I hate Sex!

When Wives Want a Sexless Marriage

Compassionate Understanding for Both Wives & Husbands

By Grantley Morris


 

 

 

 

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When Wives Hate Sex

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Sexless Marriage?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marital Help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compassionate Support

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christian Help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Introduction

On rare occasions, a wife hating sex or refusing sex is entirely one partner’s fault. (Even then, both partners almost always end up suffering far more than their partners realize.) Usually, however, the cause is more complex than either partner understands, and it is not uncommon for one partner to be certain it is all the other’s fault when in reality both have equally had the best intentions. Moreover, even if it were entirely one person’s fault, fostering resentment hurts even the innocent one. So rather than add to the hurt by accusing, this webpage is tenderly compassionate toward both husbands and wives and seeks healing and fulfillment for both.

This webpage is the map you need to find your way through a maze of other webpages that provide the masses of detail and support you might eventually need. If you lose the map (almost inevitable in a website as enormous as this one) or get so distracted that you forget to consult it (so easy to do with all the enticing links), the loss will be great.

So I plead with you to:

    * Immediately record the web address of this webpage

    * Do not visit any of the links below until first reading this entire webpage.

I know of no other way to avoid getting lost, side-tracked and bogged down with details.

An Example of How Hating Sex Develops

Some physically-normal women hate sex so vehemently that they literally cannot believe that any woman actually enjoys sex. The following e-mail quote – cited, of course, with the full permission of the author on the condition of anonymity – is an example of how this gut-wrenching situation can come about. Please excuse its bluntness:

    I have been married for over thirty years. My husband has been impotent most of those years. I began offering him my body to use when he would get an erection at 4 AM. It was a quick thing – a minute or two. But even using lubricant it felt like rape to me and totally turned me off. And he began losing his erections even when using Viagra. I gradually stopped making this option available to him because it was so repugnant to me, and also painful.

    I love this man. In so many ways he has been a good husband and a good friend. We have raised two children and we enjoy our life together outside the bedroom. He knows how to make me laugh. But our sex life is an ongoing tragedy. I wish he would just lose interest in sex so we could put it on the shelf and not allow our sexual failure to cloud our relationship.

    Is there any hope? I really hate sex. But I want him to be happy. And I want to stay married.

Suppose you forced yourself to consume large helpings of your favorite food when your body is not ready for it (your stomach is already full). It is inevitable that after a few such instances of force feeding, the very sight of what used to be delicious to you will not only turn your stomach, your aversion to that food could last for the rest of your life.

Likewise, having intercourse when your body is not ready for it will end up turning you off it. With food, the main factor affecting whether you are ready for more is whether you feel hungry. With sex, the main factor is how aroused you feel. Becoming hungry for food is largely a matter of how long since you last ate. Becoming hungry for sex, however, is not so much due to how much time has elapsed since you last had sex, as how much time has been devoted to becoming aroused.

Men are not normally physically capable of intercourse without being sufficiently aroused. The danger of women ending up turned off by intercourse is greater, however, because they can submit to it without being physically ready for it.

An even more obvious factor affecting women is that on certain occasions intercourse can be painful for a woman (such as her partner being rough, insufficient lubrication, or the woman being tender because of the time of month, or some other gynecological factor). A man would stop if he felt pain, but since no-one is able feel anyone else’s pain, he might keep going without realizing how unpleasant it is for his partner. It doesn’t take a doctorate in psychology to know that one will quickly lose all desire for something that inflicts pain.

The Complexities of Sex

An inexperienced fisherman might expect fishing to be as predictable and mechanical as throwing out a line and reeling it in. What makes fishing enthralling, however, is that there are many variables – the location, the tide, the weather, the bait, the skill of the fisherman, and so on. What produces a good catch one day might not work the next. Sexual arousal is just as complex and unpredictable. A man who doesn’t realize this is either inexperienced or has been kept ignorant by a partner who, perhaps for fear of disappointing him, has not made him sufficiently aware of what she is feeling.

Good sex is as much about mental and emotional intimacy as it is about physical intimacy. You must expose not just your body but your feelings. For some people this seems scary. It takes trust, but this is within the security of marriage and with the person you have chosen to entrust your entire earthly life to. Pressing through reservations and fears is challenging but things that are worthwhile take courage and effort.

