It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
In just a few days, on February 1, we’re going to be starting our 29 Days to Great Sex. It’s leading up to the launch of my book, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex (and an awesome contest where you can win a first–or second–honeymoon!). In writing the book, I conducted a bunch of surveys, which many of you participated in (thank you!). And one thing I found was that, for most people, sex wasn’t that great early in the marriage. It gets better with time, trust–and practice!
So today I thought I’d give us a chance to share stories of AWFUL wedding nights, especially because I think too often in the Christian church we romanticize the wedding night a little too much. Here’s an excerpt from my book that talks about this:
A few weeks before my wedding, I bought a bestselling Christian sex book. I read it cover to cover while sitting in the bathtub. (That’s where I get most of my reading done. It’s just a little dangerous when I’m reading library books.) Instead of helping me feel confident about my wedding night, it left me a nervous wreck. And a little angry besides.
First, it was all about the mechanics of sex. The book’s focus was on making sure that you, the woman, had an orgasm on your very first sexual encounter. It went through everything you were supposed to do and everything he was supposed to do in explicit detail, complete with a time schedule. After reading and raging at the book, I drowned it. I stuffed it under the water and held it there until it died, and then I unceremoniously dumped it in the garbage.
Let me try to explain why I felt so homicidal toward a book. I didn’t like feeling as if my every action was prescribed. I didn’t want sex to feel choreographed. I didn’t want to feel like there was a right way to do things. But perhaps most importantly, I didn’t want the night to be so stressful that it could be measured based on whether I had “succeeded.” What if I simply wanted to get comfortable with my husband and have fun exploring rather than trying to force my body to do something?
Given that that particular book sold hundreds of thousands of copies, I’m sure it helped many women enjoy their wedding nights. But there is a trend in Christian thinking that goes something like this: the wedding night is the big night you’ve been waiting for your whole life, so you had better do absolutely everything right or you will ruin it.
A lot of pressure, isn’t it?
Perhaps I’m being a party pooper. Perhaps that book is right, and we all should be aiming for physical bliss. So I decided to test my own hypothesis. I took a survey of married Christian women, some of whom had waited for the wedding to be sexually active and some of whom had made love before, and I asked them to rate the sex on their wedding night.
I discovered that despite selling so many copies, its message hadn’t succeeded in making wedding nights more explosive. Of the women in my survey who had been virgins when they were married, only fifteen percent reached orgasm on their wedding night through intercourse. Another seventeen percent reached it another way (we’ll talk about that later), but sixty-eight percent didn’t experience an orgasm at all. In fact, even among those who weren’t virgins, in no category did over 50 percent of women reach orgasm through intercourse on the night they were married. It simply isn’t that common.
Here’s the way I see it: fireworks are great. Everyone wants fireworks. But the point of the wedding night is that it’s a wedding night. It’s about the marriage. The bliss is that you’re now together in every way. So you can now explore, have fun, and discover all on your own time. For some people, that’s going to mean fireworks right off the bat. For others it may take longer. But it doesn’t matter, because now you’re finally married, and you have decades to get it right!
Remember those 85 percent of virgins who did not have an orgasm through intercourse on their wedding night? Today 63 percent of those women usually or always do, and another 13 percent sometimes do. They got better with time.
I think that’s good news! And so maybe one of the best things that we could do is to stop all this pressure about the wedding night, and start saying something more like: The wedding night is wonderful because it’s the beginning of a journey together. That journey is awesome! But let’s celebrate the journey, rather than expecting the arrival all at once. Perhaps that would calm down a lot of nervous brides!
Personally, I had a horrible wedding night. I was so stressed to do everything right that I totally tensed up. And I felt like a total failure.
I would have been much better off if the wedding night hadn’t been such a big deal. Now some people may argue, “well, the wedding night wouldn’t be such a big deal if you Christians didn’t insist on saving sex until marriage”, but that’s not the issue. Sex is best when you’re married, and God said that’s where it belongs. So that’s non-negotiable. And incidentally, even those who weren’t virgins didn’t tend to have great wedding nights. The problem isn’t that we’re virgins; the problem is that there’s too much pressure!
