Opening Note
No one is an expert on your life or your marriage besides you and God. The research behind this book represents thousands of hours of clinical work and study, but if something here works for 97 percent of couples, you just might be one of the 3 percent. If something doesn’t feel right for your story, your marriage, or your spouse, it might not be. Just step around it.
Some couples want help in their sex life but are not yet ready to work on something that intimate. They may first need to manage generalized anxiety or treat depression, or work on healing trauma, or address an unhealthy power balance in the marriage. Other issues may simply need to come first.
Chapter 1 — What We Want—And How to Get There
What follows is not armchair theory. It is the fruit of over thirty thousand hours caring for individuals and couples in counseling — the vast majority focused on sexual issues — alongside more than two thousand four hundred hours of professional education in sexuality and sex therapy. The research is rigorous and representative across people of all religious beliefs and of none at all. These pages approach life from a Christian perspective, though the truths carry value regardless of your starting point.
Eight areas of confusion and misunderstanding consistently surface in couples’ lives around sexuality. The surprising truths from the research help us understand our spouse, understand ourselves, and reach a new level of intimacy.
One thing to hold before diving in: although no one wants to feel like the only partner trying to work on the marriage, many troubled relationships have been transformed by the power of a one-sided choice. You cannot change your spouse; you can only change yourself. Your spouse will have to decide what they will do — you are not responsible for that. But you give yourself the best possible chance if you follow God’s charge to do what you can do.
Chapter 2 — What Are Married Couples Up to in the Bedroom?
Does sex really matter so much to a marriage? The data give a clear answer: yes, it really does. The sexual relationship can be the lubricant in a marriage — neurochemical shifts and positive feelings help reduce relational friction. But when operating under wrong assumptions, couples try hard in the wrong areas.
The first wrong assumption is that we are not normal — and especially that our spouse is not normal. The truth is that most couples are far more normal than they think. The average frequency for all couples falls right at one and a third times per week. Twenty-three percent have sex less than once a month or not at all; twenty-eight percent report one to three times per month; twenty-nine percent report one to two times per week; fifteen percent say three to six times a week; four percent have sex daily or more.
Many people arrive at their marriage bed with wrong expectations about orgasm. The average male reaches orgasm in 5.4 minutes of intercourse. The average female takes fourteen minutes — almost three times as long. Climaxing together may be wonderful when it happens but is usually a poor goal. Thirty-one percent of women and nine percent of men say they only occasionally reach orgasm. For roughly forty percent of women, intercourse alone isn’t enough stimulation to climax — they require something other than intercourse, and clitoral stimulation doubles the chance of orgasm. Yet forty-nine percent of survey-takers didn’t know that. Pain deserves attention: thirty-two percent of women experience pain at least every third time they have sex, yet forty to fifty percent of women with chronic sexual pain don’t seek help.
The second wrong assumption is that having consistent sex doesn’t really impact the marriage. It does, significantly. Among couples happy with their frequency, ninety-four percent are also happy in their marriage. Among those who are unhappy with their frequency, only thirty-five percent are happy in marriage. A spouse who is unhappy about how often they have sex is ten times more likely to also be unhappy in their marriage overall. Couples are much more likely to be happy with frequency if they are having sex once a week or more: sixty-two percent of such couples are happy, compared with only nine percent of those having sex less than once a month.
Couples with roughly similar levels of desire are also far more likely to be satisfied. Among those reporting equal or similar desire, eighty-two percent are happy with frequency — but that number drops to only eighteen percent for marriages where one partner has significantly higher or lower desire. The third major factor is whether partners can communicate well about sex.
