CHAPTER 9

WHEN YOU ARE TOO EXHAUSTED TO HAVE SEX

When Bart pulled into his driveway at six-thirty in the evening, he was bushed. Twelve hours earlier he had driven into the lot at Zingle’s Chevrolet, where he works as a senior service writer, and had seen eight vehicles already waiting in line. He felt behind before he even started his day. All day long he dealt with a steady stream of impatient and cranky customers. The day had been so hectic that he hadn’t even had a chance to answer his cell phone or connect with his wife, Beth, just to say hi.

As he approached his house, he wanted nothing more than to kiss his wife, grab something to eat, slip into oblivion on the couch, and watch CNN and ESPN. He hoped Beth had a good meal prepared. He was hungry. Bart stepped onto the back porch, but instead of being greeted by the smell of cooking food, a flustered and annoyed Beth met him at the door.

“You’re late,” she said, thrusting a slip of paper at him.

“What’s this?” The paper had directions and phone numbers listed.

“We don’t have time,” she said. “You didn’t answer your cell phone. You were supposed to pick up the Jackson twins and take Lilly and them to soccer practice. Then you need to pick up Jonathan from his drum lessons and take him to youth group.”

“Hold on!” Bart said. He was not eager to spend his evening transporting kids around. “Why don’t you take them?”

“Because,” she said, exasperated, “Joey needs to get to his baseball game in ten minutes or the coach won’t let him play. It’s our turn to carpool. I have to pick up Zach and Todd and Sam too. They’re waiting for me. Then I have my Bible study meeting, and . . .”

Bart felt a glaze spread over his brain.

“Joey! Come on, let’s go!” She turned and grabbed her purse, then reached up to kiss her husband.

“Sorry, sweetie,” she said, a little softer. “This is only for a season.”

“It feels like a never-ending season,” he muttered, dodging his son as he ran downstairs and out the door.

“Just grab something to eat at Taco Bell if you get a chance,” Beth yelled as she climbed into her car. “See you tonight. Love you!”

Bart sighed, dropped his tote onto the kitchen table, and walked back out of the house.

Later that night, Bart was lying in bed, waiting for Beth to finish brushing her teeth in the bathroom. Several moments later, she turned off the light and slipped into their bed. She snuggled up to him, and he could feel her silky nightgown rub against his thigh.

Something flickered in his brain. That used to get me excited.

Bart and Beth were so stressed and exhausted that they hadn’t made love in weeks. He’d lost track of how long it had been. And, he had to admit, it didn’t seem to bother him anymore —or her, for that matter. He was exhausted, but his mind kept whirling. Why is our life so out of control? We don’t make love anymore —and we don’t even care. Is this what the next fifty years are going to be like?

Sex’s Number One Enemy

Multitudes of sex therapists and marriage counselors name fatigue as the number one enemy of sexual intimacy. When couples are worn out, sex is one of the first things to go. Typically, the early honeymoon years of highly charged sexual lives come to a screeching halt in the child-rearing years.

The television poster couple for this kind of exhaustion is Desperate Housewives’ Lynette and her husband. In one of the first episodes of the initial season of the ABC drama, we see how incredibly exhausted they are. Lynette and her husband have four children, several of whom suffer from ADD. One day Lynette’s husband comes home from a business trip, clueless as to how tired and worn-out she is from caring for and chasing after kids all day. When he indicates that he wants to have sex, she asks, “Do I have to do anything?” She’s just so exhausted! Finally they’re in bed, and she’s concerned about birth control. He doesn’t have a condom, so he says, “Let’s just risk it.” Risk it with four kids who are driving her nuts? She doesn’t think so. She hauls off and decks him!

That scene shows an all-too-important issue for many couples. We’re so busy and overextended and exhausted that we simply don’t have time to do the things we need to or used to enjoy doing. So where do we find room to enjoy each other if everybody else is stealing all our energy?

In a Redbook article, author Susan Crain Bakos states that “an estimated 24 million American women say they don’t have time, are too exhausted, or just aren’t in the mood for sex.”[58] They have work stress, kid stress, household stress, pressure to win in the marriage, the church —and on and on. So when a husband wants sex, a wife often sees his needs as the enemy. Not that he is the enemy; his sexual needs are.

“I never thought sex would be a problem in my marriage,” Christine said. “I loved sex when we first got married. Sex used to connect my husband and me. Now it divides us. After rearing three kids, keeping up with meals and the house, being a youth group leader, working, and taking care of my parents, sex is the last item on my list. It isn’t that I don’t love or want him; I’m just exhausted. From the minute I wake up, I face demands from my kids, employers, clients. By the time I get to my husband, I have nothing left to give! I don’t want my husband to feel distant or get upset every day I say no to him, but I don’t have a choice. I’m too beat.”