So I want this post to serve as a pressure valve to engaged women. Don’t worry about it too much, and you’ll have much more fun! Here’s an awesome one that my friend Lisa wrote a while back:
I was a painfully shy, naive bride. I’d never really seen a man full-on naked, and you can forget about having intimate knowledge of too much else. I learned the hard way that not all honeymoon suites are created equal.
Read on to hear what she found about faux fur, leopard prints, and jacuzzis that didn’t work!
Now some of you likely had great nights, and more power to you. But I don’t think that’s the norm. If you had a bad wedding night, can you write a lighthearted post about it, and then link back here so we can all laugh with you? Or just leave something in the comments! Maybe if we got rid of this idea that wedding nights HAVE to be great or we’ve failed then a lot of new brides would start marriage on much better footing! Marriage is so much fun, and it’s an amazing blessing. But give yourself a break. It may take a while to feel totally comfortable. But that’s okay! And the more relaxed and excited about it you are, and the less pressure you feel, the happier you will be.
Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
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Wow – thanks for linking to my post, Sheila. My wedding night is definitely one I’ll never forget. Yes, a little less pressure to be perfect would have made things A LOT easier
Lisa
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I’ve always told the brides in my family to plan on just falling into bed, exhausted from the days celebrations, and to not even think about anything else happening on the wedding night. If you plan on just a sleep over and something develops it takes so much pressure off!
I totally agree! You have so much time together now, why rush things when you’re tired and feel pressured? If you want to, fine, but I just think we need to let go of expectations and enjoy ourselves the way we want to.
funny thing: everytime I’ve read something about the first sex in non-christian media they tell you that the first time probably won’t be that great and that you shouldn’t be devastated if it turns out to be horrible and that it will get better over time. But if the first sex happens in the wedding night we expect it to be awesome? Maybe sometimes we really should consider the advice of non-christians
It very well may be awesome! But the fact is that according to surveys, it tends not to be–whether you’re Christian or not. So I say: just lower your expectations, relax, and if it’s great, it’s great! That’s wonderful. But if it’s not, know that it will get great in time, and what makes sex really great anyway is just the fact that you can be together. If you’re more relaxed, it’s going to be better anyway. Too often we just aren’t relaxed, and THAT’S why it isn’t great! So just don’t worry about it, have fun, and chances are you’ll have a wondeful night together–whether the sex is great physically or not.
I am so thankful that my honeymoon was relaxed. We had already had sex once before (whoops…) but really, there was no pressure that time, either. We got to the hotel after the wedding and were so exhausted that was just had pretty quick sex (maybe 10 minutes), brushed our teeth, and went to sleep! Really, that’s how most of the honeymoon was. Sex and sleep, with occasional food breaks. We went shopping once or twice, too. It was really nice!
That’s nice, Anonymous! I really think relaxation is the key–and letting whatever is going to happen, happen, rather than setting yourself up for all of these expectations.
Our wedding night was a huge disaster. My husband was a virgin, I was not (but I was a recent convert and really not “experienced” at all) and I read one of those books and completely froze under the pressure of doing everything right on the wedding night and as a consequence my body totally shut down. Stress, exhaustion, and pressure was the perfect storm. I was able to make it up to him on the honeymoon, which was much more relaxed and in the years since, but I always look back on that night and cringe.
Glad I’m not alone, Anonymous (though I’m sorry yours was awful, too!). Why do we let other people determine what our expectations should be? And I am glad your honeymoon was better!
The sex was fine on my wedding night. The part I liked better was that my husband wrote me a song and he sang it a cappella to me while I sat on his lap, we drank champagne and ate chocolate covered strawberries and talked, sat on the balcony of our hotel room and looked at the city lights. Some nice relaxed love-making was an after-thought that put the cap on the evening (we had no honeymoon, so it was just one night). I tried to not make the wedding night into something it could never be. As a disclaimer, we had unfortunately erred on the side of un-chastity before we married. I think it would have been better had we waited. But now, we’ve been married 12.5 years, had six kids and done a lot of life together; and the sex is better than ever.