Like so many women, the dear woman I quoted at the beginning of this webpage had the highest motives. What she did seems loving, selfless and even noble. This makes it so tragic as to stagger belief, but the heart-breaking reality is that suffering in silence usually leads to disaster. Such woman typically have hearts of gold, so I hate phrasing it the way I am about to, but the cold truth is that to suffer in silence is a form of deception, and even when one has lofty goals, a relationship founded on deception is doomed to collapse. Usually the discomfort starts off minor and eventually reaches such levels of disgust that most women can no longer hide their revulsion, but in the interim untold damage is done.

When Marriage is A Mistake

It is too late to lament the past but it is not too late to understand what created the problem – especially as it can help prevent us from sabotaging our healing by foolishly blaming God. (As it says in Proverbs 19:3, a person’s own foolishness ruins his life and yet he blames God for it.)

Ideally, no woman should marry until she is ready to be transparently honest with her partner. If she feels she might be too scared to tell him the full truth whenever sex disappoints her, then their relationship is not ready for physical intimacy and, since sex is fundamental to marriage, they are not ready to marry. Her fear might be because he is too sensitive or perhaps she is too sensitive but, either way, they are ready neither for marriage nor sex and should defer both until things change.

Any woman with the fanciful notion that her partner should somehow magically know what she wants or is too inhibited to accurately communicate to him her sexual feelings is doomed to rob both herself and her partner of sexual pleasure. She will end up resenting and emotionally wounding her life-partner for a situation her silence has created.

By marrying, she committed herself to being exclusively responsible for her husband’s sexual fulfillment. To resent him for something she has contributed to by her lack of adequate feedback is unfair and perhaps even cruel. On the other hand, for her to force herself to do things she finds distasteful will ultimately end up worsening the situation.


Being madly in love makes one so high that sober thought and hearing from God become alarmingly difficult. This in itself explains why many Christians end up in a marriage that was not God’s choice. If a woman has suffered sexual abuse sometime prior to marriage, however, this adds an alarming range of additional powerful pressures to marry at the wrong time or even to marry the wrong person.

Not everyone with sexual problems has been abused, but those who have been abused will almost certainly need more healing than they realize before they are ready for marriage. Driven by an enormous craving for love and security, these dear women almost always end up marrying far too soon and have no idea of the extent to which their decision to marry will turn out to be disastrously cruel, both for themselves and for their husbands.

It is usual for women who at some time in their past have been sexually abused to keep pushing from their mind the full extent of their brokenness. They marry because they have no idea just how much healing they need, how long that healing will take and how much marriage will interfere with that healing. It is like having a broken leg and instead of waiting until it heals, committing yourself to running long distances without crutches every day for the rest of your life. Few of these dear women understand how critically important marital relations are to the man they intend to marry and how much marital relations will eventually end up causing horrific memories to come flooding back.

Moreover, even minor sexual abuse shatters one’s self-esteem, rendering one highly vulnerable to make an appallingly bad choice as to who to marry. Low self-esteem strongly biases a person to settle for someone who does not treat one with the respect and tenderness that he should. Alarmingly, predators are skilled at detecting such people. Some women with shattered self-esteem even think they deserve to be abused and subconsciously seek out potential abusers. Low self-esteem also makes one desperate to be in a relationship simply to avoid the possibility of being viewed by others as being abnormal by being unattached.

Sex abuse victims have often been starved of unconditional love during their critical developmental years. This so greatly intensifies the craving to have the void filled that they are unable to make calm, rational decisions as to who or when they should marry.

Don’t Worsen the Situation

Marrying badly breaks God’s heart, but breaking one’s vows also breaks God’s heart. If you disregard God’s wisdom by marrying, don’t disregard God’s wisdom by separating. Two wrongs don’t make a right; they double the offence.

Joshua and his nation were tricked into making a covenant with people whom God had declared should be destroyed. The Israelites had been conned, they regretted it, and it was completely contrary to God’s will, but merely because they had made a covenant, that made it so binding in God’s eyes that he was forced to respect it. He insisted that they, (Joshua 9) and even subsequent generations (2 Samuel 21:1-9,14), must keep that covenant in its entirety.

