What kinds of emotional needs does your sexual interest meet for your man? In written survey comments and in my interviews, I noticed two parallel trends—the great benefits a fulfilling sex life creates in a man’s inner life and, conversely, the wounds created when lovemaking is reluctant or lacking.
Benefit #1: Fulfilling sex makes him feel loved and desired
Not surprisingly, the first thing surfaced from the survey comments was that having a regular, mutually enjoyed sex life was critical to the man’s feeling of being loved and desired. One eloquent plea captured it perfectly:
I wish that my wife understood that making a priority of meeting my intimacy needs is the loudest and clearest way she can say, “You are more important to me than anything else in the world.” It is a form of communication that speaks more forcefully, with less room for misinterpretation, than any other.
The reason why this message is needed is that many men—even those with close friendships— seem to live with a deep sense of loneliness that is quite foreign to us oh-so-relational women. And making love is the purest salve for that loneliness.
One man told me, “I feel like I go out into the ring every day and fight. It’s very lonely. That’s why, when the bell rings, I want my wife to be there for me.”
Another related that sentiment to the power of fulfilling sex. “A man really does feel isolated, even with his wife. But in making love, there is one other person in this world that you can be completely vulnerable with and be totally accepted and non-judged. It is a solace that goes very deep into the heart of a man.
This is one reason why some men may make advances at times that seem the furthest from sexual. One woman relayed a story about her husband wanting to make love after a funeral for a close relative. Making love was a comfort and a way of being wrapped in her love.
Benefit #2: Fulfilling sex gives him confidence
Your desire for him goes beyond making him feel wanted and loved. Your desire is a bedrock form of support that gives him power to face the rest of his daily life with a sense of confidence and well-being.
By now most of us have seen the television commercials for Viagra in which a man’s colleagues for friends repeatedly stop him and ask what’s “different” about him. New haircut? Been working out? Promotion? Nope, the man tells them all, with a little smile.
One man I interviewed brought up those ads. “Every man immediately understands what that commercial is saying —it’s all about guys feeling good about themselves. The ad portrays a truth that all men intuitively recognize. They’re more confident and alive when their sex life is working.”
Once my eyes were opened to this truth, I realized how often I’d heard the “man code” for this fact, but failed to understand it. When men had told me they “felt better” when they got more sex, I had just assumed they meant physically better.
But as one husband told me, “What happens in the bedroom really does affect how I feel the next day at the office.” Another wrote, “Sex is a release of a day-to-day pressures and seems to make everything else better.”
Wound #1: “If she doesn’t want to, I feel incredible rejection.”
As much as men want sex, most of them would rather go out and clip the hedges in the freezing rain than make love with a wife who appears to be responding out of duty. My husband, Jeff, explained: “The guy isn’t going to be rejected by the hedges. And that’s the issue. If she’s just responding because she has to, he’s being rejected by his wife.”
Again, keeping in mind that what he wants most is for you to desire him, try to see what he wants most is for you to desire him, try to see this rejection issue from the man’s point of view. If we agree, but don’t make an effort to get really engaged with the man we love, he hears us saying, “You’re incapable of turning me on even when you try, and I really don’t care about what matters deeply to you.” On the other hand if we don’t agree at all, but throw out the classic “Not tonight, dear,” he hears, “You’re so undesirable that you can’t compete with a pillow… and I really don’t care about what matters deeply to you.”
Although we might just be saying we don’t want sex at that point in time, he hears the much more painful message that we don’t want him.
Here’s what the men themselves said on the survey:
• “She doesn’t understand that I feel loved by sexual caressing, and if she doesn’t want to, I feel incredible rejection.”
• “When she says no, I feel that I am REJECTED, ‘No’ is not no to sex—as she might feel. It is no to me as I am. And I am vulnerable as I ask or initiate. It’s plain and simple rejection.”
• “She doesn’t understand how even her occasional dismissals make me feel less desirable. I can’t resist her. I wish that I, too, were irresistible. She says I am. But her ability to say no so easily makes it hard to believe.”
