TO WIVES: Why Is Sex So Important?

wives Sex Married strangers - Dollar Photo Married Couple having relationship problemsWives: what kinds of emotional needs does your sexual interest meet for your husband? Do you know?

In written survey comments and in my interviews, I noticed two parallel trends. They are the great benefits a fulfilling sex life creates in a man’s inner life and, conversely, the wounds created when lovemaking is reluctant or lacking.

Lets look at a few of the benefits.

Benefit #1: Fulfilling sex makes him feel loved and desired

Not surprisingly, the first thing surfaced from the survey comments was that having a regular, mutually enjoyed sex life was critical to the man’s feeling of being loved and desired. One eloquent plea captured it perfectly:

I wish that my wife understood that making a priority of meeting my intimacy needs is the loudest and clearest way she can say, “You are more important to me than anything else in the world.” It is a form of communication that speaks more forcefully, with less room for misinterpretation, than any other.

The reason why this message is needed is that many men —even those with close friendships —seem to live with a deep sense of loneliness that is quite foreign to us oh-so-relational wives. And making love is the purest salve for that loneliness.

One man told me, “I feel like I go out into the ring every day and fight. It’s very lonely. That’s why, when the bell rings, I want my wife to be there for me.”

Another related that sentiment to the power of fulfilling sex: “A man really does feel isolated, even with his wife. But in making love, there is one other person in this world that you can be completely vulnerable with and be totally accepted and non-judged. It is a solace that goes very deep into the heart of a man.”

This is one reason why some men may make advances at times that seem the furthest from sexual. One woman relayed a story about her husband wanting to make love after a funeral for a close relative. Making love was a comfort and a way of being wrapped in her love.

Benefit #2: Fulfilling sex gives him confidence

Your desire for him goes beyond making him feel wanted and loved. Your desire is a bedrock form of support that gives him power to face the rest of his daily life with a sense of confidence and well-being.

By now most of us have seen the television commercials for Viagra. It’s on in which a man’s colleagues for friends repeatedly stop him and ask what’s “different” about him. New haircut? Been working out? Promotion? Nope, the man tells them all, with a little smile.

One man I interviewed brought up those ads. “Every man immediately understands what that commercial is saying. It’s all about guys feeling good about themselves. The ad portrays a truth that all men intuitively recognize. They’re more confident and alive when their sex life is working.”

Once my eyes were opened to this truth, I realized how often I’d heard the “man code” for this fact. But I failed to understand it. When men had told me they “felt better” when they got more sex, I had just assumed they meant physically better.

But as one husband told me, “What happens in the bedroom really does affect how I feel the next day at the office.” Another wrote, “Sex is a release of a day-to-day pressures. Plus, it seems to make everything else better.”

Wound #1: “If she doesn’t want to, I feel incredible rejection.”

As much as men want sex, most of them would rather go out and clip the hedges in the freezing rain than make love with a wife who appears to be responding out of duty. My husband, Jeff, explained: “The guy isn’t going to be rejected by the hedges. And that’s the issue. If she’s just responding because she has to, he’s being rejected by his wife.”

Again, keeping in mind that what he wants most is for you to desire him, try to see what he wants most is for you to desire him. Try to see this rejection issue from the man’s point of view. If we agree, but don’t make an effort to get really engaged with the man we love, he hears us saying, “You’re incapable of turning me on even when you try. And I really don’t care about what matters deeply to you.” On the other hand if we don’t agree at all, but throw out the classic “Not tonight, dear,” he hears, “You’re so undesirable that you can’t compete with a pillow. I really don’t care about what matters deeply to you.”

Although we might just be saying we don’t want sex at that point in time, he hears the much more painful message that we don’t want him.

Here’s what the men said on the survey:

• “She doesn’t understand that I feel loved by sexual caressing. And if she doesn’t want to, I feel incredible rejection.”

• “When she says no, I feel that I am REJECTED. ‘No’ is not no to sex —as she might feel. It is no to me as I am. And I am vulnerable as I ask or initiate. It’s plain and simple rejection.”

• “She doesn’t understand how even her occasional dismissals make me feel less desirable. I can’t resist her. I wish that I, too, were irresistible. She says I am. But her ability to say no so easily makes it hard to believe.”

This feeling of personal rejection, and a sense that his wife doesn’t really desire him, tends to lead a man into darker waters.

Wound #2: your lack of desire can send him into depression.

If your sexual desire gives your husband a sense of well-being and confidence, you can understand why an ongoing perception that you don’t desire him would translate into a nagging lack of confidence, withdrawal, and depression.

