Are you guys hanging in there? I know this is a highly sensitive subject, but one that I feel needs to be talked about more. One in 3 marriages struggle with mismatched sexual desire. Some studies even find that some married couples only have sex 10 times a year. WHAT!?
This is NOT what your Heavenly Father had planned. His desire is for you to have some Red Hot Monogamy within your marriage! Did you know that a survey done for “For Women Only” showed that even if men were getting all the sex they wanted, 3 out of 4 men would still feel empty if their wife wasn’t both engaged and satisfied? This means we need to work towards our DESIRE for our husbands, not simply acting in duty.
Today’s post comes from Joy at Simply Bloom and her Re-Discovering Red Hot Monogamy blog post. It’s a fantastic read!!!!!
“SEX. It’s everywhere, except where it matters most. We live in a sexually saturated culture, with the only voice we ever hear being the corrupted addicted, perverted one of the world, exploited by the media. Why on earth is the church mum on this topic?
Why are we allowing our sex lives to slip down the tube, unnoticed, un-discussed, as though it were not the magnificent gift – and powerful weapon – it is?”
Sadly, we’ve bought into the lie that it’s the ‘heathens’ that get to have the fun, wild, creative sex…and we, the prim and proper church folks, get relegated to the ‘missionary position’ {pun intended}; the boring, predictable, two-dimensional left-overs.
Seriously. Enough with that nonsense!
We should be talking as loudly, if not louder, about this mysterious gift God gave his most beloved creation, mankind. Sex is mind-blowingly incredible…and it’s because God made it that way. On purpose!
God intended for the marriage bed to be a place of toe-curling, kick-the-nightstand-over sex; madly passionate, deliciously intimate connectedness.
Why do we settle for so much less?
We’re doing our marriages, and our children’s future marriages, a disservice by not talking about this subject.
The marriage relationship was designed to be a tangible expression of God’s heart toward His church; a great love-affair marked by unconditional love, passion, faithfulness, selfless service, and vibrant communication.
Sex is dear to God’s heart, and anything dear to His heart, Satan tries to steal, distort and misuse as a weapon against the heart of man. Only something as powerful as this rouses the enemy to corrupt to such an extreme. Just read the news. On second thoughts, don’t.
What a devastatingly destructive weapon sex has become in this world. At the core, it is lust, unabashedly tainted by greed and selfishness, with a voracious hunger for power and control, and it often results in addiction.
Let me be clear when I say, this is not the sex I’m talking about. I want to look at the stunningly intimate, life-giving, spirit mingling gift of sex between a husband and wife….”
Christians should be having the best, most invigorating, creative sex ever!
We’ve got to stop feeding the lie that “good girls” don’t have fabulous sex with their husbands.
I strongly believe it’s the overflow of this faulty understanding about God’s heart toward sexuality that has many marriages in the church today suffering from a case of watered-down, resentment-laden sex. A far cry from the ever-growing, relational oasis it was designed to be.
And because no one talks about this, except maybe the Cosmopolitan-reading ‘bad girls’, we suffer in silence.
It’s a dangerous dynamic that has the potential to destroy a marriage if not addressed.
“Sex is the spice that rescues our relationships from becoming mundane pursuits of chores” – Bill & Pam Farrell.
If you even wondered how important sex was to God’s heart, notice that He dedicated an entire book to a detailed, juicy exploration of the topic. Find some time to slip away and read Song of Solomon 2:3-17 and Song of Solomon 4:1-7. It’s steamy stuff!
You see, sex is like glue in marriage. The mortar of the marriage structure. It requires the ultimate sacrifice of vulnerability, humility, and selflessness. And it immediately creates a shift in the ‘climate’ of your relationship, and ultimately, in your home. A sexless marriage will cause ripples in every area of your life. Nothing is unaffected. I realize this is a tough reality to accept, but know that there is always hope.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, puts it this way…
“Men need validation. When they come into the world they are born of women and getting their validation from mommy is the beginning of needing it from a woman. And when the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like a hero, he’s very susceptible to the charms of some other woman making him feel what he needs. And these days women don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give a man what they need… I hold women responsible for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.”
Do we fully grasp, as wives, that when we said ‘I do’, we were committing to be our husband’s sole source of sexual satisfaction for the extend of our lives together. Sure, other {unhealthy} counterfeits threaten to creep in from time to time, but the responsibility to meet those God-given needs lies in our capable hands.
Because sex has the power to unlock your man’s emotions…and you’re the one holding the key…it is inconsiderate – and frankly, un-Christlike – to withhold that gift from him. Strong words, I know. But if we refuse to do our part, there will always be another eager to fill our shoes.
