a gamble. I wouldn’t be wagering the farm on that one.
Spiritually Anchored. The relationship has something deeply meaningful underneath the attraction that holds you together. Your bond has depth, anchored by shared values and beliefs. Your autonomy is complemented by a connection rooted in your personal philosophies. This includes what it means to love, to laugh, and to cherish and be cherished.
Metabolically Aligned. This means that your energies work together. While you don’t move through life at precisely the same speed, one person’s energy level doesn’t hold the other person back either. Equally important here is libido. If both partners want to have sex every day but one doesn’t have the stamina, that is a major mismatch. And I wouldn’t even gamble a pitchfork that will play out well over time.
Deeply Motivated. This pillar is at least as important as the first three. It’s where the rubber meets the road and you get to witness whether you both genuinely want this. One person isn’t dragging the other toward commitment, deciphering cryptic text messages, or conducting archaeological excavations for evidence that they might someday choose you. They choose you. Enthusiastically. With their out-loud voice. You choose them. And you both keep choosing.
None of this requires perfection. It requires paying attention and taking action. Choosing wisely isn’t about finding a flawless human being. It’s about recognizing someone with whom the essential ingredients are already present — someone you can desire, trust, grow beside, delight in, and keep choosing.
Find that person and you’ve done something enormously important. Once you’ve made sound choices, you get the fun payoff.
Now let’s set the fucking thing on fire.
Hot and Holy Love™
Congratulations. You chose wisely.
Now let’s make certain you don’t take all that physical magnetism, spiritual connection, metabolic compatibility, and mutual enthusiasm and turn it into a relationship where the most exciting thing you do together is discuss whether you need more toilet paper.
This is where Hot and Holy Love comes in.
Hot and Holy Love refuses to accept the peculiar idea that long-term love eventually has to choose between being sacred and being sexy. You are allowed to have both. In fact, I do more than strongly recommend it. I insist.
The holy is the reverence between you. It’s knowing that this person has entrusted you with their heart and treating that trust accordingly. It’s tenderness, loyalty, honesty, friendship, safety, devotion, and the quiet knowledge that when life gets ugly, somebody is standing beside you who isn’t looking for the nearest exit.
The hot is considerably less quiet. It’s desire. Flirting. Anticipation. Touching each other because you can’t resist. It’s looking across a room at the person whose morning breath you have smelled approximately four thousand times and still thinking, Oh, hell yes. One does not diminish the other.
The sacredness of your love doesn’t require you to stop being filthy with each other. And being wildly sexual doesn’t make what you share any less sacred. The whole point is that the same person gets to be both: the one who holds your heart and the one you can’t wait to get naked with.
That is Hot and Holy Love.
Hot and Holy Sex™
And when Hot and Holy Love follows you into the bedroom, something wonderful happens. Desire, love, attention, and devotion become physical. You aren’t simply having sex with someone you find attractive; you’re making love to the person you cherish, revere, adore, and still want badly enough to lose your fucking mind over.
That is Hot and Holy Sex — Hot and Holy Love’s wildly popular, slightly notorious stepsister. It’s where lust and reverence stop being treated like opposites and discover they are spectacular together. You can be tender and ravenous, sacred and filthy, reverent and completely undone. The point isn’t technique or performance. It’s being profoundly present with the person you love while making absolutely certain they know how deeply they are wanted.
A Magnificent Marriage should have room for that kind of sex. Not because every encounter needs to shake the fucking rafters, but because erotic connection is one of the ways two people continue saying: I see you. I choose you. I cherish you. And after all this time, dear God, I still want you.
And once you have it, please don’t make the mistake of assuming it has become self-sustaining simply because you got married. Love needs to be expressed. Desire needs somewhere to go. People need to know that they are still seen, still valued, still wanted, and still cherished.
Fortunately, we have a design for that too. Next is the action plan where you get to worship the daylights out of each other.
The Five Steps of Worship in Your Relationship™
Now that you have Hot and Holy Love, you have to keep it thriving.
Fortunately, this doesn’t require rose petals on the bed every Tuesday or gazing reverently at each other over breakfast while your coffee gets cold. Worship is much more practical than that. It happens in five steps, and every one of them can be practiced in the middle of ordinary life.
Seeing. Love Witnessed. I see you. This is where it starts. Actually notice the person you married. See what they do, what they carry, what excites them, what frightens them, and the hundred little things they contribute that could easily become invisible through familiarity. Your spouse should never have to become a stranger before you remember to look at them.
Admiring. Love Appreciated. I celebrate you. Don’t merely notice what is wonderful about your partner. Tell them. Admire their courage, humor, kindness, intelligence, strength, integrity, body, talents, or ridiculous ability to find the car when you were absolutely certain you parked three levels higher. Let them know that after all this time, you still think they are pretty fucking magnificent.
Cherishing. Love Treasured. I adore you. This is where appreciation becomes preciousness. Protect their heart. Remember what matters to them. Make their favorite dinner for no reason whatsoever. Speak well of them when they aren’t there. Kiss them when you pass in the hallway. Let the person you love experience what it feels like to be treasured rather than merely accommodated. Strive to find new ways to delight them.
