Big Love versus Big Sex

Well I will get to the post title, but first a funny anecdote:  Yesterday I wrote a post talking about how I read the Bible more than anyone, pray more than anyone. And even as I wrote it, it flashed through my mind that I should offer a proviso that I have not read the Bible seriously or prayed intently for my own character, or indeed for many things, for years now. This is not a reflection of my faith, by the grace of God it has not waned or otherwise changed. I have just lacked the stability and time necessary, and it always remains high on my to do list to get back to.
Well today we had a Bible quiz, and guess what, I did not win! The truth is that God has blessed me with a strong memory so regardless of my current Bible reading habits at any time we have a qui I tend to win anyway. But today I definitely did not win, and there was a point I was even coming last! So yeah that really taught me a lesson after all my bragging! 🤣🤣🤣
On one hand, to be fair to myself, other people did seem to receive easier questions in some parts, while I for instance am barely aware of Philippians 4v19!  On the other hand, there was one particular individual, in fact a few of them, who could take less common incidents in the Bible and quote the chapter and verse where they happened. Wow! Even at my strongest I would not be able to do that, so that was truly impressive.  I would know vaguely which parts of the Bible, perhaps I can reasonably guess the book, but chapter and verse?!
Anyway, to go back to the Bible, to go back to immersing myself in the Bible and deep prayer is big on my to do list, in fact, reinvigorating my whole relationship with God (by His grace).

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So then: Big Love versus Big Sex?
You know, on typing out this title, I was almost sure that I had already written out a post with exactly this same title.  It honestly feels as if I am writing a lot about sex these days (because I am!) Each time, I have to offer a proviso: I honestly don’t know how prudent this is. I don’t know whether it is helpful to others. Growing up, I was taught to shy away from everything about sex before marriage, including talking about it. I am not going to criticise that aspect of my upbringing because I am actually incredibly grateful that my parents instilled a healthy fear of sex into me. Because to be candid sex can be dangerous, it can truly ruin your life. If not necessarily the sex itself, and the risk of getting pregnant or catching a sexually transmitted infection, then certainly getting into relationships with the wrong people is consistently a threat to women’s lives. Therefore I sincerely don’t know whether it is appropriate to write about it here on my blog. I may well decide to take down all the posts referencing sex later, and I certainly give my future husband, whoever he may be, the right of veto over any posts discussing sex written before we get married or get together. After we get married/get together I have decided not to write anything at all, out of respect to my future husband, to allay his quite legitimate fears that I might one day write a post about him!

So on one hand, I’m asking myself whether sheer prudence should stop me from writing posts about sex at all. On the other hand, I know that sex is clearly a big part of marriage, and it is a part of marriage which lots of us single people think about a lot, if not constantly. So it does make sense that it is something that needs to be addressed especially the question of how we are to think of our sexuality now, what we are to expect in marriage, and how to plan towards our sexual relationships in marriage, the expectations that we can cultivate, versus those we need to systematically dismantle.

So then, after scrolling back almost a year I did not find any post with a similar title, which somewhat surprises me as I almost feel as if all my posts about sex have revolved around this question: in marriage, do you have to choose between having “big love” and having “big sex”? You know, something I am convinced of is this: for many of these big questions about marriage, and specifically sex, they will be answered as soon as I get married. However, I am somewhat obsessed by this particular question for this reason: I want to know how to deal with my thoughts now, when a thought occurs to me that corresponds to “big sex”, say, do I have to uproot it utterly from my mind and throw it away from me as far as is possible?  Or do I merely need to keep it on the back burner, as it were, as something that I can revisit once I actually get married?

Let me define what I mean by “big love versus big sex”. By “big love”, I mean a marriage  and specifically the sexual activity within that marriage that is defined by love. So having an attitude towards sex (why am I whispering this word to myself even now as I am typing?!) that marital sex is primarily for making love, showing love to your spouse in a physical way. Whereas “big sex” is more about using sex to attain your own physical gratification rather than express love to your spouse. So “big love” is about love, whereas “big sex” is about sexual gratification as an end in itself. You know, the answer to this might be extremely obvious to everyone else, but I have finally allowed myself to accept that even a good Christian marriage might have plenty of space for big sex, not just big love (I say “finally”, but I think that that is the same conclusion I came to in the previous similar post). You know, this is quite a radical stance for a Christian, I may well be wrong, and I am very open to being corrected. Most Christians by their attitude seem to suggest that the idea of big sex, or sex for its own sake, is inherently wrong, that as Christians the only sex we should be having is making love, ie consciously showing love to one another through the act of sex. And to be fair there is a Bible verse that springs to mind where the Apostle Paul says we should not give ourselves over to passion, and the context there suggests marriage, which to me sounds like an argument against big sex.  [Either I am wrong or I cannot currently find that passage, the one passage I can find just now that is similar to this is not in the context of marriage…which supports the argument that I am making in this post.]

Sincerely though, I strongly suspect that saying that only lovemaking sex is allowed is somewhat unrealistic, for this reason: people have their sex drives and I think that for the health of the marriage it is better to distinguish between these, and “making love”.  I suspect from what happens in my own mind, and also from my readings both respectable and illicit, that when as a person you have a sexual need or “urge”, what you want is for that need to be met (I have definitely written a post about this, not too long ago!) I don’t want to pretend to my husband that this is about him, or that I am trying to show him love. I am not, what I am asking is for him to do something for me. And vice versa when he also has his own needs. This is where consent is more of an issue, on either side, because you are asking your spouse to do something for you, and they can agree, or refuse.
However, this is what I believe about making love (and obviously this will vary from marriage to marriage, obviously too people who are not married do also have sex and make love, however because we are Christians that is not what we aspire to) – that the act of making love is an active mutual investment into the health of your marriage. So it is more inherently consensual, where it is sincere, although I’m sure people will be able to tell me of instances where even this was not consensual. And to me it seems like it is more of a chore, or a duty, because it is more selfless on both sides. It is not driven by an itch that needs to be scratched. You are actively choosing to serve one another, not asking for your own needs to be met. I would say that each marriage needs regular lovemaking to make the marriage work and to keep going, whereas I think that “big sex” is more a reflection of the libidos of the parties within the marriage.

