8 Surprises That Make All the Difference
Shaunti Feldhahn
What the research actually says — and what it means for your marriage.
Feldhahn surveyed thousands of couples and discovered that the biggest sexual struggles in marriage aren't physical — they're emotional and informational. Both partners want to please the other but have no idea how because they've never had the conversation.
Everything Feldhahn and Sytsma want you to walk away with
Common struggles — desire differences, communication gaps, frequency dissatisfaction — are nearly universal. Since sex is one of the few areas where we rarely compare notes with even our closest friends, it's easy to feel uniquely deficient. You're not.
Receptive desire means the person is open to sex but feels desire later, after engagement begins. This pattern is nearly twice as common among women. It's not low desire — it's a different order of desire. Your spouse is not broken, and neither are you.
A sincere, inquisitive approach to your spouse is more impactful than perfect technique. Curiosity is incompatible with contempt, criticism, and blame. When something doesn't work, shift from 'I failed' to 'I wonder what would.'
God designed sex for pleasure, but it's richer than just pleasure. If your goal is powerful pleasure, you might have only okay sex. If your goal is intimate connection and oneness, great sex is more likely to come along with it.
Instead of 'Why aren't you having sex with me?' both need to ask 'Why aren't we having sex?' When neither spouse is getting what they want, the dynamic changes completely — from adversarial to collaborative.
49% initially claimed to talk without awkwardness, but nearly half of those were in the 'liar, liar, pants on fire' cohort when their other answers were examined. The silence creates distance neither partner understands.
Women's deepest question: 'Am I loveable? Beautiful? Worthy?' Men's deepest question: 'Am I able? Adequate? Do I have what it takes?' Three in four men said feeling inadequate was far more painful than feeling unloved. Understanding this changes everything.
For most women, feeling cared for and emotionally close throughout the day is what opens the door. For most men, sex itself creates the closeness — and afterward, he becomes more emotionally warm and attentive. Both paths are valid and both need honoring.
Pouting, getting angry, or distancing when rejected is destructive. She may have been interested originally, but now she looks over and thinks 'not with that attitude.' Get on the same side of the table and problem-solve together.
Being regularly intimate raises testosterone, which facilitates more desire. Forgoing sex drops testosterone, creating a vicious cycle. Sleep, exercise, sunlight, and healthy diet also positively impact desire. This is a system you can actively influence.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Shaunti Feldhahn and Dr. Michael Sytsma
The authors open with an important caveat: although they have studied sexuality for thousands of hours, no one is an expert on your life or your marriage besides you and God. If something in this book works for 97 percent of couples, you 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. Step around it.
They also note that this book as a whole may not be right for you at the moment. Some couples want help with their sex life but are not yet ready to work on something that intimate. They may first need to manage generalized anxiety, treat depression (both of which biologically short-circuit healthy sexuality), heal from trauma, or address an unhealthy power balance in the marriage. Other issues may simply need to come first.
Although there are exceptions, eight areas of confusion or misunderstanding commonly trip couples up—and the surprising truths from the research behind this book will help you understand your spouse, understand yourself, and reach a new level of intimacy. The research backing these claims is rigorous and nationally representative across people of all religious beliefs and none at all. Though the authors’ resources are widely used by churches and faith-based organizations and reflect a Christian perspective, they are designed to be practical rather than theological. That said, sex itself will be far richer if a couple rightly understands it as sacred and created for a sacramental purpose.
Key Insight
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. This means loving and pursuing your spouse in the ways you can, and trusting God to work in the ways you can’t. Your spouse will have to decide what they will do; you are not responsible for that. But you give yourself the best chance of heading where you want to go if you follow God’s charge to do what you can do.
Does sex really matter so much to a marriage? The data is clear: yes, it really does. In many ways, just as oil is the lubricant of an internal combustion engine—preventing the constant friction of moving parts from destroying it—the sexual relationship can be the lubricant in a marriage. Neurochemical shifts and positive feelings help reduce relational friction. A protective sense of togetherness and powerful connection can be created. The causes of friction still exist (two different people doing life together), but the sexual relationship ideally helps buffer the rough edges. The problem, of course, is that sex doesn’t always work that way. In some marriages it doesn’t act as the lubricant it is supposed to be, and in others it becomes a cause for distress.
Most of us care for our spouse and are trying hard. But when we are operating under wrong assumptions, we are trying hard in the wrong areas—pursuing fixes that will never work or putting effort into things that simply don’t matter to our spouse as much as we think. We need to shift our focus to what’s accurate and true. We have probably picked up many wrong assumptions from media, culture, or a hundred other sources—including significant gaps in knowledge, blind spots, or flat-out misinformation.
