This article has been updated and migrated to my new blog, Biblicalsexology.com, dedicated exclusively to the topic of sexuality from a Biblical perspective. You can find the new article here.
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Biblical Gender Roles 
It’s quite amazing that Christian women often take this perspective, given that they should be far more worried if their husband is no longer attracted to them.
You don’t like it that your husband is attracted to you and wants your body?
Well, do you think you’d like it better if your husband wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t want you? What if he told you this?
“The fact that God created woman for man, not man for woman is extremely offensive to our modern feminist and egalitarian society but it the truth of God’s Word.”
The main crux of the problem. Feminism has made women, even Christian women, indignant at the idea that their husbands like them for anything more than “their minds”, while making men ashamed for ADMITTING they could really care less about their wives minds, so long as she is pleasant, can cook and is willing to have sex. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a smart woman for a wife can be a blessing, but it can also be a curse. Plenty of guys would be happy with a woman who just did what she was told and left all the thinking to him, but to admit that now days is to invite disaster.
The church needs to do more to fight the tide of feminism instead of helping to feed into it, but I fear that society has already left its mark on Christian women and even the church would have a hard time brining them back into the understanding of Gods design, and that’s only if the church decided to follow Gods design! Women have already been “empowered” and are backed by almost any other church around the corner and the state. Women have been elevated so as to believe they are the most glorious of all Gods creations, above man and akin to the angels, which is absolutely not true. This poison pill, however, is sweet to the taste for the ladies and they eat it up without question.
Another important post, good job!
Let me illustrate how needful.
I was talking to a pastor about my marriage situation, specifically how my wife has withheld sex for decades to show her disrespect and contempt toward me. The pastor replied that “God has called you to be celibate”. Now since I had not had any special revelation other than the Canon I asked him how he came to know the will of Lord in this matter, was it a vision or a dream or did some prophet interpret a message spoken in tongues. He said my question was disrespectful and sarcastic. (As a Reformed church we generally take a cessationist view so he was right it was sarcastic) I pressed even more, how could he speak for God in this matter when what he was saying was contrary to scripture. What he said floored me. He claimed that 1 Cor 7:5 allowed for married people to be celibate. I was quick to point out that 1 Cor 7:5 gave specific conditions all of which must be met. Since I did not agree, nor were my wife and I fasting, nor was there an agreed time when we would come back together that 1 Cor 7:5 was diametrically opposed to the assertion that God had called me to be celibate. His response was to call into question if I was a Christian and to threaten me with church discipline.
I left that church, but it was not over.
The difficulty with the church and my family was interfering with my job. My wife had said that she did not want to be with me and that she would divorce me, but I didn’t make enough money to support two houses. It was difficult for me to make sales knowing that my commission might just mean the loss of my home and my children removed from my life. I was languishing under this burden at work so I decided to do something in which the burden would not so greatly affect my performance; I now drive a truck. The money is steady and I’m not home every night to endure the torment.
So as it happened this pastor wrote a letter that arrived at my home while I was out of town. Ironically it arrived on the day of our wedding anniversary and my wife opened it and read its contents. What she read was a litany of slander and accusations against me. What that letter accomplished was to embolden my wife’s contempt and justify her coninued defrauding. Needless to say the anniversary celebration was not joyful.
What is most remarkable about this pastoral counsel is that I was thwarted from using scripture with the pastor, he claimed the issue was a settled matter and that my attempt to reference scripture was simply a refusal to obey my elders. That my background and education would allow me to twist the Word to make it say what I wanted; in other words he could not win if the Bible was the standard.
This pathetic episode is indicative of the level of contempt the church has toward masculinity and it’s eagerness to embrace the sins of women as good spirit-filled works.
But what is at stake goes well beyond my family or even family in general, what is at stake is the Gospel. The gospel is pictured in the Christian marriage. Does Christ make the church the object of His affection? Can the church reject the Lord’s desire for union without offense? Is the church subject to the rule of Christ? And can the church divorce herald from her Lord and not stand condemned? The picture the church supports is not the gospel, but apostasy and idolatry. Yes, it is that central to the very essence of the Christian faith.
What is your stance on female sexual desire toward men? Your stance on a man fulfilling his wife’s sexual desires and making sure she experiences pleasure when they have sex?
The biggest problem that I see, and the above posts confirm it, is that we have too many hirelings, who are basically cowards, behind the pulpits today. In most churches, even Evangelical churches, there are more women than men in the congregation. Pastors know that these women have a powerful influence as to how much money they receive in tithes and offerings. The more courageous pastors are usually found in smaller churches, not in the large mega churches. Rare is the preacher today who preaches what the people need to hear rather what the people want to hear! So, these cowardly preachers cater to women’s feelings rather than boldly proclaiming what God says on the subject of marital relations (and other subjects as well).
I was going to allude to this in my comment. Despite what they say women will always show their true thoughts when they start asking their husbands the age old question: “Do you still think I’m pretty?”
Black knight: “No. But you have a beautiful mind, babes.”
Sorry to hear about all your troubles. It seems the Western churches are going backwards in that, like many years of old, those in the church seem to think they have the only correct “interpretation” of scripture, and that us laypeople could never possibly understand the intricacies of the Word of God. Woe to them that do this, because they will have to answer for their actions some day. The bible is easily understood, and those parts that aren’t so easy will become understood with prayer and honest study. Lets pray more people follow this route and get out of blasphemous churches, or even better, that one who knows this will invite others into his home that they may learn together!
This is why we should return to home churches. Once you put a church in a building with a monthly mortgage, add in utilities, sound equipment, keeping a computer network and church grounds, then slap a tax exemption on it with the government you are no longer running a church, your running a business. The goal of a business is to make money, and a church whos goal is to make money is no church.
Home churches allow people to learn together, then those who are ready and learned to start their own home church, which causes growth! No reason why all the home churches in my zip code couldn’t come together once a month and meet at a local park or something for some interaction, food and praise! Its how the disciples did it, I don’t see why we cant still be doing it?
