Have you ever heard the expression, “men are like microwaves, women are like slow cookers”?
It’s often uttered at marriage conferences, as if it’s very profound. Here’s what it means:
Men are like microwaves. They heat up quickly, and once they’re heated up, they’re really hot. Women, on the other hand, heat up very slowly. And they continue to cook, but very slowly. Then, by the time it’s all over, she’s really tender.
I don’t buy it.
Sure, there’s an element of truth to that, as every married woman will know. Men do tend to be “in the mood” almost instantaneously, if the thought crosses their mind. We women don’t work like microwaves at all.
But are we really slow cookers?
To say that we are implies that we will, eventually, actually heat up.
But we may not! The truth is that for us sex is primarily in our brains. We have to have our brains in gear for our bodies to follow. So it doesn’t really matter what he does to try to heat us up, we won’t heat up unless we also decide to. It’s a head thing.
You can really only say that women are like slow cookers if you also acknowledge that it’s women who control the switch. No one else can switch us on. It’s a decision that we make to enjoy this. And you all know what I mean. Have you ever been having a very good time with your husband when you realize all of a sudden that you don’t have milk in the fridge for breakfast in the morning? You start ticking off a mental grocery list in your head, and you’re gone! You’re not paying attention anymore, and your body follows into the abyss. Our heads need to be in the game for sex to work! That’s why, by the way, it’s often hard for a woman to a want to make love if she has a headache. The headache is a distraction, and when we’re distracted, we can’t concentrate.
When we can’t concentrate, our bodies often don’t work right.
That’s not true for men. I remember soon after I was married my husband caught a horrible virus. He was in bed with a fever of 103 and a rash all over, and I crept into the bedroom. “Is there anything I can do for you?”, I whispered in sympathy.
That all too familiar look came over his face, and he smirked. “Well, since you asked…”
I thought to myself, “He is sick! In more ways than one!” But what I’ve come to realize is that this is how God made us differently, and He made us this way for a reason.
Men’s bodies are more tuned to desire sex quickly and to be able to perform right away (though obviously there can be problems, which we may deal with in another article in the future). If God also made women the same way, then what would our lives together look like? We’d likely be physically intimate extremely frequently, but there would be no impetus to actually talk to each other, or get to know each other on a much deeper level.
Women, on the other hand, were designed to desire relationship first. For us, sex comes out of our feeling of being loved. When we feel safe and secure, we want to make love. If God made both genders like this, we’d probably be physically intimate far less frequently, and we’d miss out on the profound beauty that comes when we’re intimate both spiritually and physically at the same time.
Men make love to feel loved, whereas women need to feel loved in order to make love.
Our motivations are different, and our bodies respond differently. But it’s all so that both sexes have an incredible drive and need for each other that is expressed in slightly different ways. And that means that to get our primary need met, we have to meet each other’s primary need. We are forced to be selfless, generous, and giving in the marriage relationship.
That’s a good thing. So next time you’re wondering why your husband doesn’t want to talk and snuggle as much, and why he’s only interested in one thing, realize that he is not a lesser human being. It’s not that you are morally superior because you value relationship first; it’s that you are simply different, and that’s the way God made you.
And think about this: when you do make love, chances are he talks to you a lot more afterwards. He snuggles. And the next day his step seems lighter, and he’s more fun to be with. He’s all the things that you want, but it happens after you make love, not before.
Don’t concentrate so much on what you need; try to step out and give him what he needs, too. Think about sex in a positive way, where you’re “flipping the switch”, so to speak. Anticipate it. Enjoy it. Even initiate! Think about how great it’s going to be to be with your husband tonight. Don’t just get in bed and then wait for him to turn you on. Jump in and be enthusiastic about it! Most women, when they start to make love, aren’t actually aroused yet. But once you start, your body follows if you make that mental decision to enjoy this. So just because you don’t feel “in the mood” first doesn’t mean you aren’t. It just means that your body hasn’t picked up your mental signals yet. When it does, you’ll probably be fine. And if you do initiate, you’ll find that your own emotional needs for more connection will likely be fulfilled as well.
That’s how God made us. It works beautifully when we decide that we’re going to give to each other. So can you make that decision, even if you can think of all the things he’s doing wrong? Someone has to take that first step and decide to reach out. Can it be you today? Why not pray and ask God to make you thoroughly excited for your husband. Ask God to help you anticipate being with him tonight. And you just may find that you’ll heat up, after all!
What do you think of the “women are like slow cookers, men are like microwaves” mentality? Let’s chat about it in the comments below!
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 25 years and happily married for 20! 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 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
If anything, I’m more like a microwave and my husband is a slow cooker. So I HATE this analogy. I am high drive and he is low drive. So this little saying is totally not us, and honestly kind of hurtful when it is used at conferences, on blogs, and in books.
Borderline TMI (although you just shared about your husband wanting to Do It while he had a 103 fever, so is there really a TMI here??? Also, you didn’t mention if you Did It 😉 ): I find that I have a better end, if we don’t spend a ton of time “slow cooking”, as it were. That just is to say that we all need to know our own bodies and what works and what doesn’t. The brain thing is totally true for me, there are times when I’m like, “I just can’t get my brain to focus on this now so do your thing and I’ll try again next time”.