This feeling of personal rejection, and a sense that his wife doesn’t really desire him, tends to lead a man into darker waters.
Wound #2: your lack of desire can send him into depression.
If your sexual desire gives your husband a sense of well-being and confidence, you can understand why an ongoing perception that you don’t desire him would translate into a nagging lack of confidence, withdrawal, and depression.
The men I talked to scoffed at my tentative suggestion that a string of similar rejections wouldn’t necessarily mean that their wives were rejecting them as men. They warned that any woman sending those signals would undermine the loving environment she wants most because, as one man said, “She is going to have one depressed man on her hands.”
A man can’t just turn off the physical and emotional importance of sex, which is why its lack can be compared to the emotional pain you’d feel if your husband simply stopped talking to you. Consider the painful words of this truly deprived husband—words that other men, upon reading them, call “heartbreaking”:
We’ve been married for a long time. I deeply regret and resent the lack of intimacy of nearly any kind for the duration of our marriage. I feel rejected, ineligible, insignificant, lonely, isolated, and abandoned as a result. Not having the interaction I anticipated prior to marriage is like a treasure lost and irretrievable. It causes deep resentment and hurt within me. This in turn fosters anger and feelings of alienation.
…If you view sex as a purely physical need, it might indeed seem comparable to sleep. But once you realize that your man is actually saying, “This is essential to my feeling of being loved and desired by you, and is critical to counteract my stress, my fears, and my loneliness,” well… that suddenly puts it in a different category. So how might you respond?
First, know that you’re responding to a tender heart hiding behind all that testosterone. If at all possible, respond to his advances with your full emotional involvement, knowing that you’re touching his heart. But if responding physically seems out of the question, let your words be heart words—reassuring, affirming, adoring. Do everything in your power—using words and actions your husband understands—to keep those pangs of personal rejection from striking the man you love. Leave him in no doubt that you love to love him.
And remember, if you do respond physically but do it just to “meet his needs” without getting engaged, you’re not actually meeting his needs. In fact, you might as well send him out to clip the hedges. So enjoy God’s intimate gift, and make the most of it!
…I recognize that some women might very much wish that they could respond more wholeheartedly to their husband’s sexual needs, but feel stopped in their tracks for various personal reasons. I don’t want to add any more frustration. I do, however, want to encourage you to get the personal or professional help you need to move forward. The choice to pursue healing will be worth it, both for you and the man you love.
Make sex a priority
An excerpt from a Today’s Christian Woman article captures this issue—and provides an important challenge to change our thinking. The author starts by admitting that although her husband really wanted to make love more often, it “just wasn’t one of my priorities.” She then describes a subsequent revelation:
I felt what I did all day was meet other people’s needs. Whether it was caring for my children, working in ministry, or washing my husband’s clothes, by the end of the day I wanted to be done need-meeting. I wanted my pillow and a magazine. But God prompted me: “Are the ‘needs’ you meet for your husband the needs he wants met?”
If your daughters weren’t perfectly primped, he didn’t complain. If the kitchen floor needed mopping, he didn’t say a word. And if he didn’t have any socks to wear, he simply threw them in the washer himself.
I soon realized I regularly said “no” to the one thing he asked of me. I sure wasn’t making myself available to my husband by militantly adhering to my plan for the day… Would the world end if I didn’t get my tires rotated? I’d been focused on what I wanted to get done and what my children needed, I’d cut my husband out of the picture.
Are the many things that take our time and energy truly as important as this one? Now would be a good time to reevaluate priorities with the help of our husbands so they know that we are taking this seriously.
… Having heard from so many men on this, I would urge you: Don’t discount it. It’s more important to him—and to your relationship and therefore your own joy in marriage —than you can imagine.
Now that you understand the tender places in your husband’s heart, hopefully you have developed compassion for him and the way he is wired.