1 Corinthians 7:3 The husband must [a]fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and [b]come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
The husband and wife are both each other’s sex object.
Also, wives have the sexual [objectification] desire too: see the prevalence of bodice ripper romance novels including the now ubiquitous 50 shades.
SnapperTrx,
Your Statement:
While personality certainly plays a role in a man’s attraction toward a woman the honest answer is it is not usually the first thing that draws him to her. Our feminist world acts like it is a crime if a man asks a woman out simply because she is beautiful. Now he may find out later that her personality if awful or their value systems are completely incompatible at which point he breaks it off with her. But the fact that her beauty is the first thing that draws him to her is not immoral or wrong in anyway.
And you are 100% percent right that no men should not be ashamed of the fact that they could “really care less about their wives minds, so long as she is pleasant, can cook and is willing to have sex.”. This is what we are designed to desire from women and these are the primary roles God designed for women in marriage.
The dirty little secret about the ideology of “men should love their wives for their mind and not what services they can perform for them or how beautiful they are” is actually covering sinful motives. In most cases the phrase “men should love women for their minds” is code for “men should value their wife’s opinion as an equal partner”. It is a way of saying “hey buster – I get an equal say in this relationship and I am smart and should be able to affect the course of our family decisions”. It is going back to Eve’s sin desiring to be equal with God and desiring things she was not meant to have.
Deep Strength,
Your Statement:
I agree with you that there are certain number of women that sexually objectify men in the same way men sexually objectify women based on their own desires. But I actually believe the vast majority of women engage in the sexual objectification of men because society tells them to do so – not because they actually desire to do so. It is “cool” for women to sexually objectify men and “uncool” for men to sexually objectify women. Many women reason “Hey men have been objectifying us for thousands of years – it is time we start objectifying them!”.
While some women are highly physically driven in the sexual department – I believe most women don’t like being forced by society to approach sex from the highly physical aspect that men do. They desire sex from an emotional and relational perspective – it is how the man makes them feel that turns them on, not necessarily how he looks.
Deep Strength,
Your Statement:
I am not sure I completely agree with that statement. Let me explain why. Over several years I have been asking God to remove my cultural lenses. We all have them and I think it takes years and sometimes decades of just looking at the Word of God and recognizing our cultural biases. We desperately want to insert our Western ideas of equality and fairness into the Scriptures. Even for those of us like you and I that deeply believe in male headship and reject feminism we still sometimes want to save a little equality and fairness between men and women in a few places.
And I agree on its surface I Corinthians 7:3-5 seems to be teaching total equality of sexual access between the husband and the wife. The language is identical between the husband and wife in regards to their duty toward each other in this passage.
However what I came to realize when I used to agree with your interpretation of I Corinthians 7:3-5 that “The husband and wife are both each other’s sex object” is that I was violating a cardinal rule of Scriptural interpretation. Scripture interprets Scripture. We have to look at the entirety of the Scriptures before we come to positions on these vital subjects.
The Scriptures tells us:
The two passages of Scripture teach three very important principles of the Scripture that are reinforced in other Scriptures.
1. The husband is the head of the wife and the wife is to submit to her husband in EVERYTHING.
2. The husband is to provide for the physical needs(food, clothing, shelter) of his wife(not necessarily her wants).
3. The husband is to provide sexual access to his body to his wife in order to meet her sexual needs.
But here is the $10,000 dollar question I was forced to ask myself a while back. While husbands and wives are to have sexual access to each other’s bodies are the access rights identical? The answer if we look at the above principles of the Scriptures is NO.
If I want to have sex with my wife I can literally command her to at any point in time. She could be in the middle of doing laundry or be on the phone with a girl friend and I can say “Babe – drop what you are doing and let’s go have a meeting”. “A meeting” is code for lets have sex. Because she must follow the Biblical command to submit to me in everything my wife is to drop what she is doing – go into our room, drop her clothes and have sex with me. That is the type of submission God calls for from wives toward their husbands.
However if the roles were reversed – if I was on the phone with a guy friend from church or working in my office and my wife came in and demanded that I drop what I was doing and go have sex with her can she Biblically do that? The answer is NO. To do so would violate my headship over her. We don’t ever get to go demand that our authorities do something now.
Does she have a right to request sex with me? Yes.
Do I have a duty to provide my wife with sexual relations? Yes.
But I can provide them at my own discretion. In the same way I am obligated to provide her with food and clothing – but she can’t demand I stop what I am doing and go the grocery store to buy food. I must provide these things for her – that is without question. But how and when I go about providing these things for my wife are at my own discretion.
We also have to examine why did God put in women the desire to have sex with men? It was meant to compliment a man’s desire for sex. Every desire a woman has was given her to bless man because she was made for man. God knew sex would be more pleasurable for a man if the woman desired it so he put a natural desire for sex in women.
So when we say a man is his wife’s sex object I think it frames things wrongly. God created woman for man’s use so it is right to say a woman is a sex object for man. God did not create a man for woman’s use but he commands that men are to provide their wives with certain things including food, clothing and access to their body for the purpose of sexual relations.
As I said to another commenter recently I think it is great and by the design of God when wives desire sex with their husbands. If a wife is horny and just wants want to jump her husband’s bones that is great. But a woman must never loose perspective of the very reason she has that desire. It was not given to her for her own benefit – but for her husband’s benefit. Everything about her was made for his benefit.
Ashley,
See my comment previous comment in this thread to Deep Strength on the matter of men giving their wives sexual access to their bodies. Just to sum up what I said. I do believe the Scriptures command that husbands and wives are to have sexual access to each other’s bodies. However that sexual access is not identical because the Scriptural principle that husband is the head of his wife and the wife can never command her husband.
So a husband can command his wife to drop what she is doing and have sex in a given a moment. A wife cannot do the same with her husband. She cannot command him – she can only request of him. He may choose to fulfill her request right then or at a later point in time. Make no mistake – he has a duty give her sexual relations. He has no authority or power to completely cut off sex from his wife – she has a right to sexual access to his body. But it is not sex on demand – like it is from the husband toward his wife.
