8 Surprises That Make All the Difference
Shaunti Feldhahn
What the research actually says — and what it means for your marriage.
Feldhahn surveyed thousands of couples and discovered that the biggest sexual struggles in marriage aren't physical — they're emotional and informational. Both partners want to please the other but have no idea how because they've never had the conversation.
Everything Feldhahn and Sytsma want you to walk away with
Common struggles — desire differences, communication gaps, frequency dissatisfaction — are nearly universal. Since sex is one of the few areas where we rarely compare notes with even our closest friends, it's easy to feel uniquely deficient. You're not.
Receptive desire means the person is open to sex but feels desire later, after engagement begins. This pattern is nearly twice as common among women. It's not low desire — it's a different order of desire. Your spouse is not broken, and neither are you.
A sincere, inquisitive approach to your spouse is more impactful than perfect technique. Curiosity is incompatible with contempt, criticism, and blame. When something doesn't work, shift from 'I failed' to 'I wonder what would.'
God designed sex for pleasure, but it's richer than just pleasure. If your goal is powerful pleasure, you might have only okay sex. If your goal is intimate connection and oneness, great sex is more likely to come along with it.
Instead of 'Why aren't you having sex with me?' both need to ask 'Why aren't we having sex?' When neither spouse is getting what they want, the dynamic changes completely — from adversarial to collaborative.
49% initially claimed to talk without awkwardness, but nearly half of those were in the 'liar, liar, pants on fire' cohort when their other answers were examined. The silence creates distance neither partner understands.
Women's deepest question: 'Am I loveable? Beautiful? Worthy?' Men's deepest question: 'Am I able? Adequate? Do I have what it takes?' Three in four men said feeling inadequate was far more painful than feeling unloved. Understanding this changes everything.
For most women, feeling cared for and emotionally close throughout the day is what opens the door. For most men, sex itself creates the closeness — and afterward, he becomes more emotionally warm and attentive. Both paths are valid and both need honoring.
Pouting, getting angry, or distancing when rejected is destructive. She may have been interested originally, but now she looks over and thinks 'not with that attitude.' Get on the same side of the table and problem-solve together.
Being regularly intimate raises testosterone, which facilitates more desire. Forgoing sex drops testosterone, creating a vicious cycle. Sleep, exercise, sunlight, and healthy diet also positively impact desire. This is a system you can actively influence.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Shaunti Feldhahn and Dr. Michael Sytsma
No one is an expert on your life or your marriage besides you and God. If something works for 97 percent of couples, you just might be one of the 3 percent. If something in this book doesn’t feel right for your story, your marriage, or your spouse, it might not be. Just step around it.
This book as a whole may not be right for you at the moment. Some couples need to first learn to better manage generalized anxiety or treat depression — both of which biologically short-circuit healthy sexuality. They may need to work on healing trauma, or address an unhealthy power balance. Other issues may simply need to be addressed first.
There are eight areas of confusion or misunderstanding — and the surprising truths from the research will help us understand our spouse and ourselves and reach a new level of intimacy in marriage.
Dr. Sytsma has invested over 30,000 hours caring for individuals and couples in counseling, mainly with sexual issues, plus over 2,400 hours of professional education in sexuality and sex therapy. He co-founded Sexual Wholeness, Inc., where they train and certify Christian sex therapists, and has trained hundreds of pastors and therapists as a professor for ten seminaries.
Although the research is rigorous and representative across the board (among people of all religious beliefs and of none at all), this book is designed to be more practical than theological — but sex itself will be far richer if a couple rightly understands it as sacred and created for a sacramental purpose.
Although no one wants to feel like the only partner trying to work on the marriage, many troubled relationships have been transformed by the power of a one-sided choice. You cannot change your spouse; you can only change yourself. This means loving and pursuing your spouse in the ways you can, and trusting God to work in the ways you can’t.
“Does sex really matter so much to a marriage?” The answer is clear: Yes, it really does.
