There is a painful, false belief woven into the fabric of our culture that permeates the thinking of almost everyone I see at my office. A surprisingly high number of counselors and pastors believe this myth too! Yet it is incredibly damaging to the man who struggles sexually. It is equally as damaging to the wife who believes it.
It’s simply not true that more or more exciting sex will keep a man from wandering and curb his sexual acting out. In fact, in most cases, it makes things worse. Why is this so?
This myth is so damaging for men because it perpetuates both the deficient emotional intimacy issues that underlie acting out as well as the neural chemistry of acting out. Increasing frequency of sexual intercourse with one’s wife usually serves only to create an expanded context for acting out. Now, in addition to a computer, a hotel room, an office, or a strip club being the place where sexual misconduct occurs, it also takes place in the marriage bed. The husband’s view of his wife changes from seeing her as a beautiful child of God and dearly treasured companion to viewing her as another object available for vaginal masturbation. Does that sound harsh? It should, because it is harsh.
This is what happens, though, when we use our wife for sexual gratification devoid of any aspect of deep, loving emotional intimacy. Moreover, when a wife agrees to do sex differently, meaning more “exciting” or “exotic” by trying different positions, clothing, conversation, or implements, she simply becomes an equivalent of the husband’s debilitating porn, a personal prostitute—and neither husband nor wife consciously perceives this. To an addict, this request to his wife is nothing more than vicariously clicking his computer mouse. His wife becomes an object to be manipulated for his desire, not to connect with her soul, not to honor God, not to show love, not to create a bond unlike any other on the planet. Instead, simply to get off.
Transforming one’s wife into an object for gratification is cruel, demeaning, and, frankly, a slap in God’s face. Objectification takes the gift of a wife who has been generously joined to a husband for mutual benefit and development and crassly converts her into a thing to gratify his selfish desires.
It is pertinent to note the neural chemical aspect of seeking more exciting sex or exotic sex. Other books delve into the details of this, so I’ll keep it fairly brief here. A host of chemicals are released in the brain during sexual activity, including dopamine, epinephrine, adrenaline, and serotonin. For the sake of this discussion, the primary chemical driver in sexual addiction is dopamine, which motivates the pursuit of novelty and excitement.
Invia Betjoseph, a friend and an Every Man’s Battle Workshop counselor, describes dopamine as gasoline in an eight-cylinder car engine. Sexual addiction and acting out affects the brain in such a way that the amount of dopamine released into the brain is excessive. It floods the engine. Over time, the brain loses calibration, and the behavior necessary to satisfy the urge for dopamine intensifies. With each flooding of dopamine, the person is pushed toward achieving a bigger and bigger high. Thus, addiction escalation occurs.
As Invia says, the addict ends up confusing intensity for intimacy. Asking his wife to heighten the sexual arousal experience serves only to strengthen the unhealthy neural pathways that perpetuate the addiction. Neither the addict nor his wife wants this outcome.
I think it’s worth repeating that I’m speaking here to a husband and wife whose relationship has been damaged by sexual betrayal, and I’m specifically addressing a marriage in which the husband struggles with sexual integrity issues. Engaging in heightened sexual arousal and experimenting in the bedroom can be perfectly fine and, in fact, create a new level and type of intimacy for a couple whose sexual trust has not been broken. But if you’re reading this book and trying to restore trust in your relationship in the aftermath of sexual betrayal, you cannot risk reinforcing your old addictive thought patterns. The neural networks associated with those thought patterns affect intimacy on every level, maintain self-preservation, activate consequence-avoidance techniques (perpetuating further lies), and are connected to the kind of compartmentalization that allows someone to live a duplicitous life.
For wives who buy into this myth, the resulting problems can be as bad as those of their husband. A wife wants to be wanted. In general, she wants to be pursued and doted on. In the beginning of the trust-building process, she may want her husband to keep his distance. At some point, though, she will want him to pursue her again. Sometimes wives believe that if they were more sexually active with their husband, it would offset his sexual acting out. As with all myths, there is a sliver of truth here, but the reality is that a wife’s sexier behavior may curb his acting out outside the bedroom, but it won’t change what happens in his heart and mind inside the bedroom. His character and attitude as it pertains to his sexuality will remain unchanged.
