How do you explain colour to a colour blind person?
You can’t do it really well, can you? I have a “nephew” (he’s an adopted nephew, really) who always believed his favourite colour was red. Then he was tested for colour blindedness and it turns out he can’t see red. He’s been seeing SOMETHING, but it’s not red. And he never knew it this whole time!
I sometimes feel like it’s the same phenomenon with women who have very little sex drive and don’t really want sex.
I try to find so many ways of explaining how we’re missing out on something, and how it doesn’t have to be that way, but I’m never sure if I’m getting through.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week, because last weekend I was speaking at a FamilyLife Weekend Getaway, and the majority of women who came up to me with questions just had no libido. And they were tired of feeling guilty, but what were they supposed to do?
And so I thought–how can I explain it better?
I don’t know that I can say anything new. But I wrote a post a little while ago for Gary Thomas’ website, and I thought I did a good job there. So allow me to reprint it in its entirety today. And please–if you have no libido and you’re sick of hearing about sex, can you read it anyway? 🙂
Sheila’s Marriage Musings: When Safe Isn’t Good Enough
Every night when I was a little girl, I would drift off to sleep dreaming of one day being married to a man who would make me feel safe. An only child of an amazing single mother, I still desperately needed to know that I was loved and that my life wouldn’t be uprooted again.
I wanted stability. I wanted to be cherished.
I’ve been married for twenty-five years now, and I can attest with every fiber of my being that I am, indeed, very safe.
But I’ve also learned that safe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The reason that I’m happy with my husband today is not because I’m safe; the reason I’m happy with my husband is that together, we’re living an adventure.
Sometimes in our quest for safe we forget to live.
We’re trying so hard to avoid anything bad that we forget to let the good in, too.
We know there’s such a thing as holy contentment–the sentiment that the Apostle Paul conveyed in Philippians 4:12:
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
I believe, though, that there’s also a thing called holy discontentment, even in our marriage.
It doesn’t mean that we’re unhappy with our mate. It’s that we feel that we’re missing something important that God had for us. We know that He created us for more, and we’ve been settling. And we have a thirst for God’s passion to be more real in our lives, so that we stop playing it safe and start really living.
Nowhere do I see this as much in women’s experiences as in the area of sexual intimacy. Many of us are content to put sex on the back burner, every now and then consenting in order to give our husbands a break, but not truly experiencing passion ourselves. Maybe we figure we weren’t made for it. Maybe we figure it will never feel that good anyway. Maybe we figure we have too many other things on our minds and it’s too much work to make sex feel awesome.
Now, I know many of you are throwing yourselves into anything but sex because you’re the one with the higher sex drive. In 30% of marriages, it is the woman who wants sex more, not the husband, and your biggest question is why doesn’t your husband want to make love? Others have been so wounded because of your husband’s pornography use that sex has become ugly. For you, I am sincerely sorry, and I pray that you will be able to get others around you to hold him accountable and to help you both restore what has been broken.
But for those of us who have just given up, let me ask–are you settling for something that God never meant for you to settle for? Are you giving up too easily, and losing out on the life that God meant for you?
Before I got married I dreamt about sex.
A LOT. I pictured us spending Saturday mornings in bed every week, just enjoying each other. But then we got married and I realized that sex was work. It didn’t always feel that great. I was often so tired. And for me to be able to enjoy it, I had to be able to concentrate (no one ever tells us women that!). If I had a headache, or was worried about something, or had too much on my to do list, then sex flew out the window.
Somewhere along the line, though, passion did, too. Our lives became work and housework and shuttling the kids to music lessons and to church clubs and to sitting down at night to watch Netflix and to knit my eighth pair of socks this year. Not that there’s anything wrong with knitting socks, mind you. But life became a routine.
The more content we get with normal, the less we yearn to be part of the big passion story that God is writing in our world.
God is a passionate God. He’s creative to the extreme. He’s jealous. He gets angry, but also rejoices over us with singing. He is the furthest thing from mediocre or boring. As C.S. Lewis said, “He’s not a tame Lion, you know.”
When we settle for tame in our marriage we often tame God, too. Our sexuality and our spirituality are linked, because they get to the core of who we are. We have been created to know so intimately and to be known so intensely. God chose to use sex as the metaphor and vehicle by which we would partly understand His passion for us. The sexual imagery in the Bible is awfully blatant.
During those years in my marriage when I put sex on the backburner, then, it’s hardly surprising that I often ended up putting God there, too.
