Can a formula or routine help you to have a better sex life?
It’s Wednesday, the day when we always talk marriage (and often sex)! And today I want to share with you a post sent to me by Dani from Whimsy in My Cup about how she and her husband manage to prioritize their sex life. I think it’s great fuel for discussion!
The simple truth is that sometimes (often!) life gets busy. And Dani says that instead of waiting for the perfect conditions to make love, you have to create those conditions and work to a goal. Interesting.
I know what she means about how life gets busy–I’m still sick (seriously, I sound awful), but my internet is back up, so my mood is much better! So that’s the update on me. Now here’s Dani:
My husband and I have been married nearly 19 years. We now have four daughters – three teenagers and a toddler. But just a blink ago, my husband and I were in a different season. It was the season of three toddler girls running around the house. Many of you know exactly the season I’m referring too! Maybe you’re in it right now.
As a parent, the infant/toddler season is probably one of the most physically exhausting stages of your kids’ lives but at the same time, one of the most rewarding.
It’s when you have a handful of toddlers running around that you realize if your marriage is going to get any attention, you’re going to have to be intentional about making it happen. Because toddlers are wearying and babies are time-consuming. And if you aren’t careful, you can end up neglecting THE most important relationship in life – the one of you and your husband.
So, it was while my husband and I were in this season that I developed the 2+2 theory.
We all have needs and men’s and women’s needs are vastly different. I love that the Creator did such a seemingly odd thing by creating us so different. It definitely takes the dull out of life but it can also actually make life incredibly pressurized.
We often don’t understand each other at first try and unless we chose to learn this life dance, we can end up hurt, broken and empty. But if we chose to take the journey of growing and discovering ‘who this person is’, we can live complete, fulfilled and abounding. When life seems to be pulling farther than you can be stretched, we have to protect the most important relationship – our marriage.
Experts say that a healthy man needs sex about every 3 days.
(Seriously, girls, he NEEDS it!) Being a woman AND a mother, I know that, though I really enjoy sex, what I need is to feel like a fully alive, beautiful, confident woman – not just a mommy – or I can start feeling like sex is just another task to add to my to-do list and there ends up being no enjoyment in an act that God designed for pleasure and beautiful intimacy.
For both of these needs to be met in our marriage, God gave me this 2 + 2 thought. And though, I’m the last person to want to establish a rule or be ‘religious’ about something, this practical wisdom really helped my husband and I stay connected through a wonderful but wearying season of life and marriage. And this little theory continues to be at the heart of my vision for a healthy marriage.
So, what is the 2 + 2 theory?
The first 2 is sex twice a week. Plain and simple. This meets the God-given need in man for physical intimacy. Girls, this means being ready and willing – even initiating a time of intimacy with your husband… twice a week.
The second 2 is 2 hours a week of vacation time for mama. It’s important that she can remember the fact that before ‘mommy’, she is ‘woman’. That 2 hours is used in whatever rejuvenates her in a healthy way. Alone time, friend time, workout time, coffee time, shopping time, pampering time… It’s about her finding the sexy woman her husband sees and being comfortable being her and not just mom.
If you feel drained from parenthood or even just an extra full season in life, if your marriage seems to be stale or even suffering, I’d challenge you to try this little theory. Be intentional about growing and thriving in the most important relationship you have on earth!
Dani Stroda blogs at Whimsy in My Cup and is a regular contributor for For View From Home. She released her first book, “Journey Through the Door”, last fall. It is available on Amazon and at revivalrevolution.life. Dani is passionate about empowering women to live healthy, whole and free in life and relationships. Besides her relationship with the Lord, Dani’s biggest obsession is her family – she has been married for 19 years to Mitch and has 4 daughters, ages 17, 15, 12 and 4. You can follow Dani on Facebook and Instagram!
So what do you think, ladies? I like that the 2+2 doesn’t have to be a maximum, it can be a minimum! So it’s not really a formula–it’s just saying that “we need to do at least this”. Let’s talk in the comments!