Since sex is one of the few areas where we rarely compare notes with even our closest friends, it is easy to feel that we are one of few couples dealing with something. By “normal” here, we primarily mean typical or common—that doesn’t always mean something is okay or optimal.
The average frequency for all couples falls at roughly 1⅓ times per week (four times every three weeks). About 23 percent of couples have sex less than once a month (or not at all), 28 percent report one to three times per month, 29 percent report one to two times per week, and 15 percent say three to six times a week. Then there is the robust 4 percent who have sex daily or more.
Nationally, among couples having sex, 78 percent practice oral sex (37 percent most of the time, 40 percent some of the time), and 22 percent rarely or never do. The numbers were similar for churchgoers. Fully 82 percent of men enjoy receiving it, while 38 percent of women enjoy giving it. Sixty percent of women enjoy receiving oral sex, while 70 percent of men enjoy giving it. Even when a spouse might not naturally “enjoy” giving oral sex, many take delight in giving delight to their spouse.
Many people are hoping for pleasure—even more for their spouse’s pleasure—but also carry tension about whether they or their spouse will “get there.” In fact, 31 percent of women and 9 percent of men say they only occasionally climax—and sometimes don’t at all.
Key Insight — Orgasm and Stimulation
Many people think intercourse alone is enough stimulation for most women to climax. But for roughly 40 percent of women, it isn’t—they require something other than intercourse, and clitoral stimulation doubles the chance of orgasm. Yet half (49 percent) of men and women didn’t know that. One study found that the greater the distance between the vaginal opening and the clitoral glans, the less likely intercourse alone leads to climax.
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 great when it happens but is usually a poor goal. Armed with the right information, couples can develop realistic goals and remove patterns of shame, blame, and unhealthy beliefs—which allows them to relax into playfulness and intimacy.
Don’t brush off sexual pain. If you push through the pain, your body is likely to tense up and cause more. In research, 12 percent of men and 32 percent of women feel pain at least every third time they have sex, and 58 percent of women have pain occasionally. Yet 40 to 50 percent of women with chronic pain don’t seek help.
Sex is ultimately designed to bring you and your spouse together in oneness. When that is the focus, climaxes are put in the right perspective: they are great, but they aren’t the goal. If you have tunnel vision about intercourse or genital stimulation, what happens when things don’t work as well—for example, if a wife experiences dryness during perimenopause, or a husband has erectile issues? Don’t default to a sense of futility and back off. You can still have great sexual pleasure without intercourse. Exploring all the options for erotic, arousing connection may even be a solution: when a husband gets creative, the arousal may be so much higher that there’s less dryness.
Couples in low-sex or no-sex marriages (having sex less than once a month) are much more likely to be struggling in many other areas. Couples having more sex are far more likely to be thriving.
Definition
Low-sex / no-sex marriage: A marriage in which the couple has sex less than once a month, or not at all.
As a baseline, 43 percent of couples are happy with how often they have sex, 33 percent are in the middle, and 24 percent are unhappy with their frequency. Among couples happy with frequency, 94 percent are also happy in their marriage. Among those who are “meh” about frequency, 70 percent are happy. And among those unhappy with frequency, only 35 percent are happy in marriage. (The correlation likely runs both ways: sex leads to marital happiness, and being happy in marriage makes you more likely to have sex.)
Principle
A spouse who is unhappy about how often they have sex is ten times more likely to also be unhappy in their marriage. Sex isn’t the be-all and end-all, but being dissatisfied with sexual frequency is strongly correlated with being dissatisfied with the marriage overall.
What leads to being happy with frequency? Three common factors emerge. First, a couple is much more likely to be happy with frequency if they are having sex once a week or more—62 percent of such couples are happy, compared with only 25 percent of those at one to three times a month, and just 9 percent of those having sex less than once a month. Second, a couple is more likely to be happy if they have roughly similar levels of desire: 82 percent of couples reporting equal or similar desire are happy with frequency, but only 18 percent are happy when one partner has significantly higher or lower desire. The third factor is whether the partners can communicate well about sex.
Most of us don’t talk about sex as well as we think. For example, 49 percent of survey-takers initially claimed they could talk about sexual issues “whenever we need to, without any awkwardness or difficulty.” But nearly half of those same people answered other questions that placed them squarely in the opposite camp—saying it was definitely not easy to talk about what they wanted, or that they wouldn’t want their hesitant spouse to talk to them about it.
