Day 7: A Wife’s Prescription to Connecting with Her Husband

28 Comments

1. Great insight!
   “Happy marriages gain more than earthly contentment and physical pleasure.  United marriages build stronger families, which in turn create healthier future husbands and wives.  Hurting marriages often have only the strength to tend to their own wounds.” This is very true and very important speaking from the hurting marriage perspective. I really liked the insight that sex had benefits for you and talking was beneficial for your husband. Complementary indeed.

   1. Thank you, JW!

2. Great insight, and i agree sex is a high priority for most men but I think a man’s greatest need is respect, Ephes 5:33 and a woman’s is love, next to the need for God. By meeting your husband’s sexual needs, placing it as a priority as he does ,you are showing him respect . Honoring what he wants and needs.If a wife has sex all the time , if she was not showing him respect in the act or otherwise , sex would not be as fulfilling for him. Then it becomes just an act.There would still be something missing in the marriage. They might not even realize it because men have been told that sex is their greatest need. I got married thinking this was true , my husband has taught me otherwise.Yes he enjoys sex, but respect more! Sex is also a spiritual experience, the joining of two flesh and spirits. We are more spiritual beings than physical, hence our need for God, therefore our greatest needs will always be spiritual.Great book that covers all this is LOVE AND RESPECT by Emmerson

   1. Thank you, Peach! Love and Respect is a great book. My husband and I have both read and discussed. I recommend it, too! There’s no doubt that sexual intimacy is incredibly spiritual. We have bought the world’s rhetoric that it’s only physical pleasure, but it’s spiritual pleasure, too! (see https://www.oysterbed7.com/2013/01/supernatural-sex-spiritual-dimension-of.html)

3. My husband and I have enjoyed Mark Gungor’s “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” DVD series. One thing he talks about there is how each spouse can connect to the other with their heart and their “happy place,” as he put it. A woman needs to feel loved in order to give her husband her “happy place.” A man needs his “happy place”s desires met in order to feel loved. So when each spouse is giving what the other needs, they will both be receiving, both will then feel more loved, and both will be more inclined to continue to give. It’s a beautiful cycle! We’ve also read “Love and Respect” and that’s a similar concept.

   Thank you so much for this, Bonny! 🙂

   1. Thanks, Jaimie! A beautiful cycle, indeed. That sounds like a great series. I love to laugh!

4. Great advice as always, Bonny. It’s easy to forget that overcoming low libido is a process and requires following a “prescription” like the one you outlined. Sometimes I just want it to be easy, like “Can I just have some testosterone, please?!”

   1. I think that pill is in the works, Gaye! LOL However, even if it was that easy, I know that I still need to work on the emotional connection with my husband. Thank you for your kind words, my sweet friend!

5. I absolutely love your post, Bonny! Thanks for sharing your journey as well as your insights into this very important aspect of our marriages.

   1. Those are very kind words, my friend. If my journey can help give comfort to another wife, to God the glory! Thank you, Jolene.

6. Argh! While I appreciate the post and the series, if I read one more thing about husbands who want too much sex I think I’ll scream. I guess I am the one woman in the world who has a husband who rarely wants sex. He says he loves me, and I think he does. Otherwise our marriage is great. We talk a lot, he doesn’t cheat, he is kind, he’s not a computer person. He goes to work very early in the morning and falls asleep very early in the evening. I am a night owl, and my kiddos don’t go to bed until at least 8:30. By then he’s been asleep for almost 2 hours. He tells me to wake him up, but why should I? If he wanted to be with me, he’d stay awake. It is incredibly hurtful not to be wanted, when all I read is that every other husband wants sex every day or more! We’re lucky if we have sex once or twice a week. I’m not fat, people tell me I’m pretty (although I disagree), we get along. I have no idea why I am so undesirable. I read a lot of marriage blogs, but all of the other women seem to be upset that their husbands want to be with them. To all of them I say, be THANKFUL. It must be nice to feel wanted and desirable. Sorry if I sound grouchy – but this subject upsets me. (Thanks for the series, though!)