The third wrong assumption is that difficulty talking about sex is acceptable. But without the words, you may not be getting as much action. Forty-nine percent of survey-takers initially claimed they talked about sexual issues whenever they needed to, without awkwardness or difficulty. But nearly half of those same people then answered other questions in ways that placed them in exactly the opposite category. People who can talk about sex with their spouse have significantly more sex. A husband feeling distant might press harder for intimacy as a way of saying, “I feel totally disconnected from you, and sex would help me feel close again.” Because he’s not actually saying that, what she may hear is that he only wants to use her body. Imagine if he could say, out loud, “I miss you. I don’t like not feeling close to you.” And if she could say, “But every night you’re gaming with the guys instead of hanging out with me. I need to feel close to you outside the bedroom first.” They simply needed to figure out how to connect well — with compassion and empathy rather than anger, seeing each other’s hearts.
Chapter 3 — What We See
Creating a healthy intimate life starts with what happens in your mind, not with what happens in the bedroom. It is a crucial neuroscientific principle: what you focus on is what you will see. An intense focus on problems will only snarl things up and won’t result in healing. One of the most important homework exercises for struggling couples is to create a sexual vision — how often do you want to cuddle? Do you want playful sex, erotic sex, functional sex, or what is an ideal mix of each? Use that as the goal toward which you aim.
When we are hurt by our spouse, we tend to believe negative things about their intentions. In their research book The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn surveyed 1,261 people and found that only 9 of them — just 0.7 percent — had stopped caring about their spouse. Even in the most struggling relationships, 97 percent still deeply cared. Believing a negative narrative is far more toxic to the marriage than actual sexual difficulties. Michael Sytsma’s doctoral research found that the greatest predictor of marital distress related to desire differences was whether the high-desire spouse believed something wrong about the thoughts and feelings of the low-desire spouse — for example, incorrectly believing “they never want to have sex with me.”
Another question is worth asking: do your spouse’s hurtful actions stem from a bad heart, or bad skill? A husband or wife may be poorly skilled in their ability to love — but skill can be taught. Depression, anxiety, ADHD, and autism can all lead to behavior that looks like a lack of care when it is actually a lack of capacity in that moment.
Nearly half — 48 percent — of survey-takers said they felt self-conscious about their spouse seeing them naked. Yet seventy-three percent of those same people said they themselves wanted to see their spouse naked. Just two percent said they were actually turned off. The fear of being seen is almost never matched by the reality of how a spouse responds.
When couples ask “Can we ______?” about any practice in the bedroom, it is usually the wrong question. Look at the heart as you and your spouse decide together what is healthy for the two of you. Anything sexual that doesn’t feel good afterward — emotionally, physically, relationally — for both of you isn’t good sex. Bringing a third party, including imagery, into the bedroom is always eventually damaging and is inconsistent with Scripture. Erotica and pornography may seem harmless to some, but fantasies about someone other than your spouse dilute the sacredness and distract the heart.
God clearly designed sex for pleasure, but it is richer than just pleasure. If your goal is powerful pleasure, you might have only okay sex; but if your goal is intimate connection and oneness, then great sex is more likely to come along with it. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” And Paul prescribed a way to retrain the eye: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — think about such things.”
Chapter 4 — You Are Not Broken
In general, for men, desire leads to sex; but for women, generally, sex leads to desire. This overall understanding is the key to unlocking immense freedom and enjoyment. You are simply built differently. Your spouse is not broken — and neither are you.
The type of desire we see on television — the “I’m hungry for sex with you” feeling — is called initiating desire. But this type describes only four in ten people. In only five percent of couples do both spouses work this way. The second type is receptive desire. The key characteristic is that this person is open to sex but doesn’t think about sex as often and feels desire in a different order. For those with receptive desire, the feeling of desire is experienced later in sexual engagement, not at the beginning. They usually decide to get sexually engaged, begin to get aroused, and then feel the sense of desire their initiating partner felt from the very beginning — often five or ten minutes in. Because of their physiological makeup, most with receptive desire must make a decision to get sexually engaged, and then a few minutes later are glad they did. As one woman put it, “I will engage in sex for my husband’s sake, knowing I will get in the mood eventually. Then things are usually great!” This pattern is nearly twice as common among women — seventy-three percent — as among men, where it applies to thirty-eight percent. A third type — resistant desire — applies to about seven percent of people and signals the need for more specialized attention.
