4 Things Your Wife Hears about Sex (When You’re Not Around)

by J. Parker

Chris and I have heard from many husbands through the years about what they believe women are told about sex by peers, mentors, teachers, ministers, marriage bloggers, etc. The picture that emerges has some truth, but it’s incomplete.

We want you to know the whole truth, so you can better understand your wife and, based on that knowledge, foster better sexual intimacy in your marriage.

So we’re letting you in on the private conversations of women.

Below, I’ll cover four things wives hear and say about sex when men are not around, and Chris will address a few more in a couple of weeks.

Sex Is a Burden

Yep, this is a key theme among many married women—that the expectation of sex in marriage feels burdensome.

Many wives do not have the same level of libido as their husbands, so they don’t understand the urgency and intensity of sexual desire. Meanwhile, those women are busy, exhausted, feeling demands from all corners of life, and their man’s requests for sex can feel like One More Thing weighing them down.

It comes across in statements like:

• “Ugh, he wants to have sex all the time!”
• “I can’t even get undressed without him looking at me that way.”
• “Why can’t he just give me a back rub without trying to turn it into something else?”
• “Just when I finally get everything done and slide into bed, he rolls over and tries to start something. Can’t he see I have no energy left?”

So yeah, if you thought that conversation was happening, it is. But it’s not the whole story, so keep reading!

You Should Be Having Sex

This is one of the biggest myths I hear from frustrated husbands—that no one is directly telling wives they should have sex in marriage. Most wives hear it a lot.

Take a typical Christian marriage book off the shelf, flip it open to “the sex chapter,” and I can almost guarantee it will say something like “Wives, sex is important to your husbands, so make sure you give it to him.” That message is reinforced in women’s Bible classes and marriage events, in conversations wives have with one another, and with older women teaching younger women.

Standard lines include:

• “A wise wife never rejects her husband’s advances,” or sometimes stated in a personal way, like “In thirty years of marriage, I’ve never told my husband no.”
• “We need conversation (or romance), and men need sex.”
• “Have regular sex with your husband, so he won’t be tempted elsewhere.”

With messages like these, a wife can feel like sex isn’t for her, just her husband. And it’s a duty, rather than an invitation or a delight. She struggles to embrace that sex is for her too and ends up feeling that sex is indeed a burden.

Sex Starts with Desire

A number of conversations center around whether she wants it or doesn’t want it. We have been taught—all of us, for many years, until recently—that sexual desire comes before arousal.

Thus, wives will say such things as:

• “I’m just not in the mood very often.”
• “I can’t get turned on that quick.”
• “I wish I could just flip a switch and want sex as much as he does.”

The four-phase model of desire, arousal, orgasm, resolution was standard for almost 40 years, until researchers finally realized that it didn’t describe the experience of many women (and some men).

Yet this desire-first model is ingrained in our culture—including novels, TV shows, and films—and too many wives still believe the decision to engage in sexual intimacy should be preceded by sensual feelings, when maybe their arousal comes later.

Sex Is Fun

How does this section fits into everything I’ve said before? Well, despite all of my points above, women do talk about sex playfully at times. We make sex jokes too.

Some things I’ve heard among women:

• “Throw that lingerie on the floor to see how it looks. That’s where it will end up anyway.”
• “The kids are gone? Yeah, we know what you two will be doing.” ~wink, wink~
• “I was really upset with him, but then he gave me a really great orgasm, so…”

This helps to explain the disconnect for some wives: they hear it’s supposed to be fun, yet they’re not enjoying it that much or don’t want it as much as they should want something fun. Doubt, guilt, frustration, disappointment—all of those can follow, and then shove her back up to the “sex is a burden” point.

What do you do with all this information?

Ask your wife if she’s heard any of these messages. How have they impacted her view of sex? How can you help her work through her challenges? How could you both seek the whole truth about sex as God designed it to be?

And stay tuned for Chris’s installment on what she’s heard wives say when you’re not around.