   1. Becca, you are not alone even though it feels like you are. 25% of marriages have a higher drive wife. I have a view point and that’s where I write from. I have heard from higher drive friends of mine that the book Love and Respect helped them. A higher drive female relative of mine took a marriage class through Familydynamics.net that changed their lives. Even though your experience is different from mine, I am confident that there is hope for you. Seek the wisdom (Prov. 2), Keep seeking, Keep knocking, Keep asking. Keep praying for God to reveal your answer, we all have different issues in our marriage. God will be faithful and help you through yours. I just don’t have any practical advice. Maybe someone else who reads this will.

      1. Bonny, thank you for your thoughtful response. I will take a look at the book. Glad to hear I’m not the only one, but having a higher drive makes me feel like a crazy, undesirable woman. My husband is kind, and he claims he loves me and wants me very much, but I doubt him. When I hear of all the women who can’t keep their husbands off of them, I just know there must be something wrong with me. Sometimes I feel like it is silly to bother God with my childish problems, when there are so many people out there that have far greater needs. I know this sounds stupid, but I don’t like to “bother” God with something I should just grow up and accept. I’m also going to look at the Familydynamics. Thanks again for responding so sweetly.

         1. Becca, there is nothing wrong with you! You have a wonderful gift that I wish I had, physical sexual craving. Hear me on this, NOTHING is stupid when you take it to God in prayer!!! Girlfriend, prayer will change things. Maybe you could pray over the items listed in this post over your husband? https://www.oysterbed7.com/2012/07/best-kept-secret-to-lift-low-female.html Yes, it’s written for the lower drive wife, but just pretend it’s written for the lower drive man. I think it could be relevant. But, if you think it will upset you, don’t read it. Phil. 4:6 – Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Yes, sexual intimacy is a need!! I will add you to MY prayers, sweet beautiful Becca!

         2. Becca..I really know your feeling! I belong to your legion!!! But it is getting better each month. (Well, I am blushing now!)
            I used to get the same feeling as you have now when reading through articles about husbands needing their wives very often. Mine was kind of once a month or at the most two times! I was feeling rejected and undesirable.
            By God’s grace, He made me realize my worth is coming from Him rather than my husband. Second, I tried to evaluate things practically..keeping my heart out of this.
            My husband was working in a high pressure job 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. He was too tired to even think about this..:) I started praying over this and after sometime He got a job change which allowed him more free time and less work pressure. That totally changed our game!
            Another thing was my hubby was in the earlier stages of Diabetes. This also contributed to the low sex drive. As he got time, he started working out in a gym and that improved his health which in turn helped us to be active…:)

            One last thing, which helped me is saying to him often “You are my man, I love being with you and I ACCEPT YOU AS YOU ARE!” {This was for me as well as for him – this affirmation benefited us both}
            Now, let me tell you..this will not happen right away. It takes time and you need to be practical and keep working on it. I thank God for every time my husband comes to me..because that’s His gift!
            God is with You and I will be praying for you Becca!

   2. Becca, my heart hurts for you. Feeling unloved, unwanted, and undesirable is hard enough. It must be made harder by the fact that so many others would prefer to reject the very thing you yearn for.

      I would like to encourage you to wake up with your husband before he goes to work anyway. I understand that your husband’s effort to reach out to where you are by staying up late would mean so much in helping ease your hurt. Is it possible that he is hurting, too, thinking that if you really wanted to be with him, you’d get up early?

      If you started getting up early…it’s true that you wouldn’t have this demonstration of your husband’s desire for you…but you WOULD have more connection and time with your husband. Perhaps you could each take turns, with you getting up early with him for a month and then him staying up late for a month. You would both be giving, and you both would be getting time to be a couple.

      Sometimes it’s hard to be the first one to reach out and be vulnerable–but the reward of time together might be worth it.

      1. Hi Chris,

         I thought you were NUTS when you suggested I get up with him, as he gets up SO early. Plus he had woken me up in the past, but was disappointed as I was half asleep and he didn’t feel like I was that into it. But we’ve been working on things, and I’ve taken the advice of the other ladies, and your prayers are working (thank you!) AND I’ve been reading Love & Respect by Dr. E…

         SO – the other night I made a plan. I went to bed and set my alarm for 4:15 am. I got up, went to the restroom, changed into something more comfortable, and went back to bed – where he was just waking up. Well… I’ll leave out the details – but – he LOVED it! Not only was he happy that we were spending time together, but he felt so loved (and respected?) that I had made the effort. Great advice – thank you!

         Now while I can’t do this every day, at least I know I can do it when I feel we need more time together or I want to do something special for him.