I think it is great and wonderful and by the very design of God that women have sexual desire toward men. But as I said in previous comments women have to ask themselves why God gave them this sexual desire? Was it for themselves or to please their husbands? Remember that every part of a woman’s design was made for the benefit of her husband. This must always be at the forefront of a woman’s mind if she is to follow God’s path for her life.
I absolutely believe a man should do his best to make sure each sexual experience with his wife is pleasurable for her. In other words – men should not be selfish lovers but realize God gave their wives the desire for sexual pleasure to please them as well. It is a corruption of God’s design when a man has absolutely no desire to see his wife sexually pleased. Pleasing our wives sexually is to bring us even greater sexual pleasure. Men should absolutely become students of their wife’s body and what makes her tick so she can enjoy sex better.
However having said everything above – a great deal of responsibility falls on the wife to gently yet explicitly let her husband know “what works and what does not work”. She also must get in touch with her own body so she can enjoy sex with her husband. In many cases the reason women don’t enjoy sex is because they either don’t know how their own body works or they have all these mental blocks that stop them from experiencing sexual pleasure. In many cases a woman’s mind can be her own worst enemy when it comes to enjoying sex with her husband.
@DeepStrength,
I think that you’re right about how women view sex with men deep down. And I’m not just saying it because I’m assuming that my feelings match every woman’s. The idea that women view sex from a relational perspective and want it less than men is incredibly new–basically a nineteenth-century phenomenon designed around a campaign to attract more female churchgoers by telling them that they were more sexually virtuous. (This is, of course, related to the idea that a lack of desire for sex in any circumstance is a virtue, which is also partly why men with moderated sex drives were admired and why it was believed in many cultures that men were more productive when they weren’t focused on sex.) If you read pretty much any early modern, medieval, or even ancient commentary on sexuality, you’ll find that women were viewed as more insatiable and less able to control their sexual desires. That’s why men were warned to resist women’s seductions–because they believed that women were trying to seduce men! That’s also part of the reason why they put stricter controls on women’s sexuality than on men’s. (A bigger part, of course, had to do with reducing illegimate pregnancies.) They believed that women would get out of control and then convince men to lose control too. Now, it seems clear that they downplayed men’s sexual desires or tried to persuade men to downplay their sexual desires because they believed that a high libido was a sign that a man lacked self-control and was therefore less of a man.
Really, I think at the end of the day, both men and women are driven to have sex for physical and reproductive reasons first. The emotional bonding that comes from the hormones released during sex is a wonderful but secondary benefit that helps keep married couples united. But before love matches came into vogue, men and women both needed reasons to have sex within marriage before they had time to develop that emotional bond.
Jonadab,
Every time I have heard your story it grieves me. There are many men that are denied sexual relations for weeks or perhaps months at time. But to be completely denied sex for years is hard to fathom. The cruelty of such an endeavor by any wife toward her husband is truly hard to imagine – yet we know from your story and many others here it actually happens.
I know that each man has to do what he believes is right before God and what is best for him, his marriage and his family. I may not have made the same decisions in your position but I respect your decision.
I agree with you and Snapper and others that the Church has become thoroughly poisoned by gynocentric thinking. But what I want to caution men against are two things. We cannot abandon marriage as an institution of God or the church as an institution of God. Instead we must look to reform both institutions. It requires a strong effort to teach our children the ways of God from the Scriptures. It might mean some marriages end in Biblical divorce. It might mean confronting church leaders and it might mean we have to leave a church to go to another. But in the end we cannot loose heart and abandon either of these institutions.
I know many Christian men that have given up on both the Church and Marriage as God’s institutions – but we can’t do this – but instead we must look to reform these institutions.
For some examples:
*The Greek myth of Tiresias includes an episode where the goddess Hera turns him into a woman for seven years. Later Greek elaborations include an account of Tiresias being asked to settle a dispute between Zeus and Hera on which sex gets more pleasure out of sexual intercourse. Tiresias replies that women receive ten times the amount of sexual pleasure as men.
*The idea of hysteria itself is obviously fallacious, given that the uterus doesn’t actually wander throughout the body, but it is noteworthy that Egyptians, Greeks, and medieval Europeans believed that women suffered mentally as a result of abstinence and that the best treatment for this mental disturbance was regular sexual intercourse with a strapping young man. The mythical Melampus, for example, stopped a revolt of female virgins in Argos by convincing them to have sex with young male warriors. The resultant sexual intercourse was said to have cured their madness, which had resulted from their refusal to have intercourse. Plato also argued that women who abstained from sexual intercourse suffered as a result of their unhappy uterus. Hippocrates, meanwhile, believed that women, being cool and dry in their bodily humors (again, based on a misunderstanding of how the human body functions), needed sexual intercourse with men, whom he believed had a hot and moist internal climate, to maintain their health. Their beliefs continued into the Roman world and then both the Muslim and Christian world. Even Trotula, one of the few women of that time to openly write medical treatises on gynecology, believed that sexual abstinence damaged women’s health and caused hysteria.
*I’ll also link to some other examples, such as a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron, where one young man pretends to be deaf and mute so that he can go into a nunnery. The nuns prove to be sexually demanding of him that he finally breaks down, reveals that he can speak, and complains to the abbess, “Madam, I have understood that a cock may very well serve ten hens, but that ten men are sorely tasked to satisfy a single woman; and here am I expected to serve nine, a burden quite beyond my power to bear; nay, by what I have already undergone I am now so reduced that my strength is quite spent; wherefore either bid me Godspeed, or find some means to make matters tolerable.”
