At a marriage conference at which I was speaking this past weekend, I noted how often I am asked by evangelical Christian couples about a lack of sex in their marriages. For some couples, I’m sure, this is the result of overstressed schedules and general exhaustion. But, more often, I’m convinced, there’s something more afoot.
Of course, the typical complaint from men is that their wives are no longer interested in sex, and that they no longer wish to put out the “effort” to convince them to have it. I am sure there are some men with “frigid” wives, but very rarely do I find this to be the case. Instead, when one peels back the bark enough, one will find a wife who doesn’t trust or who doesn’t respect her husband enough to desire intimacy with him. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the man is unworthy of trust or respect, but it does mean that he had better sort out why this is the case from her point of view.
Not long ago, I read an article about high-powered female corporate CEOs with “house-husbands” who stayed home with the children. This arrangement seems logical in an egalitarian “gifts-based” household economy. One of the women, however, noted that she no longer found her husband sexually attractive. “I don’t know why,” she said. “I just feel like his mother, or something.”
There are some sexually frustrated men whose frustrations are entirely outside their control. More often, though, there’s a wife who feels like a mother or a concubine. She is stressed with wondering what the future holds with an indecisive man who will not lead. Or she’s wondering whether her husband desires her, or the “barely legal” teen idol he’s been ogling on the television screen. And because the sex act is designed to signify a one-flesh union between Christ and his church, she isn’t finding herself all that interested in something decidedly less than that.
The Scriptures do more than just “allow” sexual activity between husbands and wives. The Bible mandates regular sexual union. As a matter of fact, the apostle Paul grounds the command for regular sexual union not just in each spouse’s authority over the other’s body, but also in the larger cosmic picture of spiritual warfare against Satan (1 Cor 7:1-5).
The answer for sexually icy marriages, however, is not to quote Bible passages to one another as weapons. Nor is it to put a calendar up with stars for each night of sex. Instead, perhaps it’s for a husband first to look in the mirror and ask why the chill is there in the first place.