Giving a receptive partner advance notice — creating anticipation time — can help bridge the gap between the two desire types. How we handle a mismatch is more important than the physiological difference itself. If the higher-desire spouse responds negatively — pouting, getting angry, distancing — it can be destructive to the sex life, pushing even receptive desire out of the picture entirely. Curiosity is the antidote. It is incompatible with contempt, criticism, and blame.
Sometimes feelings and actions diverge. You may feel desire but take on the receptive role and wait for your spouse to initiate because you don’t want to be pushy — this is the case for twenty-seven percent of men and twenty-four percent of women. Simply expect that you will always need to work on this. The person who doesn’t think about sex as much needs to do things that bring sex to mind. And the person who does think about sex needs to purposefully work every day on affirming their spouse, listening, and speaking their partner’s love language.
Chapter 5 — “I Want You to Want Me”
Conflict or distress around sexual desire is normal in marriage. A different level of desire doesn’t mean a lack of desire. Very often, the issue isn’t that one person is getting less sex than they want — it is that both people are getting less sex than they want. When neither spouse is getting as much sex as they’d like, it completely changes the dynamic. Instead of asking why aren’t you having sex, both need to ask: why aren’t we having sex? You can put yourselves on the same team to solve a joint problem.
The lower-desire spouse rarely thinks of themselves as holding power in their sex life. Yet the higher-desire spouse tends to wish they had a way to make sex happen more often, creating an unintentional power struggle. Once a lower-desire spouse realizes their power and leans into it purposefully, the marriage has the potential to become particularly playful and rich.
It is also worth remembering that your spouse’s lower desire doesn’t mean you aren’t desirable. The research has tried and failed — from multiple angles — to prove that sex is a need in the way food and water are needs. Without human connection, we suffer and fail to thrive. Sex is not in that same category. But choosing not to make sex a priority is no more acceptable than demanding it. When you choose not to work on sexual intimacy, you put unhealthy selfish desires ahead of the good of your marriage.
Desire is not static. Childbirth, a new job, disease, medications, trauma, and aging all change our bodies and typically impact desire negatively. Sleep, exercise, sunlight, and healthy diet are physical changes that can positively impact desire. Being regularly sexually stimulated actually raises levels of testosterone, one of the chemicals facilitating desire. Conversely, forgoing sex causes testosterone levels to drop, creating a vicious cycle: less sex leads to lower desire, which leads to even less sex. But encouragingly, choosing to have sex can create a positive cycle that becomes self-sustaining.
Get curious and ask each other the basics. How often do each of you want sex? What matters most to each of you? Try forty days of a chosen pattern — weekly, every other day, or twice a week — and see if you find one that works for both of you. And listen for the surprise that can come out of a season like this. As one husband reflected: “I finally realized — my spouse is choosing me. She doesn’t feel the physical urge as strongly as I do, and she is choosing me anyway. That is radical. It makes me feel loved and desired — even though the desire is different from what I thought I wanted.”
Chapter 6 — Sexual Healing
Across twenty years of research around the globe, certain important emotional factors — the deepest fears and desires in our hearts — simply tend to be different between most men and most women. The core insecurities for women are: am I loveable? Beautiful? Am I worthy of being loved for who I am? These questions morph into: does he really love me? Does he think I’m beautiful? Almost seven in ten women — 68 percent — said these kinds of thoughts were occasionally or often in their mind. This is why most women feel an emotional need to feel loved and cherished, beautiful and special, pursued and wanted.
In general, the most acute insecurity in the heart of men is not “Am I loveable?” but “Am I able?” Am I adequate? Do I have what it takes? Men tend to project an “I’ve got this covered” confidence, but privately say it is just a mask. Three out of four men — 76 percent — said, “I am not always as confident as I look.” Three in four men said that feeling inadequate was far more painful than feeling unloved: they would give up feeling their wife loved them if they could feel that she respected them. Most women, if forced to choose, would not give up feeling loved to get respect. Most men would.