The men I talked to scoffed at my tentative suggestion that a string of similar rejections wouldn’t necessarily mean that their wives were rejecting them as men. They warned that any woman sending those signals would undermine the loving environment she wants most. That is because, as one man said, “She is going to have one depressed man on her hands.”

A man can’t just turn off the physical and emotional importance of sex. This is why its lack can be compared to the emotional pain you’d feel if your husband simply stopped talking to you. Consider the painful words of this truly deprived husband—words that other men, upon reading them, call “heartbreaking”:

We’ve been married for a long time. I deeply regret and resent the lack of intimacy of nearly any kind for the duration of our marriage. I feel rejected, ineligible, insignificant, lonely, isolated, and abandoned as a result. Not having the interaction I anticipated prior to marriage is like a treasure lost and irretrievable. It causes deep resentment and hurt within me. This in turn fosters anger and feelings of alienation.

Feeling Loved

If you view sex as a purely physical need, it might indeed seem comparable to sleep. But once you realize that your man is actually saying, “This is essential to my feeling of being loved and desired by you, and is critical to counteract my stress, my fears, and my loneliness,” well, that suddenly puts it in a different category. So how might you respond?

First, know that you’re responding to a tender heart hiding behind all that testosterone. If at all possible, respond to his advances with your full emotional involvement, knowing that you’re touching his heart. But if responding physically seems out of the question, let your words be heart words—reassuring, affirming, adoring. Do everything in your power—using words and actions your husband understands—to keep those pangs of personal rejection from striking the man you love. Leave him in no doubt that you love to love him.

And remember, if you do respond physically but do it just to “meet his needs” without getting engaged, you’re not actually meeting his needs. In fact, you might as well send him out to clip the hedges. So enjoy God’s intimate gift, and make the most of it!

…I recognize that some wives might very much wish that they could respond more wholeheartedly to their husband’s sexual needs. But they feel stopped in their tracks for various personal reasons. I don’t want to add any more frustration. I do, however, want to encourage you to get the personal or professional help you need to move forward. The choice to pursue healing will be worth it, both for you and the man you love.

Wives: Make sex a priority

An excerpt from a Today’s Christian Woman article captures this issue. It provides an important challenge to wives to change our thinking. The author starts by admitting that although her husband really wanted to make love more often, it “just wasn’t one of my priorities.” She then describes a subsequent revelation:

I felt what I did all day was meet other people’s needs. Whether it was caring for my children, working in ministry, or washing my husband’s clothes, by the end of the day I wanted to be done need-meeting. I wanted my pillow and a magazine. But God prompted me: “Are the ‘needs’ you meet for your husband the needs he wants met?”

If your daughters weren’t perfectly primped, he didn’t complain. If the kitchen floor needed mopping, he didn’t say a word. And if he didn’t have any socks to wear, he simply threw them in the washer himself.

I soon realized I regularly said “no” to the one thing he asked of me. I sure wasn’t making myself available to my husband by militantly adhering to my plan for the day. Would the world end if I didn’t get my tires rotated? I’d been focused on what I wanted to get done and what my children needed, I’d cut my husband out of the picture.

Reevaluating Priorities

Are the many things that take our time and energy truly as important as this one? Now would be a good time to reevaluate priorities with the help of our husbands so they know that we are taking this seriously.

Having heard from so many men on this, I would urge wives: Don’t discount it. It’s more important to him—and to your relationship and therefore your own joy in marriage —than you can imagine.

Now that you understand the tender places in your husband’s heart, hopefully you have developed compassion for him and the way he is wired.


This article comes from the terrific book,  For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men -written by Shaunti Feldhahn, published by Multnomah. This is a GREAT book. It helps wives learn what motivates men and their thought processes behind their actions (or non-actions). Shaunti had interviewed over 1000 men in researching this book. She reveals the findings of her research so wives can better understand the men in their lives and better interact with them.

There’s also a For Women Only Discussion Guide available for wives, written by Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa Rice, published by Multnomah. It’s designed to be used by book clubs, or in small groups. Or it can be used for having a one-on-one dialogue with the man of your life. Many wives, after reading the For Women Only book may wonder, “What do I do with the info I’ve been given?” This discussion guide helps answer that question. It contains personal stories, questions, and situational case studies to help equip you to apply the truths you learn.

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Comments

595 responses to “TO WIVES: Why Is Sex So Important?

  1. This is probably, bar none, the best article I have ever read on this subject; it’s so spot on I can’t believe I’m reading it. The words that you use to accurately describe what a man feels are incredible, the rejection, disappointment, depression, and “heartbreaking” it truly is, for a man who has decided to forsake all others and be rejected with comments like ” not tonight”, “I have a headache”, and “is that all you want me for” being shamed by the woman he has chosen to love and spend his entire life with is especially devastating, sexual denial is as corrosive to a marriage as battery acid would be to a marriage certificate.

