CHAPTER 11

ACCEPT REALITY

AS YOU AND YOUR HUSBAND travel through life together, it’s important to be realistic about your sex life. At various stages of your lives, you’ll need to make adjustments to find the best conditions for your sexual relationship.

While it’s natural to strive for some ideal, setting yourselves up for unrealistic expectations will only add to your frustrations and lessen your satisfaction.

Take some time to review what we’ve discussed throughout this book—what sex in marriage actually is meant to be. By facing reality with your husband, you can make any needed adjustments and work together to create a mutually satisfying sex life.

Align Your Expectations

There are four realities of sex in marriage. You will need to align your expectations to these realities and with each other.

Sex Is an Expression of Love

The characteristics of love as listed in 1 Corinthians 13 are patience and kindness; not being jealous, arrogant, or self-seeking; not being easily provoked; and not calculating the wrongs but rejoicing in the positives. This is quite different from the dopamine-fueled, excited type of love.

Scripture instructs the wife to honor her husband sexually and the husband to love his wife sexually like Christ loved us and gave Himself for us without any demands (see Ephesians 5:22-25). Both spouses are to freely give themselves to each other as stated in Ephesians 5:21 (“be subject to one another,” NASB), and 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 from The Message reminds us that husband and wife are to seek to satisfy each other and serve each other, “whether in bed or out.”

The Song of Solomon is the scriptural description of a sexual relationship between a husband and wife. He expresses his love through adoration and affirmation; she expresses her love by inviting him to enjoy her sexually.

Sex Is for Reproduction

There is also a functional purpose to sex. In Genesis 9:7, we read that we are to be fruitful and multiply. As a woman moves from arousal toward orgasm, the lower one-third of her vagina thickens with engorgement to form the orgasmic platform that contracts during her orgasmic response; these responses are for pleasure.

The upper part of her vagina expands to form the seminal pool where her husband’s seminal fluid containing sperm will be deposited when he ejaculates. Then when she has an orgasm, the uterus will lower into the seminal pool and the cervix will open to receive the sperm; this enhances the possibility of impregnation for procreation.

Sex Is for Intimacy

Sex in marriage is designed for the deep and intimate connection of “becoming one.” Genesis 2:24 reads: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (NASB); Paul quotes this Genesis passage in Ephesians 5:31 in his teaching about sex in marriage. “Becoming one” is that process of husbands and wives loosing themselves and bonding deeply with each other. Research on sex and the brain has found that the brain chemicals of attraction (dopamine, adrenaline, and others) are totally different from those of attachment (primarily oxytocin). “Becoming one” is about attachment and intimacy.

Sex Is for Pleasure

The Song of Solomon is a beautiful description of a husband and wife openly and freely enjoying their bodies sexually. Read it in the paraphrase The Message for a vivid affirmation of sexual pleasure. Eugene H. Peterson’s introduction says: “The Song . . . makes a connection between conjugal love and sex—a very important and very biblical connection to make. . . . The Song proclaims an integrated wholeness. . . . We see here what we are created for, what God intends for us in the ecstasy and fulfillment that is celebrated in the lyricism of the Song.”

What is reality for you and your husband?

What is reality for you and your husband? Plan a time for the two of you to define your reality. You might start by brainstorming. Jot down every thought, whether it’s kids, jobs, schedules, space, health, relationship, or something else.

For example, if you have an infant and a toddler, finding times for your sexual play will be more difficult than if you are a couple without children in the home. If you are going through medical treatment for cancer or another debilitating disease, your sexual times will be different from when you and your husband were both healthy.

Some of these situations require short-term adjustments; others may be chronic and will need long-term adaptations. Whatever your situation, you can plan sexual times to be the best they can be for the two of you and fulfill mutual desires for deep intimacy, care, and abiding love.

Questions you might include in your discussion are:

• Is one or both of you looking for “fireworks” or the dopamine-fueled spark in your relationship? This expectation might be realistic if you are newly married, but if you’ve been married awhile, it probably isn’t.
• Are you having sex as often as you both would like? If you did the communication exercise in Chapter 6, you probably already discussed that reality. If one or both of you are not satisfied with your frequency, consider scheduling times to play. Plan one weekly time that is designed to enjoy each other without the expectation that it will lead to intercourse, arousal, or orgasm. Allow for that possibility if it becomes a mutual desire during your scheduled enjoyment of each other.
• Are both or one of you dealing with the sexual changes resulting from aging or illness? If so, how are you or might you adapt your expectations in light of those issues?