Links:
*https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?lang=eng&myID=nov0301&expand=day03
*Another story from the Decameron, wherein a man’s friends convince him that he’s pregnant and he blames his wife for her insatiable sexual appetite and her enthusiasm for trying out different sexual positions: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?lang=eng&myID=nov0903&expand=day09
*A link to google books from a translation of the writings of Isidore of Seville; it should go to page 242, where he discusses the origins of the words “mulier” and “feminina” and muses on the nature of women, in terms of their being both softer and more libidinous: https://books.google.com/books?id=3ep502syZv8C&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=isidore+of+seville+mulier&source=bl&ots=4KQwoeMggN&sig=X9NcV_fNIkpLeyigIjrlXi2cZNE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK__7VjuLUAhUI6yYKHTC4BW4Q6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=isidore%20of%20seville%20mulier&f=false
*St. Jerome also wrote that “”…women’s love in general is accused of ever being insatiable; put it out, it bursts into flame; give it plenty, it is again in need; it enervates a man’s mind, and engrosses all thought except for the passion which it feeds.”
Jonadab, I agree with bgr that it is tough to hear your story brother. You need to find a new church. I can’t believe they said you couldn’t refer to scripture, apparently they think they are a higher authority than the Word of God!
You probably know all of this already, but a huge mistake husbands often make in these types of situations is to “play ball” with them, keeping the peace. There will be no peace if she is not doing what is right and trying to rule the family. When you tell her you are looking for a new church and she refuses to go, call it out as the sin that it is, then YOU go to that new church anyway. You go there every week and call her out every week for being in sin until she follows you. The key part here is not being dissuaded from your will on the matter. Do everything to make her sin uncomfortable.
bgr, another fantastic article full of truth.
And this isn’t to argue that women have a higher sex drive than men; it’s to show that the idea that women aren’t primarily physically driven and that they want sex less than men is pretty new.
@Jonadab,
It’s very sad and disappointing to hear that your pastor thought that you should just deal with your wife’s persistent sexual denial. It’s particularly shocking that the churches won’t call out sexual denial while people in the secular world are increasingly coming to the realization that consistent sex is extremely important for marriages, that husbands and wives have an obligation to meet the other persons’ sexual needs, and that if one spouse consistently denies the other, that person is hurting their husband or wife.
Alex,
Your Statement:
Not to rehash old discussions you and I have already had – but just reiterating my two cents for our audience here 🙂
If men have a higher sex drive than women – then that means they want sex more often then women which means women want sex less often than men. I do not believe this idea is “new” but has been a fact for the history of mankind.
Lest anyone misunderstand me – I am not saying at all that normal women did not or do not desire sexual relations. Women for the history of mankind have desired sexual relations with men. This is why the Bible had so many laws, punishments and restitutions that had to made if a virgin not betrothed, a virgin betrothed or a married woman had sex with a man not her husband. They wouldn’t have needed these laws if women were not out having sex with men not their husbands.
But the key question we have to ask ourselves is WHY did these women desire illicit sex with these men whom they knew they were not allowed to have sex with?
I don’t disagree with historians that women have an insatiable desire toward men. But that insatiable desire for most women is to have their emotions stoked. They want to be told how beautiful and wonderful they are and how perfect they are. They want to feel a man’s passion for them and want to hear that he thinks of them night and day. They want to be made to feel like the most special and desired woman in the world – they want a man to be desperate and longing for them. It is AFTER they have found a man to feed their insatiable emotional appetite that they then have the fires of sexual desire stoked within them and this is when illicit sexual situations occur on the part of women.
Now do I deny the existence of women who want sex only for the physical pleasure and could care less about a man stoking their emotions? Of course not. These women have existed as well but they were the rarity.
Several facts show what I believe about men and women to be true. Marriage counselors routinely report that women more often deny their husbands sex than husbands deny their wives sex. In most marriages men are the ones that want more sex, not the women. While women have become more comfortable with reading sexually explicit novels or watching porn – you will find two things to be true about this. First the number of women engaging in these types of materials while much higher than it once was is still a fraction of the amount of men who look at pornography(probably 80 percent). The second thing to note about women reading sexually explicit novels and or watching porn is that in most cases(not all) these books are written FOR women. Yes they have lots of sex – but they mix it with a lot of emotions and feelings. This is why they have “porn for women”. There is a lot more kissing and embracing and there is less emphasis on the genitals in porn for women than for men.
Alex,
One more thing I forgot to mention – I don’t deny that some women desire sex with men because they think this will get the man to give them what they want. Many women have seduced men to get money, power or even thinking he may show them the emotional love they so desire. But I am just saying that it is rare that a woman wants sex simply for the sake of sex – where the vast majority of men very often want sex simply for the sake of sex and nothing more.
@BGR,
If you read those various treatises on women’s sexual experiences and sexuality, though, you won’t see talks about women wanting to be romanced or women having sex solely to manipulate men. You see them literally needing to have the physical sensation of a penis inside of them and also wanting to engage in what were, during the medieval and early modern period, prohibited sexual positions. There were also some manuals on how to give women orgasms (because some philosophers of medicine believed that women needed to orgasm as well in order to conceive), and those don’t recommend romancing. They recommend digitally stimulating the clitoris.
Also, how much women’s erotica have you actually read? Because there’s a lot of emphasis on men kissing the women’s breasts, touching them all over, and giving them oral sex and there’s also a lot of emphasis on penis size.
Also, I think that the real reason for persistent sexual denial in marriage on the part of women is twofold. The first is the obvious lack of care for their duties and respect for their husband’s sexual needs. But I think that the other problem is that husbands wrongly think that romance is the only key to their wives’ sexual desires. They don’t realize that they need to physically turn their wives on to get them to desire sex.
Its ironic how the world understands more truth about fundamental truths which the Bible speaks about either implicitly or explicitly, for example, that sex is necessary for marriage, and what mammon is, and even how ‘equality’ is not actually about fairness and justice, and how “rights” divides people – than the CHURCH.
The unsaved know more about mammon than the Church, which is a tragic indictment of the mammonisation of the Church. Likewise, that they know the a man loving his wife is not about giving her and their children mere ‘wants’, not needs, is also a sad indictment of the Church.
The Church of Jesus Christ is now being stomped on because of her rebellion against God..
