“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Ephesians 5:31
My long-time avoidance of and resistance to sex was mostly about me. I had issues to work through, baggage to unpack, and negative lessons about men to unlearn.
But connected to all this was one other thing: I thought my husband was wrong to want to have sex with me.
Now, I didn’t think it was wrong in theory. I understood that we are sexual beings. I knew that sex was part of marriage. Sometimes I even wanted to have sex.
Rather, I thought my husband was wrong to want to have sex in specific situations:
- When we had just had sex the day before.
- When I was sad.
- When we were in a disagreement about something.
- When I thought he should have understood that I was tired.
- When he hadn’t done anything to woo me or help me feel loved.
The real list is longer, but you get the idea. And since tiredness, disagreement, misunderstanding, and busyness were part of our lives all the time, I almost always thought my husband was wrong to want to have sex.
So although I believed that it was okay to want sex in a general way, most of the time, I thought my husband’s sexual desire was wrong.
Why I Was Wrong
It turns out that I was the one who was wrong.
I’ve learned some things since those days.
- Sexual desire was designed by God.
- Sex is as much about emotional connection than about a physical release. It is about heart, not just about bodies.
- For most men, sex provides the most powerful means of emotional connection because of their biology.
- My husband’s desire for sex is a desire to connect sexually with his beloved wife (me!).
- Although sex is far more than a physical thing, it is good to enjoy the physical aspect of sex. God gave us bodies, and he gave his physiology that provides pleasure.
- My husband truly loved my body—because it was mine and because it was the body he had loved for so long.
- Frequent sex helps me enjoy sex more and look forward to it.
- When sex is a regular and frequent part of our marriage, our marriage feels closer, with greater connection and unity.
My husband’s desire to have sex with me was a good thing.
It wasn’t wrong at all.
Sex is a God-designed way for a husband and wife to feel connected both emotionally and physically. It is good for him, for her, and for their marriage.
Granted, a husband might be unloving or even sinful in the specifics of what he would like or in how he communicates with his wife—but his desire to have sex with his wife is a good thing.
A Place to Start
Has sex become a source of tension in your marriage because your husband desires sex so much more than you do?
If there are relational problems in your marriage or if there is unrepentant sin, obviously those things need to be dealt with. And I’m not suggesting that you disregard your needs and desires. I’m not saying that your husband’s sexual desire is more important than your desires and needs or that it is more important than you.
However, if you struggle with your husband’s sexual desire for you, I want to encourage you to examine your heart and mind. Are you holding his sexual desire against him? Do you find yourself thinking that your husband is wrong to want to have sex with you as often as he does?
Perhaps a starting point in addressing the tension between you is to begin to change that thought. Instead of thinking he is wrong to want to have sex with you, practice thinking something else:
My husband’s sexual desire is for me, and it is a good thing.
Write it on post-its and place it where you will be reminded. When you find yourself resisting sex or feeling frustrated with your husband’s attempt to initiate, tell yourself that his desire for you is good. Pray for God to help you fully believe that your husband’s desire for you is good.
Changing your thinking on this won’t fix everything in your marriage, but it is a good place to start.
A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love. Proverbs 5:19
Read to learn more about some of the points in this post:
This Profound Mystery
Care for Your Husband’s Heart
A Husband’s Emotional Need
He Only Wants Me for Sex
Questioning an Assumption: Is Being Valued for Sex Such a Bad Thing?
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
Beautiful?
A Wife’s Breasts Have History!
I Thought Sex Was Just for My Husband. Here’s What Changed My Mind.
Image credit | Amber Morse at pexels.com
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The uniqueness of making love varies so much with different couples.
But the one thing that is constant between a husband and wife that love each other or mutually pursuing a deeper love, is generally they choose to be with each other.
Being together should be freedom of expressing intimate desires but also respecting certain boundaries. Boundaries that are wider with some couples but not as much for others.
But boundaries sometimes expand as our marriages mature.
For instance, what may have been taboo when we were younger might be looser or tighter as we age.
As a man, even though I had a raw desire for my wife when we first married, she seemed more prim and proper for me to expose those raw desires. I think the first time I referred to her a “sex-kitten” was maybe a year or so. By making that proclamation to her, gave her a mental rush of feeling raw and being a sexual being,
To tell her that and cuddling at night in a naked embrace surrounded in the warm curves of her body and prettier and more sensual than any of the nudes in the Smithsonian.
As a husband, I want my spouse to know with confidence that her mind and body is more beautiful in my eyes than when we were first married 38 years ago.