Other nations were so furious with these people for selling out to the Israelites that they massed their armies to destroy them. This seemed an ideal opportunity for the Israelites to have their past mistake eradicated. Without lifting a finger against these con artists, the Israelites could let heathens wipe them out, as God had originally intended. But instead, the Lord insisted that they fight to protect those they had made the covenant with. And to assist, the Almighty even made the sun stand still (Joshua 10:1-15). There is biblical evidence that God regards sex or marriage as entering into a binding covenant.

King David’s experience is heartening. He acted atrociously by committing adultery with Bathsheba and then murdering her husband (2 Samuel 11). That error cost him enormously (2 Samuel 12:9-19). Nevertheless, David repented and the Lord turned it around so dramatically that of all of David’s children (some older than Solomon), God chose to bless Bathsheba’s son (Solomon) with the throne and with being a direct ancestor of the Messiah.

Things might currently seem an impossible mess but with God on your side, expect the unexpected.

God’s Plan

Sex – even the sight of her own naked body – terrified a young teen. Long before she would ever marry, however, God began preparing this sexual abuse survivor for the marriage he would one day bless her with. Sex, he told her, builds up a husband, giving him the emotional strength to be the source of security a wife longs for. God’s plan is that by strengthening the man, sex leads to increased security for the wife, which opens the way to more sexual enjoyment for both, which further builds up the man, leading to still more security for the wife, and so on. Without sex, the cycle is broken.

Restoring the cycle of love, closeness, mutual dependence, security and fulfillment can be immensely challenging but healing – not pain, frustration and trauma – is God’s goal.

Indescribable Anguish

Being trapped in the devastating situation where physical intimacy – the very thing that should build them up – is tearing them apart, raises the pressure for both partners to explosive levels. Under such pressure, it is natural for both of them to end up blaming and resenting and even despising each other. Nevertheless, as a deeply moved but neutral observer, I find myself incapable of laying blame. Of course, it is possible to marry a sadist, but it’s far more likely for a couple to completely misunderstand each other and be so overwhelmed by the resulting personal agony and resentment as to miss the extent of the other’s pain. I can easily imagine this nightmare arising even when both partners have gone to extremes in trying to be patient, gentle, sensitive and selfless. Nevertheless, what I have written elsewhere surely applies:

    If you were treating the open wounds of accident victims you would realize that the most gentle, well-meaning touch could send patients reeling. You would not be offended if someone you were seeking to help lashed out in pain with almost involuntary action. You would half expect it. But imagine the confusion if the wounds were invisible and the person looked uninjured.

    That’s the norm for someone who is hurting inside.

    Emotionally wounded people cannot help but be highly sensitive. It is vital that they be treated with the careful tenderness you would use if you were dressing gaping physical wounds. Once we understand the seriousness of emotional wounds, it becomes easier to employ the Christlike graces of turning the other cheek and using the soft answer that turns away wrath. When we realize an outburst is just the pain talking, we no longer take it to heart. Only a fool takes personally the actions of someone drunk with pain.

The problem with the quote, however, is that it was written to help counselors who are not suffering personally but merely supporting someone who is in deep pain. When both parties are in agony, the pain escalates exponentially.

The result is a trial of devastating dimensions. I should point out, however, that even if malicious acts of rebellion against God’s loving ways are hurled against you in satanic fury, God loves you far too much to let your suffering end up a meaningless waste. He will turn it around so astonishingly that you end up spending all eternity praising God for it. In his mindboggling genius the Lord transforms godless havoc into something that eventually glorifies God by blessing us (see The Surprising Joy of Trials but ensure you have recorded the address of the current webpage and, preferably, only consult links after first reading this entire webpage). That God could do this is so mindboggling, however, as to stagger belief throughout the typically long interval between the attack and victims being able to see how they have benefitted.

The last thing I want is to add to anyone’s pain by contributing to any feeling of guilt. I long, however, to lessen the resentment gnawing away at each partner by helping each better understand the other. My dilemma is that the devastation that each feels is so immense that I cannot find words to adequately convey it.

What makes this tragedy still more appalling is that it is rare for either partner to have even a faint conception of the other’s agony; much less have anything remotely like adequate compassion. Since it is impossible for anyone to describe two different things at the same time, I am forced to describe one partner’s agony before describing the other’s but this sends me reeling in a quandary. I worry lest whatever choice I make as to which to mention first, will cause offence to the other partner because it might initially seem I am taking that partner’s side above the other’s. I beg your patience. Please believe me when I say that I believe it is possible for each partner to be equally innocent and for each partner to find the other’s innocence incomprehensible. I am also convinced that the magnitude of distress makes it almost humanly impossible for either partner to be as good-humored, gracious, thoughtful and so on as he or she would like to be.

