This believing woman may, at times, resent the fact that God gave her husband such frequent desire. At various stages in her life, she may even resent the fact that only she can meet that desire. At times, she may even contemplate the benefits of the Old Testament concept of a concubine! But if she’s a mature Christian, she’ll understand that God called her into marriage to help her husband — and in this area, he may need special help. She might wish this weren’t so, but she reminds herself that God’s design, God’s will, and God’s explicit instructions from the Bible are foundational here.
Lest I lose you, let me state that I know some of you may have an entirely opposite situation. Maybe you’ve made yourself more than available, even regularly initiating sexual relations — but your husband’s lack of sensitivity and awareness of your needs keeps your sex life from becoming even remotely close to satisfying. The situation in your marriage may not be the wife’s lack of interest but the husband’s laziness or selfishness regarding how to please a woman. As my friend Leslie Vernick points out, some women have made themselves more than available to their husband sexually, only to have their hearts broken when they discover his lack of interest for them hasn’t dampened his interest in pornography. In many cases, this abuse of pornography is a lifelong habit, indulged in long before the man even met his wife. Any man who tries to blame his wife for his sin is in serious denial.
Regardless of the situation in your marriage — whether it means there’s a need for you to become more generous with your affection or to woo your disinterested husband into more significant intimacy — let me stress the spiritual health benefits of your working to maintain this threshold to marital intimacy, and the gift you present to your husband when you work with him to see this area of the marriage excel.
Take a moment to ponder God’s passionate love for the man you married. If only you could see how God and the angels celebrated on the day your husband became a believer, a redeemed servant of God’s kingdom! If you could have glimpsed just three minutes of the rejoicing that erupted in heaven over this seemingly normal man whom not one person out of a hundred would describe as anything other than ordinary! You might just begin to realize how your attitude toward your husband’s sexual needs and desires is, in fact, a matter of cosmic concern. On the day your husband became a believer, he accepted God’s plan, not just for his eternity, but also for his sexuality. The world mocks that plan — one woman for life. No mental undressing of a celebrity or coworker. Not even an occasional leer at a barely dressed woman. No pornography. God calls him to an exclusive integrity that much of his society calls puritanical, fanatical, and flat-out unrealistic.
Then God watches. Will this man have to live out God’s call to purity without any real help from his wife? Will she participate reluctantly, grudgingly — motivated only by guilt — or with generosity, enthusiasm, and creativity? In today’s world, a less-than-satisfying sexual relationship puts both husband and wife at risk. Your entire family could be at stake.
How well does God think you’re helping his son walk in sexual holiness? The sexual life you foster, create, and maintain in your marriage isn’t merely about you and your husband; it’s about your husband’s relationship with God, as well as his ability to provide a godly example for your children.
Please don’t misunderstand: it is
not
your fault if your husband sins sexually. If my wife had a terrible accident and became disabled for life, never again being able to engage in sexual relations, God would still call me to absolute purity and sexual fidelity. Your husband is solely responsible to God about where he sets his eyes and on what he lets his mind meditate. But having said that, let me also say that you can make his job easier or more difficult by the spirit, energy, and affection that you express toward him.
Allow me to get personal. For me, sexual temptation takes on a much different form in the period after Lisa and I experience our own moments of physical intimacy. During the next few days, I feel much less vulnerable to sexual temptations of all kinds, and, to be quite honest, I’m more attuned to God in a prayerful attitude.
But here’s the catch: most of us husbands are too proud, too embarrassed, or too ashamed to admit when we feel weak in this regard. We don’t want you to think we find you unattractive, or that we’re spiritually feeble. It is the rare husband indeed who regularly and intimately gets honest with his struggles against lust. In fact, out of desperation, your husband may make a clumsy approach or bring up the topic of sex in a manner or at a time that seems wildly inconvenient or inappropriate. Why? It’s just possible that he feels beside himself with temptation and needs to experience authentic, legitimate, and holy intimacy with his wife. To get turned down at such a time, or to be made to feel guilty or unwanted or a bother, can put him at real spiritual risk.