People who are able to talk about sex with their spouse have significantly more sex. The reverse is also true: people who find it awkward, difficult, or who avoid it altogether have much less sex. Most important, people who talk about sex well are far more likely to be happy in their marriage.
Miscommunication is common. A husband feeling distant might press harder to be intimate as a way of saying, “I feel totally disconnected from you, and sex would help me feel close again.” But because he’s not saying that directly, what she may hear is: “He’s just horny and wants to use my body—he doesn’t want me.” Imagine instead if he could say, out loud, “I miss you. I don’t like not feeling close to you. That’s why I’m hoping to be intimate.” And if she could say, “But every night you’re gaming 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, to talk with compassion and empathy rather than anger, and to see each other’s hearts.
Action Steps
Creating a healthy intimate life starts with what happens in your mind, not with what happens in the bedroom.
What you focus on is what you will see—this is a crucial neuroscientific principle. And what you see changes everything about how you respond to your spouse, since it is what you are responding to. It is easy to focus on what’s not meeting our expectations—that’s usually why couples reach out for help. Yet ironically, an intense focus on the problems will only snarl things up and won’t result in healing.
Picture a highway traffic jam caused by an accident. Traffic backs up for miles as drivers slow to look at the wreck, but as soon as you are past it and looking forward, you speed up and everything flows. It works the same way in marriage. If you want a hopeful, encouraging marriage, you have to shift your focus forward and be vision-oriented—what good future are you aiming for in your sexual relationship?—rather than simply tackling each problem in turn.
Action — Create a Sexual Vision
When we are hurt by our spouse, we tend to believe negative things about their intentions. Usually, we see the motivations we most fear: “My husband said he was sorry, but it was only to stop the fight.” “My wife doesn’t really appreciate all I do.” With sex: “If my spouse really cared about me, they would want to have sex more.” Or conversely, “My spouse cares more about sex than about me.” The subtle internal belief in all cases: my spouse doesn’t really care about me or what I need.
Key Insight
In research surveying 1,261 people, only 9—just 0.7 percent—had stopped caring about their spouse. The rest, 99.3 percent, loved their spouse and wanted the best for them. Even in the most struggling relationships, 97 percent still deeply cared.
In a marriage where spouses truly care about each other, outward negativity often stems from emotional pain, not from a lack of love or a desire to hurt. And if you want a happy marriage, you have to let yourself believe your spouse cares—which is usually the first step in arresting the negative cycle and creating a positive one. When it comes to sex, believing a negative narrative is far more toxic to the marriage than your actual sexual difficulties. Research has shown that the difference in how much sex spouses wanted didn’t predict much distress. 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.” Rather than thinking “my spouse only cares about their own needs,” try telling yourself, “My spouse may not know how to show it, but they may actually care more about my sexual pleasure than their own”—which, in fact, is usually true.
When your spouse’s actions are hurtful, ask yourself: do those actions stem from a bad heart, or bad skill? There is a big difference. A spouse may be poorly skilled in their ability to love you well—but skill can be taught. The question is, can you focus on their heart while they are learning the skill?
Consider how you respond to a child’s poor behavior. You likely think, “I’ve got a good kid who doesn’t know exactly how to handle things yet and needs to learn.” You don’t crucify your kids for lack of skill, and it isn’t helpful to do that to your spouse either. Factors like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and autism can also lead to behavior that might look like a lack of care when it is actually a lack of capacity in that moment.
Key Insight — Body Image
Nearly half (48 percent) of survey-takers said they felt self-conscious about their spouse seeing them naked, worrying their spouse would be turned off by imperfections. Yet 73 percent of those same people said they wanted to see their own spouse naked. Nearly all the rest (24 percent, predominantly women) said they didn’t care either way—emphasizing they were not turned off by their spouse’s imperfections. Just 2 percent said they were indeed turned off.
One of the top questions at churches and marriage seminars is, “Can we ______ ?” The answer: you’re asking the wrong question. You’re assuming an external rule—or lack of one—will bring clarity and solve the problem. It cannot. This is about the heart, not about techniques and body parts. Look at the heart as you and your spouse decide together what is healthy for the two of you.
If a practice makes you or your spouse feel uncomfortable or upset, it is robbing your marriage bed of force and vigor. If it is a cause for contention, hasn’t been mutually decided upon, or one party is making the other feel guilty for not “getting with the program,” it is doing the same. Anything sexual that doesn’t feel good afterward—emotionally, physically, relationally—for both of you isn’t “good sex,” no matter how it fits one spouse’s fantasy or how intense the climax.