Our men no longer need to go looking for opportunities to sin sexually – it literally knocks at their door several times a day. We have the incredible ability {the power and honor} to help guard their hearts and minds in the fight.
Fight for your husband, beloved!
Our bodies are so very, very different, and while we do comprehend that on many levels, we often don’t realize the implication that has in the intimacy department.
Men are indeed like microwaves…hot and ready in a matter of nano-seconds, and satisfying them is relatively uncomplicated, comparable to a blindfolded attempt at ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. Women, on the other hand, are the {sadly infamous} crockpot. The one with a whole lot of buttons and knobs. You know the one. You’ve got to twist this 37 times, press that, move this lever 52 degrees clockwise, tweak this little button for 12 minutes and then pray it’s plugged in properly, because if it’s not…dude, you’ve got to start all over again!
Not really, but you get the point.
God made us this different on purpose! It takes time and effort and communication and a whopping dose of sense of humor to pull this stuff off! All valuable qualities to cultivate in a marriage.
Don’t give up…practice makes perfect!
When we realize that our husband’s desire for connecting with us intimately goes deeper than a superficial, physical need for release, we may be more inclined to bless his heart by pursuing his body (and jumping his bones).
As a side note, and in talking about the importance of meeting his need for physical intimacy – which motivates a desire in him to meet our need for emotional intimacy, it would be remiss not to mention the wisdom {oh, husbands…are you listening?!} and importance of a man intentionally touching his wife’s heart first {it’s all about both partners selflessly giving 100%…not just a half-baked effort in the hopes you’ll meet in the middle).
Allow me to explain…
Mark Gungor talks in his series, Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage, about the access points to men’s and women’s hearts. Aptly named the “happy” place.
Okay…now put away any persnicketiness, dust off your sense of humor and work with me on this one, okay?
For a man to touch his wife’s {ahem}, he needs to access her heart first. Or as Mark succinctly puts it…”be nice to the girl!”. And as we’ve discovered, for us to really access our hubby’s hearts…we often need to touch his “happy place” first. Or at least make sure it’s getting enough, um…happiness.
Cue the oxytocin, and voila! It’s magical.
Or something.
Sex is a balm for their weary souls. Our husbands are out there everyday – them against the world – they desperately long for a safe place to come home to, to be completely real and vulnerable, and to be fully accepted and loved. Our desire for them fuels them in a way we will never fully understand {Shaunti Feldhahn, For Women Only}
Show Me Mine, And I’ll Show You Yours:
It’s amazing how easily – because they don’t always touch our hearts first – we put off meeting our men’s needs until we feel ‘primed’. And while it seems natural – after all, it’s really hard to be sexually vulnerable with someone you don’t feel you’re emotionally connected to – we’re basically declaring, “fill my emotional intimacy tank (while you’re running on the fumes of an oil rag)…and only then will I consider filling your physical intimacy tank. “Me first. You second”.
It takes remembering the depth of love {1 Corinthians 13:4-7} I’m called to offer my precious man – that was first offered to me in the midst of my sin and rebellion – to correct my heart. When I lay down self and meet his needs first – even when my tank is feeling empty – he is passionate about meeting my needs. It initiates an energizing cycle in my marriage.
We are in a battle for our husband’s hearts. The phrase ‘it’s okay to look at the menu as long as you eat at home’ is absolute bollocks. And our husbands know it.
The Bible says that an affair of the heart is very much an affair {Matthew 5:27-28}.
God created men to be visual creatures – don’t bemoan it and whine about it, work with it, sister! Take it up with their creator if you have an issue with it. And in case it needs to be said…”don’t be modest behind closed doors!”. Our husbands love being entrusted with the most intimate, brave, wild side of their wives.
Embrace your inner ‘goddess’…and for Pete’s sake, let her out a little more often.
Don’t forget that even sexier than our girly figure in the bedroom, is our Godly confidence in the bedroom! So let’s do what it takes to get comfortable in our skin. When we feel sexy…we are sexier to our men.
Be intentional about smiling at him again whenever he walks into a room. Laugh easily. And stop being so easily offended. Learn to flirt again….”
A big thanks to Joy for allowing me to share parts of her book.
Do you want to take this home with you, highlight read and devour more?
Buy Joy’s Book! XES: Why Church Girls Get Tend To Get It Backwards
~T
Shared with To Love, Honor & Vacuum’s: Wifey Wednesday!
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4 little Fergusons 