One of the typical differences between how men and women experience exhaustion is that even when a man is weary, he can usually find just enough energy to have sex. Not so for a woman. When she is exhausted, even the thought of having sex can make her want to pass out. Because a woman’s arousal mechanisms are more complex, sex takes more time and energy for her. She enjoys sex, but she may feel that the effort isn’t worth the climax at the end. So when a wife thinks, Do I have to do anything? it isn’t a reflection of her husband’s lovemaking skills. It’s more a reflection of how exhausted she is.

Why is it that when we become overworked and stressed, we let slide those things that are most healthy for us? Prayer, time alone with God, our spouses, and ourselves. Exercise, eating healthy, sex. If sex enters our minds —even fleetingly —we think, I’d really like to have sex, but when do I have the time and the energy?

The truth is that we need sex to stay healthy. But sex should not be something we give because we have to. We need to give because we want to, because the benefits are so great, and because above everything else, we are committed to our marriages. Let’s face it: If we fail at doing everything we can for our marriages, the rest is moot. Often we hear people say, “I’m the only one who can be a mother [or father] to my children.” You know what? They are right. But even more important is that you are the only one who can be your spouse’s lover. You are the only one who can meet your spouse’s sexual needs. It may “take a village” to raise a child, but it takes you and you alone to meet your spouse’s sex needs. After God, the most important relationship commitment in your life is your spouse. Period. Not your children. Not your work. Not your schedule, your church work, your agenda.

“But . . . !” we hear you protesting. You owe it to your children to have a great marriage. That’s where their security is the strongest. That means you and your spouse must find time in your harried, hurried, overscheduled lives to have sex regularly.

You are the only one who can meet your spouse’s sexual needs.

Making Sex a Priority

We know a husband and wife who both work and have commutes of more than thirty-five minutes. Every morning, the wife is up at five o’clock to wake their three-year-old son and get him ready to go to her sister’s house for child care. She drops him off on her way to work.

One day as the husband and wife were talking to us about how disconnected they felt from each other, we mentioned that they needed to take a weekend away just for themselves. “We don’t have time to do a bed-and-breakfast,” the wife scoffed. “I’m already too swamped. We have to run errands on the weekends. Besides, we don’t have a lot of money, and I can’t ask my sister to take Bradley on the weekend too.”

The couple made their dilemma sound justifiable. (Don’t we all?) But the truth is that we choose our priorities. This couple is not guarding their marriage. Yes, children come along. Yes, sometimes both spouses need to work. Yes, sometimes you feel as if you can’t afford to pay a babysitter.

But at the same time, if your marriage is going to make it, sex is not optional; safeguarding your marriage is not optional. The Bible doesn’t say, “So do not deprive each other of sexual relations. The only exception to this rule would be if you are too tired, have worked too hard, have too many commitments, or can’t pay for child care.” The Bible sees sex as so important that it suggests the only exception to regular sex is when a couple decides to devote concentrated time to prayer. The Bible sees marital sex as a unique privilege, duty, and right.[59]

Gavin and Chondra had a fairly vibrant sex life in the early years of their marriage. Little by little they encountered speed bumps. They had baby Morgan, whose needs moved him to the front burner, leaving Gavin increasingly ambivalent as he sensed that his needs were no longer important. Chondra worked outside the home, rose early in the morning to meet Morgan’s needs, tried to take care of the house, and tried to keep all the plates spinning in the air. Gavin’s job became more demanding; he was passed over for a promotion, and they experienced more and more financial stress. They were too tired to have sex and were distracted by all the needs in their lives. The connection that seemed so effortless only four years earlier began to unwind before their eyes.

We can push sex to the side and claim that it’s “just for a season.” But pretty soon, that season turns into a pattern. That’s when it becomes ingrained in the heart and we become blind to what we’re doing. But the needs for relational and sexual connection do not disappear.

I (Gary) remember when I was working toward my doctorate and was barely home for my family. I was working sixty to seventy hours a week, and Barb and I had become more like roommates than lovers. One day Barb handed me an article about Paul Tsongas, who was a presidential candidate at the time. Tsongas had been diagnosed with cancer, and after taking time for treatment, he announced he was withdrawing from the presidential campaign. Some reporters asked him, “Why? You could go down in history.” His reply: “I don’t know one man who’s ever lain on his deathbed and said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’”

In bed that night after I read the article, I thought, I wonder why Barb chose this article to give me. That was the beginning of my realization that I needed to make some tough decisions about my life and my marriage. I had to say no to things in order to bring more balance into our connection time. So Barb and I spent many hours going over our schedules, trying to figure out where to cut back. I quit committees —even prestigious ones I felt would further my career. I had to start saying no to activities that took me away from my family. They were difficult decisions. But little by little, by saying no, some of the resilience came back into our relationship. Soon we began to see a difference in our marriage. Those little decisions added up to successes.

