Learning to Say Yes
Every once in a while, we have a post here on Maidservants of Christ that is rated PG-13 for adult situations. This is one such post. If you normally let your child read over your shoulder, you might want to save this one for a more private setting.
I was raised a “good girl.” Brought up in church, I got the yearly lessons about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Being a people pleaser and rule follower from the start, I generally followed the guidelines given to me (except the rock and roll part – I couldn’t stay away from Elvis!). Like many Christian girls with this background, I took a certain pride in my sexual purity. I was a virgin until I was married, and I’ve only ever been with my husband. I may struggle with other sins, but sexual sin is not a problem!
Or is it?
photo credit: via photopin (license)
While American Christian culture succeeded in keeping me and many girls from my generation pure until marriage, it failed in teaching us to enjoy (yes, I said enjoy!) sex with our husbands as God intended. As a result, I carried a lot of inhibitions into my marriage. I’ve often thought, “If it weren’t for sex, our relationship would be perfect.” There have been times since our wedding where my husband has felt rejected, and I have not always acted as if my body belongs to him. We’ve had “dry spells” that had nothing to do with sickness or childbirth, and they were not his choice. I committed sexual sin!
Although talking about sex is a big taboo in Christian culture, I know I’m not the only Christian woman to have faced this problem. So when Jay Dee from sexwithinmarriage.com asked us to take a look at his online course “Becoming More Sexually Engaged – for Christian Wives,” I agreed eagerly. Through his website, Jay provides anonymous Christian marriage coaching (not counseling), and one theme he had noticed over and over from women who came to him with questions is that many wanted to know how to be more sexually engaged (that is, more receptive to sex and less inhibited). In order to help more women at a time, he wrote this online course with input from his wife, Christina. The course (composed of 30 lessons in 9 “modules”) is intended to let women see things from a man’s point of view, not a woman’s idea of a man’s point of view (more on that later).
Once I got past the discomfort of reading about sex, I found the content of the course to be impressive. Wherever possible, the lessons are grounded in Scripture. Not only does he use the expected verses from Song of Solomon, 1 Corinthians 7, and Genesis 1, but he also uses Scripture to encourage wives to make time for sex with their husbands or to be comfortable being naked in front of them. He never used the Bible as a club, though. There was no sense of “guilting” women into being more sexually receptive to their husbands.
On the contrary, the more scientific sections helped me to understand some of the reasons that God would tell wives not to deny their husbands sex. Remember what I said about “a woman’s idea of a man’s point of view?” I always assumed a man’s desire for sex was largely physical, but the course taught me that my husband wants intimacy because he wants to feel connected to me. Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, is one that women produce fairly easily and have in abundance. Men have much lower levels, but they peak at, well, a sexual peak. They also go back down to a normal low level much more quickly in men then in women. In other words, while women want to feel connected before having sex, men want to have sex in order to feel connected, and the more often sex happens, the more connected they feel. The up side for women is that when a man feels more connected, he is more likely to do those things for his wife that make her feel loved.
In addition to helping me understand my husband more, the course was useful in its wealth of practical suggestions. Er, not THAT kind of practical. If you are looking for those kind of bedroom tips, you’ll have to look elsewhere! But if you want to know, for instance, how to learn to communicate about sex or how to overcome fear/embarrassment in initiating sex with your husband, these lessons have a lot of good practical skills to teach. My favorite tips were the ones for “switching gears and getting excited about sex” because after a long day with three children, physical intimacy is often the last thing I want.
Each module gives you a chance to put these suggestions into practice with a “challenge,” something you should do to be more sexually engaged in your marriage. If you do the course as suggested, you wouldn’t move to the next subject until you have worked up to the completing the challenge. The author has said that most women taking the course take 2-3 months to work through all the challenges.*
As a teenager, I hated the yearly “don’t have sex” lesson. As a young married woman, I wish this course had been available to me much earlier. Wives need to hear “please have sex” as much or more than teenagers need to hear the negative lesson. Sexual sin comes in many forms and can affect marriages drastically. If you are a wife struggling with being sexually engaged in your marriage, I would recommend this course. Click HERE to access the course. For the next week (until November 11), if you use the coupon code MaidServantsofChrist, you can get the course at the reduced rate of $50.** For the rest of November, it is on sale for $70. The regular cost is $100. Now that may sound like a lot for an online course, but in terms of marriage help, it is cheaper than counseling. If the sexual side of your marriage remains troubled for long, you may end up in the counselor’s office. I think it is well worth the money to deal with the issue now.
Melissa
*When you finish the regular lessons, you will receive an email with a link for some downloadable bonus material. Fair warning: the language in one and subject material in the other may be objectionable to many of our readers.
**This is an affiliate link. Maidservants of Christ will receive a small commission if you order from this link. We would never endorse something we didn’t fully believe in for any amount of money.