Principle
Bringing a third party (including imagery) into the bedroom is always eventually damaging and is inconsistent with Scripture. Be cautious of any solo practices that turn your heart away from your spouse. Erotica and porn may seem harmless, but fantasies about someone other than your spouse dilute the sacredness and distract your heart—and can set up expectations that will eat at your intimate life and the pleasure you find together.
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.
Both science and Scripture speak to the overwhelming importance of a right focus. The Bible calls this having a healthy eye. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” The Apostle Paul provides a prescription for retraining the eye: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
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.
| Desire Type | Typical Pattern | What It Means for Couples |
|---|---|---|
| Initiating desire | Feels sexual desire first, then seeks engagement. | Commonly perceived as the default model, but not universal. |
| Receptive desire | Feels open first, then desire grows after engagement starts. | Requires anticipation and context, not shame or pressure. |
| Resistant desire | Frequently unwilling or avoidant, sometimes fearful. | Signals deeper barriers and often needs specialized support. |
Definition — Initiating Desire
The “I’m hungry for sex with you” feeling we see on TV—the type that seems like the “right” kind of sexual desire. But this type of desire describes only four in ten people. In only 5 percent of couples do both spouses work this way. In other words: in 95 percent of marriages, at least one spouse does not normally feel desire and pursue it.
Definition — Receptive Desire
The person is open to sex but simply doesn’t think about sex as often and feels desire in a different order than the person with initiating desire. The feeling of desire is experienced later in sexual engagement, not at the beginning. This person usually decides to get sexually engaged, begins to get aroused, views the arousal as positive, and then feels the desire their initiating partner felt from the very start—often five or ten minutes into sexual play.
Definition — Resistant Desire
A third type that applies to a smaller number of people (7 percent) and signals the need for more specialized attention. People with resistant desire experience it across a spectrum: from unwillingness to engage, to consistent avoidance of sex, all the way to a fear or hatred of sex. As with all matters of sexual desire, resistant desire is complex.
The most common question from higher-desire spouses goes something like this: “Why isn’t my spouse as interested in sex as I am?” For those with receptive desire, the answer lies in the order of events. 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. This is not about choosing sex when you actively don’t want it (which could be wounding). It occurs when the receptive person looks ahead and realizes they will want it. 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 (73 percent) as men (38 percent).
If you don’t recognize that these two types of desire exist, one or both partners might assume the person with receptive desire needs to change—that their desire is “too low.” In fact, the level of desire is a completely different topic. The goal is to work with the type of desire each of you has to come together well, for the health of your intimate life and your marriage.
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 (the case for 27 percent of men and 24 percent of women). Or you don’t feel desire, but you initiate because it’s been a few days and you know it’s important for your marriage. This is called “intentional desire,” and it is an important pattern of action for many.
Giving a receptive partner advance notice—creating anticipation time—can help bridge the gap between the two desire types and give the receptive partner space to begin engaging mentally.
If the higher-desire spouse responds negatively to a mismatch, it can be destructive. Pouting, getting angry, or distancing is not sexy or appealing. A spouse who was originally interested in sex may look over at that reaction and think, “But not with that.” This pushes even receptive desire out of the picture.
Principle
Be curious. Always start with curiosity. Curiosity is incompatible with contempt, criticism, blame, and a host of other destructive stances—especially when talking about sex with your spouse.
Suppose you wish there was more sex happening, but you are receptive rather than initiating. If your spouse is also receptive, they probably aren’t going to initiate the way you’d love—and it probably won’t happen unless you initiate or both of you come up with another solution. The key is to stop being on opposite sides of the table to negotiate who does what and how often, and instead sit on the same side and figure out creative solutions together—for example, scheduling sex.
Key Insight
On this topic, realize: “I’m never not going to have to work on this thing.” The person who doesn’t think about making love as often may not be naturally drawn toward that thought—but they need to do things that bring sex to mind. The person who does think about sex may not be naturally drawn toward the attention their spouse needs outside the bedroom—and may need to purposefully work every day on things like affirming their spouse, listening, and speaking their partner’s love language. Simply expect that you will always need to work on this.
Disagreements about desire are among the most common struggles married couples face. If you are experiencing tension in this area, you are far from alone.
If the type of desire can be compared to a car being in drive, neutral, or reverse, the level of desire can be compared to the fuel in the car. Sometimes, when one partner isn’t “moving,” the issue is that they are in neutral instead of drive. They have plenty of fuel—it just hasn’t been activated yet.
