Offering the gift of sex

I’ve written so many posts about ahem, sex, and yet here I am blushing away to write another one!
The fact is that I really want to understand as much as I can about this before marriage, as it may inform my choice in marriage and my approach to it. However, as a Christian I cannot experiment with actual sex itself before marriage, and there is only so far my imagination (and previous illicit reading) can take me.
Anyway, a few days ago, a few thoughts occurred to me. On sitting and reflecting, I realised, once again, that sex is something to be mutually offered between husband and wife.

I have for a long time tried to understand the difference between love and lust, not least for my own self. I have written at least one blog post about this before. Well I was reading another external post which related the story of a couple who decided to have an affair with one another, even though they were both already married to other people. And then predictably mayhem ensued, and two families were ripped apart. Well this post stated that “as with all adultery, they were driven by lust…” and I stopped once again to consider what lust actually means. You know, I can’t help feeling that for many people, when they use the word “lust”, they mean strong feelings of sexual desire. And yet I don’t, I can’t bring myself to believe that such feelings are inherently bad or wrong. Otherwise any marriage with a strong component of such feeling is in some way weakened. Actually, I think that couples should aim to have strong sexual feelings between them – is that too radical for a Christian blog?!

In a simple way to understand, I think that lust is when you have strong feelings of sexual desire or hunger and you choose to act upon those desires in a selfish way. Or the general willingness to satisfy your sexual yearnings selfishly. Now the thing about this is that when you feed your lust, it grows. I think that this is why people start off in a relatively small way, say soft porn, and then it escalates and gets more and more serious, until the most serious cases end up in a court case. I have previously admitted on this blog that I have read erotica countless times (and I continued to guiltily read it countless times later after my admissions). Well it became unmistakably clear to me that if I did not break that habit, it would grow to overwhelm me, and woman or no, Christian or no, I too would end up in court or somewhere equally disastrous. Dear younger version of myself, or anyone else who might find themselves in this situation, know that this thing is big, and powerful. Try your hardest to refuse to get sucked in.

So then, if we are not to indulge our sexual yearnings, what are we to do with them instead? I think that this is a big dilemma especially for unmarried Christians such as myself. Ironically, I have written a blog post saying exactly this same thing a number of years ago, but as I was thinking on it recently, it struck me again, and I realised it was true.
The thing is, sex is real, and our yearnings are real. However, this society teaches us that what we are to do with our sexual yearnings is to indulge them. Everything seems to be teaching this message. This seems to be true whether we are talking about books, or movies, or music or articles about dating, personal anecdotes.
In movies, men will grab women and kiss them passionately. Couples will passionately tear one another’s clothes off before then jumping into bed. Some books and movies even seem to condone adultery, as if it is justified by strong feeling. The message seems to be that passion is to be indulged whenever it strikes.
I believe that this then flows into our own expectations about how to handle our sexuality (no pun intended!) And yet, as I was thinking about it approx a week ago, this occurred to me – again!
Sex is not something that we grab from someone else, to satisfy our own yearnings. (I believe that this also feeds into the consent debate.) Rather, sex is something that we offer to our spouses. What makes the whole thing work is if my husband is generously offering it to me, and I am generously offering it back to him, then hopefully we should both get our needs met. The way it tallies with consent is this: if you think of sex as something that you accept from someone else, rather than grab from them, then you only go as far as they are willing to offer you.

What if there is a gap between my needs and what my husband is willing to offer me? Well frankly that is the situation that I am in now, as my elusive husband is currently offering me a big fat nothing! In this case, we need to pray firstly for God’s empowerment and patience, and secondly that God will empower our spouses to grant us what we need. I have not reread that first post before writing this one but I know that I am repeating myself almost verbatim, even though I have not reread that post for possibly years.
And we need to understand that actually, this is the default! Whether because of singleness, or because your wife just had a baby, or because of sexual incompatibility, the true, loving default is for there to be some gap between our sexual needs and sexual fulfillment. This is different from the default that the media seems to sell to us, that everyone else is getting their sexual needs enthusiastically met. Perhaps another reason why a measure of sexual frustration is the true default is this: sex is something that causes true vulnerability for most of us. Apparently, even after years of marriage, many couples are still shy to discuss it with one another. Talking about it requires being vulnerable, and inviting your partner into your vulnerability, and that unsurprisingly is something that many people apparently struggle with. You know, it would not even surprise me if many people especially struggle with being vulnerable with their partner, even above other people, where you would have assumed that it would be easiest with their partner. Perhaps living with someone else involves cultivating a certain image or impression of yourself, for the benefit of your spouse whom you would prefer to see you in a certain way, and having to be truly vulnerable might in some ways destroy that image?