Joanna, that sounds like a lovely night! I wouldn’t mind a getaway like that sometime soon….
My wedding night was pretty good though I didn’t have an orgasm. My husband said “we don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to.” (nice of him not to pressure me). I said, “Are you kidding? I’ve waited 24 years for this!” We had sex three times that night. In the morning we had a lovely bath together.
I totally agree that sex gets better as you practice, learn to communicate your needs, and understand your husband’s needs. I can’t imagine sleeping with different people all the time. It would be so disconcerting. I would feel like I was in performance mode all the time.
I think the focus on being a great lover and learning special tricks to please your man in women’s magazine totally misses the point. To me, sex is about the relationship between two people. I don’t think there are magic tricks that work with everyone, all the time. It depends what your spouse likes.
I love your second paragraph: “I would feel like I was in performance mode all the time.” Me, too! I’m sorry that other people don’t really get that making love to one person for a lifetime is a blessing, not a curse.
I’m glad you had such a great wedding night! I think what makes it really great is just the chance to be together–however that might be. That was something I honestly enjoyed, too.
My wedding night was also a disaster. First of all I was really nervous and I had never seen a naked man before — talk about a shock! But the worst part was we discovered the hard way that I had severe vaginismus and we couldn’t even have sex if we wanted to. It wasn’t until months later after I had gone to a gynecologist and used dilators that we were able to have sex, and after that it was still a long journey to figure out how to have sex that’s actually enjoyable. So my advice to engaged girls is to see a gynecologist a few months before you get married. It may be scary, but it’s not half as bad as discovering you can’t have sex on your wedding night.
Anonymous, thanks for sharing that. I totally know where you’re coming from. Glad things are better for you now!
My husband and I look back on our wedding night and laugh. We both enjoyed the getting-to-know-you part, but when it came time to actually DO something, it failed. And now we laugh about it because things are soooo much better now! Part of the fun of marriage IS learning together.
Someone told me on my wedding day to expect that nothing might happen. I think that was the best advice I received. Because, like you say, it is about a marriage, not a sexual encounter. We have the rest of our lives to figure it out and have fun in the process!
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Our wedding night was disappointing as well, and mostly because of Christian sex books. My husband was 42 and those books are written toward someone much younger. Three times in one night? I don’t think so! We were both virgins and really didn’t know what to expect and didn’t take age into account. I was emotionally hurt and felt undesirable. I realize now that it was just biology, but I wish someone had given us a truly honest idea bout that.
Wow, that’s so sad! And I totally know what you mean. I thought many of the books I read were unrealistic, too. I still think the best advice is this: you’re beginning a life together. So relax, and have fun getting to know each other–however that happens. Stop with all the expectations and rules! That would be better
.
My husband and I just got married last September, and our wedding night was ok. We took a bath, which was really nice and then we had sex. It wasn’t great, i’ll admit, but I know we have the rest of our lives to prefect it and I am very much looking forward to that! =o)
First, our wedding was supposed to be on the beautiful white sandy beach of Florida, but Tropical Storm Lee had other plans. Secondly, we had no rehearsal so it was all very fly-by-the-seat. Next, the coordinator’s assistant told me (me, the “my mind is in a million places” gal) where she placed the shell with the fake rings and the flower basket. Honestly, I never heard a word. So, as the flower girl and ring bearer are getting ready to walk, she asks me where their stuff is. “I have NO clue!” so they walk down the aisle empty handed. Before that, however, the special song that I spent weeks trying to find for the grandmothers’ and mothers’ entrance doesn’t get played. What’s worse is that MY entrance song is the one played. The actual ceremony was perfect, BUT the recession song didn’t get played either. Then, the caterers got there 30 minutes late so everyone was just standing around. And don’t even get me started on my wedding cake. Lastly, we had eternal sand which was made up of two distinct colors…until little hands got ahold of it and shook it til the colors blended. To top everything off, almost our entire honeymoon was clouded by torrential wind and rain. I sure do live my husband, though, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. It certainly was an adventure!!
