I was looking at the stats for the blog today, and it reminded me of a question I had last night: I wonder how many people think they are the only ones in marriage having problems with sex, or who think that maybe sex in marriage is supposed to be dull/bad/painful and/or infrequent. It popped into my head because of something I wrote a few days ago. I didn’t post it here, because it was for a project being hosted by My Beloved Is Mine (site no longer available). But, when I was reading their post (and incidentally, some of my own words back to myself), it sparked the question. This is an excerpt of what I wrote:
…when we got married and had problems in almost every facet of our life, we looked around and saw no one else being transparent about their problems. So, we assumed that this was what marriage was like, and no one talked about how disappointing it was.
This is where our marriage started. We’ve come a long way. But the most startling revelation: we’re not alone. There are so many Christians looking for answers on the topic if sexuality within marriage, and so few resources out there. With the age of the internet, we’ve got a lot more than we ever had before, and people are talking about it more online, but still in person, almost no one is willing. Everyone is afraid. Every day I see people hit my site that are asking the same sort of questions (these are verbatim):
- Is sex a need or a want?
- Why do married men masturbate?
- What is a normal frequency of sex in marriage
- Is there such a thing as Christian Porn?
- How can I spice up my sex life?
- Why do men like sex in the morning?
- What does my wife want sexually?
- How to tie up my wife?
I also get search terms with declarations (also verbatim):
- I hate my wife breastfeeding
- I want him to ravish me
- I argue with my wife about frequency
- Pregnant wife never wants sex
- I found my husband masturbating
- Sex on Father’s Day
Then there are the sad ones, because I know they didn’t find an answer, I just haven’t had time to answer everything, and there is still pain and/or questions there on the other side of the search engine (again, verbatim):
- how to tell your wife you dont want sex
- how to know when your wife wants sex
- wife can’t decide if she wants to be married
- how to make your wife want you in bed
Now, I’m sure everything is of the opinion, “OK, yeah, maybe there are one or two people who have a question like I do, but the world is a big place, lots of people”. It’s not one or two.
At the time of this post, the community around this one blog consists of:
- 315 Facebook Fans
- 604 Twitter Followers
- 226 Google+ Followers
- 166 Email Subscribers
- 158 RSS Subscribers
Which is 1469 people (granted, some are overlap). Whenever I post an entry, there are about a guaranteed 1,000 people who read it. To date we have had 53,000 unique visitors!
And there are dozens of Christian blogs devoted to marriage. I’d say that most of them are larger than mine.
But, the point of all these numbers today is not to brag, or to compare, or to worry about stats, but to say, simply:
You are not alone! Welcome to the community. We are all searching for answers, and we all want better marriages.
So true! I think so many times our churches are so concerned (and should be) about getting people saved that we loose sight of what comes after that. We need real discipleship! On how to live this life and everything to comes with it. We need people to be real and not simply say “Don’t do this” or “Do this”. We need to know its ok to be real and real people have problems. Bottom line I think our churches need to be healed and I guess that has to start with people be able to share their problems without fear of condemnation.
Sorry kinda got on my soapbox there!
Annie
I whole-heatedly agree! Feel free to get back on your soapbox any time.
A few years ago my wife and I joined a growth group at our church and it was interesting that after a few weeks of being together one of the younger couples asked for prayer because she and her husband were having some problems in the bedroom and they didn’t know were to turn to. That prayer request turned into an amazing night of discussion about how every one of us at one point or another had to face “problems” on the bedroom whether sexual in nature or just general crankiness after a long day at work or at home with the kids. We learned some things about each other that brought us all closer together as a group and as couples. Sometimes it can be a good thing to share with other believers that you can trust to keep things between within the group the struggles you have, even of a sexual nature if need be. God created sex and He created us to be drawn to our spouses in that way. Sometimes we just need to be able to talk to other to discover that we are never alone when it comes to issue like that. Most of the people in the group have since moved on to other places, but to this day I still find comfort in knowing that if I ever need someone to talk to man to man when I can’t talk to my wife, I have a group of guys (and she has a group of gals) that either of us can go to for advice and prayer, no matter what the subject may be. 🙂
We have groups like that as well, but such issues have never come up. I think perhaps it’s because they are a mix of couples, singles, widows and single parents. It makes it hard to discuss sex in particular. I am hoping to start a group for couples at some point though.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Great post. We need for someone to start these types of dialogues. Keeping them under wraps, I think, is one of Satan’s strategies for keeping God’s children, “suffering for lack of knowledge.”