Just as oil is the lubricant of an internal combustion engine, the sexual relationship can be the lubricant in a marriage. Neurochemical shifts and positive feelings help reduce relational friction. A protective sense of togetherness and powerful connection can be created.
The average male reaches orgasm in 5.4 minutes of intercourse. The average female takes fourteen minutes to reach orgasm — almost three times as long. Climaxing together may be great when it happens but is usually a poor goal.
When we are operating under wrong assumptions, we are trying hard in the wrong areas. We may be pursuing fixes that will never work or putting effort into things that simply don’t matter to our spouse as much as we think they do.
**Wrong Assumption #1: We are not normal.*The truth: You are probably more normal than you think — and so is your spouse. Many sexual issues are common. Since sex is one of the few areas where we rarely compare notes with even our closest friends, it’s easy to feel that we are one of few couples dealing with something.
The average frequency for all couples falls right at 1⅓ times per week (four times every three weeks). 23 percent of couples have sex less than once a month, 28 percent report one to three times per month, 29 percent report one to two times per week, and 15 percent say three to six times a week.
Nationally, among couples having sex, 78 percent of spouses practice oral sex (37 percent most of the time and 40 percent some of the time), and 22 percent said they rarely or never do.
31 percent of women and 9 percent of men say they only occasionally reach orgasm — and sometimes don’t at all. For roughly 40 percent of women, intercourse alone isn’t enough stimulation to climax; clitoral stimulation doubles the chance of orgasm. And yet half of men and women didn’t know that.
12 percent of men and a whopping 32 percent of women feel pain at least every third time they have sex. Yet 40 to 50 percent of women with chronic pain don’t seek help.
Sex is ultimately designed to bring you and your spouse together in oneness. When that is the focus, the climaxes are put in the right perspective: They are great, but they aren’t the goal.
**Wrong Assumption #2: Having consistent sex — or not — doesn’t really impact the marriage.*The truth: Regular sexual intimacy with your spouse really matters to the marriage. Couples in low-sex/no-sex marriages are much more likely to be struggling in many other ways.
Among couples who are happy with how often they have sex, 94 percent are also happy in their marriage. Among those who are “meh” about frequency, 70 percent are happy. Among those who are unhappy with frequency, only 35 percent are happy in marriage.
A spouse who is unhappy about how often they have sex is ten times more likely to also be unhappy in their marriage.
A couple is much more likely to be happy with frequency if they are having sex once a week or more. Of such couples, 62 percent are happy, compared with only 25 percent of those having sex one to three times a month. Among all those having sex less than once a month, only 9 percent are happy with their frequency.
A couple is more likely to be happy with frequency if they have roughly similar levels of desire. Among those who report equal or similar desire, 82 percent of couples are happy with how often they have sex. But the happiness level drops to only 18 percent where one partner has significantly higher or lower desire.
**Wrong Assumption #3: We have a difficult time talking about sex, but that’s okay.*The truth: Without the words, you may not be getting as much action. 49 percent of survey-takers initially claimed to talk about sexual issues without any awkwardness — but nearly half of those same people answered other questions that placed them squarely in the “liar, liar, pants on fire” cohort.
People who are able to talk about sex with their spouse have significantly more sex. People who find it awkward or difficult have much less sex. Most important, people who talk about sex well are also far more likely to be happy in their marriage.
A fairly common miscommunication happens when a husband feels distant and presses harder to be intimate as a way of saying “I feel totally disconnected from you, and sex would help me feel close again.” But because he’s not actually saying that directly, what she may hear is: “He’s just horny and wants to use my body — he doesn’t want me.”
The first step is to examine these three wrong assumptions. Which do you recognize in yourself? The second step is to ask your spouse to examine the same list. If you both are willing, read this book out loud to each other — pausing often to discuss what applies and matters most to each of you.
For the vast majority, these simple shifts — trying hard in the right areas — will make a big difference.