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Oh, Elizabeth! Wow. But at least you’ll always have a great speech at every anniversary party you’ll ever have!
I’m not brave enough to post here about my wedding night but I am intrigued by this topic. My husband and I were not virgins when we married. I have often wondered how a couple that is pledged to purity goes from NOTHING to EVERYTHING all in one night. While this is the correct way to go about it I think I would be so overwhelmed! I can’t help but wonder if it could take a week of honeymooning to make the adjustment. First night intimacy, second day more intimacy, third night all the way….. etc. Is this just silly?
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I don’t think it’s silly at all! But I think the truth is that some people will plunge right in and have a great time right off the bat, and others will need more time. And I don’t think there’s a problem with that. So I think saying that the wedding night has to be one particular way is a problem, because it is stressful–no matter your sexual experience! And that’s what I’m hoping that new brides realize. It’s far less stressful if you just give yourself a break, don’t force things, and let whatever you want to happen, happen. Thanks for commenting!
And by “correct way to go about it” I meant Purity, not all or nothing!
Just before our wedding, I read the best advice any couple could get: don’t worry about making love on the wedding night. I can’t remember the book, but it basically said that both the husband and wife could/would be stressed, tired, anxious, etc. because of the wedding, the preparation and anything that may have gone wrong. Instead of pressuring yourselves for a “perfect wedding night” it suggested newly-wed husbands and wives spend the first evening resting up from the day’s events. It then suggested, after a night of rest, both would be ready to consummate the marriage in a relatively stress-free state of mind.
Because I only had a one-night honeymoon, I couldn’t follow that advice. But it did help when I realized that if we both flaked out, that was okay and not the end of the world.
Great advice, Robert! And I can see why you didn’t follow it….
Our wedding night had too many crazy extenuating circumstances! The day and night were like something out of a movie; the 25c version is this: The pastor who was going to perform our ceremony got sick with some kind of intestinal flu and another fellow (who I’d never seen before) showed up to do the ceremony. My sister passed out because of blood sugar issues, my husband was not allowed to get free drinks at the bar because they didn’t believe 1) he was the groom, and 2) he was over 21, and neither of us got any food at the reception. When we got to the hotel (still dressed in tux/wedding dress), they would not give us our honeymoon suite because my parents had paid for it, so their names were on the receipt. When we finally got another room, my knee length hair got caught in the buttons of my dress, so I had to pull a bunch of it out to get the dress off. Then we had to go out with some friends/relatives to see a local band. After all that, we pretty much just fell asleep when we got back to the hotel. Unfortunately, we overslept and got charged a late checkout fee!
What I’ve found to be very interesting is the comment that some people have about never having seen a man naked. Not to be gross, but I had three younger brothers whose diapers I changed for years, so I had at least a good idea of what I’d be seeing. My major issue with the evening was plain exhaustion!
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So many people are exhausted, aren’t they? I don’t blame you for oversleeping!
My beautiful wife and I weren’t able to experience sex on our wedding night. By the time everything was over with the reception and seeing family off to other hotels, we simply went back and fell asleep. I can say that I am thankful for that. I just wish her hairstylist hadn’t used 100 bobby pins in her hair. That took a while to fix. Sex has gotten much better over the years. I think forcing sex into our already exhausting day would have been a large setback to our future intimacy.
Too funny about the bobby pins! My daughters were in a wedding recently and they were shedding bobby pins for days afterwards (even after showering!). Sex without bobby pins. It’s a good thing.
We had bobby pin issues, too! Took us about an hour to get out all that we could find, and I was finding random bobby pins for days after.