You both want connection, pleasure, and intimacy—and often in roughly similar frequency—but you approach it differently. You may each need something different to keep your “fuel levels” up, or you might want to use your fuel in completely different ways: one person may want a leisurely drive, while the other wants a high-speed chase. Often, those differences are getting in the way rather than a truly large gap in desire level. It is crucial to grasp this, since the incorrect belief that you are far apart in desire can cause far more distress than the actual differences—which are often not as wide as you think.
Key Insight
Very often, the issue isn’t that one person is getting less sex than they want—it is that both people are getting less than they want. When you’re dissatisfied, it’s easy to think your spouse is completely fine with the current frequency. That’s probably not true. When neither spouse is getting as much sex as they’d like, it completely changes the dynamic: instead of trying to fix one person, you can work together to figure out the problem that’s getting in the way.
Instead of the higher-desire person asking, “Why aren’t you having sex?” both need to ask, “Why aren’t we having sex?” For example, is one partner always up late cleaning the kitchen while the other falls asleep? Perhaps you work out a shared solution so both partners go to bed at the same time. Put yourselves on the same team to solve a joint problem.
The dissatisfaction of the higher-desire partner tends to be more acute—which makes it all the more important to treat desire differences as a shared problem rather than one person’s failure.
The lower-desire spouse rarely thinks of themselves as holding power in their sex life. And yet the higher-desire spouse tends to wish they had a way to make it happen more often. This unintentional power struggle can tear at the foundation of marriage. If you are the lower-desire spouse, realize: you actually hold much of the power in your sex life. Once a lower-desire spouse realizes their power and leans in, the marriage has the potential to become particularly playful and rich.
It is easy for the higher-desire spouse to internalize rejection—to feel that their spouse’s lower desire is a commentary on their desirability. Separating your spouse’s desire level from your own worth is essential.
Our true needs as humans are minimal. Without food and water, we die. Without human connection, we suffer and fail to thrive. Sex is not in the same category. Research has tried and failed to prove from multiple angles that sex is a need. When we assert that sex is a need, it implies we have to have sex. Not true. It is a God-designed drive we are called to discipline for good.
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 and your spouse—which will always be destructive.
Childbirth, a new job, new seasons of life, disease, medications, trauma, and aging all change your body and typically negatively impact desire. On the other hand, sleep, exercise, sunlight, and healthy diet are physical changes that can positively impact desire. Being regularly sexually stimulated—by sexual activity or anticipation of it—actually raises testosterone levels, one of the chemicals facilitating desire. Conversely, forgoing sex can cause testosterone 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.
Action Steps
Key Insight
”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. It makes me so thankful for her.”
All of us have insecurities hidden deep inside—and the acute ones beg for comfort. When you hear, “This thing you’re especially insecure about? You don’t have to be. You’re amazing,” the emotional impact is profound.
Across twenty years of research around the globe, it is clear that certain important emotional factors—the deepest fears and desires in our hearts—simply tend to be different between most men and most women.
In general, the core insecurities for women are: Am I loveable? Special? Beautiful? Am I worthy of being loved for who I am on the inside? These questions aren’t answered positively just because a woman gets married or has her picture on a magazine cover. They 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, cherished, beautiful, special, and pursued. Whatever makes her feel that way—which could be as simple as texting “I love you” in the middle of her workday—isn’t just nice but powerful, because it speaks affirmation directly to the area of greatest insecurity.
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? Am I any good at what I do? These questions aren’t resolved just because a man is a great dad or a famous CEO. They morph into, “Does she believe I’m a great dad?” “Is she proud of me?” “Does she see what I’ve done and say it is good?” 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.” That underground self-doubt is so painful that most men shy away from feeling it at all costs—especially with their wife.
Key Insight
Three in four men said that if forced to choose, 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. Women, if forced to choose, would not give up feeling loved to get respect and appreciation. Most men would.
This is why most men feel a powerful longing to be appreciated and respected—to feel admired and believed in. Whatever makes him feel that way—which can be as simple as saying, “Thank you for cleaning up the kitchen”—isn’t just nice but powerful, because it speaks affirmation directly to the area of greatest insecurity.
Principle
It is not your responsibility to make your spouse feel good about themselves, or 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. Each of us must fight our own battle against insecurity; winning that struggle is on us, not our spouse. 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 to affirm one another well.
Both spouses deeply want to feel close to one another. But the order of intimacy that most creates that connection may be different for each partner. As you approach your spouse for sexual connection, or they approach you, these are often the subconscious thoughts: 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, sensual, and playful. When a man’s heart is cared for, he is more likely to be emotionally warm, attentive, and tender.