         He has definitely been reciprocating and things are going much better.

         Thanks sweet friends!

         Love Becca

         1. Oh, this warms my heart!

   3. Becca, there is a post in this series for the higher-drive wife! Just be patient, it is coming! 🙂

   4. Becca,
      I am in the same situation and it drives me nuts seeing post after post after post of women who don’t want it and the respective husbands who can’t get enough. While I understand that is their battle and where they’re coming from, it makes our fight that much harder. Because not only is it frustrating to us because we just want to shake women and say “WAKE UP! Do you not know how blessed you are?! I would love to have that problem!” but also our poor husbands probably suffer more from the plethora of “men want it all the time” stereotype because their ego then gets knocked down and they feel like less of a man<–That has probably been one of the hardest things to get through in this journey, and I hate it for him because no matter how much I tell him it's not true he has thousands of others telling him it is. There is next to no information or support out there for this and even when there is it's generally written by people who don't and never have had this problem. And while their tips are good ones, like "keep initiating" they don't understand that even if we do initiate and it does work we are only getting a small part of what we want…we want them to want it, us initiating all the time doesn't help us feel desirable, or wanted, it makes us feel like it's done out of "pity" or just to get us off their back, it only solves part of the problem. We are slowly (like snail slowly) getting better it's not anywhere near perfect but it's getting better. Just hang in there, and pray, and keep the lines of communication open with your husband, and pray some more. I know it's hard and very frustrating but head up, with work and God's help it will get better.

      1. Thank you Jennifer! I will try praying about it (although I feel so silly talking to God about this – that is something I need to get over.) I will pray for you as well! You said so many things that are exactly what I’m feeling. How nice to have someone out there who TRULY understands where I’m coming from. I couldn’t agree with you more about initiating. Sometimes it is more about being desired than being satisfied. In fact, I have told him PLEASE don’t be intimate with me out of pity. Nobody wants to be pitied, especially in an area like this! Also, what you said about ego is so true! That’s why it is hard for us to talk about it. If I complain that he doesn’t want me, and he insists he does, and I point out all of the women trying to get away from their husbands who want them all the time, he feels like less of a man. What a vicious cycle! JOLENE – thanks for the blog and the series on marriage. I have been so upset about this for so long (and my hubby can read me so well, even when I say “nothing’s wrong” he knows something is bothering me.) It’s not like things are instantly better – but at least I know I’m not alone – and maybe I’m not a freak of nature. Thank you all again for walking through this with me. I know I sometimes just blurt things out in my posts and I may sound like a whiny, crazy person, but it feels SO GOOD to be able to talk about it. Thank you, all!

7. Thank you all for your kind responses and your support. This isn’t an issue I feel I can discuss with my friends face-to-face, so it has been helpful to have other Christian women to talk to. I’ve tried talking to my husband, but he just reassures me that he loves me and does want to be with me. If I press the issue, he starts to get upset. He gets frustrated that I don’t believe him. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’m pleasing to him, but your support has been encouraging. Thank you for caring, and thank you again!

   1. This might help. This is about husbands low sex drive.
      https://www.happywivesclub.com/what-to-do-when-your-husband-has-a-low-sex-drive/

      1. Tabatha,
         Thank you for pointing me to this article! I have to admit, I feel very much like a freak, and I can’t reconcile the issue with how much my husband says he loves me. I have felt SO abnormal – BUT – by reading this article, and especially the comments posted at the end of it, I realized I am not alone. I am so thankful that it is not an issue of him looking elsewhere – that would be just awful. That’s what I don’t get. When we are intimate, we are both very happy about it, the act itself goes really well (oh my am I blushing – what a thing to discuss!) It’s just that I have felt like he doesn’t really want me in that way – at least not as often as most other wives claim. I do know that he has been EXTREMELY stressed at work – going on a year now (he switched jobs about a year ago) – and at the end of the day he is always so tired. We talk about his work issues, so I know he has a lot going on. Perhaps that has more to do with things than I realized. It is very hard for me to believe his work stress could cause something like this – I tend to be hard on myself and automatically assume there must be something repulsive about me. He has assured me that is not the case, but I don’t always want to believe him. I guess I’ve never really had a job that I couldn’t just leave at work at the end of the day, so it is hard for me to understand. Anyway, thanks for sharing that article – it was very insightful – and I feel much less like a freak than I did 24 hours ago. Thank you for caring enough to share!

