This passage discusses how to make sex something that unites you, rather than something that drives a wedge between you. And so let’s talk about an issue: What really matters in a marriage is not so much the frequency of sex (though that is important) as the enthusiasm and the passion.
So much of a man’s self-esteem especially is tied into whether or not his wife desires him sexually. It’s not just that she’ll acquiesce to have sex with him; it’s that she actually wants to. And, in fact, if a woman decides to placate her husband, he’ll experience that as rejection, even though she’s “letting him”. For many men, that actually leads to erectile dysfunction. They have a difficult time “completing the deed” if they feel like she isn’t really there for it.
Now, women who are married to men who don’t have high sex drives have problems in this area, too, though it often manifests itself in slightly different ways. But the message to take home is this: your spouse needs to feel like you actually desire and want sex, and not just that you are willing to go through the motions. You’ve already talked to your spouse about how frequently you’re hoping to make love, but it isn’t enough to just say, “okay, we can if you want.” You have to show your spouse that you’re truly interested.
In fact, many women complain that when they start “letting” him make love more frequently, he gets even more demanding. So they just give up. They think, “I’ll never satisfy him, so why bother?” But the problem is that you haven’t met his basic need, which is to feel desired. In fact, if you just lie there and don’t really participate, you’ve reinforced the idea that you don’t enjoy sex and really don’t want to do it. That’s going to cause him to desperately want to make sure that you do desire him, and so he will actu
ally become more urgent about wanting sex. His most basic need, you see, is not to actually have sex. It’s to feel as if he’s wanted.
At this point some women are just about ready to give up. So it’s not enough that I have sex? You ask, I actually have to want it? How can I force myself to want it?
You’re suggested an idea here: Initiate it. Really. You be the one to give him a big kiss and say, “let’s go upstairs.” Take him by the hand after you watch a movie together and lead him to the bedroom. You start the whole process, rather than waiting to see if your spouse is “going to want to tonight”. What’s in it for you, you ask? Here are just a few benefits:
1. If you initiate, you have more control over what you do
We talked earlier about how important angle and foreplay is to women. If you initiate, you can take mroe care that you get the right position and the attention you need.
Also, if you’re uncomfortable about certain things (or even uncomfortable about certain parts of your body), then you can steer things in a more comfortable direction for you.
2. If you initiate, you throw yourself into it more
You’re automatically more active, and that ofen means that your body will follow more readily because your mind is more engaged.
3. You create a goodwill circle
When you initiate, you show your spouse that you really love to do desire him or her. That makes your spouse feel better about you and baout the relationship, and is going to make both of you feel closer to each other.
In a marriage, if one person is doing all the initiating, you have a problem. That person, whether male or female, will feel as if the other spouse doesn’t really desire that kind of intimacy, and that’s a very lonely feeling.
If you know you’re likely going to make love anyway tonight, why not make the extra-effort- and it really takes so little effort - to be the one to suggest it, or to try to seduce your spouse? When it’s a two-way street, you each feel desried, you each feel loved, and you each feel close to one another. When one is always doing the asking, it’s humiliating. You feel as if your spouse doesn’t really love you or value being close to you. You feel as if you’re constantly begging. And eventually, what some survey responds told me, is that they stop asking, and sex comes to a standstill.
Healthy couples both initiate. If you are in a situation where one spouse initiates 80-90% of the time, you have an imbalance that can cause problems. One spouse should back off a bit, but the other spouse also needs to fill in those gaps.
So take a deep breath, take your spouse’s hand, and say, “let’s do it!” That one little change can make such a tremendous difference in your marriage.
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