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
(Matthew 5:13)
And to be clear, I’m putting forward this position because I think that it’s one more thing that will help both men and women better understand how they can enjoy sex within their marriages. I’m not just trying to be contrary or to defend women against something. I realize that you’re not trying to slander women by claiming that they’re primarily relational when it comes to sex, and I don’t think that that claim is slanderous or would make them better or worse than men when it comes to sex.
I think bgr is on the right path with this, but there is an element to women when it comes to physical pleasure as well. It just isn’t the same. Men are pushed biologically in a way that women are not on a much shorter (day or days) cycle and in a much stronger way. Women are also on a cycle (often weeks), but the push for them is typically less powerful. They also want excitement and pleasure, but it is not the same as what a man needs. Yes, there are those examples of unnatural aggression in women where they are literally acting like men even though they are not men, but I think this is a result of how messed up society is now.
This doesn’t even begin to address motivations beyond what the body encourages. Emotionally, God made women with a strong need to be loved which is why He tells husbands to love their wives (to meet that need). Ultimately some women go about meeting this need to be loved the wrong way in the form of thinking they can have it all, attention from every man they see, which is adulterous behavior. They might also look to use their beauty for power, control, and manipulation for the things they want.
This is why a Godly woman must guard her heart and place herself in submission to God and her husband alone, which thanks to our culture is not an easy thing to do when everything in the world screams it is all about you [when it isn’t], and you can have it all [when you can’t]. The lies and mistruth are epic. The way to proceed is for churches to stop lifting women above men (and God) and start teaching biblical doctrine. Teach young women that there are many pitfalls in this world and that them wanting to be a man is one of them. They should accept that God made them a woman and take joy in it. Just as it was wrong for Eden to desire equality with God, it is also wrong for women to desire equality with men. Simple not accepting this one thing sets them along a path where having a true obedient relationship with Jesus is put in jeopardy. We have to remember that He is in control, and it is about doing it His way. We don’t get to rewrite the rules to change things into what we want and then say, ok God, you are good with this right?, and then we don’t wait for an answer. He is good with His way.
It sounds like I am being rough on the women, but the best thing you said in your article bgr is that men are cowardly and too passive. This nature is failing women! We have to remember that with the authority God grants husbands, comes responsibility. We are responsible for our families. It is our job to wash them in the word and present them blemish free. God it be that our sometimes abrasive nature is God’s way of helping us accomplish this challenging task? We’ve gotten here because of cowardly men, false doctrine, and a lack of “being strong”.
@ BGR
You’re right about how sex functions within the hierarchy of marriage. I don’t deny that.
However, I think that more women want to have sex more than you realize like Alex is saying. Hookup culture is driven by the availability of women who want to sleep around with hot attractive men.
Women want to have sex. It just has to be in the right context… and Christian nice guys and nice husbands aren’t it. The manliness has been shed from Christian men altogether, which is a huge problem of why it doesn’t appear that way in Christian communities.
Oh dear I imagine this article will raise the ire of any feminists reading this 😃
I whole heartedly agree with everything you said BGR and if I get time will provide a more detailed response
Deep Strength and Alex,
I don’t disagree that “Women want to have sex”. I don’t disagree that sometimes a woman primarily wants sex from a very physical point of view similar to a man with little to no emotion involved. Women have cycles – and during their fertile time each month many women are horny and they can’t figure out why – it is because their body wants to make a baby. Now men run much higher and their cycle is daily as opposed to one week a month and their physical drive is much stronger.
I think where our friendly debate is on the percentages. Are 50 percent of women physical horn balls like men where emotion has little to nothing to do with their sex drive? I highly doubt that and as I stated earlier the number of men who complain to counselors about not getting enough sex from their wives and the much higher percentage of men who look at porn proves my point. If most women had the same primarily physically drive the way most men do men and women would be hopping each other like bunnies and no marriage counselor would ever hear complaints of no sex from men.
So as part of our friendly debate – I would like each of you to give me a percentage of women you think want sex the same way men do. In other words there does not have to be ANY context to the sex – they will take sex any time, any where any how.
Here are my guesses as a reference for you.
I think 80 percent of men would have sex under any context with or without feelings, not matter what mood they are in or their wife is in.
I think 10 percent of men who most likely have lower testosterone or just general emotional issues actually need the mood, feelings and context to be right before desiring sex.
I think the last 10 percent of men are actually asexual and really could care less about having sex.
I think with women it is pretty close to the opposite with some differences in the percents.
I think 20 percent of women(who most likely have higher testosterone for a woman) would have sex under any context with or without feelings, not matter what mood they are in or their husband is in.
I think 60 percent of women need the mood, feelings and context to be right before desiring sex.
I think 20 percent of women could really care less about sex either because of super low testosterone, mental issues, hangups about sex from their child hood or other reasons.
So yes I believe the vast majority of women(80 percent) do want to sex but I do believe the number women who could care less about sex is most likely double the percentage of men who don’t care at about 20 percent. I think there are women like Alex and the others describes in history that were probably about 20 percent that has drives that were closer to that of man being much more physically based than the average woman.
But I maintain that while the majority of women do want to have sex – the majority of women who want to have sex only want it when the feelings are right and the context is right where most men don’t have those things affecting their desire.
This all comes down to hormones – testosterone is what drives us to want sex and on average men have 10 times what women have so it explains why in most cases men are 10 times hornier than women.
I look forward to hearing your percentages from both of you.
Deep Strength,
I also wanted to mention my agreement with you that the hook up culture is alive and real in our culture. My 19 year old and 17 year old sons and I were just talking about this. They said probably at least 50 percent of the girls in their public high school or in college were obsessed with guys looks. Like no guy could even approach them if he did not have a six pack and look perfect. They told me though that a certain percentage of those girls(maybe less than half – so maybe 20 percent of total girls in their schools) just wanted the hot bod guy and would jump his bones no matter how he treated them. They did not care – they just wanted sex with hot guys.
