Talking candidly about sex

TL:DR;  One of my many, many, prayers about sex is that God would empower my husband and me to be candid with one about various different aspects of sex, without undue embarrassment.  I also pray that God would give me a man with whom I am sexually very compatible. However, an even more fundamental prayer, is that God would actually give me a husband in the first place!

Also: Three people that you need to be candid with about sex:
1. Yourself
2. Your God
3. Your future spouse

Obligatory disclaimer
You know what? I “sometimes” (endlessly) wonder or worry that I might think too much about sex. And as for writing about it, so frankly?!  I will often ask myself: “I’m a single woman, is this prudent?”  I have written this before, years ago: I have been wondering whether to establish a separate subblog on “Huggie-Wuggie” which will just be for specifically discussing sexual matters. However, I’m wondering whether I should wait until I hopefully get married?
The truth is that I am a single woman, and  – ahem – it is just a plain fact that biology strikes me as predictably as it strikes anyone else. Also I am a reader, and I will often read intriguing or surprising articles online on this topic which will then get my mind thinking so yeah, I definitely think about it.

So anyway, with various things I have read over many years and various thoughts on this subject, I have come up with this idea. Now this idea might seem glaringly obvious to everyone else, especially people who are married, perhaps even more so to people who do not share my faith, specifically my views on reserving sex for marriage.  Or it might be something that some people completely disagree with.

Here is a thing: As a Christian, especially with the fervour of my family background, I have been brought up to reject pre-marital sex. This has been my upbringing and this has been something that I have embraced for myself too. This has been one of the most helpful and empowering things in my life.  Being long-term single has enabled me to focus on different aspects of my life, developing strength in those aspects. Avoiding relationships and specifically sexual relationships has also enabled me to avoid various types of stress that these can predictably bring into women’s lives.  Two really obvious examples: firstly domestic violence, secondly getting pregnant and potentially having to navigate life with a vulnerable child compounding existing challenges.

So there are some things that I can only hope to understand via my imagination. So this is why I am sitting here trying to pull this understanding from my imagination, which someone else might be able to instantly negate or validate from their own experience.  So if you think that what I am about to write is laughably wrong, then please feel free to share a more accurate understanding. If the idea does have merit, all of the above might explain why it has taken me years to work it out, where practical experience might teach others the same lessons a lot earlier.

On one hand, Christians talk a lot about sex. We all know this. And yet on the other hand, they also don’t talk a lot about sex! What they do talk about which we are all familiar with is what you should not do. We all know that sex is holy, and should be reserved for marriage. I find though that there is a lack of discussion of how we as singles should be thinking about sex before we get married. Which is why I have had to sit here working it all out myself!  Actually, it is almost as if the answer to that question is that we should not be thinking about sex at all before we get married. However, I do not find that realistic.

In [wherever it is in the Bible] the Apostle Paul essentially says that if you are burning up with passion before marriage, then you should go ahead and get married, because “it is better to marry than to burn with passion”. So this obviously suggests that people are very conscious of their sexuality before marriage, and marriage is actually a way to deal with your sexuality. But with Christians, often you get the impression that before marriage you are [supposed to be] a sexless person, and then suddenly you discover sex within marriage – Actually no, that is not true, they don’t give that impression at all. Many times people acknowledge that sex is a big reason why young people want and need to get married.  However, I still believe that what I am going to share in this post is quite radical.

Without further ado, this is the big idea/realisation:
In our marriage, my husband and I are two distinct individuals. We each have our own distinct sexual needs and that is OK.
The big idea, which actually should be blindingly obvious is that it is perfectly OK and legitimate and right for our marriage to cater to each of our sexual needs. BUT I personally think that “making love” is something distinct from this altogether.
So I think that in a marriage there are three distinct sexual expressions/experiences between my husband and me:

1. Specifically fulfilling his needs
2. Specifically fulfilling my needs
3. Making love

Some people who are a lot more married than I am might be thinking “Huh?” You know what, the most important thing is that what you’ve got with your spouse works for the two of you.

Let me talk now about the distinction between “making love” and “fulfilling needs”.  Fulfilling needs is driven by his needs or mine.  However, “making love” is unhurried tenderness and sweet nothings, it is an investment into the marriage. I believe that even where neither of you are feeling particularly “needy”, sexually speaking, you need to regularly make time to make love. Far be it from the completely unmarried and inexperienced woman to get prescriptive but I would be thinking at least once a week to once a fortnight, ideally. Because it is not driven by need on either side it is an effort, and it is a chance to be mutually selfless with one another.  Like a date night, I personally believe that this will nurture the marriage itself.  Because it is not driven by need, there might not be that same sense of urgency so you can take the time to worship one another, physically adore one another etc etc.  I personally think that one of the reasons why “dead bedrooms” or sexless marriages are a thing is because people might mistake fulfilling one another’s needs for making love. So if neither party is being driven by any great need then you slowly let it slide, maybe?  Or it could just be regular marital stresses, not feeling particularly excited about one another. But you know what, I am single, perhaps it will only be when I get married myself that I am able to understand it.