Definition — What Each Spouse Tends to Want
Women: I want to feel cherished, loved, immensely appealing, close to you, and that you are paying close attention to me.
Men: I want to feel wanted, appreciated, immensely desirable, close to you, and that you can’t keep your hands off me.
Your attention to her outside the bedroom, throughout the day (including in the kitchen over breakfast), sets the stage for her interest in your attention inside the bedroom. This is not about jumping through hoops to get the prize. As you do things that give your wife a positive answer to the “Am I loveable?” question—for example, holding her hand or texting her “you’re beautiful”—she feels cared for, and it helps her feel close to you.
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. Because what he’s doing is untrue. That affection feels like a farce. And that goes both ways. If I’m being critical or condescending to him and then say, ‘Let’s get into bed,’ he wouldn’t like that either.”
First, sex for your husband probably isn’t just about the physical act—it is also about feeling that you desire him. Feeling desired speaks reassurance at a very deep level to his hidden insecurities. One wife reflected: “No matter what is going on, it’s like the cure for everything. He’s depressed? I have sex with him—he’s fine. Angry with the kids? I have sex with him—he’s fine.” The response: “You are never responsible for changing him—with your body or otherwise. But it sounds like you’re realizing that you actually have great power in his life. You can press the reset button on your husband any time.”
A second key truth is that sex likely helps your man feel close to you. If he feels disconnected, if he senses distance during the day, he may reach out sexually to address that discomfort. You may think it is crazy that he wants sex when you are at odds—and not realize that he is reaching for you because you are at odds. When he has an orgasm with you, oxytocin (a bonding hormone) is released in his brain and he feels close to you again.
Beyond the core insecurities described above, other personal vulnerabilities—about body image, past experiences, performance, or unrelated life stressors—can also shape how each spouse feels about and engages with sexual intimacy.
The Surprise: Curiosity and playfulness make sex more erotic and emotionally meaningful than perfect technique.
Imagine three kids entering a playroom. One makes a beeline to the toys they always play with and doesn’t look at anything else. The second child is haughty and critical of each toy. The face of the third shows delight and wonder as they try old toys and explore new ones. When something doesn’t work, they don’t get irritated or back off—instead, they get an I wonder if… look and examine it in a different way. If you could choose one of those kids as a playmate, which would you choose? More important, if you had to be one of those three children, which would you choose?
As Einstein once explained, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Curiosity is a thirst to know or learn something. Once you cultivate the desire to learn the intimate things that make your spouse tick, you will see that 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. What matters to your spouse most, in and out of the bedroom? What do they really enjoy and what do they merely tolerate? What have they avoided telling you because they’re worried it will hurt your feelings?
Key Insight
If your spouse views you as curious, you both are more than three times as likely to be very happy with how often you have sex. In fact, the more your spouse views you as curious, the more often you are likely to have sex, period.
The message being received by routine, lack of remembering, or indifference is clear: I’m not curious about you… and don’t really care about you. That perception may not be true at all, but that is what the spouse hears. By contrast, among those who praised their spouse, the word “considerate” came up frequently. Being considerate is nearly synonymous with knowing and acting on what matters to the other person—which requires curiosity to begin with.
For example, if your wife seems unaroused, rather than pulling away because you feel like you failed, you accept the challenge and curiously ask what might work. Or if your husband seems passive, you neither pull back nor overcompensate—you curiously ask, “What’s up? What would help you want to engage?”
In one clinical example, a wife who didn’t feel competent at oral sex said, “I don’t know how. I feel clumsy. And I feel like he’s comparing me to previous partners.” Even though her husband insisted he loved being with her, she was bound up by anxiety. She was not truly opposed to the idea—just afraid. The suggestion: shift from a fear-based “I don’t know how” mindset to a curious “I wonder” mindset. Rather than trying to “do” oral sex and “get it right,” she was invited to play, discover, and explore—Does this feel good? What happens when I do this?—with no expectations. She ended up enjoying it once it became about exploring rather than performing.
A posture of ongoing curiosity 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.
Curiosity is a simple skill to build—mostly a mindset that becomes a habit. It starts with a humility that acknowledges you don’t know it all, and you especially don’t know everything about your spouse. This fosters a willingness to keep your eyes open and try to figure out answers over time.
Action — Read Together
If you need help talking, read a book out loud together. Take turns reading and use the book as the excuse to talk about sexual things. As one wife shared: “I’ve been reluctant to share certain things because I want to give him affirmation rather than making him feel like I’m being critical: ‘Try this, not that.’ But 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 were on the same page working it out.”