I have found blanket statements to be nothing if not discussion starters. There is always someone who doesn’t get covered by the blanket. We all know each person is an unique individual like no other, but sometimes forget this will reveal itself in many ways, even in sexual ways. Libido is affected by so many things- nutrition, thoughts, upbringing, on and on it goes. Thankfully, through the writings of loving people such as you, I am learning to see my individual differences as the unique details of God’s beautiful, handmade masterpiece instead of quirks that prove how much of a misfit I have believed myself to be. Thank you for writing and for opening the door to discussions about topics few Christians dare to touch.
“Men make love to feel loved, whereas women need to feel loved in order to make love.”
This phrase makes me angry. While I realize that my anger may be caused by my husband’s multiple affairs despite my efforts to keep him satisfied (he led a double life for years, until the truth came exploding out), I still wonder if this phrase is yet another part of toxic purity culture. Another way to guilt women into responsibility to earn their husband’s affection. As if men don’t need to feel an emotional connection (feel “loved”) *before* sex too?! Also, sex *should* make BOTH people feel more loved afterwards 😊
Hi Renee–Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry about your husband. That’s truly awful!
Here’s what I think is really going on. Most men do have trouble feeling loved without sex, whereas women tend to have trouble feeling loved without affection.
That being said, that’s in cases where both are healthy. If someone is having multiple affairs, that is not healthy sexual desire. That is because they have made sex only about the physical and have divorced it from intimacy. Someone who has healthy sexuality DOES see intimacy as part of the equation. With the advent of porn and all of the way that sex is treated in the media, it’s all too easy for people to grow up obsessing over sexual release and sexual conquest rather than intimacy, and indeed, intimacy becomes a turn off, exactly the opposite of what God intended. And when that happens, sexual desire is not about intimacy at all. And sex won’t help someone feel loved, because their brain has been rewired.
That sounds more like your husband, and he will never find real peace until he understands his need for intimacy, which it sounds like he doesn’t. I’m so sorry, and I hope that you rebuild your own life now.
Here’s what I think is really going on. Most men do have trouble feeling loved without sex, whereas women tend to have trouble feeling loved without affection.
Can I turn this round slightly? Men desire sex to feel loved but also to express love. Sex is affection. Sex is extreme snuggling. Think about giving gifts, we often choose gifts for others that we would like ourselves. If we think something would make us happy we quite naturally think others would be made happy in the same way. If a man feels really loved and special when his wife wants to have sex with him, he quite naturally assumes she will feel loved and special in the same way. Men are action people, it is natural for them to ‘do’ something to express their emotions. They are more inclined to ‘do’ something rather than just talk about it. I noticed this as a teenager, boys got enthusiastic about some hobby and got straight down to action, girls spent ages talking about it. Yes we are all different and we don’t neatly fit stereotypes but they still have truth in them. As you said Sheila I am talking about healthy marriages not unhealthy ones. I don’t think it is that women are more relational than men but that men are more active from the start in how they relate.
TedX speaker and best-selling author of Mating in Captivity and the State of Affiars , Esther Perel, says that the conventional wisdom of what drives men and women may have been misunderstood all along:
Her theory (which is shared by other therapists and researchers) is that men experience sexual desire in order to aggressively pursue relational connection while women experience relational connection in order to aggressively pursue sexual passion.
In other words, men use the raw power of their sexual desire to pursue what they are truly chasing after: emotional connection. On the other hand, women use the raw power of their relational desire in order to chase after what they are truly craving: sexual gratification.
That kind of sets the conventional wisdom about what men and women want on its head, doesn’t it?
Except my husband… he is my first love, and I’m not his. I struggle every day feeling like he’s attracted to me, because he’s made comments in the past about his ex being his “type” or whatever, and she and I look nothing alike. I’m a rape survivor, and he also never initiates sex. I hate when people say that men “usually” have higher libidos, when that’s not really true. They are just more aggressive about it. My therapist said it’s actually pretty equal. Maybe that’s not true, but I have to hope it is. For my own self esteem, I guess…. Finding stories relatable to my situation is exhausting. It makes me feel more weird and ugly. I thought I would feel safe with him intimately, but he was so nervous about me NOT feeling safe that he was more nervous than excited to have sex, when we got married. So my body went into shock for months. My body could sense his aversion, and sex was painful almost the entire year. He never initiated sex, during our first year, even as a young man in his twenties and newly sexually active. I wanted to figure it out, learn to be safe, and get through the pain. He would reject me. Which made my body go more into shock on the occasions he wouldn’t reject me. He started looking at porn for a few months after we’d been married for 3, when that was never something he had a problem with. He rejected me for sex all the time. Every time I try to look up “newlywed and my husband doesn’t want sex,” articles about “my wife doesn’t want to have sex” come up. I’d actually found healing from my sexual assault through Christ, before I met my husband. His aversion to sex triggered my feelings of worthlessness and unworthiness all over again, except this time it was someone I was supposed to feel safe with making me hate my body again. I just don’t know what to do anymore. Sorry for the lengthy rant. That sort of came out of nowhere. I’m glad I found this site, though.