You know, I have just been working on a post where I suggested that one reason for “dead bedrooms” might be because people marry one another without there being any real passion to start with. Here I am going to suggest something different, and say that perhaps another reason for “dead bedrooms” is because people think of sex primarily as a way to get their own needs met. If as a wife, you are accustomed to your husband thinking only of himself in bed, would that make you look forward to it? In my reading, I have come across accounts where women suggest that their partners treat them in bed not as full sexual partners to be gratified too, but rather just as vessels to fulfil their own pleasure. And then apparently, when they have got what they want, then they would just roll over and go to sleep. And then there is the matter of the orgasm gap (definitely not blushing as I type this out, promise!!!! (Blush blush blush!)) – I can’t remember what statistic it is. Considering my erotica habit, this comes as a surprise to me. Much erotica is written by women for women (unlike visual porn). So unsurprisingly it focuses a lot on female pleasure. Without fail, the men in these stories always make sure that the women are satisfied first before they will accept pleasure for themselves. Even though there is still lots of grabbing involved, this feature never changes. The way things typically work in real life according to the accounts I have read sound to me like a guaranteed way to turn off passion in your marriage. And yet, I can’t help thinking that if people, men especially, thought of sex as something to offer to their wives, it could make the whole experience a lot more pleasurable for the woman, perhaps making each woman more likely to offer it in turn to her husband? There is also the unhelpful stigma that “good girls don’t like sex”, which I am sure can only contribute to the orgasm gap and the rest of this. I’m chuckling to myself as I imagine that tightrope that many women must walk, trying to act as if you quite like sex, and you want to be a willing partner for your husband, but you don’t like it too much, because you don’t want him to get “the wrong idea” about you or stop respecting you! Women are probably just as diverse in this as men are, in that some women will have stronger libidos, some women will have weaker libidos. I’m sure that things are changing, even in previously straitlaced Christian marriages. All the same, it would be lovely if each woman was able to openly discuss her needs with her husband, without fear that he would judge her.

What if each person, but especially the man, took his yearnings, and repurposed that energy for the sake of satisfying his wife? You know I’ve never been married, perhaps all this is laughably obvious to anyone who actually is married.
What if each spouse took it upon themselves to learn the sexual rhythms of their spouse, and seek to fulfil them? I’m sure that after living with your spouse for a few months, you will get to understand how they work, sexually speaking, and you will learn to anticipate what they might need, and when. You will get to understand, certain looks, or touches. I recently wrote on this blog about the concept of a range, that is, the range of behaviours which I am happy to do. I believe that this concept also applies sexually, that there will be an established range of things that I am willing to do, and a loving husband should not try to pressurise me to go beyond my boundaries. But within the established boundaries, I will try and do my best to give the guy what he wants sexually. If you as a woman know that your husband is genuinely trying to do his best to serve you sexually, and listening to what you are saying, just as you are equally doing for him, if he is not shaming you in any way, would that not make you so much more excited about sharing this kind of intimacy with him? If his mind is constantly running not with ways of getting you to do what you don’t want to do, but rather with ways of delighting you? And vice versa for the man? What if one spouse’s sexual needs far outweigh the needs of the other spouse? I don’t want to be prescriptive with this, but within reason, I think it would be great if the spouse with the lesser needs still made an effort to cater to the spouse of the greater needs. I say “within reason” because some spouses would probably be happy to spend all day in bed, everyday and come on, let us at least be reasonable!

This reminds me of a funny story I heard of once, told to me by a fellow Nigerian friend. She told me of a Nigerian man who was in a relationship with a woman from [I don’t think I need to go into details about their ethnicity, but it was not in Africa]. And Nigerian man had apparently confided in my friend that this woman demanded so much from him sexually that he was just tired. Man, he was tired. And I laughed so much, precisely because it subverted the usual tropes that men, especially African men, are sex-crazed monsters who just can’t get enough. From the account, it seemed as if this woman just wanted it every waking moment that her partner was available.

While I think that husbands and wives should learn one another’s cues, I think that obviously there will be times when you might need to come out and ask. Or I’m sure that each couple will have special ways, perhaps tactile of asking one another. When you ask, I think you need to be ready for the answer to be “No”. But I’m sure that everyone else knows all of this already. I’m sure that there are some things that each couple would immediately learn on getting maried. I’m writing this post largely for my own benefit, in terms of thinking ahead to marriage, trying to understand as much as I can beforehand.

To go back to love and lust, perhaps this is the way to think then: that love is a way of thinking about sex that is all about giving to your spouse, or a loving mutual exchange, whereas lust is a way of thinking about sex that is all about taking whatever you can. There is nothing wrong with asking your spouse for what you need, but an attitude of love would accept a “no” as a “no”, rather than pressurise them to try to turn a no into a “yes”. What to do with a gap between your needs and what is offered is the same within marriage as it is when looking forward to marriage in the first place: go to God and pray for strength to be patient, and that God would empower your spouse to be able to willingly offer you what you need.

Another thought: as Christians, do we need to get comfortable talking about sex? Because to be candid, the world talks about it endlessly. If we as Christians don’t talk about it, then what likely happens is that those of us with questions, such as myself, will just go looking for answers where they can be found, that is, in the world.
Perhaps this is the very kind of resource that I would find useful as a single, longing Christian: teachings about how to think of your sexuality before you get married, in a way that does not deny the fact of your sexuality.