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Latest Posts & Podcast Episodes

SWM 144 – Why wives have a complicated relationship with sex and what to do about it

One of our supporters posted a question in our forum which led to a bit of a discussion on what men perceive as sexy, and it shook the questioner a bit, because it was radically different from what she had been led to believe her whole life.

This led into a larger discussion about why women tend to have more hangups about sex than men do.  I shared my thoughts in the forum in a bit of a rant and then realized that I don’t know if I’ve really tackled this a whole lot on the blog and podcast.  If I have, it’s been a few years, so it’s time for a refresher for the new people.

So, I’m going to try and make it a little less ranty and a little more coherent and see if maybe I can teach some other wives and women out there a bit about what many men think regarding sex in the hopes that it might help some marriages, present or future.

SWM 139 – Why won’t my spouse do x – I would do it for them

Recently, I’ve noticed a question popping up all over the place. It’s come up in our supporter forum, coaching sessions, emails, comments in our latest survey, and more. This question points to a fundamental tension in many marriages – at the root of it is a self-centric desire. The desire for our spouse to serve our own needs and expectations. Whether it’s about sex or more subtle emotional needs, this recurring question often revolves around a common theme: a wish for partners to be more like ourselves.
For men, this question frequently focuses on sexual matters. Some men wonder why their spouses don’t engage in sex as often as they would like or why they don’t fulfill certain specific desires. On the other hand, when women voice similar concerns, the issues are often more nuanced. Many women express frustration with their partner’s inability to intuitively understand their needs without explicit communication.
And, of course, in some marriages, those dynamics are reversed.
Both scenarios boil down to a deeper, more universal issue: the tendency to project our own needs and expectations onto our spouses, often without fully considering their unique perspectives and experiences.
In this post, we’ll delve into why this tendency is problematic and how understanding our partner’s individual differences can relieve this frustration.

BDSM Survey Results

During July and a bit of August, we ran a survey about people’s BDSM experiences. Depending on who you ask, it was either extensive or just dipping our toes into the topic. In the end, we received over 1,000 complete responses from a wide range of couples, some for whom BDSM is part of their daily life, others who were engaging in BDSM activities didn’t think what they were doing qualified, others who wished they were doing such things but didn’t know how to start, and those who thought it was disgusting that I even considered asking questions about such a topic.

or the last three weeks, I’ve spent evenings and weekends digging through the data, coding it, doing pivot tables, building charts, running correlation formulas, and more, trying to get what I can out of it. It’s aptly called data mining because often it feels like sifting through a lot of rocks and dirt just to try and find a nugget of something valuable contained.

Today, I’m going to share what I found.

SWM 137 – Why we don’t spank our children

Last week, Gary Thomas posted an article on his substack on the topic of discipline vs. punishment—not taking a stance but rather offering it up as a controversial conversation starter. Reading it made me curious about something—does your view of hell change your parenting approach? After all, if God is our example, and you believe that hell is eternal punishment, does that then lend to a more heavy-handed approach to parenting versus someone who believes that hell is an act of mercy?

I posted that question in our forum, and it then led to a discussion on using physical punishment on children.  I spent a fair bit of time in the last week or two writing on that thread, and so I thought I’d repurpose it here for those who might be curious about how we raised our children.

We, Christina and I, don’t believe hell is eternal torture.  We don’t believe such a view is in keeping with the Bible.  We grew up in a denomination that taught it was, and it was one of the reasons we left because the doctrine couldn’t stand up to either biblical scrutiny or logic as we saw it.  If you want to know why and/or argue that stance, I fully welcome you to read the post What happens when you die?  That’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to share why we don’t spank our children, and now that my children are growing up into adults, what the outcome of such a choice has been.

SWM 135 – It’s good to try new things

Most kids, when growing up, enter a picky stage at some point.  Some when they’re toddlers, some when they’re young children, some when they become teenagers.  When our 3rd or 4th kid entered this phase, everyone knew the response when they didn’t want to eat something new that we’d made.  “It’s good to try new things.”  They didn’t have to eat it all but had to try it—a decent try, not a touch to the tongue followed by an exaggerated exclamation of disgust.

Teaching children to at least give something new a fair shot, I think, has applications later on in life as well. I often talk to husbands and wives whose spouses simply will not try anything new in the bedroom. One will bring up an idea, and it’s immediately shot down by the “picky” spouse—the one who is perfectly happy with the flavour of vanilla every night.

Today, I want to talk about why I think it’s good to try new things – not only when it comes to food, but also in the bedroom – or outside of the bedroom, depending on how much privacy you have.  We’re going to talk about the interplay between dopamine, controlled risk-taking, adventure and trust in marriages as it pertains to sex and more.

SWM 134 – AQ – Piercings, how not to start a fight, nude photos, nude beaches and more

Answering Anonymous Questions about Married Sex

Topics include:
How often should a healthy man need sex?
Clitoral piercing
How do we start talking about sex without fighting?
Is it good to masturbate to stay in a sexless marriage?
Professional nude photos with a male photographer
Newly married wife only interested in the same sexual routine
Becoming a Christian didn’t fix my same-sex attraction
Nude beaches
How to get better at rejection
Struggling with orgasm