Creating a healthy intimate life starts with what happens in your mind, not with what happens in the bedroom. What you focus on is what you will see. And what you see changes everything about how you respond to your spouse.
An intense focus on the problems will only snarl things up and won’t result in healing. If we want a hopeful, encouraging marriage, we have to shift our focus forward and be vision-oriented — what good future are we aiming for in our sexual relationship? — rather than simply tackling each problem in turn.
One of Dr. Sytsma’s most important homework exercises is to invite couples to create a sexual vision. Not just “here’s how often we want to do it,” but to flesh it out. How often do you want to cuddle? Do you want playful sex, erotic sex, functional sex, or what mix of each? What will be fun, intimate, connecting, and healthy for you as a couple?
**Mindset Shift #2: From believing the worst to believing the best.*When we are hurt by our spouse, we tend to believe negative things about their intentions. Usually, we see the motivations we most fear. In research for an earlier book, out of 1,261 people surveyed, only 9 — 0.7 percent — had stopped caring. The rest — 99.3 percent — loved their spouse and wanted the best for them.
In a marriage where the spouses truly care about each other, outward negativity often stems from emotional pain and not from a lack of love or a desire to hurt. If you want a happy marriage, you have to let yourself believe your spouse cares.
The greatest predictor of marital distress related to sexual desire differences was not the actual difference in how much sex spouses wanted — it was whether the high-desire spouse believed something wrong about the thoughts and feelings of the low-desire spouse.
**Mindset Shift #3: From seeing “bad heart” to seeing “bad skill.”*A husband or wife may be poorly skilled in their ability to love their spouse well — but skill can be taught. So the question is, can you focus on their heart while they are learning the skill?
**Mindset Shift #4: From “my spouse is dissatisfied with my imperfections” to “my spouse finds me appealing, regardless.”*Nearly half (48 percent) felt self-conscious about their spouse seeing them naked. Yet 73 percent of survey-takers said they wanted to see their spouse naked. Just 2 percent said they were turned off by imperfections.
**Mindset Shift #5: From “are we allowed to?” to “what is healthy for us?”*Look at the heart as you and your spouse decide together what is healthy for the two of you. Anything sexual that doesn’t feel good afterward — emotionally, physically, relationally — for both of you isn’t “good sex,” no matter how it fits one spouse’s fantasy. Be cautious of any solo practices that can turn your heart away from your spouse. Erotica and porn can set up expectations that will eat at your intimate life.
**Mindset Shift #6: From pursuit of pleasure to pursuit of connection — of which pleasure is a byproduct.*God clearly designed sex for pleasure, but it is richer than just pleasure. If your goal is powerful pleasure, you might have only okay sex; but if your goal is intimate connection and oneness, then great sex is more likely to come along with it.
Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” The Apostle Paul commanded, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”
In general, for men, desire leads to sex; but for women, generally, sex leads to desire. This overall understanding is the key to unlocking immense freedom and enjoyment. We are simply built differently. Your spouse is not broken — and neither are you.
**Fact #1: There are different types of desire.*The “I’m hungry for sex with you” feeling is called initiating desire — but that type describes only four in ten people. In only 5 percent of couples do both spouses work that way. In 95 percent of marriages, at least one spouse does not normally feel desire and pursue it.
The second primary type is receptive desire. The person is open to sex but simply doesn’t think about sex as often and feels desire in a different order. A third type — resistant desire — applies to a smaller number (7 percent) and signals the need for more specialized attention, ranging from unwillingness to engage all the way to a fear or hatred of sex.
**Fact #2: Desire can be felt in a different order.*Among those with receptive desire, the feeling of desire is experienced later in sexual engagement, not at the beginning. This person usually decides to get sexually engaged, begins to get aroused, views the arousal as positive, and then feels the sense of sexual desire their initiating partner felt from the very beginning. That feeling can arrive five or ten minutes into sexual play.
