Do you wish your wife would initiate sex more? If so, you’re not alone. After all, you want to know that you’re desired!
In your mind, initiation might look something like this:
She comes to you and says, “Let’s put your [pet name for your penis] into my [your pet name for her genitals].”
She grabs you between the legs and says, “I want you inside me. Now.”
She throws you against the wall and has her way with you.
At the very least, she’s the one who takes you to bed and then does all the “driving.”
You know what initiation should look like, and she’s just not doing it.
What’s going on?
Why She Might Not Initiate
Two significant reasons wives may not initiate are 1) their female sexual response, and 2) what they’ve been taught about sex.
Your Wife’s Sexual Response Isn’t Like Yours
News flash: women are different from men. And let’s face it. That’s part of what you love about your wife, right?
Most women have a responsive sexual desire. That is, their physical interest (that build-up of tension that creates that gotta-have-it-now feeling) is a response to becoming aroused. What does this mean? She may not think about wanting to have sex until she is in the middle of having sex.
For many women, physical desire is a response to mental and emotional desire. Feelings of emotional closeness or thoughts about your love for each other can generate that physical desire. Also, non-sexual touch can nurture her sexual interest.
Note from J: Even for equally matched or higher drive wives, physiological arousal may not happen until well into foreplay. She might still require more time to reach the intensity needed to take charge the way you imagine.
Her Lifelong Learning About Sex Gets in the Way . . .
Women absorb so many messages about sex that interfere with sex, including:
- Good Christian women don’t enjoy sex.
- Sex is for men, not for women.
- Sexual feelings are embarrassing or shameful.
If your wife has experienced sexual abuse or assault, or if she engaged in premarital sex (even with you), these messages might be magnified.
These negative messages can lead to her feeling uncomfortable with her sexuality. She may want to have sex, but she is embarrassed to admit it (yes, even to you).
And So Do Some Other Things
That’s not all.
- Women are typically socialized to take care of others first and ourselves last. Expressing a desire for sex can feel selfish.
- A negative body image can make a woman feel conflicted about initiating sex. She may want to have sex, but if they have sex, her husband will see her body. If she isn’t feeling great about her body, this can be a barrier.
- She may have no idea HOW to initiate. We don’t know what words to say or actions to do, and we don’t know how to learn.
Not a single one of these things is about you. Her lack of initiation feels personal to you, but these are all about her.
You obviously can’t cancel out a lifetime’s worth of messages overnight, but being aware of your own wife’s struggles may point you to some ways that you can help her rise above those negative messages.
Is It Possible that She IS initiating?
Despite the reasons that it might be hard for a wife to initiate sex, many women initiate anyway.
Here’s the thing, though: women tend to be subtle in their initiation. Unless a guy is good at picking up on subtle hints, he may not even realize what she is doing—so it just might be that your own wife is initiating and you don’t even know it!
What Does Her Initiation Look Like?
Some of a woman’s subtle initiation might be things that would help HER get in the mood. In other words, she initiates sex by doing the things that would be helpful in getting her own responsive desire purring:
- She gives you lots of non-sexual touch. If she sometimes sits next to you on the couch and snuggles or caresses your hands and legs, she may be trying to initiate sex and get you warmed up.
- She invites intimate conversation about feelings, fond memories, and so on. These things help boost her emotional desire for you, and she thinks they’ll have the same effect on you.
Sometimes her initiation techniques are ways of getting around those lifelong messages. She isn’t comfortable acknowledging her desire for sex or being selfish, but if she gets you to ask her for sex, then she can feel less embarrassed.
- She does some sexual teasing. She walks through the room wearing a long t-shirt that barely covers her back side and makes you wonder if she’s wearing anything under there. Or she leans over and gives you a glimpse.
- She offers sex: “You look like you want to have sex.” Or “Do you want sex tonight?”
If you’re wondering whether she realizes that she’s getting your motor running, the answer just might be yes.
Image credit | Foxy Dolphin at canva.com
We went through a real rough patch a few years back and got some good counseling to help. Super-simple version for some context to my question – we were in a cycle of me asking for sex, her having to refuse often for various reasons (many reasonable and legit, some not so much). She felt under such intense pressure to “perform” that it was eating away at her ability to even think fondly about sex anymore. But to break out of that, we were advised to 1.) take full intercourse off the table for some time to let her hit a reset button and 2.) bring back sex when she felt comfortable initiating and let it be on her terms and really lean into that for a while. That really was helpful for both of us with the stuff going on in our lives at the time. Problem is that now I’m ALWAYS afraid that if I initiate sex when it’s a bad time, I’m going to be doing more harm than I realize, like I was before.
Where things stand now, I’ll get up some courage and make plans to initiate, and she walks in from work and says “wow, that day was exhausting, I can’t wait to get to bed.” Or I’ll come home from work and she’ll say “I’ve had a horrible day, I need some down time tonight.” Regardless, the words all communicate “not tonight.” While that’s not always her intent, that’s what the result is. I find us to be in this wacko-cycle. She 100% fits the description of not really thinking about sex until she is (which as I guy, I find so foreign). But it feels like Russian roulette. I might initiate and it’s the “I hadn’t thought about it, but yeah, that sounds good.” But I might also get a response that she’s under a lot of pressure already and doesn’t need that pressure as well. And other times she may beat me to it and initiate. But the question of who initiates, how and when is a really loaded subject. She has said before that she hates feeling like she has to initiate all the time. But I also feel that if I’m not overly careful in when I initiate, it’s a bigger problem. So more often than not, I err on the side of caution. How can we go about finding a better balance?