Rebecca,
Like most illustrations, the microwave & crockpot breaks down pretty fast. I do like how you said there isn’t a switch to turn women on. Yes, (most) men seem to have a switch that is always on. I think that women (me included) have to stop and find that switch or the reason why they want to have sex. Pleasing my husband is a great reason, but it should not be the only thing. As selfish as that sounds, if I hate doing something, I don’t think to make myself do it will help me like it more and more.
What I have found that helps in our relationship is respect, time and timing. Slow foreplay is a must. Trying to squeeze in sex when there are obligations coming up doesn’t always work for us. Also, not insisting each other orgasms every time is also a bonus. There are times in my cycle that I’m not going to be sexually active; forcing it does nothing except bring up anger and irritation. When my husband wants to be sexually active at those times, that is when I choose to let him have the greater pleasure than myself (that sounds weird, and I hope not too confusing). We try to always have an equal focus on each other, but when I know that nothing will get the fires burning, I still want him to know that I love him and want to please him. ~ Johanna
I think maybe the “men feel loved from having sex, etc.” is just another example of Christians over thinking and romanticizing biology again. Frankly, I think men want sex more and are ready to go more readily because they have more testosterone. Women who take testosterone artificially report wanting to have sex all the time too. We are animals, and we live and die by our hormones.
There is a lot of truth to that!
We are not animals and we don’t live and die by our hormones. I say that as a Christian who ‘overthinks and ‘romanticises’ biology because God created me to be a thinking, feeling being not an animal. He gave me a soul which is interwoven with my mind and body so that what I do with one part of me, effects the rest if me. This website exists and all the people commenting here are proof of how far removed we are from animals because they don’t agonise over their sex lives, they just get on with it. Yes men have more testosterone and are therefore usually more sexually charged but they were created that way for a reason that transcends mere biology. We maybe don’t always understand correctly why God made us the way he did but there is a reason. We live in a culture that is determined one way or another to strip us of our humanity and make us ‘ not very smart’ animals but that just makes us miserable.
Except that, we ARE indeed animals. I would agree with C.S. Lewis, though, and say that we are not JUST animals. We are something more. I’m just not sure how helpful it is to emphasize some transcendent purpose to our biology, if we don’t know what that transcendent purpose is. There’s probably a really good spiritual reason why we have two eyes placed on the front of our head, instead of in the middle of our torsos, but since God didn’t see fit to let me in on that reason specifically, I just can’t see my way to getting too philosophical about it. But we tend to go a little crazy waxing philosophical about human sexuality.
Really, I was just addressing the conventional wisdom in Christian circles that men need sex to feel loved. If that’s so, why don’t low-testosterone men seem to need sex to feel loved? I tend to think it’s simply physiology, yes, and I don’t apologize for that. Anyone who’s ever tried to live a joyful, energetic life on a minimally functioning thyroid, or in the midst of PPD, knows that hormones have a huge effect on a person’s spiritual well-being.
I’m a clinical Christian Sex therapist and mostly I do agree with that analogy. It’s basically how God created our hormones and bodies. There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re just feminine souls that happen to have biology that is like a slow cooker unless it’s in the middle of the month! Then we’re like microwaves!
Sheila, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for your discussions. And, just for the record, in my marriage, most of what you say about men and women and sexuality is opposite! I was glad to read that you had found that in about 30% of marriages, it is the wife who has the higher libido. My husband needs to feel loved in order to want sex, and I have told him, “I don’t need a reason, all I need is a place!” I guess that’s not entirely true; it’s just that my heart and my body are TOWARD him and our relationship, so I am ALWAYS a willing and happy participant. It is VERY hard for me to feel that he loves me if we aren’t having sex very often. I have trained myself to look around our lives to see the evidence of his love for me; it is everywhere! Over time, he tries to have sex more often and I try not to fall apart when we don’t.
Thanks for all you do!
Jodi, I’m hoping to do a week long series on women with the higher libidos soon. I did one a while ago, but it was a long time ago now, and it’s worth a revisit, because it’s such a common situation now. You’re totally not alone, and I hear you!
It’s hard to write about our sex life. It exposes myself and my spouse to the world. We have been married 30 years. Sex started out great. The last few years it has gotten to the point that I dare not touch her to initiate anything. It’s met with not so subtle rejection that she tries to make appear to be subtle. I have tried to visit about it, it’s always me that addresses anything in our relationship that needs attention, sexual or otherwise. I try – I really try to do the things she says “gets her in the mood”, it doesn’t do anything for her. So, I’m left with “Don’t touch” and /or “I didn’t really mean it when I said certain things get me in the mood”. I love my wife, and I love to play and make love with her. But I’ve grown tired of the game and am now at the point where I don’t try at all any more. So it’s frustrating, and while I have never cheated, nor want to, I can see why that happens – for either gender. And – no, I have no reason to think she is cheating.