Most of those with receptive desire must make a decision to get sexually engaged, and then a few minutes later are glad they did. This is not someone choosing to have sex even if they actively don’t want it — rather, the receptive person looks ahead and realizes they will want it. This pattern is nearly twice as common among women (73 percent) as men (38 percent).
If we don’t recognize these two types of desire exist, one or both partners might think that the person with receptive desire needs to change to be healthy sexually. That their desire is “too low” — when, in fact, the level of desire is a completely different topic.
**Fact #3: We take on different desire “roles.”*Sometimes feelings and actions diverge. You feel desire but take on the receptive role and wait for your spouse to initiate because you don’t want to be pushy (27 percent of men, 24 percent of women). Or you don’t feel desire but initiate because it’s been a few days and you know it’s important — “intentional desire.”
Fact #4: Anticipation time can “wake up” a receptive partner.
**Fact #5: How we handle a mismatch is more important than the physiological difference.*If a spouse responds negatively to a mismatch — pouting, getting angry, distancing — it can be destructive to their sex life. She may actually have been interested originally, but now she looks over and thinks, “But not with that.”
Be curious. Always start with curiosity. Curiosity is incompatible with contempt, criticism, blame, and a host of other destructive stances — especially when talking about sex with your spouse.
The key is to stop being on opposite sides of the table to negotiate who does what and how often, and instead put yourself on the same side of the table and figure out creative solutions together. For example, scheduling sex.
“I’m never not going to have to work on this thing.” The person who doesn’t think about making love as much may not be naturally drawn toward that thought — but they need to do things that make sex come up in their mind. And the person who does think about sex may need to purposefully work every day on things like affirming their spouse, listening, and speaking their partner’s love language.
Point #1: Conflict or distress around sexual desire is normal in marriage.
**Point #2: A different level of desire doesn’t mean a lack of desire.*If the type of desire can be compared to a car being in drive, neutral, or reverse, the level of desire can be compared to the fuel level. Sometimes when we don’t see one partner “moving,” the issue is that they are in neutral instead of drive. They have plenty of fuel — it just hasn’t been activated yet.
**Point #3: We are not as far apart as we think.*We both want connection, pleasure, and intimacy — often in roughly similar frequency — but we approach it differently. The incorrect belief that we are far apart in desire levels can cause way more distress than the actual differences.
**Point #4: In many cases, both spouses want more sex than they are getting.*Very often, the issue isn’t that one person is getting less sex than they want — it is that both people are. When neither spouse is getting as much sex as they would like, it completely changes the dynamic. Instead of “Why aren’t you having sex?” we both need to ask, “Why aren’t we having sex?”
Point #5: Overall, higher-desire spouses are more distressed than their lower-desire or equal-desire counterparts.
**Point #6: The lower-desire spouse tends to control how often sex is happening — and can use that for good or for ill.*The lower-desire spouse rarely thinks of themselves as holding the power in their sex life. And yet the high-desire spouse tends to want more power. Once a lower-desire spouse realizes their power and leans in, their marriage has the potential to become particularly playful and rich.
Point #7: The fact that your spouse has lower desire doesn’t mean you aren’t desirable.
**Point #8: We may deeply long for sex but we don’t “need” sex.*Research has tried and failed to prove from multiple angles that sex is a need. When we assert that sex is a need, it implies that we have to have sex. Not true. It is a God-designed drive we are called to discipline for good.
**Point #9: Withholding sex because it “isn’t a need” is incompatible with a loving relationship.*Choosing not to make sex a priority is no more acceptable than demanding it. When we choose to not work on sexual intimacy, we put unhealthy selfish desires ahead of the good of our marriage and our spouse.
**Point #10: Desire isn’t a static thing.*Childbirth, a new job, disease, medications, trauma, and aging all change our bodies and typically negatively impact desire. Sleep, exercise, sunlight, and healthy diet can positively impact desire. Being regularly sexually stimulated actually results in raised testosterone levels — which facilitates desire. Conversely, forgoing sex can cause testosterone to drop, creating a vicious cycle. But choosing to have sex can create a positive cycle and even become self-sustaining.