As one husband reflected: “God knows we cannot begin to understand His true nature but He loves the fact that we try, in whatever capacity we can. And I’m hoping it is sort of the same with my wife. My hope is that even though I try and fumble about and ask silly questions and try again, that she would give me grace in that effort. There’s mystery to her that I’m not sure I’ll fully understand, but so much more intimacy comes from trying.”
The Surprise: Having a comfortable way to signal (and receive) openness or interest will create connection and prevent much pain.
When there’s a sense of disappointment, pressure, or frustration—“I never know what answer I’m going to get”—we tend to think the issue is about someone’s sex drive (or lack thereof). In reality, it may be about initiation.
Living seductively also means not letting your worst self come out with your spouse. Maybe you realize you have to stop treating your spouse like another child to be managed, or fight off irritation that they didn’t notice the work you put in on the lawn. Maybe you fight the temptation to be cold in bed because you’re hanging on to anger about something said over breakfast, or to act like a martyr when asked to run an errand when you’re tired. You know you can fight your less-than-appealing natural tendencies because you already do—at work, at church, homeschooling the kids, or planning community events. You don’t demand the things you want; you draw them out of colleagues and friends by bringing your best self to the party. You need to apply the same skill with your spouse.
Sparks can be verbal (“Wanna get naked?”) or nonverbal (beginning to caress more private areas). They can be very direct (beginning to unbutton clothing) or more indirect (taking an evening shower and not being in a hurry to get pajamas on).
One husband discovered that his wife really valued when he tried to equally share the chores—and that if he explicitly flirted with her while doing the dishes or before going out to clean the gutters, it gave them both “anticipation time” and was their start to the sexual process, even if it happened hours later. His wife said, “Instead of foreplay, we call it choreplay.”
It’s not enough to send a signal—you need to ensure your spouse actually receives and understands it. Check in and stay attuned to how your signals are landing.
Definition — Three Categories of Intimate Touch
Basic cuddling: Something you could do in front of others.
Making out: Something arousing that you wouldn’t do in front of others, but not orgasm-focused.
Sex: Orgasm-focused.
There is huge value in identifying shared language for these categories, so you can figure out what level of touch you are aiming for. For example: “I don’t think I have the energy for sex, but I would love to cuddle.”
This clarity prevents a common problem: the higher-desire spouse may simply be looking for a cuddle, but their partner resists because they assume he or she is looking for actual sex.
Principle
The failure to effectively give and receive a “no” is one of the most infectious agents in a couple’s sex life. Both the person saying no and the person hearing it need to convey and absorb one message: the timing isn’t right. Because so many vulnerabilities and emotions are involved in reaching out sexually, it is easy to hear painful messages in the turndown: You aren’t desirable, I don’t like you, you’re not appealing, I don’t care about you. It is highly likely that none of those is accurate, but they feel real. “The timing isn’t right” provides a reassuring alternative. It doesn’t mean it won’t sting—but it is a world away from “You aren’t an appealing person.”
In general, it makes all the difference if the person giving the no can share why the timing isn’t right and offer an alternative. For example: “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. Today was grueling. Can we have a date Thursday after I get back from my shift?”
The Surprise: Accepting that your spouse isn’t everything you wanted lets you enjoy what you’ve got.
In the end, all counseling work is grief work. Something about your spouse isn’t what you were hoping for. You have to grieve what isn’t and accept what is before you can move forward to enjoy what you have. The best partner probably provides about 80 percent of what you’d want in a spouse. We all fall short; we all have opportunities for disappointment. Maybe you’ve always envisioned playful sex, but your spouse treats it like an engineering problem. Or you’ve wished your spouse would sexually flirt with you during the day, but they’re in work or parenting mode and it doesn’t cross their mind. Or perhaps there’s something more significant—maybe you feel your spouse should be much better at something that really matters to you, or they’re struggling with behavior that seems unlikely to change. Maybe you’re in a neurodiverse marriage, and their scattered focus or difficulty empathizing keeps you feeling seen only in glances.
When you feel those very real disappointments, there is a way forward—it’s just probably not the answer you’re hoping for. Instead of the cause of disappointment being resolved so you get everything as you want it, you must grapple with a different solution: grieving the loss of what you wanted and accepting things as they are, even as you continue to work on yourself. Accepting your spouse and the situation allows you to focus on enjoying what you have.
This may be a hard truth. If your spouse is wrestling with something disappointing or hurtful, no one can make them change. But you have the power to bring about positive change by shifting you. Whenever you allow something in your spouse to keep you from your own fulfillment, you are choosing to be a type of victim. If they must change before you can be okay, you are trapped by whether they are willing to change—so you try to force change, and that usually backfires because humans typically do not respond positively to being pushed.
