Anonymous Questions – Oct 10, 2018

It’s been almost two months since I answered anonymous questions, so I thought I’d catch up.

For those who are new to the site, these questions are all gathered from our anonymous Have A Question page.  If you have a question that you’d like answered, but don’t feel comfortable emailing or messaging us, you can visit the page and ask it there.  We have no way to trace it back to you, so your identity is safe. It also means we can’t ask any follow-up questions, so bear with us as we try to answer with the little context we have, if any.

That said, let’s get on with the questions, and my thoughts on the answers.

Question 1​ – Multiple wives

When did God stop allowing multiple wives?​

​This question has actually been asked before, and I have a post with this exact title!  So, I’m not going to bother answering it again, but you can read the original post here.

Question 2 – ​Asexuality

​Jay, After many years of marriage counseling our therapist introduced the concept of asexuality or demisexuality to describe my wife’s persistently low libido. Do you have a perspective on this? After many years of frustration we essentially have a sexless marriage and I really deal with temptation to meet up with someone who is responsive and interested in me sexually.​

So, my views on this are not likely to be too popular, but I don’t think asexuality is an orientation.  I think it’s a symptom.  Demisexuality is a “half way” between a “normal” sex drive and asexuality, so I would categorize that as the same symptom, just not as acute.

Rather, I would guess your wife likely doesn’t have low-libido, just that her sex-drive is responsive, not spontaneous.  She likely also believes that she shouldn’t have sex unless she’s “in the mood”.  Add these together and I think you get what’s happening in a lot of marriages.  A bunch of spouses who think that they have low-libidos because their sex drive doesn’t match what they see in the movies, and because so many people have the same symptoms, they don’t need to deal with it.

I’d suggest reading this ebook (free) together and discussing it.  It might open both of your eyes to a lot of new information that could change the dynamic of your marriage.

Question 3 – Domestic Discipline

My wife and I blend a female led domestic discipline lifestyle with our contemporary marriage. She is a religious old fashion gal. She uses this to control my negative alpha male behaviors. Are we being sinful with our activities?

I have a few concerns here:

1. I strongly believe in husband led marriages.  I think the Bible proscribes it, and I think God created our physiology to match.  We’ve also seen from our surveys that marriages where the wife-leads tend to result in less sex, and anecdotally, I’ve never personally seen a marriage where the wife leads that isn’t under a lot of stress, suffers from bad communication and where the wife isn’t really irritated that she’s in charge.
2. I think domestic discipline is problematic, regardless of who is the one in charge.  I’m dead set against corporal punishment whether they be children or adults, and domestic discipline usually involves some physical impact in order to keep someone in line.  Basically it treats the submissive adult worse than I would treat a child.  Instead of giving them opportunities to grow their character, you drop their responsibility down to what an amoeba can understand: avoid the pain.
3. What are these negative alpha-male behaviours?  I’m not sure exactly what that means.  I’m worried it means she’s trying to turn you into a female version of a man.  One that has lost the will to lead, to have integrity or be authentic.

Personally, I wouldn’t agree to this.  I think at best, you’re in for a world of pain, and at worst, you’ll just give in and lose what it means to be a man.

Question 4 – Ingesting your own ejaculate

Hi. I’m a 22 year old female. I let me husband finish inside me as we are trying to get pregnant. Many times he will lick me after and get a mouthful of his seed. Then kiss me and transfer it to my mouth to swallow. Is there anything biblically wrong with this? We both enjoy it just want to make sure it’s ok. Thanks!

A couple of years ago, a husband asked this question.  I believe the answer will fit your question as well, so you can check it out here: Can you have oral sex after intercourse?

Question 5 – Farting during sex

First, thank you for an amazing resource. This is the best website for marital sex that I know of. I have a delicate question and do not know where else to turn. My wife and I have been married for over 15 years. Sex is still good and frequent. The only issue I have is my wife’s frequent farting during sex. She passes gas almost every time we have sex. I guess that does not bother me as much. What bothers me is that she is extremely unapologetic about it. At first, I remember her muttering “whoops, sorry hun”, and now she just does it. Most of the time I don’t mind it, but if I am making love to her from behind it can be very off-putting. What I find strange is that she never really farts in front of me during the day, but somehow when it comes to sex, she seems to not care at all. Last night we were having sex, she asked to change position and as I got behind her and started doing her doggy-style, she tensed up and farted really, really loudly and did not say anything. It was a big turn off. I still managed to finish, but barely. I do not know how to broach the subject and I am not sure if I should, I would hate for her to be insecure or uncomfortable. If she needs to fart, she obviously should. But, I find that it is affecting my enjoyment. Please advise.

So, a few thoughts here:

Firstly, talk about it.  It might make her uncomfortable or feel insecure, you can’t control that.  But hiding from her that this is bothering you isn’t right.  It’s inauthentic.  Especially if all you want is an “excuse me” when it happens.

Secondly, maybe pick positions that don’t cause her to fart.  Maybe doggy-style just thrusts in the wrong direction.

Lastly, maybe try adjusting your diets or changing when you have sex.  Maybe don’t go for doggy-style immediately after chili-cheese dog night.  I mean, farting during sex happens occasionally.  But every time?  Seems like that might be a question for a nutritionist.