Get curious and ask each other the basics. Assume you don’t know what your spouse will say. How often do each of you want sex? What matters most? What can I do? Try forty days of a chosen pattern and see if you find one that works.
“I finally realized: My spouse is choosing me. She doesn’t feel the physical urge as strongly as I do, and she is choosing me anyway. That is radical. It makes me feel loved and desired — even though the desire is different from what I thought I wanted.”
All of us have insecurities hidden deep inside — and the acute ones beg for comfort. When we hear, “This thing you’re especially insecure about? You don’t have to be. You’re amazing,” the emotional impact is profound.
**Truth #1: Men and women tend to report markedly different emotional factors under the surface.*Certain important emotional factors — the deepest fears and desires — simply tend to be different between most men and most women.
In general, the core insecurities for women are: “Am I loveable? Special? Beautiful? Am I worthy of being loved for who I am on the inside?” Almost seven in ten women (68 percent) said those sorts of thoughts were either occasionally or often in their mind. This is why most women feel an emotional need to feel loved, cherished, beautiful, and pursued.
In general, the most acute insecurity for men is not “Am I loveable?” but “Am I able?” Am I adequate? Do I have what it takes? Three out of four men (76 percent) said, “I am not always as confident as I look.” Three in four men said that feeling inadequate was far more painful than feeling unloved: If they had to, they would give up feeling their wife loved them if they could feel that she respected them.
This is why most men feel a powerful longing to be appreciated and respected. To feel admired and believed in. Whatever makes him feel that way isn’t just nice but powerful, because it is speaking affirmation directly to the area of greatest insecurity.
It is not our responsibility to make our spouse feel good about themselves. Each of us must fight our own battle against insecurity. Winning that struggle is on us, not our spouse. And yet as each of us looks at our spouse fighting their own battle, we provide them ammunition — on the side of confidence or on the side of insecurity.
**Truth #2: Sex — and the process of getting there — may mean something different to our spouse.*Women tend to think: “We can do that once you touch my heart.” Men tend to think: “You touch my heart by doing that.” If women are hurt, they tend to withdraw sexually. If men are hurt, they tend to withdraw emotionally.
When a woman’s heart is cared for, she is more likely to be sexually open, sensual, and playful. When a man’s heart is cared for, he is more likely to be emotionally warm, attentive, and tender.
**Truth #3: Women are more likely to feel that “sex begins in the kitchen.”*Your attention to her outside the bedroom, throughout the day, sets the stage for her interest inside the bedroom. As you do things that give your wife a positive answer to the “Am I loveable?” question, she feels cared for and close to you.
**Truth #4: Men are more likely to feel that sex brings closeness — and become more affectionate as a result.*Sex for your husband probably isn’t just about the physical act — it is also about feeling that you desire him. Feeling desired speaks reassurance at a very deep level to his hidden insecurities. Sex likely helps your man feel close to you. If he senses distance, he may reach out sexually to address that discomfort — he is reaching for you because you are at odds. When he has an orgasm with you, oxytocin (a bonding hormone) is released and he feels close to you again.
Truth #5: Other insecurities can impact how we feel about sex.
Curiosity and playfulness make sex more erotic and emotionally meaningful than perfect technique. Imagine three kids entering a playroom. One makes a beeline to the toys they always play with. The second is haughty and critical. The third shows delight and wonder as they try old toys and explore new ones — when something doesn’t work, they get an “I wonder if…” look and examine it differently. Which child would you choose as a playmate?
As Albert Einstein once explained, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Once you cultivate the desire to learn the intimate things that make your spouse tick, you will see that curiosity truly is a sexual superpower. A simple, sincere, inquisitive approach can be even more impactful than a vast array of sexual knowledge or perfect technique.