Key Insight
Those who stated 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 3 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. You must grieve and let go of who they are not, if you are to accept who they are. If you’ve ever lost a close friend or family member, you know you have to work through many emotions to accept that you will no longer be able to grab coffee and discuss the latest news. In healthy grieving, you eventually reach full acceptance. That same process must happen with many disappointments in marriage.
Many people haven’t grieved the loss of something in their spouse. A wife might say, “I know he’s ADHD off the charts, but I need him to really care about what happened during my day—to sit on the couch and just listen.” A husband might say, “I know she’s not a workout-type person, but I really need her to come to the gym with me.” Or maybe it is much more significant—the loss of erections after prostate surgery, or the chronic fatigue and pain from autoimmune issues. If you wish for something you will never have, you’re not only going to be distressed, but dissatisfaction with your spouse could grow exponentially. Even worse, you can easily miss what is wonderful about them. Grieving means you accept that something will never be a part of your life.
Grieving brings two important shifts. First, you stop seeing your spouse through a deficit lens, focusing on what they are not. Instead of only seeing weakness, grieving who he is not allows you to be drawn by his strengths. 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 wanted lets you celebrate the artist they are becoming.
One huge difference between giddy premarital couples and crisis couples struggling to be in the same room is a willingness to extend grace. Grace is often defined as unmerited favor. In marriage, you extend grace by choosing to see the best in each other, despite all the very real ways you mess up. It means putting into practice that biblical command to focus on things that are excellent and worthy of praise rather than things worthy of driving you crazy. For example, perhaps you choose to view your spouse as persistent (a trait you love) rather than stubborn (a trait you dislike).
As one person shared: “He kept showing me grace during the rough patches, and it was finally like, ‘Wait a minute, there’s no reason to fight him because he’s on my side!’”
If you don’t grieve, then what your spouse is not is all you see—as if you’re standing an inch from a scratched-up porch column, and most of what fills your eyes are the blemishes. Having grace is like stepping back several yards and refocusing: you can see the whole house, which helps you not fixate on the scratches. Giving honor, then, is like looking at the house and realizing it is beautiful—the graceful windows, the welcoming front door that makes you want to walk inside. When you honor your spouse, you focus on and celebrate the 80 percent.
Principle
There is a critical difference between acceptance and tolerance. As one therapist pushed back on a frustrated higher-desire wife: “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?” Sexuality is so diverse; it is sad when someone gets stuck on one type of behavior or characteristic. If you can move through the frustration, there is so much more on the other side.
Honor makes acceptance complete and allows for true enjoyment. Because once you truly accept that your spouse isn’t everything you wanted, you can see and enjoy what you’ve got. All the way through the survey, those who had come to a more complete sense of acceptance and enjoyment had more positive responses: they were more likely to enjoy being sexually playful, more likely to communicate well, and less likely to hold themselves back about mentioning something they might want to try sexually.
Definition — The “Forsaking All Others” Principle
Marriage is a choice and then a lifelong commitment. The wedding vow phrase “forsaking all others” foreshadows the grief process in marriage. It acknowledges: “Not only am I choosing all of who you are and who you are not, I am also actively choosing not any other.”
Definition — Yada
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 mere 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 many years, scholars taught that Song of Solomon was solely a divine allegory of Christ’s love for his bride. Certainly, they claimed, descriptions of “tasting of her garden or his fruit” couldn’t be about oral sex. God would never speak of something as base as physical pleasure, right? Except a plain reading of the text shows it is about both the spirit of the act and a loving couple engaging in sex. Conversely, culture often emphasizes only the body of the act—sex becomes entertainment, a sport, all about parts and technique and how you play the game for the greatest pleasure.
Principle — Incarnate Sex
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 (bigger, better orgasms without caring how the behavior impacts their spouse’s heart), the greater meaning of the act is at risk of being torn apart, and sex becomes disincarnate. Or if either spouse focuses only on the spirit (“I’d rather never have sex again, I just want to be close”), sex is missing a key component and becomes disincarnate.
Consider this practical example: a high-desire husband often focused on the body of the act initiates with his wife. She often responds in a way that says, “We can do that after you touch my heart”—she is asking for the spirit of the act. After he takes her on a date and attends to her heart, she wants to engage physically. While they emphasized different aspects, they accepted influence from each other and worked to keep sex about both the body and the spirit—they worked to keep it incarnate.
So be curious and explore each other. Don’t just accept your assumptions. Talk through the points in this book. 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.