Then the other half of girls looking for hot guys(so about 30 percent total of the girls) would only have sex with hot guys that worshiped them first and during the relationship. Then the other 50 percent of girls where just somewhere between and waiting for some guy to romance them and looks did not matter as much. But even then romancing these girls is quite the feet and many guys could not pull it off. So my sons told me for most guys 80 percent of the girls were out of bounds for one reason or another. Either they would only date hot guys, or they would only date guys that worshiped them.
@BGR,
I think that 80% of all humans want sex primarily for physical reason. Why? Because it’s primarily a physical activity. The primary pleasure that any sex-haver derives from sex is physical. It makes no sense to try to get any person aroused by going about it in a circuitous way and trying to stimulate arousal through emotional means.
And again, why do you think that, up until about 200 years ago, most people believed that women had an equal or higher sex drive than men? Why do you think it was that they believed that women had a PHYSICAL need for sex? And you’ve pointed out before that most of the porn that men watch or otherwise consume is porn that focuses on women pleasing them, not women getting pleased by them. It also focused on how hot the women are, not how hot the men are (and in porn made primarily for men, the men aren’t that hot.) That’s why women don’t like it as much as porn (whether written or visual) that focuses on strong, sexy, experienced men introducing them into the world of sexual pleasure. And that’s why there’s more kissing and caressing in female porn–women generally get more pleasure from a full-body sexual experience than from just a genitally-focused sexual experience and generally need that full-body focus more. And by full-body, I mean that in the physical sense, not the emotional sense.
As for why men are more sexually denied than women? After reading secular asks for relationship advice, I have to conclude that there actually isn’t a great disparity between men and women being sexually denied or sexually unsatisifed outside of the Christian community.
Some additions:
I think that you’d all admit that men who aren’t treated well by their wives will loses at least some of their desire for sex with their wives. So while a woman may have less sexual interest in a husband who ignores her or is actively mean to a her, man will probably also lose sexual interest in a wife who is disrespectful to him and doesn’t take interest in his achievements or bother to be a comforter or a supporter.
As for looks, I definitely agree that there are plenty of women who are too picky, and I also agree that there are plenty of women who will at least initially overlook a man’s personality flaws if he’s unusually good-looking and fit, just a man might initially ignore a woman’s personality flaws if she has an unusually good face and figure. But there are also plenty of women who are attracted to men who aren’t physically flawless but still look decent and take care of themselves.
Alex,
Thanks for giving me your percentage – but you and I will have to disagree on that. I think you are way off with that 80 percent number. I don’t know why some literature of the ancient times seem to show the majority of women wanting sex just for sex sake with no emotional attachment as much as men. The fact is that women are emotional creatures much more so than men. I don’t believe as you have alluded to several times – that women today have just been culturally conditioned to not want sex in the same way men want it.
Please don’t take this the wrong way or get upset at me. I really enjoy talking with you and value your comments here. But I think you are seeing this through the lenses of your own nature. You are one of those 20 percent of women that is very physically based in your sex drive – maybe you are just like most men. You could be mad at your husband for him doing dumb or hurtful things to you – but your don’t care. You just need to get it on and you will. But that simply is not how the majority of women operate. Most women get in the mood for sex because their husband said something nice or did some little thing for them. Maybe he just snuggled up with them and watched a show on TV so now they feel loved and connected and now they want sex. But even if a woman just got horny out of the blue(which I don’t deny women do) – her horniness can evaporate in an instant if her husband is mean or rude to her. That is not how men’s sex drives work. We don’t generally get tripped up by those things and we don’t need a certain relational context or mood to have sex – 99.9 percent of the time we are ready to have sex at any minute.
And while you may have read some sites that made you think sexual denial between men and women is equal – I encourage you to speak to therapists, marriage counselors and pastors who will tell you it is not.
@BGR,
No offense taken!
And I don’t think that the issue with women, particularly Christian women, is cultural conditioning. I think that part of it is a lack of understanding of their own sexual natures. They don’t know what physically pleases them, what turns them on, or how to get in the right mindset for sex. (And I think that we can agree that women’s minds can get in their way more often than men’s.) I also think that they’ve fallen into the trap of seeing their sexual pleasure and arousal as purely being their husband’s responsibility. Sure, the husband will have to put in the work to do what his wife likes as well as what he likes, but the wife has to learn about her body and do the thing a that she likes and ask for the things that she likes. After all, men end up doing a lot of work anyway to please themselves and their wives. Men just have the good luck of generally being easier to figure out.
Alex,
I don’t deny that some men are emotionally affected by how their wives treat them outside the bedroom. But for the majority of men – their wife could have just said something mean or disrespectful and then a minute later they turn around and her clothes are the floor and she wants sex. Most guys are not going to go – “wait you just hurt my feelings and now you want sex?” Are you kidding? The vast majority of men would jump right in there with no second thought.
In fact I have heard of couples where this is a very real scenario. This happens for two reasons. One reason is the wife realizes she just hurt her husband in what she said so this is her way of apologizing without having to say a word and most men love this kind of “wordless apology” from their wives.
The second reason it happens is because some women get off on messing with their husbands head. In one moment they are disrespecting him and getting him angry and the next they shock him by dropping their clothes in front of him. They get off on watching how fast his mood changes. This is NOT and I repeat NOT how the typical woman’s sex drive works.
Imagine the scenario flipped around. A man says hurtful things to his wife – maybe he calls her stupid or fat or does some other insensitive thing. Then she is steaming mad or hurt and she walks into the bedroom and he has is clothes off lying on the bed wanting to have sex. Can you honestly tell me your 80 percent of women are just going to flip their emotional switch and be turned on by their naked husband and just jump his bones?
Alex,
Also I just wanted to comment on men’s emotions when it comes to sex. I am not saying emotions play no part in sex for men. But the difference is most men don’t care about the emotions BEFORE sex – they care about DURING sex. For instance – most men want their wives to smile at them, look them in eyes and act like they are enjoying what their husband is doing to them. It bothers a normal man if his wife has a frown on her face during sex and acts like he just wants him to hurry up get it done and get off her. I have talked about this numerous times.