A healthy curiosity is focused on continually discovering your spouse — and working to understand them. What matters to your spouse most, in and out of the bedroom? What do they really enjoy and what do they merely tolerate? What have they avoided telling you because they are worried it will hurt your feelings?
**Finding #1: Sincere curiosity stirs up a host of positive sex and marriage outcomes.*If your spouse views you as curious, you both are more than three times as likely to be very happy with how often you have sex. The more your spouse views you as curious, the more often you are likely to have sex, period.
**Finding #2: Curiosity is one of the most direct ways of showing that you care — just as lack of curiosity signals the opposite.*The message received by routine, lack of remembering, or indifference is clear: “I’m not curious about you… and don’t really care about you.” By contrast, being considerate is nearly synonymous with knowing and acting on what matters to the other person — which requires curiosity to begin with.
If your wife seems unaroused, rather than pulling away because you feel like you failed, accept the challenge and curiously ask what might work. If your husband seems passive, neither pull back nor overcompensate — curiously ask, “What’s up?”
**Finding #3: Curiosity reduces anxiety and makes sex more playful and erotic.*A wife who felt clumsy about oral sex shifted from an “I don’t know how” mindset to an “I wonder” mindset. Instead of trying to “do it right,” she played, discovered, and explored. She ended up enjoying it once it became about exploring with no expectations.
Finding #4: Curiosity keeps things fresh and allows you to notice things you might have missed.
**Finding #5: Demonstrating curiosity is simpler than you may think.*It starts with a humility that acknowledges you don’t know it all — and you especially don’t know everything about your spouse. If you need help talking, read a book out loud together. One wife said, “When we finally read a book together, it was like, ‘Now this isn’t personal. We’re being invited into this conversation; we can blame it on the author!’ We were suddenly tackling a problem together.”
“I think it was A.W. Tozer who said something like, ‘God knows we cannot begin to understand His true nature but He loves the fact that we try, in whatever capacity we can.’ And I’m hoping it is sort of the same with my wife. There’s mystery to her that I’m not sure I’ll fully understand, but so much more intimacy comes from trying.”
Having a comfortable way to signal (and receive) openness or interest will create connection and prevent much pain. When there’s a sense of disappointment, pressure, or frustration, we tend to think the issue is about someone’s sex drive. When in reality, it may be about initiation.
Living seductively means not letting your worst self come out with your spouse. You seduce people at work every day — you don’t demand the things you want, you draw them from colleagues. You bring your best self to the party and draw the best out of others. We need to apply the same skill with our spouse.
**Skill #1: Send a signal to create a spark.*Sparks can be verbal (“Wanna get naked?”) or nonverbal (caressing more private areas). They can be very direct (unbuttoning clothing) or indirect (taking an evening shower and not being in a hurry to get pajamas on). One husband discovered that explicitly flirting while doing the dishes gave them both “anticipation time.” His wife said, “Instead of foreplay, we call it choreplay.”
Skill #2: Make sure the signal is not just being sent, but received well.
**Skill #3: Clarify what you are sparking.*Think about intimate touch in three categories: basic cuddling (something you could do in front of others), making out (arousing but not orgasm focused), and sex (orgasm focused). Identifying language for these categories lets you figure out what level of touch you are aiming for. “I don’t think I have the energy for sex, but I would love to cuddle.”
Perhaps the higher-desire spouse is simply looking for a cuddle, but their partner resists because they assume he or she is looking for actual sex.
**Skill #4: Know how to say and receive a no.*The failure to effectively give and receive a no is one of the most infectious agents in a couple’s sex life. Both the person saying no and the person hearing it need to convey and absorb one message: the timing isn’t right. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting, but it is a world away from “You aren’t an appealing person.” It makes all the difference if the person giving the no can share why the timing isn’t right and offer an alternative: “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. Today was grueling. Can we have a date Thursday after I get back from my shift?”
