The couple were devout Christians and virgins when they first met. Forty years later, the pain of their marriage showed on their faces. As they spoke to me of their troubles during our pastoral counseling session in my office, they each hung their heads in loneliness and grief.
There had been no adultery. There had been no divorce. But there had been no friendship. Although they did a lot of work together, they hadn’t had much fun. With their children grown and home empty, the glue that once held them together was gone, and they were reduced to life as nearly sexless roommates.
In the most painfully awkward moment of the conversation, I asked the wife what she wanted from her husband. She said that every evening for forty years she had sat on the couch just wanting him to sit and visit with her for twenty to thirty minutes. But he rarely did. Indeed, twenty to thirty minutes is not a lot of time. But when it is missed nearly every day for forty years, a debt of roughly five thousand to seven thousand hours has accrued.
The husband tried to defend himself, talking about the quality times they had, in an effort to excuse the lack of quantity time. But she would have none of it as her bitterness and loneliness seeped out. What wisdom could touch the pain caused by a dying marriage? I struggled with that question as I counseled this couple, and it became obvious to me that they had missed out on God’s true design for marriage and sex. And they were far from alone in their struggles.
When my wife, Grace, and I speak at marriage conferences, an overwhelming number of people of all ages come up to us with the most heartbreaking stories of loneliness, marital infidelity, childhood abuse, and extremely detailed “can we do this or that?” sex questions. Often their shame and embarrassment keep them from getting the help they need in their marriages. Also, our church, Mars Hill in Seattle, has people from all ages and life stages but is a young congregation, with lots of twenties and thirties, many singles, and a higher-than-usual percentage of guys. Subsequently, we have spent more than fifteen years counseling people before they were married about how to live as a Christian in such a sexualized culture, what’s okay—from a biblical perspective—to do in bed once you are married, and how to deal with intimacy issues all throughout married life.
Grace and I weren’t strangers to those issues ourselves. As a young couple we had to deal with the fallout from sexual sin before our marriage, and we hadn’t had anyone we could turn to for help. The ramifications would play out in some painful and frustrating ways over the years, as you’ll read later in this book, but by the grace of God, we’ve been able to work through the mess and have emerged as best friends and lovers in the way God intended.
For such a big issue, most teaching on sex inside the church is inadequate, and most teaching on it outside the church is perverted. Fortunately, God has a lot to say to us on the topic of sex and marriage. He planned both, and He gave them to us as wonderful gifts to be enjoyed. In this book we share biblical truths about some of the marital issues you may face, including how to be your spouse’s best friend, dealing with porn addiction, overcoming sexual assault, how to avoid being a selfish lover, and yes, even those sex questions you’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone, especially your pastor. We pray this book will be a blessing to your marriage