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Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 29 years and happily married for 24! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 7 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
Women for the most part really don’t know how deep this runs with us. This is one of my favorite videos from the Family Feud that illustrates it so much. (And I cheer with arm thrusts at one point every time.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DQv2GxFHt4
Oh, my gosh, that was hilarious! I loved his summary at the end. I’m going to have to share that on Facebook!
My husband isn’t like this at all. He can go weeks without it. I, on the other hand, can’t go very long. In this post, the author says a healthy man needs sex every three days. This is discouraging to me. I have no doubt that my husband is in love with me, and he seems to be healthy. His job is pretty low stress as well. I just don’t get it. He’s been this way since we got married when he was 19. He’s 30 now. Should I be concerned about his health?
Me too, KC. 🙁
I would be happy with twice a week. Right now, I’d take once a week. Last time it was a six week gap. We don’t have kids. My husband just isn’t really interested in sex, and hasn’t been for over 5 years (we’ve been married six years). I’m certain he’s faithful, but he doesn’t like seeing the doctor and won’t get a check up, so we’re just stuck in stalemate. It’s killing me, but I have no idea what else to do.
Pray, pray, pray! Obviously health statistics are generalized and not everyone fits into them. But if you aren’t happy with the way things are, take it to the Lord first… it’s amazing how powerful prayer is. Secondly, communication is the key in great relationships. In a gentle tone, communicate your feelings and your needs to your husband. I pray you find a place where you are both content in your sex life.
My husband is the same, but luckily, he finally realized how important sex is to me and we consistently have sex once a week. Every once in awhile he surprises me with 2 times. Prayer got us on the right track.
KC & Bella,
I do agree with Dani that not everyone fits in to the 2 +2 category. Each person is different & so are their needs. But the principle is a good one. Communication is very important…with your spouse & with God. God is going to lead & direct you as you seek his face. Our husbands’ may be a little more difficult to communicate with, but definitely try. Once we grow out of childhood & start having relationships, we start to have expectations. If our expectations are unreasonable and our partner doesn’t live up to them, we can be hurt, feel rejection, etc. Men can be selfconcious about sex anyway, but if there is a problem with ERD, they may REALLY be embarrassed to discuss it or see a doctor. It’s like if they don’t admit it, it’s not real. I was married the first time for 36 years & my husband at that time had very bad back issues & two surgeries where metal rods put in, and he had a heart attack & quadruple by-pass. The medications plus his health changed things. I am 56 and remarried two years ago. My husband is 59, so we are faced with getting older too. I said that to say perhaps that could be a reason for inaction on your husbands’ part. May the Lord bless you both & your families.
Nick,
I’m glad you posted this video response! That was EYE OPENING! And funny!
It really is helpful to hear a guys perspective and thoughts. I’m in the “I just don’t get it boat.”
But hearing, “DIE” for it, I guess I never realized that it’s a need like food and water to a man!
I guess I thought it was a need like a woman says she needs a new outfit as opposed to a component for survival.
Learning and navigating the mystery of marriage always!
Glad for Sheila’s page and the community here!
Yes Lindsay. It is a need. It is a great need and I swear I start doing the arm thrust every time it gets to kill. Yes. This is what we men would do for sex.
I happen to also have a community of Christian men on Facebook and we’ve started a blog and I’m the one who has done the writing for it thus far. These two might be of interest to you.
https://aschristloves.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/welcome-to-the-world-of-men/
https://aschristloves.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/why-do-you-want-sex-so-much/
Honestly, if you want to know something about your man, you can go and read all the books on men that you want to, you can make generalizations from studies about men and think that’s the way he is, or you can use the more high-tech way of figuring out what’s going on his head and what he’s thinking and why that I prefer. Just ask him.
Love this idea but 2 hours a week??? I don’t see 2 hours a month! My plate is too full! 2 kids, home school, no readily available babysitter and I work from home 1/2 the hours they sleep and the weekends. He’s at work most of the waking hours of a week. I never imagined life would be this busy. I don’t have time to switch out of mommy mode:( I have no time to even think about sex much less think about being the sexy woman I use to feel like. I guess it’s a nice goal to shoot for though.
When I developed this theory, we had 3 kiddos and I homeschooled as well so I completely understand. Have a goal and invest in what is priority for you in this season!