    It’s so sad that so many men go through this and suffer silently, and turn to drugs, alcohol, or their work to deal with their pain. 1 Corinthians chapter 7 expressly tells us specifically not to deny each other unless we are fasting and in prayer & to not let the enemy tempt us so we are to come together quickly for that reason alone, sadly many churches fear to tread on this subject for fear of alienating wives, God’s word is his word and it’s not meant to coddle us, but instead guide us and correct our errors.

    The intimacy that comes from making love is unlike any other; it is truly becoming one like we are supposed to. To not come together often sets up the seeds of resentment, which are a deadly toxin to any marriage. I thank you for writing this; if more people knew and understood this the divorce rate would easily be half of what it is today!

  2. I can’t believe how spot-on this is to my feelings as a man! I also feel like this perfectly explains why men who love their wives will choose chastity over adultery every time. (I loathe TV dramas where the man ALWAYS cheats and then wins “her” back.) No amount of affection from a new partner could fill the void you feel from a lack of reciprocation coming from your wife. You don’t have to be Christian to get that. (I am certainly not). As stated, this was so spot-on I had to comment even if it is out into the weird deep space of the web.

    1. Thank you Ian. We appreciate your supportive words. How much we wish that this never had to be an issue. But we live in a fallen world and just “don’t get it” as far as how different our needs and approaches can be–and how important it is to work together to help each other. I pray your situation changes where you and your wife will get to the place where you both feel fulfilled in this intimate area of your marriage. It sure took us a long while, but God opened both our eyes and now we are closer than ever. So, it is possible that things can change, even if it doesn’t look like it at the present time. Keep praying, looking to Jesus for guidance and see what God can do. He cares. Thank you for sharing.

    1. Hi Rachel, I’m sorry to say that we don’t send articles out this way. You will have to do this yourself. We only send out new Marriage Insights to those who sign up to receive them. Again, I’m sorry that this is different than you requested, but please feel free to copy this article and send it as a document attached to an email or in the body of the email. We make all this free for all who want to view and use what we have posted on the Marriage Missions web site. We pray it is a blessing in some way to you.

  3. How much I wish I had found this article when it was originally written, when there may still have been time. Nearly three decades of toxicity caused by what should have been one of the great joys of our life together. This should be required reading for every couple BEFORE marriage, with regularly scheduled refresher readings until death do you part.

  4. I would love to see your scriptural backup for every single one of these points because you all sound just like the men out in the world not like Jesus. Not like His heart and not like how He treats or loves His bride in any way shape or form. Where is your scriptural backup for any of this?

    Everything I’ve seen in scripture shows sex is being mutual for the husband and the wife. Mutual devotion, mutual satisfaction, mutual love, mutual friendship, relationship intimacy connection etc. Does this dude have a solid foundation in his identity in Christ or is he looking to his wife to give that to him through sex? Because everything mentioned here is stuff he should be having in his relationship with God first and foremost and be operating out of that because everything comes out of the overflow of our relationship with God and our understanding and reception of His love for us.
    The bedrock of everything regarding marriage is the love of God in Christ Jesus.

    We’re commanded to love each other as brothers and sisters in Christ like Jesus does to the world sees where his disciples first and foremost.

    All of man’s reasons for having and wanting and demanding sex sounds so incredibly selfish codependent insecure and immature and not biblical at all, which sounds like he is not really letting God in to deal with his heart issues but is making his wife responsible for them instead. It’s nauseating and exhausting. Particularly because this is exactly how men in the world sound.

      1. It was all about him and his needs. Not one mention about why she doesn’t want sex with him. No mention of the fact that the sex she is having doesn’t feel good to her. Nothing about her need to experience pleasure, her right to it which is equal to his. Where is there anything about mutuality in this article? No wonder some wives don’t want sex with their husbands if this is what is expected of them. This article is awful. It worries me that there are young wives out there that are still being damaged by this sort of teaching. But having said that, I’m encouraged by the fact that many young newlyweds are rejecting it!

        1. Because every single article is not required to go over every single reason a wife would one day decide the sex isn’t important or desirable to her. Sometimes it really is okay for an article to be written to help men. There are tons of articles out there discussing why women don’t want sex or should be glad to cut sex out of the marriage. This one is written so that women can hear from men. It’s okay to just hear from a man’s point of view. You seem shut down to it and cut off from everything it says, and you have no counterpoints against it.

          1. Thank you for the clarity you bring on this the intent of this article. We appreciate it and we’re sure many others will too.