Thanks Robyn. I agree, keeping silent is contributing to the problem.
I’m following your link from Fellowship Fridays. My husband has been asking himself this week “where has my wife gone?” We don’t have a bedroom. Our beds are the couch. This doesn’t help our love life – but I decided last week that I need to quit with holding and I’m learning to enjoy, of course it takes a little finesse to not get caught with three children in the house, even at midnight one may wake up to use the restroom. Thank you for your tasteful post.
Not having a bedroom does make things trickier, particularly with little ones about. Good for your for deciding to quit withholding, that can be a hard decision. I would urge you to check out the posts All You Want Is Sex and Is Sex A Need Or A Want to get the male perspective of why sex is important, and how sex helps marriage on a biochemical level. It may help to bolster your resolve.
This is such a great message – it’s so important to know that we are not alone and other people struggle too. It’s good to feel normal!
Thanks for linking up at Essential Fridays.
Blessings
Mel from Essential Thing Devotions
Thanks Mel, I agree. That’s one of my big goals here, to make talking about sex a little more normal, so people can actually start to deal with their marriage problems instead of ignoring/keeping silent about them.
It is sad that with billions of people on the planet, people feel alone. Thank you for your post. It is fascinating to see how people from various backgrounds approach the problems you bring up. I am new to your post but I will come here often.
The Best Is Yet To Be!!! Still Cracking that Code!
Jay,
I have visited the site a couple of times and although I agree with you and think this site and other christian sites like this are really needed. Because of the dysfunction in my own (34 years) marriage bed I find myself dealing with a lot of emotional pain when ever I read articles on what marriage should be. My wife was raped at a very young age and has never fully healed from that even through much counseling. I haven’t given up completely and hope some day we can experience true emotional and physical intimacy as God intended for marriage. With that said I am endeavoring this year to push past my own pain and do everything I can possibly do to love my wife unconditionally, to not harbor resentment, and to build a better marriage. The thing I find most discouraging about most of the marriage sites is that for the most part, most of the stuff written doesn’t apply or work in my situation. Almost everything written that is supposed to work at helping my marriage doesn’t, my wife never responds to the things written about in most articles, they way the articles say the response should be, and when I try to do things suggested I end up hurt or frustrated by the lack of response in my wife. That is why I am choosing to love unconditional and change the way I have been trying to love her and to and find ways of studying my wife and loving her in ways that she needs. Thank you for this site as I know I can always learn new ways of loving my wife.
That is a good goal, and I think the hardest thing for Christians to learn: that we are all broken in some way or another, and often, when we think someone is being hurtful on purpose, or doesn’t care about us, we fail to see, understand, realize, or remember their backstory in the moment.
I wish I had some training dealing with your situation so I could give some sort of insight, help, hope anything. But I’m afraid I’m completely out of my element. So, my best advice would be to do what you’ve already purposed to do: love your wife unconditionally in the best way you can. Keep working towards healing. Keep praying. Both of you, stay close to God, together and separately.
One thing to work on yourself might be objective independence. That is, keep working for what you want, because you want a better marriage, but try not to be attached to the outcome. It’s incredibly hard, but if you can manage it, it’s incredibly freeing, for both of you. I’m still trying to learn this skill, but I’m getting better. It used to be that being rejected used to send me into a depression of sorts, I would detach emotionally so I wouldn’t feel it. These days I’m trying to focus more on the intent, and not the outcome. I initiate because I love my wife. If she says no, it doesn’t mean I love her any less, and that’s what I try to focus on, not the outcome (her response), but rather my part of it. It might be freeing to your wife as well to know that you will continue to pursue and desire her and love her, unwaveringly, regardless of her response. That’s the only idea I have, I wish I had more.
Stay strong.