When I couldn’t be carried away and a little out of control with Keith, it was hard to let God take control and to be overcome with His goodness, too.
Passion is of God. And passion is expressed in so many ways–in worship; in our heart for the world; in our love for our kids. But also, most definitely, in the bedroom. And when we let passion die in one area, it often dies in all.
Perhaps it’s time to awaken passion. I’ve created a “Boost Your Libido” course for women like me who have been living very safe lives, and want more. Maybe God isn’t just calling you to more passion with Him, but also to more passion with your husband. That part of you can be reawakened, and when it is, it’s amazing to see what God can do with the rest of our lives, too!
Boost Your Libido is a super practical 10-module online course (with video!) that will help women understand what libido is, the roles our brains and bodies play in libido, and how to escape from a boring sexual rut in our marriages. The modules build on each other step-by-step, so you can start seeing immediate results! We don’t need to settle for safe.
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I’m getting married this summer and what you described sounds very similar to me…Imagining Saturday mornings, really looking forward to when we can finally just enjoy each other. But then I read so often about how it changes after marriage, that sometimes I get nervous I’m getting my hopes up. What advice do you have for someone about to get married to prevent falling into that passionless, only–if-he really-wants-to, routine?
That’s a GREAT question, Bex! I think open communication at the beginning is so important. For a lot of couples, sex doesn’t work like clockwork, and it does take some practice (whether you’re virgins or not; sex feels different after marriage because the emotions behind it are different). So if it doesn’t feel that great for you, speak up! Make it an awesome fun research project.
Then make sure you’re prioritizing sex in terms of frequency–I would say 2-3 times a week at the beginning would be good at least, and make sure that at least one of those times is primarily for your pleasure. I think if women can associate sex with something amazing early in their marriage, it’s far less likely to develop into a rut.
And then go to bed at the same time! Such a simple thing, but something that few people do. And it makes a huge difference!
Be pro-active. I got married in December 2015. The first 8 months of my married life I had (yet another) bout of major depression. Now if you know anything about depression, you probably know that that is about the opposite of passion. It drains all of the passion out of your life to the point that even breathing feels like too much work. Sound like that would be an absolute disaster for our sex life, yes? Specially since actual intercourse really didn’t feel that good to me in the beginning, and we’ve still not figured out how to get me to climax.
Sounds like a perfect recipe for a disastrous start to a sex life, yes?
Luckily, it wasn’t. I *decided* that it needed to be a priority and made it so. I figured that everything else was work anyway, I might as well direct some of my (very limited) energy that way. I also decided to try and enjoy it. Luckily, my primary love language is physical touch and my husband is very patient and gentle. So even if (when) my body is not having any of it and it just isn’t going to feel good no matter what either of us does, it’s still quite nice to be touched and petted.
I think in modern times we’ve bought into the feelings = reality lie way too much. You can, and in fact you often do, do things that you don’t feel like doing. It doesn’t make you less authentic or whatever silly excuse people come up with. You have a will and a mind as well as emotions. Your will and your mind can make you do stuff, even when all your emotions are raging against it.
I’m not sure I’m helping here. Just realize that it is work and it can take quite a while to figure out. My suggestions would be to 1) go to bed about 40-60 minutes before you actually need to be asleep 2) remember that it does get better 3) be patient with yourself and with him 4) try and learn to meditate. By that I mean the practice of consistantly focussing on something. Whenever an irrelevant or distracting thought pops in your head, gently push it out and refocus. This is actually really quite relaxing in and off itself. I try to do yoga before bed. It helps me calm down and gets me used to focussing on how my body feels (tunes you in to your body)
Don’t get too nervous. I was freaking myself out reading things like this before my wedding. It’s really not as complicated and stressful as it sounds. And remember you can make changes. It’s better to avoid ruts, but if you fall in, you can always climb out again.
Oh, and remember many women have reactive drives. I never, ever sit around and then suddenly feel turned on and want to go jump my husband. Like never. But I quite often want to cuddle and kiss before we go to sleep. 5-15 min of cuddling and kissing quite often turns into something else 😉 Even when I am dead tired and stressed out of my mind
GREAT advice, Alchemist! This is why I love you so much.
Be really open and frank about what is and isn’t working for you, sexually. What “works” in movies or what a young husband’s idea of what should feel good to his wife is rarely what actually feels good. You both will have a lot to learn so go into it prepared to learn.