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My wedding night was uneventful. We had one of my friends staying over because she came up from London, so we waited until the next night to celebrate.
Sheila – Great post, thanks so much. Need to remember this the next time we do pre-marital counselling.
Part of the pressure is on the husband – he feels he is a failure if his bride dose not climax the very first time. In fact, many feel they are a failure if it does not happen during the first act of intercourse. (The odds of that second one are astronomically high, BTW.) So he feels pressure to make sure she does, and she reads that as pressure on her, and so it goes.
On the other hand, the “just wait to the next day” advice that some give is well meaning but usually makes it worse. It just pushes it off, which makes the pressure even worse. Beside, no man finds it easy to sleep next to his now wife if they are “waiting till we are rested”!
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I would agree, Paul. I don’t think we can say, “just wait until you’re rested”, because for some couples that just isn’t likely to happen. What I’d say, then, is simply this: don’t let anyone else set the expectations for your honeymoon or your wedding night. Don’t pressure yourself about it. Don’t do anything (or refrain from doing something) just because you think you should or someone told you to. It’s your wedding night. Let what happens, happens, and just have fun being together–without pressure!
This one gave me a little (rueful) chuckle too. Actually I have rather fond memories of our wedding night. But there was the smoke detector that went off just as we were getting to the not-ok-before-marriage stage (too many candles that my thoughtful new husband had put in our room). There’s nothing like watching your husband jumping around the room sans clothing trying to blow out some candles and take the battery out of the smoke alarm to familiarize you with what a naked man looks like. And rummaging through the attic until 1am looking through my newly moved in boxes for my identification documents for our plane flight the next morning definitely gives you a jump start on building unity under less than ideal conditions.
We had the bobby pin issues too but we turned removing those into one of the best parts!
Oh, my goodness, that fire alarm thing is really funny! I can just picture it (:) ).
We were both in our late 20s when we married, and had been looking forward to sex for most of our adult lives. We were both virgins, but had each dabbled in pornography at different points earlier in our lives and knew we had some wonky ideas of what sex was like. We very intentionally talked about not having any expectations for that night because we had no idea what would happen. We did plan a bit, though. First, we planned to kiss some, then undress together, take a shower together, then see what happened. We also planned an early afternoon wedding, so it was 400 pm when we left the reception; we were asleep by 8! We, as students, had time, so we stayed there in the town where we got married for the next two days and flew out on the third day… no time pressures for a short bit.
After 5 years, sex is great, but its not, at least for me, the mind-blower that the movies make it out to be. Nor does it happen “accidentally”.
I hope that we can be more forth-right with our children about expectations and realities when that time comes. Our parents weren’t. I wonder if they assumed we knew? But then, Hubby’s parents, I think, assumed we weren’t waiting… they asked if we wanted to join them for dinner after the reception. “Um, no.” said Hubby, “we have something else we want to do.” “oh” was the embarrassed response.
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These are really funny! First there’s the bobby pin disaster, and then the fire alarm, and then the awkward in-laws, and so many other funny comments. I think I should write a post after my 29 Days of Great Sex is up just about the wedding night again and include some of these.
I know what you’re saying that sex isn’t stupendous yet. But don’t worry; 5 years is still early. According to the survey I did for my book, the best years are 16-20! So they’re coming!