In the lives of overextended couples, the tail is wagging the dog. Life is running them. And for what? Really? You gain the world but lose your marriage, which in essence is like losing a piece of your soul.

Of all sexual issues, exhaustion is the one over which we have the most control. This is the one area in which spouses can help each other regain some sense of balance. How? Either by reprioritizing or working less or saying no to outside activities that don’t further the marriage or by asking for help. Making sex a priority sends this message: My time and intimacy —emotionally, spiritually, and sexually —with you is more important than my joining another bowling league and being gone another night every week.

Nothing cuts a husband’s pride quicker than knowing he’s number twenty-five on his wife’s to-do list. And the same holds true when a woman feels last on her husband’s priorities list. Be honest for a moment —could you be neglecting your spouse?

Making Room for Sex

Of all of the bedroom busters, exhaustion is one that will require behavioral change. Rebalancing your life demands discipline. It means finding babysitting options. It means choosing to shorten your work hours. It means learning to say no. Here are some ways to begin making changes in order to make your sexual intimacy a top priority.

1. Evaluate yourself. Ask yourself: What am I getting out of this pace? What’s the payoff? Does it make me feel good about myself? Am I working for others’ affirmation? Am I a pleaser? Am I a perfectionist? Does it keep me independent? Does it keep me in control?

The answers can be key to why you are keeping your spouse at a distance sexually. Some people hide behind the activity. One man told us, “I’m working seventy hours a week because I want to be affirmed. I understand that issue, but to me the payoff is better there than breaking out of that for some potential payoff with my wife.”

Marriage calls us to give everything, to commit completely. It isn’t about the payoff, it isn’t about what we get out of the marriage or what our spouses can do for us. Marriage is a choice to live a God-honoring life. It’s about growing and maturing spiritually. The only way that can happen is when we understand the sacrifice involved in our marriage commitments.

Marriage calls us to give everything, to commit completely.

If you discover that you are using busyness to avoid intimacy or to hide unresolved conflict, you may need to dig deeper. Don’t be hesitant to get professional help to move back to a place of wholeness in your marriage. Chapter 13 tackles some of the deeper issues that you may need to address.

2. Replenish yourself. What activities replenish you? Is it a bubble bath alone at the end of the day? Is it watching a baseball game uninterrupted? Is it a walk alone or a walk through the park with a good audiobook or a relaxing CD? Is it stopping by the grocery store and buying yourself that bunch of flowers? Is it taking thirty minutes a day to read an exciting novel? Is it spending a half hour meditating quietly? Is it driving down to the local café, sipping a skim latte, and writing in your journal? Is it taking that jog along the riverbank?

Replenishing needs to be a daily routine. We know a woman who uses her two-hour commute time to listen to her favorite audiobooks. “I can’t explain it,” she told us, “but losing myself in a good audiobook makes the commute go faster, makes me a nicer person, both on the road and to my family. It helps me unwind so that when I arrive home, I’m ready to focus on my family.”

3. Reprioritize. A couple need to recognize that they have a mutual problem that requires a mutual solution —and that solution may require mutual sacrifice for mutual benefit. Sit down and tackle the problem together. When we asked our survey respondents to tell us what they disliked about sex, fatigue was at the top of the list for 58 percent of the spouses. In another survey, 80 percent of new moms said their sex life deteriorated because they were simply too tired to make love.[60]

We hear this statement often: “Sex isn’t high on my priority list.” Quite frankly, many men would shudder at where sex comes on their wives’ priority lists. When we conducted a survey for our book The Five Love Needs of Men and Women, sexual intimacy ranked thirteenth for women. Some of you may be surprised it came in that high. Well, some people in a Florida study would agree. Their respondents said, “Sex just beats out sewing for pleasure” —at number thirty-seven on the list. Ouch.

Busyness may seem like a “season” of life, but if you don’t nurture your sex life now, later may be too late. The further apart a couple grows, the longer and more difficult the path back to intimacy becomes.

From the husband’s perspective, he might say, “Well, I’m just looking for sex once in a while. It doesn’t take that long.” But it isn’t just about sex; it’s about creating the environment of sex and sexual intimacy in marriage. If you want your marriage to be God-honoring, if you want a solid and trustworthy marriage, you need to agree that no matter what, you will carve out time each week just to relax and have fun with each other.

If you want your marriage to be God-honoring, if you want a solid and trustworthy marriage, you need to agree that no matter what, you will carve out time each week just to relax and have fun with each other.