         1. Becca, there is nothing wrong with you, sweet friend! Your husband LOVES you! But it sounds like he has a very stressful job physically and emotionally.

            Stress and feeling tired CAN affect their ability and desire. When my husband is bone tired either from physical or emotional stress, that is literally the last thing on his mind. Depression can cause a low libido too.

            Also, he can begin to feel like there’s something “wrong” with him which can make him less likely and more fearful of actually attempting it. It might even be a hormonal thing.

            It sounds like his work schedule is part of the problem if he’s going to bed at 6:30 in the evening (if I read that right that your kids go to bed at 8:30 two hours after your hubby does).

            My hubby always goes to bed before me. So we had to work something out so that we could have some time alone together AFTER the kids were in bed but BEFORE he went to bed.

            Sometimes it was just cuddling while watching t.v., sometimes talking, sometimes enclosing ourselves in the bedroom and hoping the kids didn’t wake up, lol!

            Sometimes I had to get up realllllly early (as he went to work at 6 a.m. back then) which was NOT fun for me, lol! But I needed to if I wanted that time. 😉

            If you can’t get him to the doctor, just keep doing what you’re doing and loving him and finding other ways to increase intimacy that don’t involve “the act.” And remember, my friend, your husband loves you!

8. Becca,
   You are not alone in your struggle.
   My husband has terrible work hours right now…up at 1:30am and in bed no later than 6:30pm. We also have my two teen boys from my first marriage living with us which makes it hard for me to crawl into bed with him before he has to go to sleep. And getting up with him is out.
   He is just plain tired.

   So, it’s usually once a week right now, although we do try hard to get in one other time during the week IF my boys are both gone early enough in the evening.
   How many nights I sit alone crying after he has gone to bed from that feeling of not being desired and wondering if he really does even care anymore about making love. It is hard.
   And tonight was the worse. Both my boys left for the evening and I winked at my husband telling him I would hurry up and make him dinner so I could tuck him in early. He seemed excited about the idea. So finished eating and there was still at least 45 minutes before he needed to get to sleep, but he was finishing watching a tv show we had turned on and I sadly realized the minutes were ticking down to 6:30pm. I slipped into the kitchen to start doing the dinner dishes knowing nothing was going to happen after I’d even gotten myself all geared up for it, and he came in to hug and kiss me and tell me he was heading to bed. 🙁 Needless to say, I bawled my eyes out after he went to bed. He made no comment about it and I simply said that maybe tomorrow night would work, he just smiled and I kissed him good night.

   For me, the hardest part is not hearing him tell me that he really wants me even though he is just too tired right now. I want to hear him tell me that even though it won’t happen tonight he really desires to make love to me. I would give anything for that and to have him really kiss me during the week. At least hearing that he wants me and still having some semblance of intimacy like long kisses, maybe little make out sessions, would ease the pain of having to wait a whole week to feel his touch, kwim?

   It’s tough and I too get so tired of reading how women just don’t want sex and men want it all the time. I begin to wonder what is wrong with me, why doesn’t my husband want me all the time.
   And yet, I have to stop and realize how many hours he works so that we can pay bills, put food on the table and allow me to stay home. When I start to get upset, I stop and thank God for bringing such an amazing, loving, caring man into my life after 20 years in an abusive marriage.
   It doesn’t make all the pain of denial go away, but it lessens it.

   BTW, my husband greatly enjoys when we make love and he is an amazing lover. All that to say, that he doesn’t just go through the ‘motions’ so to speak, but truly does love our sexual time together. I know some spouses who deny often just really don’t want anything to do with sex even on the rare occasions they give in to it. My husband isn’t that way. And that I think, makes it all the harder for me.

9. Aimee, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have been praying about this issue (hard as that is for me – these great ladies are such an encouragement) and I will pray for you as well!

10. What a great line of comments!

    On a very light note, have you ever thought about why there is nothing in Proverbs 31 about the intimacy aspect of wife-hood (I’m not sure that’s a term…).
    Proverbs 31 is : “The sayings of King Lemuel—an inspired utterance HIS MOTHER taught him.” The Proverbs 31 woman (as far as I understand it) is a mother’s wish for her son’s bride

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