The above article comes from the terrific book, FOR WOMEN ONLY… What you Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men -by Shaunti Feldhahn, published by Multnomah. This is a GREAT book (which has much more insight on this and many other subjects) to help women learn about what motivates men and their thought processes behind their actions (or non-actions). Shaunti had interviewed over 1000 men in researching this book. As a result she found that she didn’t know the mind of her husband and others like she thought she did. So what she does in this book is reveal the findings her research brought out so that other women can better understand the men in their lives which will help them to better interact with them. Preview or Purchase this book now
There is also a For Women Only Discussion Guide available, written by Shaunti Feldhahn along with Lisa Rice, which is published by Multnomah. It’s designed to be used by book clubs, in small groups, or even for having a one-on-one dialogue with the man of your life. Many women, after reading the For Women Only book may wonder, “So what do I do with the information I’ve just been given?” This discussion guide is designed to answer that question. It contains personal stories, questions, and situational case studies to help equip you to apply the truths you learn in your own life. Preview or purchase this book now
-ALSO-
There was a radio broadcast series that aired a while ago where Nancy DeMoss interviewed Shaunti Feldhahn and Barbara Rainey on this same subject. We believe you would greatly benefit from reading the transcripts. To do so, click onto the links provided below:
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(USA) Having been married now for 13 years, I am convinced that this whole marriage thing is a cruel joke that God has played on us humans. I thought I was the only man dealing with this dilemma and suffered a great deal of regret towards my wife. Until I got brave enough to "hold myself accountable" to some other Christian brothers, only to find out that they were living the same Hell!
I am convinced that my wife takes me totally for granted especially in the area of sexual intimacy. I serve my wife well in every arena of our marriage and yet she has this half hearted attitude towards sex. And now her excuse is pre-menopause. God, when will it end? When will I be valued for being what God made me? And the worst part is she actually expects me to understand all of her justifications for infrequent physical intimacy all the while I have to jump through hoops every day just to get any respect as a man let alone a husband. Pick up the kids, keep the yard clean, change the oil in her car, fix her breakfast and lunch as she goes to work, talk to the kids, discipline the kids, bring her a diet coke home, kill that spider, lay new carpet, fix the toilet, turn on the heat, turn on the AC, and so on. Her list is un-exhaustive and all I desire is a little consistent physical intimacy after a hard day’s work. And 80 % of time I go to bed and to work, totally unfulfilled.
If this is the reflection of the mystery of Christ and His church… no wonder the Church is so ineffective. I applaud this article but I still don’t think women will get it if they read it. I think they actually believe that have a right to be non-intimate with their husbands and yet the Bible says the very opposite. And the worst part is even when we do have sex I am the initiator 95% of the time and I work harder at pleasing her because I have taken the time to find out what she likes the most. And even then I’m lucky if she puts any self motivated interest to return the favor. Bottom line, I think most women are selfish and Christian wives have doomed their husbands to a life of mental and emotional defeat and adultery!
(TRINIDAD) I have been married for a year and five months. My marriage is failing.
(ZAMBIA) I have been reading all the posts on this topic. Honestly, how do you expect the wife to give in to a husband who has been unfaithful…had sex with someone else without protection? And when you ask him to do an HIV/AIDS test and other STIs he refuses. Some pastor counseled us and we tried it and I was feeling like he is infecting me with diseases… I can’t give in for anything.
Just look at the society we live in. It’s full of HIV/AIDS, sexual harassment and violence against women. Women are killed, they are disrespected. Sex with my husband does not turn me on.
Would you blame the wife in this situation? I have tried to pray for our marriage but each time I close my eyes I see him having sex with that dirty sickly looking woman. I just want out of the marriage.
(KENYA) It’s sad really and I feel for all the brothers and sisters in here. After reading this, I am truly thankful to God that ever since I discovered I could have sex, I’ve never had issues with it. Been married 10 years and I don’t mind making love morning, noon or night. I might miss a day or two to regain my strength but if I go beyond that I get uptight and irritable.
Granted, some days I feel like it and he doesn’t either but I have learned that putting our issues aside actually helps us resolve those very issues after sex. Mind you, my husband doesn’t say much but every time we make love, I know he looooves me! I initiate and like variety in position and geography… so long as it is all governed by the scriptures. My man’s problem in probably not too little but too much
BUT – there is a time that we did not have regular sex for about 5-6 years – 1.5 of which we had no sex at all. He was the one who stopped for reasons that are only between him and Jehovah God.