It is because of this issue of libidos that I believe that “only lovemaking is OK” is an unrealistic stance. I imagine that the bigger someone’s libido is, the more they will want to have sex for its own sake, not as a specific expression of love, but rather for the sake of gratification. And you know what?  From where I am currently standing I think that this is OK. I’m currently thinking that God gave us sex not just for the sake of expressing love but also for the sake of pleasure. As Christians, I think that we would simply be beating ourselves up too much if we insist that it should only be expressly for the sake of expressing love, or, shudder – as some very strict Christians believe – solely for the sake of procreation. Gulp!  Crucially though, whether for love or pleasure, it is still to be enjoyed within the context of marriage. Furthermore big marital sex requires big love; it is the structure or atmosphere of love that both partners work to create that then provides the correct environment for seeking and enjoying this kind of pleasure; it is when you know that someone truly loves you that you can trust that they will sincerely work to offer you pleasure. And it still needs to be done within the boundaries of God’s requirements, so only enjoying it with your spouse, it has to be utterly consensual etc.

You know, what I am going to say next is also going to sound very radical, but from another perspective; that both spouses should aim to fulfil their spouse’s sexual needs – within reason. There are some things that I have already decided that I will never do. If he likes he can ask a million times, and the answer will always be “No.” However this is where knowing yourself and honesty come into play. I plan to be upfront about these things before we get married, and make it clear that this is a fixed boundary. But spouses should also be upfront about things that they would like to enjoy in their marriage, to give their wouldbe spouse a chance to walk away or to firmly refuse beforehand. If someone has already said an emphatic “No” before marriage, then it is not fair for their spouse to be badgering them within marriage for that same thing. I also think that spouses need to be honest about if they have a big libido and they are going to be making big demands from their spouse. Yes it is extremely embarrassing but once again it is not fair for you to shy away from the question before marriage, and then make it clear as soon as the wedding is over that actually, you expect to be spending every waking moment in bed with your spouse.

However within a context of what has been discussed transparently and mutually agreed then I believe that each spouse should aim to serve one another as far as is possible.  However, consent still needs to be requested and given each time.
If men tend to have bigger sex drives than their wives, then in practice it will often be the wife serving her husband more sexually.  I think pragmatically if the husband knows he is making big requests from his wife to satisfy his big libido, then he needs to step up in other ways with sacrificial love, to make the balance more equitable. On one hand I know that many people would get this, on the other hand I also know that many people, and specifically many men, don’t get it! From my reading of real life scenarios, especially on Reddit, many men seem to have the attitude that “she’s my wife, it is her job to fulfil my needs!” without realising how much of a sacrifice it can be for the wife. So they will insist on their wives serving them sexually at the drop of a hat, in a way which does not truly leave enough room for consent, but borders rather on coercion, indeed badgering them for things they have specifically refused – and then they will also be selfish in every other way within the marriage. And it apparently does not occur to many of these men that they also need to proactively work to give their wives sexual pleasure.  They honestly think that everything revolves around them and their own gratification.  I’m sure that such men rarely, if ever, actually make love to their wives, but rather seek their own pleasure in everything.  That is not “big sex” as I am describing here, that does not create a genuine atmosphere of love within the marriage, rather that is simply big selfishness.
I think that to be acceptable, big sex needs to take account of both spouses’ needs. Even though it is not necessarily lovemaking per se it is still an expression of love in that in that moment, one party is sacrificially giving their spouse pleasure, and it needs to take place in an overall marital context where each spouse feels loved, respected, cherished and listened to.

In a real marriage, perhaps all these things get tangled up and interwoven together, perhaps you start off doing one thing then find yourself moving into another, and then back again so with any one sexual act it is not always distinct whether this is making love or having sex or….However I think that it is useful for each spouse to know in the moment what they are asking for, and not confuse “asking for my sexual needs to be met” with making love. In practice I imagine that asking for a need to be satisfied might arise more spontaneously as an urge hits, whereas making love might be the consequence of taking time to actively show love to one another, and to be attentive to one another so it might come at the end of a date night, or it might be otherwise planned
I also think that in a marriage, even if both parties have very low or non-existent libidos, they should still try to make the effort to make love regularly, simply as an investment into their marriage, to stop them from falling into that familiar trope of being merely roommates.

Sexless marriages: I am sure that sexless marriages happen for a variety of reasons. I think that a sexless marriage is defined as one where the spouses have sex in any way once a month or less?  Other than having low libidos, I imagine that one big reason for sexless marriage is because a loving atmosphere within the marriage has disappeared, so sex, if it ever does happen, is only about one party or the other trying to grab some pleasure at the expense of the other – possibly always the same party grabbing pleasure at the expense of the other party. I’m sure that there are lots of possible reasons why marriages become sexless. Other reasons could be illness, for instance, or the menopause. All the same, this strikes me as a big possible reason. It is one reason why I would caution that while “big sex” is I believe legitimate and from God, it still needs to be enjoyed within a context where love is actively cultivated, otherwise the marriage will probably dry out slowly but surely even with all the big sex in the world.