Since I have already given space to describing some of the wife’s distress, I guess I should start by attempting to describe the man’s agony. Please understand that I am adamant that the pressure husbands face never means they should force themselves upon their wives. What it does mean is that any sexually healthy man, living with someone he finds highly attractive and had married with the expectation of having his sexual needs met, will find restraining himself extremely challenging. It will demand such enormous levels of will power as to make losing a lot of weight and keeping it off seem easy.

The Man’s Dilemma

Dear wife, image what it would be like to be unattached and so desperately lonely and love-starved that you could barely think of anything else every waking moment of every day, and, in addition, you were nearing the end of your childbearing years and childless and aching for a child. What would be churning within you might be approaching the intensity of the average man’s craving for sex. When his need is fully met, things might mellow but this explosive yearning rages beyond normal levels when the need is not satisfied. (If you were put on a restrictive diet that kept you hungry all the time, it would hardly be surprising if you became obsessed with food. After a few weeks of being able to eat all you want, however, your cravings would settle down and eating would still be a need but you could expect it to cease being such an obsession. Sexual cravings operate in a similar way.) You might despise this fact of life but you chose to marry. You chose to commit yourself for life to being the only one who can meet your husband’s deep need.

Few wives who loathe sex can grasp how devastating, frustrating and tortuous it is for the average man to be regularly denied sex. Given the choice, many a man would prefer to lose both of his legs than be trapped in a sexless marriage. Physically, it is close to a cross between regularly bursting to urinate but not being allowed to and a starving person living in a cake bakery but seldom being allowed to eat. (For encouragement for husbands who have to endure this, see Celibates: Celebrate your Sexuality.) Emotionally, for his loved one to find his advances repulsive tears any normal man apart, causing him to feel ugly, rejected and a failure, and making him highly vulnerable to any woman who shows the slightest interest in him. To be denied sex wrecks any normal man’s self-esteem, his ability to feel loved and his ability to feel connected to the wife he loves. To be reeling in agony is one thing, but to be despised and viewed as a sex fiend for one’s anguish is even worse.

The Wife’s Dilemma

On the other hand, the man is typically just as unable to grasp how difficult it is for his wife. For her, it is like being forced to eat chocolate when you are already vomiting up chocolate. The result is not only highly unpleasant; it ruins – possibly for life – something that should be enjoyable. But the loss is more fundamental than the chocolate analogy suggests. It is more like losing an entire sense, such as no longer being able to taste.

More disturbing still, if a husband or a pastor or a woman’s own interpretation of Scripture insists that God requires her to keep submitting to this sexual torture, it adds another appalling layer to the horror: spiritual abuse. Whereas sexual abuse can destroy not only one’s ability to enjoy sex but even one’s ability to feel safe in one’s own home; spiritual abuse can destroy one’s ability to enjoy God and to know him as the warm haven of comfort and inspiration that he really is. Hating sex is one thing but instead of being able to see her loving God as the tender-hearted, warm, beautiful, deeply caring Person he really is, spiritual abuse can even drive a person to hate the heartless monster that God is mistakenly thought to be.

Yes, slandering God as supporting sexual abuse within marriage is spiritual abuse. That dear woman is God’s darling daughter and making her have sex when she finds it distressing incurs the wrath of God as much as raping a little child. It would be ridiculously unscriptural to assert that, in a world filled with people who break God’s heart by violating his loving ways, following our crucified Lord will never be temporarily painful (see Insights into Martyrdom and Persecution and God & Suffering). Humanity’s Eternal Judge will execute justice but he mercifully delays it to give us all a chance to repent. Had he executed justice at the moment of our first (or even our hundredth) sin we would all be literally in hell right now. Nevertheless, our gentle Lord is jealously concerned for his daughters, and anyone claiming that God approves of a man having his selfish way with his wife is dangerously wrong.

Yes, where practical and where it will not cause marital relations to degenerate even further, a marriage partner should endeavor to reduce the other’s temptation, but it is not only husbands who are exposed to temptation when wives have no sexual desire. A wife forced to have sex will be sorely tempted to end the marriage and some could even end up enticed into lesbianism.