Recently though, the Lord came through for us and wham bam, my hubby initiated and it’s been action ever since. I can’t say what the formula was but God knows I had reached the end of my rope having faced numerous temptations and at some point, gave in (and told hubby about it)…
I pray that God will open the eyes and hearts of both the guys and gals and that we will be ready to fulfill each others needs unselfishly. Please know that porn and infidelity will only offer temporary satisfaction – however, trust in the Lord and he will sustain your heart and meet you at the point of your need. May you, like my husband and me, recover it all; all the years the worm has eaten. In Jesus Name!
(USA) I am getting married in two months and this has helped me a lot with what to expect.
(USA) Came across this web article and I must say that it’s truly opened my eyes that I’m not the only one facing such a problem. I actually went to speak to a therapist in secret if I had some sort of sexual disorder for wanting it when she didn’t and everyone told me that I was perfectly fine. Imagine the anguish and pain I felt when I kept getting rejected all the time. I’m not sure if this applies to other males, but I truly respect all females for who they are and for my other half. I try to cater to all her needs, doing really nice things for her and all without expecting anything in return. My only thing that I’ve ever asked was to have an intimate time more than what we have now, which is really sporadic and it’s always because she feels like it.
I spoke to her about it and she’s told me that there’s so much more to our relationship than just intimate sessions and so it’s not a huge part in her life. I tried my best to accept it but all of you know it’s really not how we were made. For me, sex, making love or whatever we call it, is a true intimate bond that I share with her but maybe females just don’t see it that way.
Honestly, if I ask, it seems as though I’m forcing it and if I wait, I find it hard to bear. I read in another web article that if you truly love your wife or other half, that the anticipation is worth the wait. I’m sorry but I cannot agree with that for many reasons that were already cited above. It’s come to a point where I’m not sure if i should send her this link because she may think I’m using it to pressure her into something she’s not comfortable with.
My fear is that I only desire her and her only. If this keeps up, I may find myself wandering off into the "cheating" zone and if something happens, it becomes our (guys) fault again. Are we really to be blamed for it entirely? I’m not too sure anymore. Maybe someone can comment on my post. Criticize or whatever, but I’m quite sure that other guys reading this post will understand the dilemma I’m in.
(USA) EKE, As is obvious, the multitude of posts on this article sound like the same man over and over. Our frustrations are real and our needs are legitimate. I am a Pastor of 20 years who gets so fed up with the oblivious attitude of my wife in spite of my best efforts to communicate. She does try though. But it’s pretty hit and miss.
After several rough seasons I have struggled with questions about starting over with someone else. But here are my motivations to never do it 1) I know it’s not what God wants me to do. 2) There’s really no guarantee a new relationship would not fall into the same problems. 3) I can’t bear to break her heart. 4) I can’t bear to break my kids hearts. So I live by this: “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
(USA) I am here to share a message of hope! I last posted a comment on May 22, 2008. Our marriage has turned completely around. We attended counseling last summer, and we have learned to love each other again. The most helpful thing our counselor advised was that we read a few books together “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus” by John Gray, and “The Peacegiver” by James Ferrell. We read them together and discussed them.
We started with Mars/Venus; it was difficult at first, because I had so much pent-up anger that I didn’t really care about the book’s message. But, we stuck to it. We learned that men and women are different. The most wonderful thing that we discovered is a new language of understanding. We have words now to describe how we are feeling. So, instead of getting in an argument because one of us is in a bad mood, we can say, “Oh, I understand that you are different from me and that you are just going through one of your moments. What can I do to support you or make you feel better?”
Knowledge is the key to understanding. Because of reading these books and discussing how to apply them in our lives, we have an emotionally healthy relationship, where before we were walking on an emotional tightrope. It’s wonderful! In fact, we want all of our family and friends to experience this. For Christmas gifts, we gave all of our married brothers and sisters the Mars/Venus book. They have all enjoyed many laughs and aha-moments while reading it together. I highly recommend them all.