Fulfilling one another’s needs:
Here is another thing about being a single woman: Hollywood and books etc always make it seem as if in a great relationship, the partners are always perfectly sexually aligned, and frankly speaking, always want the same intensity of sex at the same time. The truth is, because biology strikes (and correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it may also strike men!) there will be times when either partner is overcome by a desperate sexual urge or yearning. This is when it becomes a matter of “needs”. And from my reading, there is often a mismatch between each partner’s sexual needs in a marriage. One partner might have a very strong sex drive, and might feel as if they need it constantly. The other partner might be the complete opposite, and happily go for months if not years without any sex.  Some people don’t actually like sex at all, and might merely tolerate it.  When I was younger, I used to be grossed out by the thought of getting so primal and animalistic with another human being, with all the body fluids and everything, (“disgusting!”) but you know, as I’ve grown older…shrug! 😂

This is what I believe is radical [and yet also Biblical]:
Pre-emptive consent.
I believe that as an individual you need to be truly honest with yourself about your sexuality.  And you need to do this before marriage. In all my years of being brought up as a Christian, and being surrounded by Christians, I have never, never heard of the idea that each partner in a Christian couple might discuss their specific sexual needs with one another before they get married. However, I believe that if two prospective spouses were able to do this with one another, and were able to be truly honest, with their own selves and with one another, then this would be a great thing for their marriage.

These are the things you need to know about yourself before getting married to someone else:
1. What do you anticipate that your sexual needs are going to be?  How often do you get urges? Can you put a frequency on these things?

Secondly and you really really need to be honest with yourself about this, so that you can be honest with your potential spouse:
Do you imagine that you could be a generous lover, or a selfish lover?  By generous lover, I mean this: do you think that you would be able to enthusiastically have sex with your spouse even if you yourself are not “feeling like it”, or in the mood?  Or would you be a selfish lover, [must think of a non-loaded alternative to the word “selfish”] who would resent having to get sexual if you yourself are not feeling particularly sexual in that moment?

The thing is that you might not realistically be able to know this about yourself before getting married.  However, there are definitely things that you can know about yourself before getting married, such as this: what typically makes you feel impatient, or frustrated? What makes you feel resentful? For me, in a non-sexual sense, one thing that consistently makes me feel impatient is when I am focused on something, and someone comes to disturb me. Or when someone does not recognise or respect my time boundaries. So if Huggie-Wuggie were to suddenly present me with an overwhelming urge when I am already engrossed in something else, I already know that that would annoy me, and I would complain. However, if he was able to sit down, analyse himself and see patterns, and we were able to draw up a schedule together to work with, then I would be a lot happier!
As a single woman, scheduling “times of intimacy” has always seemed a bit weird to me. But you know what?  It is a compromise! Sometimes you might just need to make these compromises about a variety of matters, not just sex, to make your marriage work.

Or how about this?  You might be able to be quite generous if your spouse were to spontaneously ask for sex once or twice a week. But what if he or she were to constantly request it, perhaps several times a day, to the point where you are thinking to yourself “Seriously?!”  I read an article recently on the Guardian about a man whose girlfriend was constantly asking him for sex, to the point where he was getting sufficiently frustrated to write into the Guardian. This inverts the typical trope that it is the man that is constantly asking the woman for sex. However I have read or otherwise come across sufficient accounts to know that this was not just an outlier, it genuinely does work both ways; in some relationships the men generally want it more, in other relationships the women have the greater needs.
For me, if my husband were to be a “wants it all day every day” kinda guy, then the truth is that I am ambitious.  I think that I would only be able to maintain such a routine for a decade, tops, and then I really would have to go back to my businesses! 😂😂

Purity
Sometimes, you get the impression in Christian circles that a “pure” woman is someone who does not think about sex, and does not have a strong sex drive. As someone who has read way more erotica than I would ever like to admit (by whole orders of magnitude) I definitely agree that it is better and far more in line with purity to avoid thinking sexual thoughts or consuming sexual material. However, if you as a man have a strong sex drive, and you deliberately seek out someone who is the opposite, or someone who will merely tolerate sex in marriage, then frankly, you are just setting yourself up for lifelong sexual frustration.