But as most porn for men shows – the emotions before sex mean nothing to most men. Think of the porn where a woman delivers pizza and she just drops her clothes and has sex with the guy. Most men could care less HOW they get to the sex – they just want to get to the sex.
So again it is the emotions DURING sex that men are most concerned with.
After sex most men can just role over and go to sleep while most women want to cuddle and bond and talk.
So I just see a very real difference in the sexual natures of both men and women and again I think my last comment to you illustrates that difference clearly.
BGR,
I agree that a woman is more likely to have her mood ruined by her husband being mean to her in the moment than vice verses. But I think that more women than you suspect migh still be turned on if their husbands, say, started kissing their necks, running their hands up and down their bodies, and whispering something in their ear like, “You know I don’t mean that, babe.” So, a slower physical seduction combined with an apology might work, especially since her husband’s desire would help prove to the wife that he didn’t mean it when he insulted her looks. I also think that more women than you suspect would get turned on in the middle of a full blown argument, due to the sometime overlap between passionate anger and just plain passion. Then there are women who would still enjoy makeup sex.
Also, physical turn-ons for women are often very different than for men. Women definitely tend to be more tactile than men, so their husband’s touch, whether gentle but sensual or aggressive but passionate, can be a big turn-on.
As an addition, I definitely agree that men and women have different sexual natures. But I disagree that the main way to seduce a woman is through her emotions.
Alex,
Your Statement:
I think this is one of the cruxes of our disagreement. While I agree with you that some women work the same as men when it comes to sexual desire and seduction(what gets them to want to jump into sex) I maintain that the vast majority of women are in fact seduced through their emotions.
Now by “emotions” I don’t always mean a man saying romantic words. It could be other gestures. Perhaps he sat and watched a movie with her. Maybe he brought her flowers after work. Maybe he just volunteered to do the dishes. Maybe he fixed something around the house that really bugged her. Or maybe he did nothing at all but a girl friend of hers told her how lucky she was to have the man she had. A million things could have set her emotions in the right spot whether her husband had something to do with it or not.
But now let’s take emotions from the negative angle. Let’s say a woman is feeling ignored by her husband. He is working long hours and then he comes home – goes to his man cave and plays video games the rest of his short evening. Then just 5 minutes before bed after ignoring her all day he comes up and does what you alluded to – he starts kissing her neck and rubbing her arms and she knows what he wants. But has he earned it? No way! He has ignored her all day and now he wants sex!
This exact scenario plays out in countless marriages every day. Counselors can attest to this happening a lot. So what say you to this?
@BGR,
Maybe you’ve had different experiences, but I’ve never heard of a woman being seduced by a man doing the dishes. And in the movie-watching scenario, sex probably isn’t happening if he just tries it at the end of the movie. There has to be kissing and cuddling and all. And I think that that’s a big reason for sexual denial on the part of women. Their husbands mistakenly think that they can turn their wives on by buying flowers or doing the dishes. Those things are certainly nice, and they can potentially make the wife feel more relaxed or emotionally open, which in turn can make her more receptive to actual advances.
As for your counter-example, I think that there’s a difference between a husband trying to turn his wife on by paying attention to her physically and between him just asking for sex at the end of the day. The first is way more likely to work than the second one is, especially since his expression of his sexual desires involves him going out of his way to pay attention to her and make things good for her too. It’s not him just asking her to pay attention to him all of a sudden.
All that being said, I do agree that most women will lose interest in sex if their husbands don’t maintain any emotional relationship with them. If their husbands occasionally play videos games all night instead of spending time with them, that’s probably not going to tank an otherwise active sex life. If anything, the wife might be more annoyed that her husband didn’t initiate sex earlier. (Though, yeah, if a wife feels like her husband has to do a certain set of things for her to get sex, it probably won’t go over well if he tries to initiate sex after playing video games all night.) But if he does that every weeknight and then doesn’t do anything with her on the weekends either, then yeah, that’s going to generally reduce most women’s interest in sex.
@ BGR
If I remember correctly (and I don’t remember the source), approximately 75% of marriages the man wants more sex and 25% of marriages the woman wants more sex. Obviously, the majority is men, but there are definitely some high sex drive women.
Also, some other interesting commentary, if these stats can be believed:
In general, though, I would say the percentages vary. If we’re talking about hookups I would say that almost 100% of the participants generally want to be doing it both men and women. If we’re talking about marriage there’s likely a greater percentage of Christian marriages where the wife is “less sexually responsive” than normal as compared to secular marriages due to the dearth of masculine Christian husbands.
I think “feelings” are more of a factor when sex is weaponized like in most modern marriages that need counseling. This is one of the false perceptions that “romance” is required for women to have sex because of the myth of the “slow cooker” that pervades a lot of Christian marriage counseling/preaching.
If sex becomes a bargaining chip, then all is lost. A wife who thinks she can dole it out when she feels like it is going to use it to control her husband. A wife needs to have truth and truth is that she needs to submit to her husband’s sexual wishes. The whole idea of “husband has to do this” to “get her to have the sex” is flawed and will not work. With all that said, a contented wife who is being loved as God tells a husband to love his wife will find it much easier to submit to her husband sexually and everything else. Some husbands are easier to submit to and some are harder to submit to. A husband who loves his wife will want to please her in bed. Yes, there are those lazy selfish husbands out there who need to grow, but I believe most men want to please their wives sexually.
As a woman I can’t even believe this is a discussion, it’s almost embarrassing. I am not a Christian but I do know that we have gender roles. Women were made for men, it’s obvious and necessary for mankind. We were made to attract men and populate. I love the simplicity of my purpose. I did get a degree and could support myself if needed but why??? I have been raised by parents who taught me how to be a wife and mother and I will pass that on. Nothing I have ever been ashamed of. I’m proud to serve my husband and be a good wife.
Alex,
Your Statement:
I actually have had this happen with my wife. If I did the dishes all the time or on a regular basis then no it would not turn her on and typically it does not. It is when I have not done them in a while and she does not even remotely expect coupled with her just be tired and I just surprise her and not only do the dishes but clean the house. There have been a few occasions where it has actually paid dividends at the end of the night.
