Differences in desire for sex is one of the most frequent issues discussed among couples seeking advice for sex. The common stereotype is the husband’s nearly insatiable desire and the wife’s lack of libido. This of course is not always the case, as will be discussed in another post; however, many couples suffer through unnecessary pressure for lack of understanding and sometimes care regarding this issue. Husbands come for help in alarming numbers because of discontentment with sex in marriage.
For the wife, it is necessary to recognize your place in your husband’s life. You are exclusively and uniquely qualified to bring your husband the sexual satisfaction he desires (1 Cor 7:3-4). In a God-honoring marriage, no one or nothing else can bring him that satisfaction (Heb 13:4). Discontentment often leads men to committing further sin in order to search for satisfaction, even though they are never truly satisfied. As discussed in earlier blogs here and here, this search ultimately rests on the husband’s lack of self-control.
However, as a wife, you are responsible for your part of sex in marriage. Although you serve your husband in many areas of marriage with exceptional care, creativity, and selflessness, the area of sex is often either minimized or neglected. Any neglect toward your husband cheats him from the satisfaction that God designed exclusively for him from you in marriage.
A Few Key Principles to Remember
The Purpose of Sex.
The purpose of sex is to ultimately glorify God, but also celebrates being one flesh together, serves as the means to pregnancy, expresses one’s love for the other, and provides pleasure. Understood in total, sex provides another avenue to meaningful, heart-felt worship for the couple together. In it, the couple celebrates a whole-bodied response to the goodness and grace of God in Christ together. This is only possible as the husband and wife both stay mindful of God’s purposes and participate freely together in sex.
The Benefits of Sex.
Sex provides incredible benefits for you, your spouse, and you both as a couple together. Not only does sex provide for an opportunity to worship, which is incredibly huge by itself, enjoying sex together as a married couple also provides encouragement, satisfaction, protection, and, depending upon the season of life, the potential for children. These benefits are huge. Here is the catch wives, only sex with you can provide these benefits for your husband. A lack of sex with you and a less-than-passionate response for sex with you robs from him what God has intended for him.
The Motivation for Sex.
Often when discussing an individual’s libido, multiple factors play a part in whether or not one desires sex. Although these various multiple factors are important, the ultimate motivator for sex is love. This is true in so many areas of marriage. Wives faithfully serve their families, often doing many things they do not care to do – actually repetitively every day – as an outcome of their love. How many women do you know who just naturally love to change diapers, care for sick children, clean up after messy humans, and wait on people all day long? I do not know any. But when you put that together as a unit, many women would say they love to do those things because they love their husbands and families.
For that same reason, a wife should love to have sex. Why? Because she loves her husband and love always has at its core the goal to give. The wife’s love must reflect Christ’s love (Eph 5:1-2). As a wife focuses on loving her husband through giving to him selflessly, her motivation for sex falls in line with what honors God. As a result of knowing she is honoring God, her desire for sex will increase. For the husband who does not have a wife that is passionate about sex, he is being cheated.
Your Role in Your Husband’s Life
You function in a role that no one else does. You exclusively can provide your husband the God-honoring, fun-producing, sex-saturated life God purposed for him. God expects him to be completely and solely satisfied sexually with you. Solomon writes to husbands,
18 Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice with the wife of your youth.
19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love. (Prov 5:18-19)
God commands for a husband to be satisfied by you. Here the text refers to your breasts as an euphemism for sex with you. It refers to a part (your breasts) for the whole (the sexual experience, including intercourse with you). The Bible says for the man to rejoice with you, to be satisfied by you, and to be enraptured with your love.
In God’s design, most men live with full awareness of their desire for sex. God hard wires men to want sex (although living in a sin-cursed world affects some men’s desire and the means by which they are willing to become satisfied). When your husband is around you, his desire increases – not because you are doing anything sexually, simply because you are you. Even in the middle of conflict, under lots of stress, or worn ragged, his response will often be to want sex. Why? Because God has hard wired him that way.
Why is this important to understand? Simply because you are the only person that can provide that for him. This is why God expects you to consider him before you consider yourself in regard to the frequency of sex and level of your passion for sex (1 Cor 7:3-5).
Sex Benefits You
Because you are the only person who God has ordained to satisfy your husband, do not forget the benefit of good sex for you. Good sex with your husband is not a cure-all. However, it places your husband in the strongest position for him to better deal with his heart, that is, consider other issues you bring to him related to his own sin, struggles, and temptations. As you honor God in this area of your life, you better enable God to work in your husband’s heart. Your sin does not further complicate your husband’s general tendency to sin. You alleviate an excuse that his sinful heart can use to justify more sin. In addition, you have the joy of knowing that the love Jesus has for you has enabled you to both serve God first and then your husband. You enjoy a clear conscience, better attitude, and less complications of sin in your own life – not to mention you may also enjoy pleasuring your husband.
Fight Your Own War in Your Heart
What can you do if you struggle either desiring sex, prioritizing sex, or participating passionately? Begin in your heart. Whenever you desire to live for what you want instead of what God wants from and for you, this is idolatry. Here are a series of starter questions (there could be many more) you can use to at least begin the process of evaluating your heart to help you identify what it is your are living for in a particular moment.
- What keeps me from desiring, prioritizing, or participating passionately in sex right now?
