6 Years. 6 Messages.

Today is the six-year anniversary of this blog. Since I wasn’t even sure the blog would last all of three months, I like to recognize my blogversary when it rolls around.

This year I’d like to share the six central messages I try to communicate in my posts here.

1 . Part of loving your husband is caring about how he best experiences connection and receives love.

I am starting here not because this is more important than the others (because it isn’t) but because I want to start with the place my own story began—with compassion for my husband. For most men, love and connection happen best through sex—not because they’re horndogs with no self-control, but because sexual intimacy floods them with the bonding hormone oxytocin. God designed men with biological wiring that makes sex the most powerful way to experience emotional connection—and to experience the lack of sexual intimacy with their wives in a deeply emotional way.

Select Posts

• Is a Sexless Marriage a Loveless Marriage?
• A Husband’s Emotional Need
• Your Husband’s Sexual Desire for You Is Not Wrong
• If You Make Just One Change
• The Power of “And”
• What a Quickie Taught Us About Sexual Intimacy
• 4 Reasons Your Husband Desires Your Orgasm

2. Sex is for you, too.

As important as it is to understand why sex matters to our husbands, it is also important to understand that sex isn’t only for them. Sex should be enjoyable for you, and it should feel good for you. So many of us have been taught (through implication or through explicit messages) that sex is only for our husbands and that having sex is our marital duty. Ugh, right? That doesn’t sound very appealing at all. Even if our bodies aren’t cooperating, sexual intimacy should help us enjoy feeling connected and close to our husbands. Quite often, addressing this is largely a matter of reframing our own thinking. Sometimes, though, it requires both spouses to make some changes in how they think, talk, and act about sex. You deserve a good sex life no less than your husband does.

Select Posts

• What’s In It for Me?
• How Not to Think About Sex
• I Thought Sex Was Just for My Husband. Here’s What Changed My Mind.
• Learn to Embrace Your Sexuality
• Speak Up
• How I Learned to Not Hate Sex

3. Your sexuality probably doesn’t look like your husband’s—and that’s normal!

For so many years, I thought I was sexually defective or that we had a serious relationship problem because I didn’t instantly become aroused at the sight of my naked husband, because I needed lots of time and attention to get warmed up, and because I didn’t go around thinking about sex all the time. I believed I was broken because I thought my sexuality was supposed to look like my husband’s did. It’s sad and a little shocking that I’d been married and sexual for so many years before I understood that my sexual response was pretty typical for women. And even if it weren’t typical, it is normal for me and that’s okay. If you have thought you have a low sex drive or that you’re defective because you don’t “zing” in the same way your husband does, take a deep breath and remember that you are a woman, with a woman’s sexual response.

Select Posts

• Love Like a Woman: Should Your Sexual Response Be Like Your Husband’s?
• Love Your Man: Should Your Husband’s Sexuality Be Like Yours?
• Get Your Sexy On!
• 6 Ways to Nurture Your Sexual Desire
• When You Need Help Getting in the Mood: 3 Ways to Nurture Your Desire Throughout the Day
• Park Your “Sexy” in the Garage

4. Healing and forgiveness are possible—but you need to actively choose that path.

We all bring some kind of baggage into our marriage—from lessons we learned about sex or about men, from the lack of lessons, from previous sexual experiences, from shame or pain, and more. Our baggage can cause so much damage in our marriages, and we need to choose to deal with it. We can heal. We can learn to walk in forgiveness. It isn’t easy, and we may think we’ll be more comfortable staying behind the walls we’ve built. With God’s help, we can pursue healing and forgiveness—and it is completely worth the effort to do so. Yes, our marriages will benefit—but we are worthy of our own effort for our own sake, too.

Select Posts

• Trapped by Trauma
• Shame, Guilt, and the Gift of Sexuality
• ‘Tis the Season
• Beautiful in Its Time
• Mending the Remnants of Brokenness
• Get Rid of All Bitterness
• Healing at the Pool
• Lessons Learned from Premarital Sex
• Unbearable Lessons
• 4 Techniques for Understanding Your Own Views on Sex

5. You have way more sexual freedom than you might realize.

The boundaries are simple—sex should involve only you and your husband, and don’t violate other biblical principles along the way. It’s okay to explore new ways of experiencing physical pleasure together, and it’s okay for sex to sometimes be mostly about just one person. The process of exploring, learning, and sharing contributes to intimacy and connection over the lifetime of a marriage. If it’s always about the same spouse, or if one spouse isn’t comfortable with what’s going on, there’s a problem–but we often focus so much on what is not allowed that we ignore a lot of the areas we can explore.  Enjoy the adventure with your husband! And if you and your husband aren’t comfortable exploring? Enjoy what you do as much as you can.

Select Posts

• Learn What You Like in Bed
• An Unconventional Request
• 3 Ways a Vibrator Can Help Marital Intimacy
• Sexy Pictures and Video in a Christian Marriage?
• The Comfort Zone (be sure to check the links at the bottom of the post)
• Your Sexual Pleasure: Is It Okay for a Christian Wife to Enjoy Sex?
• Do I Have To?
• An Unconventional Request
• Can a Christian Wife Learn to Be Wild?
• 5 Ways to Work on Your Sex Life without Having to Add Spice
• Vanilla Is a Flavor

6. You are God’s beloved daughter, beautiful and loved, just as you are.

So many of us struggle with our body image or with our sense of being lovable. We are supposed to be naked and unashamed in the marriage bed, but many of us struggle to be naked and unashamed even when we are by ourselves, even inside our own heads. My beloved sister, you are fearfully and wonderfully made by God. You are an image-bearer. You are so, so loved. You are beautiful because you were made by God, in His image and for His purposes.

Select posts

• The Lie That Hurt My Marriage the Most
• Body by God
• Body Image Got You Down?
• Remember Whose Daughter You Are
• What Would Jesus Say?
• More Than Many Sparrows

Although I’ve written about many things, the majority of my posts circle around these six ideas.

I’d love to know which of these messages has resonated the most with you.

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If this blog has helped you, please consider making a one-time contribution to our podcast retreat travel fundraiser. We are trying to gather together soon to do some serious planning (I can’t wait to share some of what we’re working on with you!) and record some episodes together. Our episode sponsorships cover our podcast expenses, but they don’t cover anything else. You can contribute to our GoFundMe here. Or, if you would like to make a direct donation to me for my travel expenses, you can make a donation through PayPal at forgivenwife@gmail.com. Or use the buttons below. Consider it a blogversary gift! Thanks for your support!

Image credit | Chris Taylor