Revering. Love Sanctified. I hold you as sacred. Reverence changes how you handle the difficult moments. Winning becomes less important than protecting the dignity of the person you love. You can disagree, get irritated, occasionally wonder how an otherwise intelligent human being could possibly load a dishwasher that way, and still remember: This person is sacred to me.
Worshipping. Love Chosen Again and Again. I choose you every day. This is what the first four steps become when you keep practicing them. You see this person. You admire them. You cherish them. You revere them. And through all the ordinary Tuesdays, spectacular Saturdays, dirty dishes, great sex, bad moods, private jokes, victories, losses, and years together, you keep saying with your words and your actions: I still choose you.
That’s how Hot and Holy Love stays hot and holy. Not by crossing your fingers and hoping marriage preserves it for you, but by continuing to treat the person you chose as someone worth seeing, celebrating, treasuring, revering, and choosing.
Of course, once you have something this valuable, certain human behaviors may attempt to make off with it.
I call these unsavory characters The Five Thieves of Love. You’d better check your pockets if they bump into you.
The Five Thieves of Love™
Allow me to introduce you to these five little delinquents. They’re the criminal crew with the ability to steal the precious love that you’ve built. And the really dangerous thing about them is that they rarely look like thieves while they’re doing it. They slip into the ordinary moments of a relationship, often disguised as perfectly reasonable reactions, and quietly make off with things you may not realize are missing until much later.
The Five Thieves of Love are:
1. Blaming
2. Resentment
3. Ego Wounding
4. Verbal Abuse
5. Apathy
Each one specializes in stealing something specific. Each one has learned to disguise itself as something other than what it is. And each one, left unchecked, can work for years inside a relationship that still looks, from the outside, perfectly fine.
Every successful heist has specialists. Someone creates the distraction. Someone opens the safe. Someone drives the getaway car. Love’s thieves are no different. Recognizing them as they rear their ugly little heads can help you to thwart their felonious ways.
The Making of a Magnificent Marriage™
So there you have it. Choose wisely with The Erotic Four. Build a relationship where the love is both hot and holy. Keep that love thriving by seeing, admiring, cherishing, revering, and worshipping each other. And once you’ve built something that precious, guard it fiercely from the behaviors that can quietly steal it away.
None of this promises a perfect marriage. There is no such thing. What it gives you is something far better: two people who chose each other well, created something extraordinary together, and continue choosing, tending, enjoying, and protecting what they built.
That is a Magnificent Marriage. And I believe it’s the marriage every Magnificent Man is worthy of.
The Marriage Every Magnificent Man Deserves
After everything I’ve said in this book about the magnificence of men, I want to tell you what I hope all of this looks like in real life.
I want you to have a woman who lights up like a Christmas tree when you walk into the room.
Someone you can laugh stupidly with until neither of you can remember what was so funny in the first place. Someone who desires you and makes damn sure you know it at every turn. Someone who sees what you carry, understands what you give, and never treats either as something she is simply entitled to receive.
I want you to have someone you can protect — and who protects your heart right back.
Someone who reaches for you in bed because after all these years, she still wants you. Someone who knows your strengths and your soft places. Someone who celebrates your victories, stands beside you through your losses, and reminds you who you are on the days when you temporarily forget. And someone whose favorite pastime is finding new ways to delight you.
I want you to be beloved. Not because you checked enough boxes to earn it. Not because you managed to become some flawless version of a man who never screws up, gets tired, says the wrong thing, loses his patience, or occasionally loads the dishwasher like an escaped zoo animal.
You don’t have to be perfect to be worthy of extraordinary love — or to have it.
You’re a Magnificent Man. So choose wisely. Love enormously. Worship enthusiastically. Guard what you build.
And then, with every fiber of your being, enjoy every glorious moment of your Magnificent Marriage.
Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.
Chapter Companion Song Recommendation:
— “Reminiscing,” Little River Band, 1978
The Erotic Four™, Hot and Holy Love™, Hot and Holy Sex™,The Five Thieves of Love™, Magnificent Men™, Magnificent Marriage™, and The Five Steps of Worship in Your Relationship™ are trademarks of Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.
This article is an excerpt from Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.’s forthcoming book Magnificent Men: How Men Are Undervalued and How Worshipping and Being Worshipped Can Bring You The Hot and Holy Love You Desire, exploring the restoration of men’s dignity and worth, the sacred and sensual dimensions of intimacy, and hot and holy love.
Author Bio
Randi Fredricks, Ph.D. is a best-selling author, psychotherapist, and leading expert in counseling, communication, and human connection. Her first published study, released in 1993, explored the impact of family dysfunction on intimacy and communication in adult relationships. For more than three decades, she has developed innovative therapeutic models to help individuals and couples create deeper connection, emotional resilience, and extraordinary relationships. Her work explores the intersection of psychology, spirituality, humor, eroticism, and human magnificence, helping people live more fully, love more deeply, and embrace the extraordinary possibilities of a beautiful life.