Question 6 – How do you discuss sex with a spouse who doesn’t want to

A little background info: My husband and I have been married over 2 and half years, no children & we are in our early 20’s. We were each other’s first kiss & we waited to have sex until we were married. We’ve been together 8 years (he was military so a few of those years we were not physically together in the same town, but still dating). Anyways, he doesn’t want sex as often as he use to (he use to want it on a weeknight…gasp or when he got home from a normal day at work he couldn’t keep his hands off of me, now I’m lucky to get lucky once a week) and when we do have sex I hardly ever have an orgasm. He does have a job that makes him tired…but if he can go to the gym I figure he can stay awake a few more minutes with me… I’ve expressed I would like to have sex more, that I enjoy sex and I’ve told him my favorite things to turn me on/ help me get to the orgasm point, but he hardly ever does the things I enjoy in bed. When I try to bring up anything about sex it’s almost immediately dismissed. How do I start a discussion about sex with my husband? It’s the last thing he wants to discuss…is it something I’m doing/not doing?

This is the most difficult part of being a marriage coach: trying to help a couple, when one of the couple refuses to acknowledge there’s even an issue, or that they have any responsibility in it.  Honestly, it drives me a little nuts.  I want to just walk up to them and ask “Really?  This is how you want to play it?  You are really okay with the trajectory of this instead of simply acting like an adult and talking about it?  What is wrong with you!?”  And while I don’t believe in using violence to solve issues … I completely understand the desire to simply hit someone out of frustration.  Don’t do that.

So, how do you get a spouse to talk when they don’t want to?  There are two options that sometimes work, which you can use combined or separately.

Some spouses simply feel uncomfortable talking about sex.  They can communicate about it, but face-to-face conversations are too hard.  So, sometimes we can get them to discuss it if we remove some of the vulnerability.  For some it’s as simple as going for a walk, that way you can talk without looking at each other’s faces.  Walking side-by-side and talking while staring at the path works for some.  For others, driving in a car side-by-side does.  For some, this is still too intimate.  For them, writing a letter can help.  Text, or email works too for some, but a written letter sends the clear message of “I put time and effort into this and it’s serious.”

The other one is to spell out exactly what it means if they don’t want to discuss it.  In this case, being very clear that you feel like he’s not listening to you, which makes you feel insecure in the relationship, that you feel that he’s unconcerned about your pleasure, and that his unwillingness to discuss it has you potentially questioning the stability of the marriage.  For some, it might even be appropriate to share that you’ve been considering divorce.  I don’t get that impression from this question, but some of our readers might be there.

I’m not suggesting you use divorce as a threat, but if it’s a reality you are considering or fantasizing about, I think it’s fair game to let them know it’s on your mind.  Of course, that may be terrible legal advice in some countries, so make your own decisions as I’m not a lawyer.

The point is, often spouses don’t realize just how serious the situation is unless you spell it out for them.  This might not be a divorce issue, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.  When a spouse starts to feel ignored and unattended to, it opens the door to affairs, feeling abandoned, and the death of multiple kinds of intimacy.

Personally, I’d rather have an uncomfortable discussion today rather than a very uncomfortable discussion 5 years down the road.

Question 7 – Hypothetical asexual couple

Hi Jay. This is a hypothetical question, and I realize as such answering it may not add any value for your readers but having followed your blog for quite some time I’m just so curious about your thoughts that I just had to ask!

I notice many questions and discussions about sex drive mismatch. The discussions seem reasonable as do your suggested approaches for dealing with it.

What if two asexual people decide to marry for love and companionship? If both spouses really don’t want sex and so they don’t do it is that situation sinful from a biblical perspective? I have to think there is no opportunity for temptation under such a circumstance as asexual people I assume really don’t want or enjoy sexual activity.

Anyway like I said, totally hypothetical but even so, it has been on my mind for a while.

Thanks!

So, we often get hung up on the “is it sinful or not” question.  And it’s difficult to answer that, because Christianity can’t decide on what’s sinful and what’s not.  So, let me set that aside for a moment.

While this question might be hypothetical to you, I do get people who leave comments and email me saying they’re both asexual and should they be forcing themselves to have sex or not.  So, it’s a real question.

As I stated before, I don’t believe people “are” asexual.  I think they might be experiencing asexuality as a symptom of some root cause.  Be that sexual trauma, bad teaching, hormones out of balance, or whatever.  I do think there are some people who have the gift of celibacy, but I don’t think that’s the same thing.

Once you get married though, there is a call to have sex.  1 Corinthians 7:5 says you should, and that one of the reasons is so you won’t experience temptation.  We tend to translate that as sexual temptation, but in the case of two people experiencing asexuality, I think the temptation leans more towards accepting their brokenness.

It’s like if I’m obese, and my spouse is obese, well, we’re less likely to work on our weight issue, because, well, we both are overweight, so neither one is looking at the other saying “you should lose some weight”.  It’s also a lot harder to tell your spouse “well, you would probably feel better if you were lighter” if you’re also carrying a lot of extra fat.  I know, because my wife and I have been struggling with our weights since high school.  Luckily, we’ve gotten to the point where we have no problem saying “we need to lose some weight”.  So, we’re actively working on it.

Point is, two people not struggling with asexuality means they’re never going to figure out what the core cause is.  It means they’re going to continue believing things that are not true, or having a system that’s not in balance, or teaching things about sex that aren’t true.  They’re also never going to experience that intimacy that I think only comes with sex.  They will miss out on those God-created mechanisms for bonding two people together.

And, should they have kids (many asexual couples still want kids), whether naturally or by some other means, they will pass on a model of marriage that isn’t quite complete.  While the kids may not know exactly what the difference is, people do tend to follow in their parent’s footsteps, whether they realize it or not.  We just sort of pick up on the unspoken implicit example we’re given.

So, does avoiding healing, passing on a broken model of marriage and failing to hold your spouse and yourself accountable to character growth and thus limiting the depth of intimacy in your marriage constitute as sin?  You decide.  Either way, it’s not something I’d suggest doing.

That’s it for this round of anonymous questions.  If you have a question of your own, or a topic you’re having trouble finding information on, check out our Have A Question page to ask it anonymously, or just contact me here.