Ultimately, what we’re shooting for is not just stopping his acting out and having more sex within the marriage. The goal is to experience sexuality in a way that honors God and each other. We’re aiming for an experience of knowing and being known so intimately that it bonds our souls together.
A wife who acts on a belief that more or different sex will prevent further sexual indiscretions will only prolong her husband’s core problem. She will delay his healing and, unfortunately, hurt herself too. This occurs in three ways.
First, the wife can become a personal prostitute in exchange for personal security. The currency she is paid is the semblance of security that her heart won’t be violated again. Wives often report feeling backed into a corner on this one, because they feel forced to choose between two bad options. On the one hand, they might not feel the emotional or spiritual intimacy necessary for authentic sexual engagement, yet they still feel compelled to oblige sexually. They end up allowing their bodies to be used for their husband’s gratification. It’s worth noting that many wives report that they struggle with thoughts about when, how, and with whom their husband has done the same thing. They ask, “Did he touch her this way?” “Did he say these things to another woman?” “Did he look for pictures of women doing these acts?” Their minds become a mental prison cell, and the torturer is their husband. On the other hand, should the wife choose not to engage sexually, the risk is that her husband will act out again, thus violating her heart and sense of security.
So, husband, my question to you is, Do you really want to put your wife in this position?
This also applies to wives who feel more pressure to initiate sexual activity. I often hear from husbands about a disparity between levels of initiation. “I just wish she would initiate more often,” they say. I used to say that too! Then I realized that the problem wasn’t Shelley’s willingness to initiate; it was her lack of desire to initiate. Ouch! The reality was that I didn’t love her in ways that would prompt her to want to initiate anything. I had to own that fact about our relationship. Perhaps you should too.
The second problem with a wife who buys into the “more sex will help” myth is that if she’s asked to behave in ways she isn’t comfortable with in the bedroom, this can translate into a loss of her sense of self. In other words, she has to be or do something other than who she really is. This is not the picture of a marriage where each partner is seeking to honor the uniqueness of a God-created individual.
It pains me to hear men say they are disappointed with their wife’s willingness to be exciting in the bedroom. Too often they are communicating a secret, almost subconscious reality. Their idea of what should go on in the bedroom is tainted by what they’ve seen in porn! If you want your wife to behave, move, sound, and look like the scripted, artificial, manufactured, airbrushed images you’ve seen on-screen, you will be perpetually disappointed. And she will always feel like she is playing second fiddle to your unrealistic fantasies, resulting in a wound of inadequacy.
Wives don’t want to have to compete with that stuff, nor should they. Your wife wants to be honored and cherished for her heart, mind, character, personality, sense of humor, love for the Lord, and other qualities. And then for her body—maybe.
Now it is only prudent to pull back the curtain and expose another biblical justification behind a myth. Quoted ad nauseam by Christian sex addicts, the following lines of Scripture are easily twisted and misconstrued. I can’t imagine what Jesus would say if he were to confront someone in sexual sin and these verses were tossed at him as justification for sexual immorality.
Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command.
(1 Corinthians 7:1–6)
Let me first frame the context for what the apostle Paul has written here. This is a response to a letter from the church in Corinth with questions about what it should look like to honor God in their culture. Mind you, Corinth was a lascivious crossroads where different people, cultures, and religious practices intersected. It was a sex-saturated society where “worship” at some temples took the form of sex with prostitutes. So the scene is one where, instead of guitars and drums or pipe organ and a choir, instead of singing, dancing, raised hands, and hymns, it’s a bunch of people having sex. As new believers trying to find their way, the Corinthian Christians asked their church father, Paul, about the dos and don’ts of interacting with the culture around them.
While we don’t have a copy of the letter from the Corinthians to Paul, especially the part pertaining to sexual immorality, I imagine it might have said something like this:
Paul, as believers in Jesus, we know our lives should look different from the culture around us. However, there is one particular area we are struggling with: sex. See, having sex is how we worshiped false gods. Now that we follow the one true God, if we have sex, are we sinning? If we engage in sexual activity, aren’t we pledging allegiance to those old, false gods again?