It is not your responsibility to make your spouse feel good about themselves, nor their responsibility to do the same for you. Each of us is responsible for our own view of self — ideally, as we seek our most fundamental identity from the One who created us. And yet as each of us looks at our spouse, out fighting their own battle, we provide them ammunition — on the side of confidence or on the side of insecurity. Speaking life into each other’s area of deep vulnerability is a God-given opportunity.
Women tend to think: we can do that once you touch my heart. Men tend to think: you touch my heart by doing that. When women are hurt, they tend to withdraw sexually. When men are hurt, they tend to withdraw emotionally. When a woman’s heart is cared for, she is more likely to be sexually open and playful. When a man’s heart is cared for, he is more likely to be emotionally warm, attentive, and tender.
For men, sex is probably not just about the physical act — it is also about feeling that his wife desires him. Feeling desired speaks reassurance at a very deep level to his hidden insecurities. When he has an orgasm with you, oxytocin — a bonding hormone — is released in his brain, and he feels close to you again. Your attention to her outside the bedroom — throughout the day, including over breakfast — sets the stage for her interest in your attention inside the bedroom. As one woman explained: “If he’s not listening or valuing me during the day, then I don’t want him to put his arms around me at night. That affection feels like a farce.”
Chapter 7 — The Magic Touch
Curiosity truly is a sexual superpower. A simple, sincere, inquisitive approach to your spouse can be even more impactful than a vast array of sexual knowledge or perfect technique. A healthy curiosity is focused on continually discovering your spouse — working to understand them, to learn them. What matters to your spouse most, in and out of the bedroom? What do they really enjoy and what do they merely tolerate?
The research makes the case concisely: if your spouse views you as curious, you are both more than three times as likely to be very happy with how often you have sex. The message being received by routine, lack of remembering, or indifference is clear: I’m not curious about you. By contrast, those who praised their spouse sexually frequently used the word “considerate” — and being considerate is nearly synonymous with knowing and acting on what matters to the other person, which requires curiosity to begin with.
Curiosity also reduces anxiety and makes sex more playful and erotic. One wife who felt clumsy and afraid performing oral sex was guided to shift from a fear-based “I don’t know how” mindset to a curious “I wonder” mindset — approaching it as play and discovery rather than trying to get it right. She ended up enjoying it once it became about exploring rather than performing. A posture of ongoing curiosity also prevents your intimate life from falling into ruts. It keeps you attentive to shifts in what your spouse enjoys, to new possibilities you haven’t tried, and to subtle cues you might otherwise overlook. It starts with a humility that acknowledges you don’t know everything about your spouse — and a willingness to keep your eyes open and try to figure out answers over time.
If you need help talking, read a book together out loud. Take turns reading and use the book as the excuse to discuss sexual things. One wife described it this way: “When we finally read a book together, it was like, ‘Now this isn’t personal. We’re being invited into this conversation; we can blame it on the author!’ We were suddenly tackling a problem together.” And there is a kind of grace in trying at all — that even though I try and fumble about and ask silly questions and try again, she would give me grace in that effort. There’s mystery to her that I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand — but so much more intimacy comes from trying.
Chapter 8 — Getting Started
When there’s a sense of disappointment, pressure, or frustration in a couple’s sex life, we tend to think the issue is about someone’s sex drive. In reality, it may be about initiation. Living seductively also means not letting your worst self come out with your spouse. At work, at church, and with friends, you don’t demand the things you want — you draw them out by bringing your best self to the party. You need to apply the same skill with your spouse.