I wish my husband wanted/needed sex more often, but he can easily go a week or more with no problem. I try not to “keep score” but I feel like I initiate more often then he does, especially in the last few months. I’ve told him I’d like to try to increase our frequency to 2 times a week. (Not because I’m especially in the mood, but because I feel like our marriage needs this connection.) He tells me that the average is to have sex once a week. I told him that is factoring in sexless marriages, unhappy marriages, etc. I told him I read somewhere that happy couples generally have sex 3 times per week. Three times could be a lot with being tired, busy, etc., so I’m not pushing for that. Sheila, I know you have posts about this . Maybe I need to reread them. I guess I’m just venting!
I have been on marriage retreats, been to marriage classes by Jimmy Evans, and a few other things marriage related. I understand that sex is a need for men, I understand that sex for men is how they connect to their partner and how they feel love. I try to be open to that idea and be understanding but most (and I will clarify not all the time but most) I feel as though it’s not about connecting with me or getting his share of love in his love language but it’s about the feeling of sex. That he’s more worried about what feels good for him and getting to the goal then making it a together thing or bonding moment. So in turn all I ever see it as is a chore and very rarely do I ever get in the mood. I want to be what he needs but I hate it almost every time.
JoAnna, I totally get it. Sex is supposed to unite us physically, emotionally, AND spiritually, but sometimes it really does feel like only the physical matters (and in our pornographic culture that promotes just the physical, that’s almost normal). My book 31 Days to Great Sex can help couples actually talk about this and focus on each other’s pleasure and the mutuality of what sex is supposed to be. If you’ve never been able to really talk about it with your husband, maybe that’s a good place to start? The ebook version is only $4.99, and what people have told me is that it finally starts those conversations. I hope that helps–I know it’s tough! I really do.
We have sex much more than 2 times a week, often it’s two times a day. We both enjoy it (after many years of working on it) but two hours alone every week … that seems like an impossible dream. Four kids plus a baby, homeschooling, family on the other side of the country, no money for a babysitter … and this has pretty much been the case for the last 12 years when my first child was born.
I have told my husband that when the kids are grown he’s not going to see for months at a time except to see me walking out the door. I’m joking, sort of.
My husband tells me to take time for myself but without the actual support to do so it’s just talk.
If he’s willing to admit that you need the time, then MAKE him help you get that time. Yes you can make him do this and NOT be a bad wife, unlike what some ladies who read this blog will tell you. If there’s an opportunity to leave the kids with him, walk out the door!!! Just say I’ve gotta go do blah blah blah, and LEAVE! The world will not fall apart baby.
I see that most of the people commenting in this post are women. Im a man and i think this post is interesting but i have a question. What do you do when your wife doesn’t want 2 hours of alone time. I have read many posts about helping your wife with he kids and at home so she will be in the mood for sex and I try everything. I help her with our 10 months old daughter as much as I can and I try to clean and cook as often as possible. I don’t know how it works in the U.S with paternity leave but right now I am on my paternity leave and then I will go on vacation and probably be on paternity leave for 5 more months so I am also very tired. When she gets home from work it’s not like I get comfortable in our couch and do whatever I want. I start to clean, do the dishes and help taking care of our daughter. I have offered myself to take our daughter out so she can have alone time but she refuses. I have asked her many many times but she doesn’t want to. And sex is off the table. I don’t remember when we had sex last time. I think it was more than a month ago. And that is so hard. So does anyone have some ideas on what I can do? Can the 2+2 work in our marriage?
It sounds like you’re home with the baby and she’s working outside of the house so she is maybe feeling guilty that you’re home with the baby all day when she’s working so she doesn’t want to take more time away from the baby??
Yeah that may be one part of the problem but the thing is she recently started to work. When she was home all day with our daughter she still not wanted alone time. So I don’t know what to do to help her rest. It’s so frustrating. I don’t know if that’s why she doesn’t want to have sex but if it’s that I don’t know how to fix it.
Pray! Pray! Pray! I agree that keeping God first and ask Him to give us understanding hearts and serving hearts to one another in this season of life. He has helped my husband and I to become “one” more each day, each season.