That’s why being proactive — working with your husband to build a fulfilling physical relationship — is so healthy for your husband’s spiritual standing. At times, this will be a joy for you; at other times, it may feel like work, or even a dreaded chore. But on every occasion, I hope you see it as an expression of concern for your husband’s spiritual well-being.
If you’ll persistently pursue this side of your marriage, you’ll reap tangible, practical, and long-lasting rewards. Your husband will feel emotionally closer to you than at any other time, while find-ing the spiritual reinforcement to go out into a world of constant sexual temptation and be an overcomer.
The Limits of Desire
My wife has a painful nerve condition that requires my amateur therapy. I need to help her do certain stretches and hit certain pressure points that alleviate her frequent pain. I certainly don’t enjoy these stretches, nor do I look forward to using my elbow on pressure points until she cries out in pain. To complicate matters even further, Lisa typically wants me to do them either early in the day, when I want to get to my desk, or right before bedtime, when I often feel tired and want only to lie down and read a book. What I enjoy or desire at that point, however, doesn’t really matter. Lisa needs these exercises; I’m her husband, and I’m glad to do them.
What would you think if you heard me respond to her legitimate physical need this way: “Honey, get that look out of your eye. I’m
tired
. I just don’t feel like doing those exercises tonight.”
“Gary, I’m really hurting. Please! It’ll really help me sleep better.”
“We did them two nights ago! What’s the matter with you? What kind of body did God give you, anyway? Are you some kind of a freak?”
“Fine. I guess I can make it another day.”
“No,” I say like a martyr, sighing deeply so there’s no chance she’ll miss my altruism, “I’ll do them. Just give me half an hour to get ready.”
I’ve just made my wife feel like dirt, all because I didn’t “desire” to help her do those stretches.
If you heard this exchange, would you think of me as a loving husband?
Desire certainly has its place, and the wise couple will do everything possible to build a fulfilling and mutually enjoyable love life. But in some stages of life and on certain occasions, it’s entirely appropriate to view sex as a loving ministry and a tangible expression of love. I’ve read that about 50 percent of women will never desire sex until they get physically stimulated. Until these women allow themselves to engage in foreplay, the thought of physical intimacy simply won’t seem inviting. That’s not their fault; it’s just the way their bodies are wired. The apostle Paul doesn’t say you must
desire
your husband; he just says you are not allowed to
deprive
your husband (see 1 Corinthians 7:5). We do many things in marriage that we don’t particularly
want
to do.
I’m sure you don’t “desire” to change your eighteen-month-old’s diaper. Many times, I don’t “desire” to help my daughter with her homework. But my duties as a parent call me to get involved in my kids’ lives. I want to eagerly pursue the things that interest them.
So does desire not matter at all? Of course it does. But when sex is
only
about desire, we lose the bigger picture. Sex can be a ministry that feeds the marriage, with the added benefit of providing stability for your children. I honestly think most men in their thirties and older would feel more than pleased if their wives willingly participated in two high-quality times of sexual intimacy a week — we’re talking about two to three hours total.
If God came to me with a proposition — “Gary, I have a chore for you that will take just two hours a week. It’ll secure your wife’s affections, thereby providing great security for your children; it’ll make your wife feel loved; and it will be a crucial part of building a stable home” — I can’t imagine turning him down. I really wouldn’t care
what
the chore was; if it meant shoveling manure, I’d say, “Where’s the shovel?” I’d do it gladly, knowing that my wife and children would receive such tremendous benefits.
Women who ignore this aspect of marriage because they’re too busy with their children have it backward. They risk opening up their children to the devastating wound of divorce by not tending to the stability of their marriage. A wise woman understands her husband’s desires and uses them to strengthen the relationship. She anticipates his needs and gives him something to look forward to when he comes home, reinforcing his need for her, his desire for her, and his focus on her.
