Category Archives: Physical Intimacy

I’ve had a lot of conversations with couples as well as husbands and wives individually lately about what often gets called “duty sex” or “pity sex.” For those who don’t know, duty/pity sex is when one spouse gives in to sex, not because they desire it themselves, but because their spouse does. They might have sex for many reasons, including feeling obligated, pressured, guilty, to keep the peace or to “get them off their back.”

The problem is that these negative reasons are often the only ones considered, and so any situation in which one spouse wants sex and the other agrees to it without having an internal desire of their own is seen as unfavourable.

But there are some excellent reasons to have what’s commonly considered “duty sex” or “pity sex,” and often, the conflicts I see in marriages are not that it’s because of those reasons I mentioned above but instead about something positive and loving.

So, in this podcast episode, we’re going to talk about reframing duty sex in those situations.

Well, it’s winter here, which means cold and flu season.  So, of course, the last couple of weeks, it’s been rolling through our family of 7.  Christina and I were the last to get it, and it seemed I got it worse than her.  She complained about being sick but still working out multiple times daily (playing Supernatural on the VR – in case any others are fans).  For me, I was barely making it through my desk job and not making it some days.

But at night, we’d crawl into bed, and I was still interested in sex, I think more than usual even – her, not at all.  That made me wonder – what is it about being sick that makes me want sex more?

Unfortunately, my head was too fuzzy to research or write an article; here we are, a week later, and I’m ready to tackle it.  So, let’s dig into being sick and sex and why some may want sex when they’re sick, and even more so when they’re sick.

What does it mean to feel “connected” during sex. For many spouses, when their husband or wife says “I don’t feel connected during sex”, they get quite confused. They’re thinking “I am literally inside of you/you are literally inside of me, how can we be MORE connected?!”

But of course, they’re not talking about a physical connection, but rather an emotional, mental or spiritual connection.