I Worked on Sex, and Then He Got Angry

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:58

Making sexual changes is one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life.

The process of changing my attitudes and actions about sex dragged me through realizations about myself that were rough and unpleasant. I faced hard truths and difficult experiences from my past. My deep insecurities surfaced, along with feelings of emotional vulnerability. I forced myself to learn to trust my husband, despite my childhood promise to myself that I would never fully trust a man. I worked on myself every day for months.

I know now that every ounce of effort has returned to me in a bounty of blessings. It was completely worth it.

At the time, though? I wasn’t so sure.

Before I go any further, I want to add a disclaimer, just in case some folks reading this aren’t familiar with me.

This post is about my experience in a marriage to a good-willed husband after I changed a years-long pattern of refusing to have a good sexual relationship with him. Behind this post are the following assumptions:

• Consent matters. This post is for a wife who has determined for herself that she needs to address her own struggles with sexual intimacy.
• Anger is an acceptable emotion. Using that anger to justify abuse or other intentionally hurtful words or actions is not okay. Anger that causes a problem in a marriage is not okay, either. Some anger is righteous, and some is not.
• Explaining a husband’s point of view does not erase the value of a wife’s point of view. His feelings are not the only ones that matter. They just happen to be the ones discussed in this post.
• My experience may not apply in other marriages. I was convicted that I needed to persist in my efforts despite how much husband was responding. Another marriage might require another approach in order to pursue long-term intimacy.

Six Months In

For the first few months, the difficulty was in all the new things I was thinking and doing. As I became more comfortable and confident with these new habits, much of the tension left my marriage.

Big Guy enjoyed the sex, both in quantity and quality. He seemed pretty content.

Then he got angry.

My initial efforts to pay attention to sex were in hopes of boosting him out of a depression. Then God grabbed hold of my heart and showed me the pain I’d been causing my husband. At first, sex clearly was making a difference–so the change toward anger confused me.

It was around six months after I began my journey of change. I saw changes in my husband’s behavior. He was grumpy in situations where he normally wouldn’t be. He sometimes pushed me away when I initiated. He withheld himself from me in a lot of ways. He was grumpier and more irritable than he had been back when we were hardly ever having sex.

I would think, But I’m finally doing what you’ve been begging me to do for years. Why doesn’t this make you happy? What am I supposed to do? What is going on? I would wonder. Is there still something I’m not understanding?

This period of my husband’s anger lasted about six months. I’m glad I persisted through it, because time allowed me to see this season as part of my husband’s healing process. In fact, I came to realize that it was a sign that he was beginning to heal.

His Hurt

In order to explain his healing, I need to first talk about his hurt. A wife’s pattern of sexual resistance is very painful—emotionally painful—for most men. Sexual intimacy is the primary way most men experience any genuine intimacy at all.

I have a page on my site where you can see this pain. Your Husband’s Hurt invites us to hear the voices of men who are experiencing deep pain. It is so raw. It isn’t easy to read. Even if you think the men are wrong to feel the way they do, their feelings are both real and very, very painful.

Although my husband’s specific words don’t appear on that page, he had quite a few years when he carried the feelings expressed there. He sometimes spoke similar words to me.

The emotional wounds from which my husband was healing were deep and raw. Before my sexual changes began, those wounds constantly oozed in the form of irritability and grumpiness.

For the first six or so months after I began this journey, sex served as a bandaid that stopped the oozing. It protected the wound, but it didn’t provide any healing.

Big Guy noticed that he was getting more sex, and better sex, but he wasn’t sure it was real or that it would stick. In fact, he didn’t want to mention it to me because he thought maybe I hadn’t realized what was happening. He thought that if I realized it, I might stop.

He was grateful to have what we had, but he was also certain that it was just a phase. He thought we would soon return to our usual routine of little sex.

His Anger

After about six months of a consistently better sex life, my husband began to believe that the changes were real. Why did that bring out his anger?

He was angry.