In fact one time I took an entire Saturday and did several fixes around the house on things that were bothering her and walla – she even told me it put it her in the mood. Some women actually do get put in the mood by their husbands doing various things for them.
Does your idea of cuddling and kissing work too? Sometimes, sometimes not. There is no full proof way to put my wife in the mood whether it is fixing something around the house, doing the dishes or just spending alone time with her. She might be in the mood, she might not be after me doing a variety of things that worked in the past.
But you know what? I don’t let her mood stop me and I really don’t do these things as some sort of “I will do this for you and I expect this from you in response”. I just do it to be kind. I have made it clear to her that if I want it – I am going to get it unless she is in agonizing pain, has diarrhea or is extremely sick in some other way.
But no – kissing and cuddling is not some magic “get every woman in the mood” switch. Most women don’t have one switch that works every time like men do. Women have tons of different “switches” and you might try all of them in a matter of days and she still may not be in the mood. But as I teach on this site all the time – the wife being in the mood or not should not stop a man from “drinking from his well” whenever he wants.
I just think men should be kind to their wives and try and do nice things for them from time to time in an attempt to least try to make things better for their wife but at the end of the day she is most responsible for her own moods and outlook on sex.
Alex,
Your Statement:
Alex – do you realize that in your above statement you have pretty much validated everything I have been saying about women? For most women – their interest in sex is DIRECTLY tied to their emotions and how they feel at any given moment. Men just want sex period. Women MIGHT want sex when a man does X,Y, and Z that makes them feel loved.
For men for sure if she shows interest in sex they will drop what they are doing and go for it or if they cannot that minute you better believe they are going to get done with whatever they are doing and get there. Even their wife shows no interest in sex – they will STILL want sex.
As I said before men don’t care about any preconditions for sex as women do – they just want sex for the sake of sex as Deep Strength allude to in his comment. Men only care about the emotions during sex(that a woman looks like she is having a good time and he is doing his job right) but men care little to nothing about the emotions before or after sex in most cases.
It is because men generally want sex for the sake of sex with no preconditions that men most often want sex more than women. Now that does not mean as that some women don’t want sex more than their husbands. Deep Strength gave a number of 75% of men wanting more sex and 25% of women – I can buy that. I think it is more like 80% percent to 20% but that it close enough.
Alex,
One more thing I would like to add as I have heard this from many men, and I have experienced this with both my first and second wife. Most women do NOT like it when their husbands expect sex if they do X, Y, and Z. They are two things women typically want. First they want the man to shake it up and do A, X and Z one time and then U, A and X another time. If they feel a valiant effort has been made they may grant his request. But if they feel he is just going through the motions to get her in the mood and not using his imagination – well it ain’t happening. Also they want him to do all these things and not always expect sex.
It is a complete mind game and I used to play it years ago with my first wife and when I was first married to my second wife. And guess what – I decided to no longer play the female mind game. Yes I still do nice things for my wife like the dishes or things around the house from time to time. Yes I still cuddle with her and spend time with her – sometimes as much time as she wants and other times not as much time as she wants.
But you know what – the entire stress is gone for me as far as thinking “will this get me the sex I so desire”. I know whether I do these things or not if I want it I am going for it. Sometimes she is totally not in the mood and she may do it in a grudging manner because she does not want to anger me. And guess what – I take it. Because I don’t play the game. Other times perhaps everything falls into place and did do some things she liked and it did put in her in the mood – so much the better.
But either way I don’t play the “will this put her in the mood game” anymore. Whether I do something, or do don’t do something before and if I do something and it works or does not work it does not matter – sex is going to happen on a regular basis because it is God’s will and command for marriage.
@BGR,
I never said that there was a magic mood switch for women, or for men for that matter.
“Alex – do you realize that in your above statement you have pretty much validated everything I have been saying about women? For most women – their interest in sex is DIRECTLY tied to their emotions and how they feel at any given moment. Men just want sex period. Women MIGHT want sex when a man does X,Y, and Z that makes them feel loved.”
That’s not actually what I was saying. I was saying that women can have their desire for their husbands’ turned off if he continuously neglects them emotionally, just as a man can have his desire for his wife turned off if his wife continually disrespects him.
And i think that Deep Strength summed up my position better with this:
“If we’re talking about marriage there’s likely a greater percentage of Christian marriages where the wife is ‘less sexually responsive’ than normal as compared to secular marriages due to the dearth of masculine Christian husbands.
I think ‘feelings’ are more of a factor when sex is weaponized like in most modern marriages that need counseling. This is one of the false perceptions that ‘romance’ is required for women to have sex because of the myth of the ‘slow cooker’ that pervades a lot of Christian marriage counseling/preaching.”
@BGR,
Regarding your wife, I believe that you’ve said before that she has a pretty low libido, regardless. You wrote on one of your posts in sexual denial that she’s not usually too keen on physical affection (unless presumably she’s in the mood for it to go further) and that while she likes romantic gestures and companionship, that doesn’t consistently turn her on either. With someone who just genuinely has a low libido, there’s a good chance that building emotional or physical intimacy just won’t really put her in the mood. There are a lot of seduction techniques that don’t work as well with low-libido women. Romancing doesn’t work as often. Physical affection, like cuddling and massages won’t work as often. Building anticipation throughout the day by sending flirtatious and sexual text messages (which apparently works for a lot of women) won’t work as often either. It also sounds as though your wife, unlike women with more normal libidos, isn’t as into foreplay or additional intimacy during sex, unless she’s really in the mood before. That’s another low-libido hallmark.
And I actually do agree that it’s important to ask for sex or come onto your wife when you are in the mood and not worry so much about whether or not you’ve done the right things that day to get her into the mood. I mean, if I’m remembering from your earlier comments, you’d agree that a husband should make an effort to turn his wife on with foreplay and all so that sex is comfortable for her. That’s really what I mean by a physical initiation.