We engage sexually at least 2-3 times a week, my husband loves foreplay and makes sure I have as good a time as I can, we talk for hours every week, often staying awake late to do so, we make one on one time for each other daily, in spite of having four children under four, I think we both would describe ourselves as being in love with each other, and yet… Sex is a struggle for me. It’s just hard. If I don’t spend a good portion of my thought life each day preparing for it, I very much struggle to work myself up to it, which ends up taking about an hour, start to finish – an hour when sleep would have been welcome. I know it’s important, so we do it pretty much every other day, but I know he wants more. I know he is nervous about being forward sexually because of how much I struggle. I know he feels confused as to why I could struggle when he takes such good care of me, we connect emotionally, and I almost always climax. I’m confused too. I’m sick of the feeling of relief after sex, the thought, “At least he won’t want it tomorrow” and the feeling of nervousness when it’s been a couple of days, the thought, “He’s probably going to want to tonight, now I have to pretend I’m in the mood” – because apparently just laying there without the appropriate level of enthusiasm and sexual overtures isn’t very appealing ?
As horrible as it is, if I had known sex would be like this, I may not have gotten married. But obviously,I am married, and therefore this is where God wants me and I gave to figure out how to handle this for the rest of my foreseeable future. I use all the tricks I read on your blog, and I physically enjoy sex too, so I guess I don’t understand where to go from here. It’s just so much work mentally and physically. If I’m being honest,I get a little jealous of my husband’s easy arousal. Like, seriously,I would love it if him taking his shirt off was enough to get the going, haha!
Sorry, that was a long rant. Do you have any idea what is wrong with me? Is this just normal?
Four under four, I so resonate with what you posted here! My situation isn’t exactly the same as yours but I feel I’m trying to do all the right things but it gets tiring! I don’t have anything super helpful to offer you other than the fact that you’re not alone in feeling this way.
Has it always been this way or is it more since kids? I also had four in four years and it’s so intense, more than most people can imagine. You’re needed all the time for everything, and even fun things can seem like a chore because you are always, always doing and you never have enough time and energy for even the things that *must* be done, let alone anything extra. Everything you do the time and energy are stolen from something else.
If you think that sounds like it, then it may be mostly a matter of time and patience for it to become fun again, along with the rest of life when you no longer have to be constantly monitoring other people’s bodily functions. My kids are all school age now and it is so different than it was eight years ago!
Also, there’s just no way to bring that many lives into the world without depleting your own body’s resources. Even if you don’t have any active health concerns, your body undoubtedly needs a lot of time and great nourishment and rest to rebuild (things that are hard to get while you have so many littles!) Your body and subconscious mind may be trying to protect you from further depletion, or just not have the wherewithal for fun when it takes all you’ve got to survive. Taking care of yourself, taking time to renourish and rest are so very important.
Wow Four under Four!
You have so eloquently expressed exactly how I have felt.
Same feelings, same thoughts!
You are not alone!
I think that the analogy with color blindness is very good, but also that the unfortunately quite widespread (and fortunately not present in this blog) concept that sex is a duty for the wife is often very harmful to a woman’s libido. I think that if somebody feels that sex is a duty, they are likely to get into a circle of stress and guilt, which kills the desire to have sex.
So I think the message a husband should send is: your pleasure is always very important, and this is not a duty for you, and I am not going to push you. This might decrease sex frequency in the short run, but increase its frequency, intimacy and reciprocity in the long run.
Very true, Dean! Thank you for that.
Great comment, Dean!
How do you explain color to a colorblind person?
How do you explain sexual pleasure to one who has never experienced it?
What my husband wants most is to bring me sexual pleasure.
He wants me to be sexually satisfied.
But, I don’t know what that feels like.
Frankly, I don’t know what feeling sexually unsatisfied feels like either.
I’ve been married over 25 years.
I can orgasm. But my orgasms are no big deal. I have never felt the ‘ intense pleasure’ everyone describes. Just a few minor muscle contractions and then nothing. It takes a lot of effort to get ‘there’ and ‘there’ for me isn’t worth the energy expended.
I wonder if I’m the only one who has this problem?
Perhaps I’m sexually colorblind.
I’m so sorry, Joannie. I’ve been thinking about your comment for a few hours now. Maybe I should write a post on it. Let me think about it overnight. I may even write something on a Saturday (which I never do!) because I’ve been haunted by this today.