Sexual desire can knit a man to a woman, or Satan can use it to build an ever-growing reliance outside the home. Satan has one goal in sexual temptation: to take that man’s heart away from his wife and away from his family and to get him to desire something, or someone, else. The Devil doesn’t care what or who it is, as long as that desire weakens the Christian family’s foundation.
God calls you to entice your husband and make his desires, thoughts, and fantasies center on you. That way, his physical longings build up the family (and your children’s well-being) rather than putting it at risk.
Yet some wives read something like this and say, “You know, he’s right. I need to do better.” And for a couple weeks, they’ll try. Then they’ll forget, or they’ll get frustrated with their husband’s lackluster response, and things will return to the subpar level at which they used to be.
As a husband, if I knew that a vicious enemy lurked outside the door, waiting until I fell asleep to strike his blow against my family, I’d stay awake all night. I’d do everything I could to keep that threat away — particularly if I knew that this enemy had but one aim, namely, to tear apart my family. I’d keep focused. I’d do everything in my power to build up the defenses, to keep watch.
Wives, such an enemy really
does
lie in wait at your family’s door. It’s called “sexual temptation.”
The Proverbs 31 woman “watches over the affairs of her household” (31:27). She is diligent and alert. You may grow weary of meeting your husband’s needs, but know this: neither natural temptation nor the spiritual tempter of our souls ever sleeps. In fact, the apostle Peter describes Satan as a “roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Today, Satan even has the Internet on his side.
The Problem of Porn
Pornography has crept into many of our homes, crippling countless marriages. Over time, porn stunts a man’s desire for his wife. The same God-ordained sexual desire that can knit a man’s soul to his wife can get diverted to create a lust for women in general, thus creating distance and frustration instead of personal intimacy and satisfaction.
We can cultivate sexual appetite every bit as much as we cultivate taste for certain foods. Porn trains a man away from real sexual experience and makes him desire what in the abstract should seem creepy (think about it: what’s even remotely appealing, to a healthy man, about having sex with a magazine or a computer monitor?).
If your husband is deeply into pornography, nothing I say can fully address the issue. You need much more than “three easy steps.” I recommend that you purchase a copy of
False Intimacy: Understanding
the Struggle of Sexual Addiction
(Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997) by Dr. Harry Schaumburg. It features an excellent chapter written especially for women whose husbands struggle with porn. For your husband,
Don’t Call It Love
:
Recovery from Sexual Addiction
(New York: Bantam, 1992) by Patrick Carnes provides a step-by-step approach to walking out of this sin. Dr. Mitch Whitman, who specializes in addressing men’s sexual problems, especially likes Russell Willingham’s
Breaking Free: Understanding Sexual Addiction and the
Healing Power of Jesus
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1999)
.
This next sentence might surprise you. If your own marriage suffers from this problem, make sure you don’t overreact. Your husband needs to see how much pain this causes you, but please don’t begin treating him like a freakish sex pervert. I’ll be honest with you: most men have viewed pornography at least once or twice. Now, that’s no excuse for men to make this a regular habit. But you won’t help matters by making your husband feel unusually weird, weak, or unchristian about seeking out porn. It’s a common temptation, and many men have fallen. As Dr. Mitch Whitman has counseled so many wives, “Be glad it’s finally out in the open. Secrecy feeds the power of giving in to the temptation.”
Let me put it this way: 51 percent of pastors cite cyberporn as a possible temptation, and 37 percent confess it as a current struggle. In fact, four out of every ten pastors have visited a porn site.
Sixty-three
percent
of the men attending a church seminar admitted to struggling with porn in the past year; two-thirds of these men serve in church leadership.
7
It may shock you, but according to this study, if you greet four men on a Sunday morning, odds are that at least two have looked at porn within the last twelve months.