Moreover, as wives who have come to loathe sex are aware of their suffering but are often unaware of how much they have lost by being unable to enjoy sex, so those who have suffered spiritual abuse, often have no comprehension of the tragic magnitude of their spiritual loss.

Partnership

A husband and wife are one, which means that her sexual pleasure is bound to his and, likewise, his pleasure is bound to hers. Sexual heights can only be attained by both of them learning to give and receive physical pleasure.

Good sex is all about partnership. It is not about one always giving and the other always receiving; it is about both partners giving and both receiving – though not necessarily simultaneously. It is like two mutually-dependent people hoping to retrieve a prize by negotiating an obstacle course. One of them can move but is blindfolded and the other can see but cannot move around. They can attain the prize only by the one who can see giving moment-by-moment directions to the blindfolded one. This could be fun but if they get tense, it could easily degenerate into arguments, blaming each other, defeatism, and so on.

Sex can sometimes be frustratingly difficult but it draws upon all that makes a good marriage – patience, gentleness, persistence, trust, commitment, communication, cooperation, learning to understand each other, remaining teachable, and so on.

Is There Hope?

According to the Word of God, what makes two people one is not wedding vows, nor merely living together, but sex (proof: One Flesh). Since God’s intention was for sex to be so bonding that it makes two individuals one, for it to become a source of conflict and division is heart-breaking. The thrilling news, however, is that since God’s longing is for sex to be in no sense a curse but a beautiful source of marital unity, the powerful Lord supports couples who seek to end the pain and division and want healing. Nevertheless, it requires from both husband and wife a determined commitment to God’s way.

Even the first step can be a mammoth undertaking. The second step can be equally daunting. And likewise for the next.

1. Dealing with Resentment

When we are hurting, our minds keep feeding us with reasons for blame and people to blame. Regardless of whether we blame ourselves, our partner, other people or God, however, blame is like expressing anger by bashing an already-injured fist against a wall, over and over and over. As tempting and addictive as blame is, it ends up perpetuating our pain and preventing healing. There is just one alternative: let the innocent Son of God take upon himself all the blame and suffer the horrific consequences until it is fully consumed. To work through this, you need to read Do-It-Yourself Healing and then Sweet Revenge! Turning Hate into Healing.

Forgiving someone does not mean convincing yourself that the offense was minor, nor does it mean blaming yourself, nor does it involve aiding the perpetuation of the offence. Forgiveness is a journey to peace, fulfillment and Christlikeness but the road is long and challenging. For help, see Why to Truly Forgive Hinges on Getting in Touch with Your Anger and all the links.

2. Rebuilding Trust

Healing will not be possible until the wife can reach the point of being convinced that her husband will never again breach boundaries that she puts in place. Having had one’s trust violated in the past makes the regaining of trust – becoming convinced that the person has totally changed – extremely difficult.

Her boundaries will probably at first be extremely restrictive. Intercourse must be on the list of totally banned activities but there will most likely be many more.

The husband will almost certainly feel extremely frustrated and even highly offended by the restrictiveness of the boundaries and the lack of trust and the tortuously slow progress. He will have to plunge deep into the heart of God and draw deeply upon all the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy (instead of being grumpy), peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Unless he can master this, he will sabotage the entire healing process.

The husband has absolutely no right to demand that his wife submit on a matter than has already left her highly traumatized. There might have been ignorance in the past but he will be held highly accountable before his Judge for any further discomfort he inflicts upon his wife. See A Second Look at Conjugal Rights and Husband, Head of a Submissive Wife?. To see what a terrifying responsibility marriage is, the husband should read God’s View of Marriage. (Early in that webpage page is a link to a helpful version of it for wives.).

Eventually the wife might feel ready to adjust the boundary but for any given session the man must entertain no hope of progressing beyond whatever is the current preset boundary.

The obvious issue that must be resolved is what happens if the man gets highly aroused. You must find a resolution to this issue that you both feel reasonably comfortable with and are sure has God’s approval.

I’m not God. Neither do I have any special access to God’s heart and mind that is denied any other Christian who earnestly seeks him. Other than my unwavering conviction that sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage is sin, my views on sexuality have not even remained unchanged throughout my half a century as a Christian. I was therefore clearly wrong at some points in my Christian journey. (For more about my spiritual limitations, see Truth: An Awesome Responsibility.) So I make no claim to infallibility and I urge you to personally seek God’s heart and mind on these matters, after doing all you can (and it is no easy task) to rid yourself of biases that might hinder your ability to truly hear from God.