- Is it an issue of health or cleanliness? Then communicate that with your husband.
- Is it an issue of being tired? Then graciously explain the problem to your husband and let him know the soonest time you will not be tired. An acceptable answer is not when the children graduate from high school. The real answer relates to later today, in the morning, etc. Then be prepared and invite him to have sex with you at the appointed time. Over time, the goal is to reserve your energy to serve your spouse with sex as you have served him and the family the rest of the day. You can always be creative as to time and place in order to give your best to him as well.
- Is it stress, worry, or anxiety? Then take time to thank God that He is in control, that He can be trusted, and that He has given you this opportunity to pour your heart and soul into passionately loving your husband. Make this an issue of prayer as you focus on your husband and loving him through the pressured situation. You do not want the pressured situation to encourage more sin in your life, actually making the pressure even greater.
- Is it disappointment, discontentment, or anger with your husband? It is essential to remember that God did not give sex to you as a couple for you to use it as a negotiating or bargaining tool. Use your words in the appropriate time to discuss the issues of conflict together. Sex is not the tool to manipulate your husband into this conversation. You will need to pray for the awareness of God’s help, strength, and purpose as you seek to love and serve your husband more than yourself.
- In this moment, who do I want to serve more – God and my husband or myself? This question relates to your awareness of God’s call on you to serve through love. The idea of service and giving are closely related. The goal is to lovingly give as Christ has given to you. The Gospel realities of Jesus’ past death, burial, resurrection, and His present presence in your life daily offering you grace, comfort, and help should help provide you the motivation to serve your husband in love as you have been loved.
- Am I minimizing my role in my husband’s life to provide for him what God intends for him to have from me through sex exclusively with me? Understand dear wife that you are the one ordained by God to exclusively provide for him what God designed for him. If you fail to serve him in loving, passionate, and creative ways in sex (much more than just intercourse), then you put him in a very weak position. You may be married to Superman Christian; however, why put him in a situation where saying no to temptation to please himself in ungodly ways becomes easier? (Remember, his sins are always his responsibility, as we will address to him in our next blog.)
- Would my husband say that I am friendly, romantic, kind, flirtatious, and playful? This question speaks to many other issues in your daily living besides just sex. The goal here is for you to prayerfully consider how you actually treat your husband throughout the day. If you would have treated him while you were dating the way you are treating him today, would he have wanted to marry you? This question is not, “Are you doing laundry, serving around the house, cooking meals, and serving in hundreds of other ways?” I can answer that for almost all of you – you are! The issue relates to your heart, your being, and your overall attitude toward your husband. Do you lovingly smile, find things to compliment, and flirt with him? Do you tell him you are praying for him? Do you encourage him as a man, a hard worker, and a leader? Do you tell him things that you want from him sexually? Do you encourage him to look forward to further sex with you? Do you text him coded messages welcoming him into your presence? Do you encourage morning sex, quickies, or other kinds of sex outside of end-of-the-day sex before sleep? Do you let him see you naked? Do you let him touch you? Of course you do not have to do all these things, but you should be doing some or most of these things.
- Is your husband satisfied and God honored? This may be the ultimate self-counsel question in terms of day-to-day living. Your husband’s satisfaction is your responsibility in normal marriage situations. Again, a future blog will deal with husbands in relationship to lust controlling his life, but in the vast majority of marriages it comes down to whether or not he is satisfied. His satisfaction rest solely in your control. For God to be honored in your life and your marriage to be everything God wants it to be, your husband needs to be satisfied by you. If that bothers you or if you are not willing to satisfy him, then the issue is not a sex issue, the issue is a worship issue and a willingness to honor God in your life.
Are You Cheating Your Husband?
Are you cheating your husband? For the sake of God’s glory, your good, and his increased pleasure in being your husband, I hope you are not. The line between a cheated husband and a cheating husband is often so thin. As I see in counseling, I am concerned that wives do not do as much as they can do to keep their husband as strong as possible in this area.
Occasionally in counseling I use this illustration related to the husband who is not sinfully lust-driven. If you were to invite me to eat dessert or some other kind of food after enjoying my favorite meal of prime rib, baked sweet potato, and asparagus or broccoli, I will immediately turn it down. In fact thinking about more food will make me shiver and feel disgusting. It is not even appetizing for me to see it. Why? Because I am so full and satisfied with the meal I received. I do not crave anything else because I have been blessed already. Dear wife, in a similar way, your husband should be so satisfied at home with you that he is full, not easily distracted by something or someone different.
May God grant you grace as you consider your part in your husband’s life.
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NOTE 1: In cases of your husband’s infidelity, the issue of sex becomes much more complicated. Please talk to a biblical counselor related to your best response to him.
NOTE 2: If your husband has a lust-driven heart, you need to encourage him to go to counseling. Your constant willingness to please him does not satisfy a sinful heart. He needs further help with his idolatry.
So, in preparation for the next blog on sex, husbands can consider this question, “Husband, are you cheating your wife?” Talk with you then.
Part 1: What You Need to Know about Sex and Why
Part 2: What is the Ultimate Purpose of Sex?
Part 3: What is the motivation for good sex?
Part 4: What are the benefits of good sex?
Part 5: What is the connection between sex and communication?
Part 6: How can you understand the struggle of a man’s desire for sex in marriage?
Part 7: How should a husband deal with his desire for sex?
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