our wedding night fiasco started when we tried to leave for our honeymoon from our reception but found our car dead. turned out our family disconnected the battery but reserved a cadillac escalade for us to be driven off in. it was nice. but my husbands oldest brother was our chauffeur. kinda awkward. we got home and my FIL (who had drove our car home) told us that we shouldn’t drive our car to the beach because the clutch was slipping and the radiator was leaking. so I waited awkwardly at my in laws house while my husband and his dad got the parents car ready for us to drive away in. we eventually got on our way and we were excited. until we took the wrong exit and hit a nasty pot hole. we got back on the freeway and about 15 minutes later, we got a flat tire. my husband pulled off onto the left shoulder (since we had been in the fast lane) and put the donut on. it was the front passenger tire that was flat! so he is changing this tire right next to traffic that is going 60-70mph. I called my best friend and maid of honor crying! I thought for sure I was going to see my new husband get hit by a car. we called family and they said we needed a new tire and that driving to the beach on a donut was very unsafe. they called around and found a mom and pop shop to meet us for a new tire. we were in our nice get away attire still (a silk dress, khakis, and white shirt). I was uncomfortable so we pulled off into a parking lot of a middle school that was in the middle of nowhere. I made my husband get out of the car so I could undress and change into comfy clothes (we were virgins, yes. the first time he saw me THAT unclothed wouldn’t be in these circumstances). he was very respectful and did so
then we met the tire guy and 2 of my BILs with their wives at panda express. we got the tire changed, had dinner with them, and we were on our way again! the weather was AWFUL going through the mountains. we didn’t talk the whole way. we finally got to our honeymoon condo after midnight. we got all of our stuff to our room. i took a hot shower to unwind and prepare myself mentally (aka “get horny” as my best friends mom told me a week prior). i got dressed in my honeymoon attire and awkwardly walked into our bedroom. as I mentioned before, we were both virgins. we had been together for almost 4 years at this point. it felt pretty natural for us to be together finally. I will say that people hyped up the whole orgasm thing which left me disappointed. we even barely had sex because it was so painful for me. but we figured it out over the course of our 8 day honeymoon. nearly 4 years later, we laugh at our experience. and we look forward to our sex life just getting better and better. 
Oh, dear, that’s just awful!
It’s great that you can laugh about it, though. I guess it’s these things that are horrible at the time that can actually be quite funny afterwards!
My husband and I waited until our wedding night to have sex, although we had gone farther than we probably should have. Due to some stuff with him being in the military we had been legally married for six months, but had still waited until our “real” wedding. After our reception we were so exhausted that on the way to the hotel we were both like “I don’t care if we have sex or not.” We weren’t really planning on it, but it ended up happening. It was quite painful for me, but I was prepared for that. Despite that, it was still a really good experience. It was very calm and relaxed and neither of us felt under pressure at all. Afterward we took a shower together and it was so much fun to do something we had looked forward to for so long! Our honeymoon was nice, but the sex part was kinda rough. It was still quite painful for me most of the time, which caused me to totally stress out about it which in turn lead to it being more painful. Also, we just didn’t really know what we were doing and had to learn what worked. My husband is in the Navy, and up until two days before the wedding, we hadn’t seen eachother for six months (The last time I’d seen him was the day we got legally married) so besides sex, we had to just get used to being together again! I was 21 and my husband 20 and now we have been married almost six months. Even in this short time it has gotten so much better! I am so glad we waited! Just last night my husband was saying how he thinks it would be really hard to just have sex with someone you didn’t love. So much would be missing. I’m so glad we (usually
) have not just the physical, but also the emotional and spiritual components in our relationship. It is so so precious. I treasure our times together and that he waited for me and I for him and the time for After we were married.
These stories remind me I my wedding night so much! Both of us are young (still only 21) and still in university. I remember feeling so tired but beyond excited as well. There were two pieces of advice that my mother gave me shortly after we got engaged that I found very helpful. One was not to read any book, online article or magazine on sex until after we were married but rather come to her with any questions I had. I recognize though that this solution only works if the mother is willing to be open with her daughter. And the second was to pick where we would spend the night not out of fear if people would find us but rather on where we would feel most comfortable. This resulted in us spending the night in our new apartment which my husband had already been living in for a month so was very homey.
But the sex itself that night was not fun for me in any way. It was quite painful which resulted in me feeling more stressed. At one point I broke down into I controllable tears. But this turned out to be the best thing. My new husband was able to comfort me and reassure me of his love for the first time with no boundaries or wariness of someone walking in. After that I was able to relax considerably as he was able to not get angry or make me feel like I was failing.