My own conviction is that solo sex and/or porn damage us and one’s marriage by perverting one’s sexuality. If you are interested in my carefully and sensitively reasoned exploration of this, see How Solo Sex Deforms One’s Sexuality and An Innocent Look? The Morality of Porn and Leering and the pages they lead to.

When it comes to what physical expressions of love have divine approval within the sanctity of marriage, however, I do not reveal my views. Instead, I have provided what I believe to be a more helpful and spiritual approach: an unbiased webpage that guides husbands and wives in emptying themselves of their own presumptions and prejudices and praying through these matters to receive their own divinely-led understanding. A good place for the wife to start is to read How Holy Wives Express Marital Love. Then both partners should prayerfully read – preferably together – Is it Perverted?

3. Slow Progression in Learning to Enjoy Touch

Whilst it can be damaging to your sex life to engage in any activity you currently find unpleasant, you should not go to the other extreme of waiting until you move from feeling neutral to passionately desiring it before giving it a go.

After conducting an extensive, in-depth survey of women willing to keep sex diaries, Bettina Arndt has concluded that for women to maximize their personal marital fulfillment they should not wait until they want sex before engaging in foreplay (Source). It applies to men, too. Often, sessions when my sexual pleasure has soared to extraordinary levels began with me having little or no desire to even bother. I simply decided to push myself. At times, I’ve wondered whether sexual arousal were even possible. Despite my desire being buried somewhere in a deep hole sound asleep, foreplay slowly awakened my desire and coaxed it out of hiding. Eventually, what I had doubted would be worth the effort and thought would turn into a fizzler, turned into exquisite ecstasy. It has happened often and yet I still find myself amazed at the gradual transformation of no interest into passionate desire.

A friend of mine never eats chicken because just once, as a child, eating chicken was associated with food poisoning. These days, if he forced himself to eat chicken he would feel nauseous and might even vomit. Likewise, just one or two unpleasant experiences can have a profound and long-lasting effect on one’s ability to enjoy sex.

Vast numbers of people are like my friend with a certain food item. In my case, as a teen I was prescribed migraine medication that looked very much like Smarties (small, colorful, sugar-coated chocolates similar to M&M’s, that I used to enjoy as a child). Not only was the medication much the same shape as a Smartie, it had a thin brightly colored outer shell and a soft, chocolate-colored center like a Smartie. I was required to chew one whenever I had a migraine. Doing so always instantly made me gag. For years I could not even see a Smartie without feeling nauseous. My aversion to Smarties would have continued for life, had I not eventually re-trained myself to eat them. The process began accidentally years later when, as part of my psychology degree, I was required to conduct experiments with young children using Smarties as counters. Having to see and handle Smarties in a neutral setting began to break the link in my mind between them and nausea. It still, however, took courage to eat one. Since the chewing was particularly like taking the medication, I began by popping the Smartie in my mouth and letting it dissolve; trying to focus not on feelings of nausea but on the pleasant taste.

One woman’s experience is slightly encouraging in that, to her immense surprise, her desire for sex spontaneously returned after 38 years of marriage to someone who had turned her completely off sex. It happened after three years of no sex. Tragically, instead of this being a blessing, however, it was nothing but a further source of grief and frustration because it occurred only when, due to widowhood, marital relations were no longer an option. For as long as her husband kept expecting sex, she had remained turned off it (see Confessions of a Frigid Woman ).

I am unaware of any relevant statistics but my extensive experience supporting sex abuse survivors makes me strongly suspect that even with a totally different and highly considerate partner, an effortless recovery is rare. If this woman were to remarry, for instance, she would almost certainly suffer times when it felt to her that she was back in her previous marriage. Like my aversion to Smarties, an aversion to sex can be broken, but expect it to be highly challenging.

The Healing Journey

We have seen that learning to enjoy touch must begin by a frank but kind and compassionate discussion with one’s partner. It is vital that every eventuality be thoroughly discussed and plans set in place so that each knows what boundaries the wife requires and both must be certain that, no matter what, those boundaries will not be violated. As explained, it is quite likely that her marital history has made it difficult for the wife to believe that this time boundaries will be respected and this issue needs to be thoroughly and patiently explored.