The first skill is sending a signal to create a spark. Sparks can be verbal (“Wanna get naked?”) or nonverbal. They can be very direct or more indirect, like taking an evening shower and not being in a hurry to get pajamas on. One husband discovered that if he explicitly flirted with his wife while doing the dishes, it gave them both “anticipation time” and was their start to the sexual process, even hours later. His wife called it “choreplay.” The second skill is making sure the signal isn’t just being sent but received well. The third skill is clarifying what you are sparking — falling into three categories: basic cuddling, something you could do in front of others; making out, arousing but not orgasm-focused; and sex, which is orgasm-focused. “I don’t think I have the energy for sex, but I would love to cuddle” is a sentence that could prevent enormous misunderstanding.
The fourth skill — knowing how to say and receive a no — may be the most important. The key is that both the person saying no and the person hearing it need to convey and absorb one message: the timing isn’t right. It is highly likely that none of the painful messages heard in a turndown — you aren’t desirable, I don’t care about you — is accurate, but they feel real nevertheless. “The timing isn’t right” provides a reassuring alternative. It makes all the difference if the person giving the no can share why and offer an alternative: “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. Today was grueling. Can we have a date Thursday after I get back from my shift?”
Chapter 9 — Love the One You’re With
Accepting that your spouse isn’t everything you wanted lets you enjoy what you’ve got. The best partner probably provides about 80 percent of what you would want in a spouse. Maybe you have always envisioned sex being playful, but your spouse treats it like an engineering problem. Maybe you’re in a neurodiverse marriage and your spouse’s scattered focus keeps you feeling seen only in glances. When you feel those very real disappointments, we want the cause of the disappointment to be resolved. Instead, we must grapple with a different solution: grieving the loss of what we wanted and accepting things as they are.
The research is stark: those who said they had not come to terms with the gap between what they wanted and what they had were 3.5 times more likely to report a dissatisfying marriage. Those who had largely or entirely come to terms with it were nearly three times more likely to report being happy in their marriage. To fully accept your spouse — which is not the same thing as condoning unhealthy behavior — you must fully release those things about them that negatively distract you. First, you stop seeing your spouse through a deficit lens. Second, fully accepting who your spouse is not allows you to see who they are — just as grieving that a child will never be the athlete you hoped for lets you celebrate the artist they are becoming.
Grace is the next step — choosing to see the best in each other, despite all the very real ways you mess up. Perhaps you choose to view your spouse as persistent — a trait you love — rather than stubborn, a trait you dislike. Having grace is like stepping back several yards and refocusing: you can see the whole house, which helps you not fixate on the scratches. Honor is like looking at the house and realizing it is beautiful — celebrating that 80 percent. There is a critical difference between acceptance and tolerance. As one therapist pushed back: “You are tolerating it in him. That isn’t acceptance. How long will you be able to tolerate it before you crack under the weight of your frustration and shift to resentment?” If you can move through the frustration, there is so much more on the other side. Those who had come to a more complete sense of acceptance were more likely to enjoy being sexually playful, more likely to communicate well, and less likely to hold back about mentioning something they might want to try.
Marriage is a choice and then a lifelong commitment. The wedding vow phrase “forsaking all others” is old-fashioned, but it foreshadows the grief process. It acknowledges: not only am I choosing all of who you are and who you are not, I am actively choosing not any other.
Chapter 10 — A Higher View
The writer of Genesis records that Adam yada his wife, Eve, and she bore a son. Typically translated as “knew,” the Hebrew word yada means to know. While it would be easy to view this as a euphemism, it is actually a powerful choice of words reflecting God’s higher design for sex. Sex becomes about learning one another and exposing your innermost selves fully to each other. At its fullest, sex is about sharing and creating a profound intimacy — a oneness that often takes years of learning and growth to experience in full.
For sex to be complete and truly great, it must be incarnate — fully body and fully spirit. If either spouse focuses only on the physical, the greater meaning of the act is at risk. Or if either spouse focuses only on the spirit, sex is missing a key component. Both science and Scripture speak to this. So be curious and explore each other. Don’t just accept your assumptions. And enjoy spending the rest of your marriage on the process of discovery. The journey may not always be easy, but it will be rich and well worth it.