I just want to be clear so everyone who comments on this site will understand my policy regarding comments.
The reason you will see that I keep all positive comments and very few negative ones is not because I don’t know how to defend my positions, it is simply a matter of time. I only have so many hours in a day to respond to all of the emails and comments I get each day on this blog.
So it is a question of where I choose to spend my time – will I spend hours and hours debating people who will never believe as I and millions of Christians around the world believe? Or would that time be better spent responding to emails and comments from Christians who are truly seeking help? Every hour I spend debating a naysayer is an hour I don’t get to spend helping a Christian wife or husband who writes me privately asking for help.
Also believe it or not contrary to what non-Christians and liberal Christians who read this blog with seething hatred think I actually do love my wife and kids and enjoy spending time with them and will not spend every waking hour I have responding to a critic when I could spend it with my family.
That being said you will see me allow through some negative comments from time to time and when I do it is because I feel that answering that person(even though I will probably never convince them otherwise) would be helpful to my fellow Christian brothers and sisters so that they can reply to these charges when asked by other people as they go about their daily lives.
If you want to guarantee your negative comments get out on the web then create your own blog posts as many have in reaction to my posts.
Also if you send a negative comment, and even want a chance of it being approved and replied to if it has profanity or speaks disrespectfully toward the God of the Bible it will automatically be deleted.
Biblical Gender Roles 
Hello, thank you for dealing with these topics! My husband and I have recently gone through a Nouthetic Christian Program to deal with sexual sin within the marriage. My husband was raised in an environment of pornography and sexual immorality, among several other abusive themes. As such, these sinful habits followed us into our marriage… He was in the habit of self-gratifying and viewing pornography several times a day, despite the fact that I was willing to keep him well satisfied sexually. Fortunately, after being prompted by the Holy Spirit, he realized his ways were keeping us from true intimacy and made the wise decision to seek help for his situation. He asked me to join him in taking the spouses course and I agreed happily. Overall, our sex life has been very good, considering his prior circumstances. We are very compatible, both comfortable with the same things, and I certainly do not deny him, as I rarely am “out of the mood.” Now, my question: Since he has been abstaining for sinful sexual practices, our frequency has understandably increased, and I am fine with that, however, a situation came up where he came down with a virus and still wanted to have sex, but I asked him if we might wait, because I had some obligations in the next few days that would require me to be in total health, in order to fulfill. I looked up whether or not we could still have sex and not pass the virus and it said we could, but not to kiss or breathe in too close a proximity to one another…basically ruling out anything oral or too “forward facing.” A trusted spiritual advisor mentioned that when he and his wife were unable to engage because of sickness he would ask her to manually “relieve him,” so as not to put him in a situation where he would be led to mastrubate. This suggestion seemed “off” to me. I personally thought it would be very awkward…trying to avoid him enough as not to catch his sickness and at the same time, be close enough to relieve him. And honestly, when I read not to deprive one another, I understand it to mean, do not “fraudulently refuse” one another: do not make up excuses, refuse just to make a point, hold it over one’s head, agree only in the case of favors or gain, etc.. This is never the case with us… But in the case of legitimate sickness??? At any rate, he told me to “forget it,” but I know he was not happy. All I was asking was to wait a day or two…basically until either he could get well, or I could afford to be sick! I would appreciate your insights.
Sabrina,
Thanks for your comments and your question. Let me first say that I sense in your comments a wife that truly wants to please her husband in the sexual arena – and to that I say to you “bravo”! You doing that research to see if you could have sex with him having that virus shows your care for him.
I am familiar with Jay Adam’s Nouthetic counseling programs and I actually know a man that worked with him for 15 years. I disagree with his positions on masturbation as the Bible does not forbid masturbation. Even sexual arousal and sexual fantasy are not forbidden. The Apostle Paul said that lust is covetousness. Covetousness is when a person has the thought about actually trying possess something or someone they have not right to possess.
What that means is this:
A man may be aroused by a beautiful woman and no sin has been committed on his part.
A man may wonder what a woman looks like naked, or even have a sexual fantasy about a woman and there is no sin in that.
A man can masturbate to the imagination of a beautiful woman and he has not sinned.
A man sins when he starts fantasize about how he can actually take possession of a woman outside of marriage. When he starts to imagine scenarios in which he could actually have a relationship with her that leads to sex outside of marriage – those are lustful(covetous) thoughts and that is what the Bible condemns. So as you can see I have some Scriptural disagreements with Jay Adams on this subject.
I believe that God gave men and women masturbation as a tool for just such times as what you describe – when you can’t physically be with your spouse, or perhaps you are single and are being tempted to have actual sex outside of marriage. When you take that tool away, you setup a scenario for actual sin in my view. The Bible actually talks about masturbation(God regulated it in the cleanliness laws of the Old Testament, and it never calls it a sinful activity).
Now masturbation can be abused and it is wrong to look at images of people committing immoral acts which I am sure your husband was looking at. It sounds to me like your husband was abusing God’s gift of masturbation to the point where he was doing it so often and getting wrapped up in immoral imagery that he was unable to have a normal sexual relationship with you. So in that case I completely agree that he needed some counseling and some help. I just think he needed to learn to masturbate in healthy way, in way that did not cause him to not seek sex with you because he was masturbating too much.
With that being said, I have some additional followup questions.
You said you felt that manually relieving him would be “awkward” and many women feel that way – but there is nothing wrong or sinful about that and that is a perfectly acceptable option for a Christian couple.
Did you give him this as an option and he refused? Did you offer it hesitantly to him, or enthusiastically?
I understand you had to stay way from “forward facing sex” – but wouldn’t that leave sex from behind as an option where your faces would not be anywhere near one another?
I realize that it might seem trivial to you and “why couldn’t he wait a few days”, but just imagine if you needed to talk to your husband and he said you needed to “hold that thought” for a few days? For a man this exactly what the frustration of waiting for sex can feel like.