When all of the above issues have been resolved, you will probably find it helpful to create whatever setting you find most conducive to feeling secure, relaxed and sensual. Try to begin setting the mood an hour or more ahead of time by perhaps dressing up, having a romantic meal together and intimate sharing. Choose suitable lighting, temperature, perfume, music and verbal lovemaking.

Just as there is more to enjoying a good movie than viewing the last scene, sex should not focus just on intercourse. You both have entire bodies to devote to exploratory touching, massaging, caressing, fondling, and kissing. It might be having your back lightly scratched, your feet massaged, your inner thighs lightly tickled, your inner forearms licked, your ears gently blown into. Each of us is unique but as you persist you will discover things that are at least mildly pleasant. Give yourself permission to start enjoying whatever begins to feels nice. Learn to savor and develop those feelings; giving moment-by-moment feedback to each other (at least by groans if you cannot be more articulate) as to whether you want it to continue. If you can think of a variation that might improve it, communicate this to your partner (if you cannot manage this verbally at least do so by such means as guiding your partner’s hand).

One of the things that stop sex from becoming boring is that it is highly variable. What is delightful one time might be dull or even uncomfortable another, so don’t get into a rut and don’t assume that if something didn’t appeal on some occasions that it never will.

Keep experimenting, trying new things on different occasions. When you are ready for it, consider bathing each other, powdering each other, oiling each other. Try to delight in each other. Make it an exciting and romantic adventure in intimacy. For more help in how to gradually progress, see Serious Help for Hurting Couples

Wrap Up

Reasons for a woman not being ready to enjoy sex can range from as simple as needing more lubricant, to as complex as suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Trying to bury the problem and push on regardless, however, is likely to end up as disastrous for your marriage as ignoring an oil warning light on your car’s instrument panel will end up disastrous for your car.

If matters have been allowed to escalate, both partners need to devote much effort into sympathetically understanding how exceedingly difficult this dilemma is for the other partner. Achieving this degree of understanding is far from easy. Each partner is torturously aware of his/her own distress and typically cannot imagine the extent of the other partner’s agony.

The husband must be loving, gentle, patient, self-controlled and utterly committed to enduring the torment of going without what he craves for as many years as it takes. On the other hand, the wife must embrace her moral and spiritual obligation to God and to her husband to do everything in her power to heal as quickly as she can. This will almost inevitably demand much time, effort and courage. It will include:

    * Forgiving her husband, no matter how much he might have contributed to the current mess. This alone is a very long and challenging journey. For much help in freeing one’s marriage from the bitter devastation of resentment, see Why to Truly Forgive Hinges on Getting in Touch with Your Anger and all the links provided there.

    * If you have any memories of unpleasant sexual encounters with another partner that you wish not to revisit, then healing will also require facing those memories, no matter how ugly and terrifying they might be. To understand the centrality of this, see Positive Confession or Living in Denial?

    * Healing will certainly involve a willingness to have regular sessions with a trained counselor, and if prayerfully using all my webpages to work through the matters privately does not suit you, then you must see one.

I’ve Read this Page: What’s Next?

If you have not already done so, I again remind you to record the web address of this webpage so that you don’t lose access to all the valuable links. I have poured my life into them, allowing you to have for free what would normally cost thousands of dollars to get so much information from a counselor.

I suggest you take a little break and, when ready, return to begin reading the links. They are listed below in the order they appear in the webpage but it might be better to reread the page, to note the context and click on whatever links interest you.

Each link will usually take you to fairly long webpages that lead you to still more webpages that are likely to further help you. It is a huge amount of reading but this problem is huge and I want you to have as much support as I am capable of providing. If, like me, you’re a poor reader and don’t have much money, think of it this way: by reading the pages you are not only speeding your healing; you are saving yourself thousands of dollars.
 

 

 

 

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Marital Help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compassionate Support

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christian Help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Sexless Marriage?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Wives Hate Sex

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Links Listed Above

* Note the web address of the current webpage or you are unlikely to ever find your way back.

* The links are usually just to the first page and lead to still more links that should also be read.

 

 

 

 

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Additional Valuable Links

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Not to be sold. © Copyright, Grantley Morris, 2013. For much more by the same author, see www.net-burst.net   No part of these writings may be copied without citing this entire paragraph.

 

 

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