Accepting that your spouse isn’t everything you wanted lets you enjoy what you’ve got. “In the end, all counseling work is grief work. Something about your spouse isn’t what you were hoping for. You have to grieve what isn’t and accept what is before you can move forward to enjoy what you have.”
The best partner probably provides about 80 percent of what we would want in a spouse. We all fall short; we all have opportunities for disappointment. If you wish for something you will never have, you’re not only going to be distressed, but dissatisfaction with your spouse could grow exponentially. Even worse, you can easily miss what is wonderful about them.
**Step #1: Realize that change is up to you.*No one can make your spouse change. But you have the power to bring about positive change by shifting you. Whenever we allow something in our spouse to keep us from our own fulfillment, we are choosing to be a type of victim. Those who had not come to terms with that gap were 3.5 times more likely to report a dissatisfying marriage. Those who had largely come to terms with it were nearly 3 times more likely to report being happy.
**Step #2: Grieve what is not the way you wished.*To fully accept our spouse, we must fully release those things about them that negatively distract us. Grieving means you accept that something will never be a part of your life. First, you stop seeing your spouse through a deficit lens. Second, fully accepting who our spouse is not allows us to see who they are. We tend to do that more easily with our children — if we grieve that they are never going to be the athlete we wanted, we can celebrate the artist they are becoming.
Marriage is a choice and then a lifelong commitment. The vow “forsaking all others” foreshadows the grief process: “Not only am I choosing all of who you are and who you are not, I am also actively choosing not any other.”
**Step #3: Extend grace.*Grace is often defined as unmerited favor. In marriage we extend grace by choosing to see the best in each other, despite all the very real ways we mess up. One huge difference between giddy premarital couples and crisis couples struggling to be in the same room is a willingness to extend grace. “He kept showing me grace during the rough patches, and it was finally like, ‘Wait a minute, there’s no reason to fight him because he’s on my side!’”
**Step #4: Honor them.*If you don’t grieve, what your spouse is not is all you see — as if standing an inch from a scratched-up porch column. Grace is like stepping back several yards; you can see the whole house. Honor is like realizing the house is beautiful. When you honor your spouse, you focus on and celebrate the 80 percent.
“I’ve accepted that having lower desire is just the way my husband is.” “No — you are tolerating it in him. That isn’t acceptance. How long will you be able to tolerate it before you crack under the weight of your frustration and shift to resentment?”
Honor makes acceptance complete. And it allows for true enjoyment. Those who had come to a more complete sense of acceptance were more likely to enjoy being sexually playful, communicate well, and be open about what they might want to try.
The writer of Genesis records that Adam yada his wife, Eve. Typically translated as “knew,” the Hebrew word yada means “to know.” Sex becomes about learning one another and exposing our innermost selves fully. At its fullest, sex is about sharing and creating a profound intimacy — a oneness that often takes years of learning and growth to experience in full.
For many years scholars taught that Song of Solomon was solely a divine allegory. But a plain reading of the text shows that it is about both the spirit of the act and a loving couple engaging in sex. Conversely, culture often emphasizes only the body — sex becomes entertainment, a sport, all about parts and technique.
For sex to be complete and truly great, it must be incarnate — fully body and fully spirit. If either spouse focuses just on the physical (bigger, better orgasms without caring for the spouse’s heart), the greater meaning is at risk of being torn apart. If either spouse focuses just on the spirit (“I’d rather never have sex again, I just want to be close”), sex is missing a key component.
Consider Sam and Jasmine: He is the high-desire spouse, often focused on the body of the act. When he initiates, she often responds in a way that says, “We can do that after you touch my heart.” After he takes her on a date and attends to her heart, she wants to engage physically. They accepted influence from each other and worked to keep sex about both the body and the spirit — they worked to keep it incarnate.
Be curious and explore each other. Don’t just accept your assumptions. Talk through the points in this book. And enjoy spending the rest of your marriage on the process of discovery. The journey may not always be easy, but it will be rich and well worth it.