It sounds to me like you and your wife need to have an open and honest conversation about this. You might suggest several approaches and talk about how they might work for you.
Some couples have have designated different days of the week for one of them to initiate. For example, if it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, he’s the one who decides to initiate (or not), and Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are for her to decide. Or, he takes Monday through Wednesday and she takes Thursday through Friday.
Others find it helpful to have a 24-hour rule. Either one can initiate, and either one can take a rain check–but it has to be “cashed in” within 24 hours. That means that “no” is really “not yet.”
Another thought might be to talk with your wife about how you can best respond when you initiate and she says no. If she says she is under a lot of pressure and just can’t manage sex, is there something you can do to help her feel relaxed so she finds it easier to respond the next day? If you understand that her “no” is not about you but is about her difficulty in relaxing enough for sex, does that change how the “no” feels to you? Is there a different way she can be clearer or respond to help you do better?
Also, I’d like to encourage you to take a look at J’s latest post about how to take some of the risk/sting out of being the primary initiator.
~C
Thank you so much KHS Ministry, last a forum where we men can learn how to understand our wives sexuality and serve her sexually has been a long time coming.
This post, and especially the section “What Does Her Initiation Look Like?”, was an “aha” moment for me and impacted me so much that I had to share it with my wife to get her opinion. As she read the section “Your Wife’s Sexual Response Isn’t Like Yours” she let out a very audible YES. We shared this post with my daughter and she said yes at exactly the same point.
As my wife and I run talks in our church on sex and sexuality in marriage and also support for men and women struggling with pornography. Thank you for KHS and HHH.
I hope that posts like this help you and your wife better minister to other couples. It is amazing how much we don’t understand about how our spouses work sexually.
If you want to really blow your mind, take a look at this post on my blog for wives.
I have been a reader of both of your blogs/websites for a few year, and have always found them thoughtful, thought provoking and educational. Thank you for your time and effort in tackling subjects that seem to be difficult and not talked about often enough.
This post was very interesting, its a great reminder that men and women wired differently. It is very easy (for me anyway) to equate the lack of or “perceived” lack of initiation with no interest in sex.
It was a refreshing reminder there are times that my wife’s interest in physical intimacy is shown differently than I would, and I need to pay attention to those details. This post also is a reminder about how important communication is, especially with this topic, when it is soooo easy to misinterpret each others intent.
Thank you for all you do, and keep up the great work! I have enjoyed reading all the entries on this site, and I keep enjoying the posts on your original sites.
Thank you!
Hello, some women are such major prudes that even after you’re open and honest with them they still don’t trust you. I want to know if it’s something inborn in them or they have control complex issues
There’s a lot of area between being born with something and being a control freak—and that’s where the truth usually lies.
No woman is born a prude. If she is overwhelmed hearing about certain activities, it is often because she has had a lifetime of lessons teaching her that sex is shameful and that sexual desire is wrong. It can feel impossible to shake the messages that you don’t even know are wrong.
If she avoids sex, it is often a combination of her own sexual baggage and relationship issues. If you’re even thinking the word “prude” in relation to your wife, my guess is that your view of her is quite obvious—and that can be a significant factor in her lack of trust.
While initiating sex is quite vulnerable for many men, the actual act of sex is very vulnerable for women. We quite literally are having our bodies invaded. We have to be able to trust that our emotions and our sexuality are completely safe with our husbands. If a husband has made a negative comment about her sexually, if he has denigrated her body, if he has sought sexual stimulation from pornography or another person, her trust has been violated. Many women struggle to trust anyway, and if a husband adds to that through his words or actions, it becomes even more difficult for her. She may come across as a prude, but what you see as prude, I see as a woman who is hurting. A wife who feels protected and safe will find it easier to work on sex and trust than a wife who doesn’t feel that way.
All that said, I know it must be incredibly difficult to be in a marriage where this is an issue. Sometimes husbands don’t know if her views are the result of something before marriage or of something that happened in the relationship. She may not have even told him what he did that hurt her or shook her trust in him.
I commend husbands for being honest with their wives. Authenticity is important, and while not all sexual desires should be fulfilled, opening up gives your wife an opportunity to know you in a deeper way.
~Chris
Wife perspective here. I originally read this article to send to my husband, who go figure wishes I would initiate more. Admittedly, I have a high drive so I’ve never understood why it was so important that I was actually the one starting the process. And I noticed several things in the article that are 100% true. 1) Women are drawn to sex by how they are feeling. If you’ve said something even minorly hurtful that morning to you wife it diminishes her libido. We worry about if you’re upset with us and that clouds our desire for sex. On the contrary, if you have a meaningful (even short) conversation with your wife or are super sweet throughout the day, if she’s anything like me, she would be way more open to sex, or even initiate it. 2) it feels weird to initiate sex. Something about being that forward goes against my nature. It makes us like we’re taking over the man’s place, even if we really enjoy having sex we just don’t like to initiate much because of weirdness. 3) sometimes when I do “initiate” with my husband he has no freaking clue. I’ll send some cheeky meme earlier in the day (because most women like a little anticipation time), he’s clueless. Or When we tuck in for the night I might be a little more “handsy” and not even in a sexual way. All of those are my hints, and your wife likely has much more subtle hints than you. It is very unlikely that she’s gonna come straight out and ask for sex like you might. If I stay persistent with the subtle hints my husband will finally ask “what are you doing” and I’ll have a cheeky grin and he’ll finally get it. Pay attention to the small hints, it probably feels ultra weird for her to be making them.