In Sexual Disintegrity, I wrote about the sexual brokenness that I carried into my marriage.
I struggled to feel loved. I yearned for a sense of belonging. I had used casual sex to seek healing for things that had nothing to do with sex.
Within my marriage, my sexual disintegrity led to habits of avoiding or resisting sex, controlling what we did and when, and avoiding other kinds of intimacy as well. The baggage I’d brought into our marriage continued to grow because it was all centered on me and my own thoughts and feelings.
A Moment of Conviction
My long-time avoidance of sex deeply hurt my husband. I will always remember the moment when I realized that. It was a moment that completely changed our marriage.
The moment changed me, too.
That moment broke me and convicted me—and it is the moment when our marriage began to heal.
As a response to that realization of hurt, I took to heart 1 Corinthians 7:5:
Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
I took on an attitude of sexual stewardship.
Blessing My Husband
My husband’s sexuality is his. As a steward, I cared for it. I honored it, responded to it, and nurtured it.
My heart had grown compassion for him that reshaped my approach to sex in our marriage.
In viewing myself as a caretaker of my husband’s sexuality, I knew that this was about far more than sex. I’d come to understand that for my husband, sex was about emotion and connection even more than it was about physical need.
My new understanding of what sex meant to my husband became a cornerstone of my sexual stewardship. I knew that how I responded to him sexually had a big impact on him emotionally as well.
As a steward, I felt a responsibility to care for my husband sexually.
For me, that meant that I sometimes tried things I wasn’t particularly interested in. Sometimes it meant that I had sex when I didn’t feel like it or even when I was upset with Big Guy. It meant that I made an effort to initiate.
We often think of duty sex as having sex only because you know you’re supposed to, with a feeling of resignation and “have to” rather than a feeling of joy or delight.
My initial approach to sexual stewardship was duty sex in its most honorable and most loving form. It was my honor and my great joy to be able to bless my husband in this way.
Duty sex helped me create new habits and build on the compassion I now had for my husband and his pain.
A Season Sexual Stewardship ≠ Sexual Wholeness
So much of my sexual disintegrity was a result of me-centeredness. I felt unloved. I felt unwanted. I felt unlovable.
I, I, I.
At the moment God opened my eyes to how I’d hurt my husband, He yanked me from a place of self-centeredness to a place of having a heart for my husband.
During the first several years after this moment, I worked hard to change my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about sex.
This season accomplished important things:
- It helped me move away from habits of self-centeredness.
- It nurtured healing for my husband’s heart and began to rebuild his ability to trust me.
- It fostered healing in our marriage by removing a primary source of tension between us and promoting unity and connection.
This season of sexual stewardship is part of my own journey toward sexual wholeness. As important as this season was, however, this time when I focused on stewarding my husband’s sexuality did not bring any healing of my own sexual brokenness. My sexual disintegrity stayed with me for several more years.
I had switched from me-centeredness to Big Guy-centeredness. I was treating sex as primarily about my husband.
I’d been wrong to view sex only through the lens of my feelings, and I was wrong here to view it only through the lens of my husband’s feelings.
Before I married, I sought my identity and worth in other people’s perceptions of me. During my season of sexual stewardship, I was seeking my identity and worth specifically in my husband’s happiness and in his perception of me.
A Place Where Healing Could Happen
A husband-centered sex life is outside God’s design for sex just as much as a wife-centered sex life is—and I was no less broken than I’d been before.
However, as I focused on my husband for a season, my marriage was transformed into an emotionally safe place for me as well as for him.
My marriage became a place where my sexual brokenness could begin to heal.
Only when I invited God into my sexuality did I find sexual wholeness—and that’s what I’ll talk about when I wrap up this series next week. (Next week’s post will be a day or two late due to Christmas.)
My Story of Sexual Healing and Wholeness
- Sexual Healing and Wholeness – Introduction to My Story
- Sexual Disintegrity – My Journey Toward Sexual Wholeness #1
- Sexual Stewardship – My Journey Toward Sexual Wholeness #2
- Sexual Invocation – My Journey Toward Sexual Wholeness #3
Does my story resonate with you? Find regular encouragement through the Intimacy Encouragement subscription or Intimacy Mentoring.
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I've moved! While you can peruse the archives here, I am no longer posting at The Forgiven Wife.
Please join me at Honeycomb & Spice.
Ladies, if you're interested in joining me for a study of Juli Slattery's new book God, Sex, and Your Marriage, time is running out! Our study begins with introductions on February 26, 2023, but the study will be open to join until March 5.
I’m looking forward to the final installment. I was raised in male-centered purity culture, and 12 years into marriage I am only now realizing just how damaging it has been for me to ignore my own desires and preferences because I believed a good wife never says no to anything her husband wants. But now I don’t want to make the mistake of swinging too far in the opposite direction and making it all about me and what I want. I’m not sure how to strike that balance between mutual enjoyment and generosity. It isn’t healthy to frequently think “How long do I have to do this until I can pull away without being rude?”
Nope, that’s definitely not healthy! I don’t know that I have that balance figured out for myself–but once I experienced sexual wholeness by inviting God into the whole thing, it hasn’t seemed to be an issue.
As a husband who has been refused sex many times but also been refused certain sexual practices (i.e., oral sex), I can tell you that it is perfectly fine with me to have a conversation that leads to not doing something I want to do. But it has to be done in a spirit of compromise and compassion. Unilateral declarations of refusal with an extra helping of condemnation do not inspire sexual or emotional intimacy. Saying “I would love to do something special for you but I’m not sure if I am comfortable with that” is a far cry from “Don’t even think of ever asking me to do X, Y or Z.”
I feel like I’m in a bit of a lose-lose situation. How do you say, “I know we’ve been doing things a certain way for 12 years now but it turns out I don’t actually like XYZ…” And then I feel like a selfish jerk and I don’t want to hurt him, so I go right back to thinking that it’s better if I just don’t say anything at all. Aaaaaand that’s how we got here 12 years later. *sigh*
I tend to phrase that in terms of how my body responds rather than what I like. During different seasons of life, my body has responded in different ways to sexual stimulation. Recently it’s because of menopause, but even before that, I would find that what was going on with me in life would affect my mind’s ability to relax or respond to certain stimuli. Making it about my body’s response makes it seem less like a personal thing and more like a shared problem that we can work on together. Could that approach work for you?
Unlike you, my wife does not suffer in silence. I have tried to change things up in the marriage bed to add spice and variety only three time in our entire marriage and each time I was shot down without any further discussion or compromise. Not wanting to be a selfish jerk or not wanting to hurt my feelings was the last thing on her mind. I crossed a line and she pushed me back over the line.
Not knowing your relationship dynamic, I think you either need to just say what’s on your mind as compassionately as possible or I think your husband needs to back off and create some safe space for you to be honest about how you feel.