I think that these are the things that you need to be honest with yourself about.
And then as embarrassing as this may be, I strongly believe you need to discuss this with your prospective spouse, before you get engaged, just to make sure that you will be sexually compatible.
So you need to put it all out there, and say “This is who I am, this is what I think I will need. Do you think that that would work for you?”
By the same token, I think that if you have any specific preferred sexual flavours – or “kinks”, then you might also need to discuss those now!  I believe that even within a heterosexual and thoroughly Christian marriage there is still abundant room for different sexual “flavours” beyond vanilla – or at least I hope so! 😂😂😂

Now the advantage of doing this is this: if your prospective fiancé/fiancée honestly says “Yes, I think that that could work!” then in a way you have someone who has generally consented to your sexual needs or appetites.  Now this is a general consent, but each individual sexual request will still need its own particular consent, and as a spouse you will need to respect their answer in each instance. However you know that you have someone who knows what you will want and has generally consented to that. So hopefully they will not constantly complain whenever you attempt to initiate sex.

Take your time:
If your prospective fiancé/e asks for something that you know you could never do, then I think you should just say “No” straightaway, and that would be that. That might mean the end of the relationship, or it might mean that you need to sit down and think of a way to compromise. However, if between you, you think that the answer could be yes, I would highly recommend that after this conversation, instead of giving an immediate “yes”, each party goes away to think about it. You know, when someone proposes marriage to you, I think that the reason most people can give an answer straight away is because it is obviously a plausible question that someone can expect to be asked in the course of a relationship, so most people will have thought about it, at great length. However, when considering sexual topics, if you have not known what your partner might want, it might be the first time it ever crosses your mind. It might be easy to give a “yes” without thinking through the ramifications. This is not what either of you want. So I would recommend going away, really thinking about it, praying about it as necessary and then hopefully, being able to give a considered, and measured answer.

For instance, I was thinking that one reason why many couples might not have sex or make love that often, even if they truly love and admire one another, is this: the sheer admin of constantly having to be washing bed sheets, remaking the bed. I mean, seriously?!  And if your spouse is the one who is constantly requesting sex, but you are the one who is actually having to do the work of stripping the bed and remaking the bed, wrestling with the duvet and the duvet cover, doing the laundry, hanging out wet bedsheets on the line and bringing dry sheets back in again – what’s that? Oh his lordship prefers ironed bedsheets?! –  then yeah, that would definitely make me grumble!

Or what if your spouse is just not a “pulls-their-weight-at-home” kinda person, and you find yourself constantly having to be the one to do all the house chores, run after the kids etc? If this was me, even if I was ordinarily inclined to be sexually “generous” towards my spouse, I might just genuinely be too shattered to be as “generous” as he and I would like!

Fears: A few concerns about such a conversation suggest themselves to me and the main ones are these:
1. Firstly, that we will not be as wise as we could be, and we will let ourselves get aroused or “turned on” and  carried away by the topic, perhaps going into unnecessary graphic detail, to the point of possibly going too far sexually
Possible solution: Avoid being physically in the same place to have this conversation, perhaps have a phone call, or a video call, or exchange emails. And then you might need to prudently avoid one another for a few days after the conversation.

2. Secondly that we will find it extremely embarrassing.
Possible solution:  Unfortunately that cannot be helped. Perhaps you don’t need to go into too much detail at first, perhaps you could just send out feelers, or hints to see whether they are generally on board, before gradually getting more detailed.

3. And what if you don’t end up marrying this person? Then they might go around carrying some intimate knowledge of your sexual needs and desires for the rest of their lives…
Possible solution: Honestly, this is why you need to make sure that you know that you can trust this person before getting too deep into a relationship with them. You also need to make sure that you know that you can trust what they say during this conversation, and that they will not behave in a completely different way in marriage.

Letting rip?
This thought belongs more in the body of this post, however I cannot now think of where to insert it so I am just going to place it here, at the bottom: despite the example given above about the man whose girlfriend is constantly asking him for sex, people consistently suggest that men have significantly greater sexual needs than women.  Assuming that that is correct then I think that as women we need to be mindful…Actually, scratch that, as spouses of either gender we need to be mindful going into our marriages. Remember that our culture is absolutely saturated with sex everywhere, with images of naked bodies, photos etc etc. Bear in mind that your good Christian spouse might have been trying to obey God as desperately as he or she could, and they might have been running from temptation as hard as they could, sometimes even physically. And then they finally get married – to you. Don’t be surprised to discover that your spouse – shock horror – appears to be somewhat obsessed with sex. As far as they are concerned, this is finally their chance to legitimately let rip after holding on, and trying to obey God for so long. What I’m trying to say is that you need to open your eyes, think from the perspective of someone who potentially has a much stronger sex drive than you and who has desperately been trying to be holy. What do you think might be going through his head?  What do you think he might be thinking?!  Even if he never spells it out to you?!
I think that if you don’t like sex then you need to speak up fast.  In fact, I believe that if you are on either extreme – you either think endlessly about sex, or you don’t like it at all, you definitely need to speak up very loudly before marriage.