And, because we are at peace with one another, we are able to be closer, and intimacy comes naturally. All of our sexual problems went right out the window with all of the garbage. One thing I remember our counselor saying is “Many people are wrong in thinking that the better the sex, the better the marriage. The opposite is true. The better your marriage relationship, the better the sexual intimacy.”
I see many frustrated husbands posting messages on here. I would like to encourage you to read Mars/Venus and 5 Love Languages with your wives. Like many wives, I didn’t understand the impact of sex (or the lack thereof) on my husband. But, once a wife is able to understand, she makes it a priority in her life. My many hopes and prayers go out to all of you who are struggling. Find peace in Christ!
(USA) First off, I want to thank everyone else who has posted. It’s been a real blessing to read these posts and realize I’m not alone in my feelings of depression and despair. It’s true that men don’t talk about this enough, and each one thinks that he is the only one being ‘betrayed’ by his wife’s lack of libido. Isn’t it crazy that rejection from our spouses can hurt so much?
I’ve tried several things to detach from my intense (and mostly unreciprocated) desire for my wife like meditation, alcohol, and pornography. They didn’t work (surprised?) but three things have helped me feel better about myself and my situation are (1) helping out more around the house (yes, scrubbing toilets), (2) losing weight and taking better care of my appearance, and (3) prayer. I can’t say I’m having sex more frequently, but I feel better about myself as a man, and less dependent upon my wife for my own self-esteem.
(USA) In my quest for deeper understanding of my husband’s heart, I stumbled across this article which I am so thankful for. Also, to all of the men who have taken the time to post a comment, I very much thank you for revealing your innermost feelings. Your comments have helped me tremendously.
I have been married to a wonderful and faithful man for 15 years. We have a 4 year-old son and in general, I thought everything was going well. However, since the birth of our son, I must admit that our intimacy has diminished to the point of love-making once a quarter. Obviously, this is not normal, but I did not realize how much this was hurting my marriage since my husband never expressed his needs to me. Although I do enjoy making love with husband, it’s not vital to my well-being or happiness, so it was no longer a priority AT ALL.
During the past year, I have personally grown closer in my walk with the Lord, and most recently, have been earnestly praying for an anointing of His wisdom & revelation. Thinking that the Lord would be showing me things pertaining to my spiritual walk with Him, I suddenly stumbled upon three pornographic websites on my laptop that my husband had been viewing. Words cannot describe how mortified, angry and disgusted I was with my husband. I felt betrayed & was ready to call it quits without discussion.
My husband claims that this was the “first time” that he had viewed such websites and that initially, the little boxes just flashed on the screen. Hmmm. After a thorough scan of all the computers, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt. But the relevance here is that it woke me up to the needs & desires of my husband. We have been intimate for the past 3 nights & in a way that we both have not felt since our son was born (that’s 4 years!).
After love-making, my husband commented about how wonderful he felt and that prior to my renewed interest, he was on the verge of resenting me for “withholding” sex. I was a little perplexed that he had such thoughts. I assumed that he was no longer attracted to me. Go figure!
For all of the husbands & gentlemen out there, I have never “withheld” sex, but (I do admit) that I never expressed a real interest, either. However, never once did my husband express to me just how important it was to him.
I believe that the Lord gave me this revelation and the wisdom to do something about it immediately. In addition, I am convinced that the Lord has instilled a strong desire in my heart, for my husband. I now feel that I physically want to be with him all the time and I want to satisfy his every need.
In summary, my sincere advice is for the husbands to earnestly pray & ask the Lord to give your wives wisdom & revelation, and an open heart regarding this matter. Nothing is impossible with God. Nothing!
I hope you will not grow bitter & angry, but will give your wives a chance to show you just how much they love you. Personally, I wished that my husband would have just written a letter to me expressing his true needs. I was totally clueless!
(UK) This is very sad indeed! I think the best thing is to understand one another, is to accept the fact that we are different. I am looking forward to reading those books with my husband as well. Thanx Barbara; you really brought a message of hope!