It isn’t so much that a husbands desire at certain times are wrong: sometimes they are! I’ve heard of husbands wanting sex a week after a baby was born, or days after surgery, for example, or other such craziness. Its just plain wrong.
On the other hand, I’ve heard of wives denying their husbands for weeks or even months on end just because of “I don’t feel like it”.
If the only time you think you think your spouses desire for sex with you is valid =>only when you want it tooYOU<=. Once a month ain't gonna hack it. If the only thing you have is tiredness, "I don't feel like", the dog is acting funny, or some other nit-picky thing thats got you in a snit, for heaven's sake GET OVER IT and give some grace and be with him, even if life has whacked you upside the head for months.
Honestly, if husbands and wives would just put themselves in each others position for just a little, give each other a little grace, and sacrifice for each other, a whole lotta grief would go away.
I don’t think it is wrong for husbands to desire sex right after the birth of a baby. It isn’t wrong to have an urge or desire, whether physical or emotional. I do, however, think it is wrong for them to expect or demand sex at those times. It is wrong for him to resent her for not having sex during her postpartum recovery. However, it should be okay for him to say, “I really wish we could have sex. I want you.” An expression of desire is not a request for fulfillment of that desire.
You are right that grace, love, and empathy go a long way here.
I’ve been married a long time. When we first got married, I had very similar thoughts….
How could he want sex when I’m exhausted? How could he want sex when I’m so stressed? Why would he possibly desire sex when I’m so mad? I don’t recall ever feeling like he was wrong to feel that way, I just couldn’t understand how he could be so inconsiderate of my feelings and experiences in those moments. His wanting to have sex at those times made absolutely no sense to me and often made me feel disrespected.
Perhaps I’ve developed my feelings as a result of a coping mechanism, but somewhere along the way, I quit taking his sex drive so personally. I realized his biology dictated his sex drive, his desire to be sexual, which was, sometimes fueled by outside stimuli, while other times it was an internal drive. And sometimes it’s going to occurred at the most inopportune times. It’s not his fault. God made him this way.
I have also learned how my husband tends to use his sexuality to fill many other needs he has, such as emotional bonding, feeling loved, feeling masculine, stress relief, and plain feeling good about himself. Before marriage I had no idea men used sex to fill such needs. Maybe because I never did. I really thought it was all about the pleasure. Silly me.
Anyway, I’m assuming, that because sex fills so many emotional needs, it’s easy for men to take it personally when rejected at one of those inopportune times. My husband has had to learn that he needs to assess my personal reality sometimes and show some grace. There will be times he needs to not take his own sex drive so personally. There are two in this equation.
In my mind, his sex drive isn’t about me, but directing it toward me is his way of expressing his love for me. I need to keep that thought in my mind and that’s not always easy.
I don’t know. I’ve come to think that my husband’s sex drive is one part nothing about me (physical) and a bigger part completely about me and feeling close to me. I think you’re right that men experience sexual rejection as a very personal and painful thing–even though we don’t necessarily mean it that way.
Chris,
A lot going on here. Emotion, Biology, Circumstances involving Crisis, not in the mood.
We husbands do need to in tuned with our wives. I have to admit, rejection is something I don’t feel if my wife isn’t mentally or physically not able to make love,,, maybe the feeling is more of an awkward feeling.
With my wife, it seems as if she kind of likes me to initiate the intimacy. She may give certain tells that she is on fire or I may give a playful signal of a kiss and she goes “forget that noise” acting like we aren’t going to be intimate, while she is allowing her undergarments to magically fall to the floor.
She always has good hygiene so sometimes her playful responses back “it ain’t happening, means “it’s happening”, while other times it really means it “ain’t happening”
So we husbands do miss the mark in knowing or not knowing when we should make a move toward intimacy with our spouses.
If both the husband and wife have a high sex drive, but a deep rooted crisis is effecting the husband’s desire to be intimate with his wife when her intimate hormones are exploding, she may also feel sexual rejection.
Sooner or later, while the lengthy crisis is occurring, the husband and wife eventually end up being intimate in order to release some built up, “back pressure” and turn the intimacy into straight sex. Not very emotionally fulfilling when spouses aren’t emotionally connected and having straight sex.
Though in my view (and my spouses) there is some excitement when spouses are mentally connected and enjoying a combination of making love and having straight sex at the same time, a certain rawness that sometimes is hard to describe in a Christian thread like this.
I think pursuing and being emotionally connected is the only way a couple can be truly see what is inside one another’s heart, where spouses know when the intimacy is more consensual or for the frequency for mutual consensual intimacy to occur.
I can speak from experience, that both my spouse and I struggled with the connection part, during times when our marriage was navigating through some choppy waters.