In response, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 addresses sexual immorality by talking about how important it is to remain pure and to treat sex and our body with respect. In this very specific response to the Corinthian dilemma, he clearly begins to construct the container within which sexual engagement is appropriate: the marriage covenant. But here is where we can get sideways if we’re not careful. Paul’s direct comments are regarding sex, but the spirit of his total message is about idol worship. He is trying to affirm their commitment to each other sexually while also cautioning them against the temptation to revert to their old ways. Here’s a reframing of his message in laymen’s terms:
Guys, good question. I appreciate your heart for the truth and for authentic worship. Yes! By all means, have sex with your wife or husband. It’s a good thing, a God thing! It is designed to be a wonderful soul-connecting experience between the two of you within which the one true God is glorified. And don’t deprive each other by withholding sex. The temptation to return to worshiping false gods is great, and the temple prostitutes are always available. If a husband and wife both agree to take a break from sex, they should be committed to deepening their relationship with God during that time.
Now, this is where it gets misconstrued. Here is how Paul’s message is often interpreted by the husbands I counsel in my office:
Yes, sex in your marriage is good. In fact, it is a requirement. It is part of the package. You are entitled to it, and you can demand it as you see fit. Should your spouse not be interested, she is withholding from you, thus she is sinning. In your state of deprivation, you will probably be tempted to act out sexually. And you have a right to. If you give in to sexual temptation, it is her fault for not being available.
Do you really think Paul is saying, “You aren’t culpable for your sin”? I’m not saying a wife who deprives her husband sexually is in the right, nor that she won’t have to deal with Jesus on the matter. What I am saying is that we are responsible for our sexual sin. No amount of sin on someone else’s part is justification for sin on our part. No matter how bad our marriage may be, if we act out sexually, that’s our choice and responsibility. No matter how sexless a marriage is, if we sin sexually, that choice is on us.
The third problem for a wife regarding the “more sex” myth is that she may have to manufacture pursuit, which feels very patronizing. Many wives end up losing themselves, or at least a sense of themselves, when they begin to act out sexual desire for their husband.
Manufacturing pursuit means a wife must somehow contrive a situation or circumstance that results in sex, thus mitigating her husband’s acting out. She may do things or be someone other than who she authentically is in order to satisfy her husband sexually.
This is what that looked like at our house. Shelley confronted me about an affair. I manipulated her and lied about the information she had. A few days later I told her that I had “almost” cheated and that it was her fault. The truth was that I was having an affair and was looking for any reason to justify and rationalize my behavior rather than accept full responsibility. As such, I targeted Shelley with my excuses and manipulated her into owning them. I said that she wasn’t sexy enough, especially in the bedroom. She donned this burden and set out to rectify her alleged problem in an attempt to please me.
She began shopping at stores she otherwise would never have shopped at. She began wearing lingerie, which was out of the ordinary for her. She began dressing in ways that were more revealing and immodest. She tried to become someone she wasn’t, someone she never wanted to be. But she was willing to “spice it up” to save our marriage and mitigate the risk of my acting out and destroying her heart again.
Do you see what a disgusting, disrespectful way this is to treat another person? Would you or I like to be treated this way?
Shelley ended up disliking herself, and all her efforts yielded absolutely zero in terms of changing me. Instead, she became bitter and resentful, which created a greater relational distance between us.
And I was becoming more entrenched in my sin.
INSIGHT FROM STEPHEN ARTERBURN
Surrender
I have heard the mantra “one day at a time” so much that it has become part of my existence. It is so simple but also so difficult to live by. The key is daily surrender. Every day I have to surrender my will and my wants to God. I have to humble myself before him and ask him to have his way with me and my life while I die to my own agenda. That kind of surrender is not easy. Yet it is the foundation for victory. You yield to God, and he brings the victory.
“Your will, not mine” is a great daily motto that takes us from defeat to victory. In fact, each time we are willing to surrender our will to the will of God or the needs of another, it is in itself a victory. Fill your life with daily moments of surrender, and you will stay on a path to victory that glorifies God.