I know. This seems obvious—except that it wasn’t. I was so focused on the idea that he should be happy about having sex that I didn’t understand that my husband might be legitimately angry at me.

Big Guy had good reason to be angry. I had caused him a great deal of hurt and anguish over a period of years, albeit unknowingly. For a long time, he had believed that he was undesirable or that I just had a low libido. As he began to believe that the changes would stick, he realized that at any point during the past, I could have decided to turn things around and I just chose not to. I remember him shouting at me once, “You could have been doing this all along! Why didn’t you? Why did you make me suffer?”

He was hurt and angry—and he had every right to be.

It was safe for him to express negative  feelings.

Before, he had tried to suppress all his negative feelings, words, and actions because he knew those were things that would hurt his chances at sex. He couldn’t figure out all the circumstances I required before being willing to have sex, but he was pretty sure that negativity was not on the list (he was right).

The fact that he allowed me to see these negative feelings was a sign that he was starting to feel safer with me. He was beginning to believe that I wasn’t going to withhold sex just because he got grouchy. The dam that had kept his feelings suppressed had been breached, and his feelings overflowed.

He was rebuilding his trust in me.

Big Guy had spent years unable to trust me with his emotions or his sexuality. It takes time to rebuild trust.

Anger was a sign that he was trying out this shaky trust. Without being aware of it, he was testing the new waters in which he found himself.

He wasn’t entirely convinced that the change was real. Letting me see his anger was a way of checking to be sure he was assessing the situation correctly. Letting me see his negative feelings was an attempt to determine if I truly loved him or if my sexual attention was still contingent on his “good behavior.”

He was a little sad, too.

Part of accepting the new normal was grieving all that we had lost. My avoidance of sex had cost my husband his prime years for sexual connection. He was in his mid-40s when I began to make changes, and he was having some health challenges that sometimes affected his body’s ability to respond the way he wanted it to. After all those years of being desperate for sexual connection with me, now his body wouldn’t do what he had wanted so much for it to do.

With God’s Help

I’ve often said that the second six months of my change were harder than the first six months. During the first six months, I was getting used to new ways of thinking and acting. During the second six months, I was dealing with my husband’s anger at me.

God grabbed hold of me during that time.

So many times, I wanted to give up and go back to the way things had been before. My husband seemed mad at me all the time—sometimes even during sex.

With God’s help and protection, I withstood that season of my husband’s anger. God reminded me every day of my husband’s hurt. Thinking of his hurt helped me respond from a place of compassion rather than one of frustration or irritation at his anger. When he expressed his anger in inappropriate ways (such as yelling for a while after his point had been made), I was able to address that with a great deal of compassion and respect rather than fly off the handle myself.

God frequently reminded me of His design for marriage and sex. I was reassured that my efforts were the right thing to do, regardless of Big Guy’s reactions. I needed to allow Big Guy to work through his feelings and persevere in my work on sex and on myself.

As the months marched on, my husband worked through his anger, leaving healing in its wake.

My husband worked through his anger, leaving healing in its wake. Click To Tweet

I’d like to offer some advice for wives who find themselves in a similar situation.

• Pray for your husband’s heart to heal from the pain your refusal caused.
• Continue to pursue sexual intimacy and to express desire for your husband.
• Love your husband in spite of his unlovability—because that is when he most needs it.
• Don’t let your guilt about your past sexual resistance make you think you don’t deserve sexual happiness—and don’t think your past resistance gives your husband a free pass on how he expresses his anger. It was wrong of you to treat him unlovingly by avoiding sex, and it’s wrong for your husband to treat you unlovingly in his anger.
• Be patient. Allow your husband to work through his healing and know that it may take him time.

Making sexual changes was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. Once we got past my husband’s first months of healing, I was able to see that it was also one of the best things I’d ever done.

Related Posts

Your Husband’s Hurt
Rebuilding His Trust
What If Your Husband Responds Negatively to Your Sexual Changes?
After All That Effort, Now He’s the One Who Doesn’t Want Sex
Is a Sexless Marriage a Loveless Marriage?

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