It may help you to be aware of sexual changes common to men and women as they enter the senior years.

A man’s testosterone reaches its peak in his midtwenties and decreases at one percent per year on the average, so at age fifty it will be 25 percent lower than it was at age twenty-five. Some men don’t notice a difference at that age, but many do start sensing the changes, which are:

• He may no longer come to the sexual experience already aroused, but may need penile stimulation to get and keep an erection. Some men interpret that change as a loss in desire or experience it as sexual dysfunction. It is neither. Women often appreciate this change because he now responds more the way she does.
• His erections may not be as firm as they once were, but if he has good blood flow to the penis, he may be able to have firm enough erections to have entry. If that is no longer possible, it is important that he have a thorough medical evaluation by a urologist who is familiar with testing for erectile dysfunction. Since erectile response is due to the supply of blood to the penis, inability to have an erection could be a warning of a heart condition. His cardiac functioning will need evaluation.
• It may take longer for him to ejaculate, and he may not need to ejaculate with each sexual experience. Accepting that reality will put less pressure on both of you. Some men keep vigorously thrusting, which then causes vaginal irritation for the aging wife.
• The ejaculation will not be as intense. When we went to the Masters and Johnson Institute for training, Masters said: “A twenty-year-old spurts; a fifty-year-old dribbles.”
• It will take longer to get another erection after an ejaculation. In fact, it will likely take hours—maybe even days.
• With a physician’s determination and prescription, the changes of aging may be treated with Androgel, a testosterone supplement, and with an oral erectile conditioner like Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra.

If a woman still has her ovaries, her testerone levels may not change much until after age sixty-five. Her changes will be due to decrease in estrogen and progesterone. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is practiced cautiously now, due to findings that associate HRT with increased risk of breast cancer and other medical issues.

Other recommendations for women’s physical changes are outlined in Appendix 1 or have been referred to previously. The primary difficulties for aging women are decrease in lubrication and the thinning of the vaginal wall, which may lead to vaginal irritation and pain.

Adjust to Realities

Following are adjustments to the realities of sex and of marriage that younger, newly married couples typically need to address.

SEX IS MESSY! ENJOY THE MESS!

Women lubricate, some women ejaculate; they have what is called a flooding response. You need to protect the bed for this. The liquid comes out of the urethra, but it is not urine. It can be as much as one-third cup, so that will be messy.

Men ejaculate, and even though it’s only a teaspoon it can feel like a mess. If you are a woman who never likes to get messy, you may need to do some play therapy with your husband. Play with clay, goo, or wet sand. Learn to let the juice from the orange run down your arm as you eat it. Laugh, giggle, and enjoy at your pace.

Be sure your husband knows not to force you into messes, which may trigger more dislike rather than warm you to the experience of sexual body secretions. Find creative ways to open your eyes, your heart, and your mind to the possibility that messes are a positive part of the sexual experience.

Your circumstances will change.

YOU MARRIED A REAL PERSON!

Your husband in not the fantasy person you may have created in your mind. And you are not the fantasy person he may have created in his mind. Harville Hendrix’s book Getting the Love You Want[50] is a great resource if you find yourself questioning your choice and having difficulty with reality.

Flow with the Changes

Throughout a lifetime, your circumstances will change. It may be that when you first married, one of you attended school while the other was working. Later, there may have been fertility struggles when sex became about work to make a baby. If you are in that situation now, separate baby-making sex from pleasure-for-you sex. Take time for both.

Pregnancy presents a new set of circumstances. Some women become more aroused when they’re pregnant and desire more sex than ever; for others, the hormonal changes we mentioned in an earlier chapter can shut down sexual interest and response. Many studies indicate that frequency of sex is cut in half after the first child arrives. And when another child comes along, finding time for yourselves becomes even more challenging.

There may be a bit of a reprieve when the children are all in school, but then they become adolescents, which presents different challenges. Finding your sexual rhythm may be even more difficult. Your kids may be going to bed later than you would like to go to bed.

When you become empty nesters, hopefully you will have kept in touch with each other sexually, rolled with the changing life circumstances, and maintained your sexual relationship. Then you will have the joy of rediscovering sex with freedom in your home. It is a joy!