Yeah I guess I have to pray and pray. Sometimes it’s just so frustrating but I guess I am learning to love without expecting nothing back. That’s marriage after all. I just had hoped for so much more than just being roommates and co-workers. I sometimes don’t feel we have a marriage but we have a company called “Our home”. I just wanted to be married , enjoying each other and so on. But I guess that’s not happening. I sometimes think it’s so unfair. She doesn’t need sex and she is happy spending time with our daughter and she doesn’t have to do much to feel good in our marriage. She is happy knowing I am there to do what I am supposed to do. But I have to suffer because I want sex. I am longing to be more connected with her and so on. I have to try so that we can be connected she doesn’t even have to care. In proverbs 5 I think theire is a story about a man who is tempted by another women and I read somewhere that it never says that the women was beautiful, the only Thing the story says is that she was available. She didn’t seduce the young man with her looks but by being available and it is tempting to find easy solutions but in the end it kills you but I can’t say that it doesn’t tempt me but as you say I have to pray, pray, pray.
A.C, along with praying, I feel like you should speak with your wife about your needs and appeal to her understanding and caring for you.
Many women here can testify we enjoy sex (given the right circumstances). She can too. Maybe there’s a reason she doesn’t want it (I mean, there is, maybe you two can have an open conversation about it and figure it out). Same goes for “alone time”. Express your concerns and grievances and encourage her to express hers, and ask for compromise. My humble opinion.
Thank you for your advices Celine and Jfreak. The truth is that I have tried but nothing happens. I have told her and in the beginning she said that she would get better but then it’s the same thing anyways. It got to the point that everytime I tried to talk about sex or even tries to read a marriage blog post about sex like here on to love honor and vacuum, she just ignored it and changed the subject. So I stopped trying. I feel like I can’t be open to talk to her about it. It hurts I guess. I know she loves me. She have had talks a long time ago and then she said that she doesn’t think about having sex. It does happen that she wants sex, so ithe doors are not totally closed but those times are very few and it seems like it’s getting worse. When we first started to have sex after her pregnancy it went two weeks between and then it only happened because I was being annoying or nagging about it, everytime she said things were going to be better but everytime things are getting worse. The last 4 months it started to be each third week and now more than a month has passed and it doesn’t look good. I mean I hope that this is just a faze but it doesn’t seem like that. I feel like we will never have a good sex life. It seems like she doesn’t need it. It makes you wonder if something’s wrong with me.
Maybe I want it to much. I have started to think that sex maybe means to much for me. Living in this sex crazy world and at the same time being restrained from sex by religion may have caused me to see sex as something very important and desirable but maybe that is wrong. Maybe sex isn’t as desireable as the world makes it. So maybe it’s not she that needs to change maybe it’s what I think of sex that needs to change. The hard part is that I don’t know how to change that.
When it comes to alone time I don’t think anything would work. She would see it as something selfish to want alone time. I am sitting at work right now, here in Sweden it’s 21:32 and i am alone in the office but I got to say it feels like an alone time and I enjoy it but I wish I coul enjoy it without having to go to work.
Hi A.C.
I don’t think that anything is wrong with you. I have a hard time imaging that Gods plan for your marriage is a marriage including no desire and no sex. It’s the way he created is, and a gift from God.
But I also think it’s not healthy for your marriage to be without the intimacy you miss. Just my thoughts.
Greetings from Denmark.
/Stig
Hey A.C.
I have been reading The blog here of and on for roughly a month now.
Along with praying i would counsel some honest comunication with your wife about where you are at concerning the physical side of your relationship.
It has helped me and my wife take the physical side of our relationship to a whole new level.
Why do you think many couples seem resistant to scheduling sex? Frankly, I think discussing and setting expectations is important to every part of marriage, including sex.
(Linked to this post here.)
Twice a week is ok. More would be better. However, the real challenge for my wife is to really BE there. It’s too easy for a woman’s mind to be somewhere else and if her mind is somewhere else, her body doesn’t show up either. So, I guess twice a week might be an ok minimum, but ready and willing and initiating is so rare, that two or even 3 or 4 times a week wouldn’t make up for the lack of “wholely” “being there”. But there is always a “good” reason, so I focus on my part and pray God will pick up the rest.