Evaluate your priorities. If making the payments on your house requires both of you to work, what’s more important —the house or your marriage? Why not move into a smaller house and focus on your marriage? Who cares what other people think? A lot of people may weigh their options: Okay, nice house —sex with my spouse. Hmm. I’ll take the nice house. To them it’s worth the stress of putting their spouses on the back burner. But if you neglect the sex, you’ll probably be selling the house in the near future because your marriage will have deteriorated. We know too many people who bought an expensive house that forced both spouses to work, and they ended up getting a divorce. That’s the reality, friends. Something has to give —or something will give. And more than likely, that something will not be without pain and long-term consequences.

Train your mind to understand that saying no to things that aren’t marriage-related is saying yes to your marriage. Often when we say yes to our children’s extracurricular activities, to being on every church committee, to working extra hours, we say no to our spouses and to sex. And guess who suffers most when we do that? Everything and everyone. When we say no to caring for and nurturing our sexual intimacy, ultimately we say no to healthy kids and work and church.

We understand that the pressure is intense to make sure you are giving every opportunity to your children. But your kids may be wearing down too. We have friends who told their kids, “You get one sport a year. Make your choice.” It was a shock to everybody’s systems, but this couple realized they had to change something or they were headed for a breakdown. Once this husband and wife held their ground, they started to have fun again. They became each other’s friend again; they had time for sex. Their marriage and family really turned around.

An overly stressed, busy marriage loses its resiliency. It’s like a rubber band that has lost its elasticity. You pull on it a few too many times, it cracks and eventually snaps, rendering it useless. Cutting down busy schedules helps return the elasticity and resiliency to a marriage.

Grab your calendars, sit down with your spouse, and talk through your schedules. Ask each other these questions:

• What is an absolute priority?

• What feels like an absolute priority but really isn’t?

• What can we get rid of, at least for this season?

• What is the best day to set aside as our date day —a time for just the two of us to have sex, to have fun, to enjoy each other?

If your family responsibilities cause you exhaustion and busyness, then you need to hire, bribe, or threaten parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends, or church members to babysit your kids so you can get away. Offer to swap child care responsibilities with another couple. But occasionally you need to leave everything behind and go somewhere with your spouse just to have fun and make love. This is a priority, a must.

4. Schedule regular times for sex. Scheduling sex is particularly important if you feel overextended. Realize that sex is not going to be as spontaneous as it may have been in your honeymoon years. But your busy schedules mean you need to be intentional and proactive.

Put it on your calendars. Mark off every Thursday night or Saturday morning —whatever works for you —for a month. Get into a pattern; otherwise you aren’t going to do it. If that’s what it takes for a season, then do it. You need to get yourselves back to remembering, Oh yeah! This is really fun!

5. Put Sabbath back into your week. God built into his schedule —and ours —a time to rejuvenate. He knew that we would become so caught up with our “important” stuff, that we would neglect times of refreshment and joy.

Sabbath rest was so important to God that he made it one of the Ten Commandments. It’s a biggie, friends, right up there with “do not worship any other gods.” In fact, it’s listed before “do not murder” and “do not commit adultery.”[61] If God takes rest that seriously, then we need to take it seriously as well.

In an interview with Marriage Partnership magazine, author Randy Frazee tells the story of how he went through a period where he experienced insomnia for forty-five days. Finally, after he couldn’t take it any longer, he visited his physician, who told him he had a problem with his adrenal system. Randy had been going so long and fast without regular replenishment that his system had gone into overdrive. His physician told him, “You have a choice. Move to Borneo, or make a lifestyle change. If you don’t, something serious will happen to you.” Randy had discovered that when your body doesn’t have time to recuperate, it eventually takes it out on you. Your relationships suffer, your sleep suffers, your sex life suffers.[62]

Our friend Annie told us about a conversation she had with her Jewish friend about sex and the Sabbath. The woman told Annie, “There are certain things I always try to do on the Sabbath. One is that I always have sex with my husband.”

“Really?” Annie said. “I thought sex was considered work and that you were not supposed to work on the Sabbath.”

“Oh, no,” replied the Jewish woman. “Having sex with your spouse on the Sabbath is worth double brownie points to God. You get so many brownie points for all these good things you do. But when you have sex with your husband on the Sabbath, you get double.” Whether or not God gives brownie points, we all need to understand that God has provided rest, refreshment, and fun when spouses nurture their sex lives. This Jewish woman understands the importance God places on sex.

6. Plan a getaway. Don’t use a financial crunch as an excuse. Save up for a getaway! Once every month or so, go somewhere. Go to the motel down the street. Check out priceline.com for hotels in your area. Go to a KOA and rent a cabin. If your friends are going to be away for the weekend, ask them if you can use their house.

Getting away takes creativity and intentionality. One couple found an inexpensive way to catch some alone time together. They signed up their kids for a class or activity, dropped them off, and for that hour or so, they went home and made love. That’s intentionality and creativity.

7. Turn off the television. One big time stealer is the television. Instead of turning it on in the evenings, why not sit outside and listen to the birds? Take a walk. Go to the bedroom and mess around!