Hot, Holy & Humorous

Are You a Good Lover?

Let me share a comment from my last post on The World & Sex…Rowing against the Tide:

Jay Dee of Sex Within Marriage:

Yeah, I’ve had the conversation where the other person goes “…..wait….you mean you’ve only had sex with 1 person? Your whole life?!?”

It’s humorous and sad at the same time.

Usually the next question is “How do you know if you’re good or not?!”

Fact is I don’t. All I know is I’m good for my wife, and that’s all I care.

That question had me shaking my head all day.

Paper with A+ at the top
Photo credit: Microsoft Word Clip Art

I’ve been honest here that my husband was not my first. I’ve had lovers, plural. And I don’t know how someone thinks that having more than one partner means you’re better informed somehow. Are their lovers filling out evaluation forms? With possible responses like, “Best I ever had,” “Rocked my world,” “A good way to pass 15 minutes,” “Faked the orgasm,” and “Will deny we did it if anyone asks”?

Guess what? You know you’re a good lover the same way whether you’ve had multiple partners or did it the way God intended with just one: Your lover responds.

In fact, I’d argue that you’re better able to discern how good you are making love with a single mate, whose opinion really matters to you, time and time again. Because a one-timer can fake it no problem, but it’s harder to fake a lifetime of sexual satisfaction. Not many people can keep that up for thirty-plus years.

(And if you’re doing that, stop it. It’s not fair to your spouse.)

So are you a good lover?

Here are some ways to know:

  • Your spouse fondly remembers sexually intimate moments with you.
  • Your spouse desires to have sex with you again. (But if they don’t, that may not be a personal statement about your performance, but a low libido issue with them.)
  • Your spouse’s body leans into what you’re doing.
  • Your spouse asks you to keep doing what you’re doing.
  • Your spouse makes what I’ll call “happy noises” — which could be anything from tiny moans to full-on wailing.
  • Your spouse tells you that you’re a good lover.

Whether or not you are a terrific lover or not today isn’t the point, though.

Because the beauty of God’s plan for sex in marriage is that you have plenty of opportunity to learn, to grow, to experience a full range of lovemaking. You can ask what your spouse would like to do differently and how you can better pleasure them.

What if you actually looked at your spouse and said, “Is there anything I could do differently in the bedroom that would make sex an even better experience for you?” Or “What do you really like that I do in the bedroom?” Or “How can be a better lover to you?”

You might find that you’re already an A+ lover. Or perhaps your spouse wishes you’d go a little slower or a little faster or a little softer or a little harder. And you can make an adjustment and become an even better lover.

Also, be willing to give your spouse helpful feedback. Helpful feedback is not “No! Not like that.” It’s “a little to the left; yeah, there” and “I love it when you ____” and “I’d like to try ___.”

In a godly marriage, we care a great deal how the experience is for our spouse. It’s not just about me and my sexual arousal and my climax. It’s not even about me being a great lover. It’s about we. How we are good lovers for one another.

And getting better all the time.

Jay Dee is right: “I’m good for my wife, and that’s all I care.”

Just focus on becoming the best lover you can be for your spouse. And then if anyone asks, you can say, “I’m awesome! Unbelievable. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe how good I am.”

“I belong to my beloved,

  and his desire is for me.”

Song of Songs 7:10

16 thoughts on “Are You a Good Lover?”

  1. I like that last sentiment and I live by it: always continue to grow. I’m happy with where my skills in that department are, but that doesn’t mean I’ve reached the end. God willing, I have a few decades more to work on it.

  2. That comment has always bugged me too. “Really? You were a virgin when you got married? But what if you wouldn’t have been sexually compatible??” As though having good sex before marriage ensures good sex for the rest of the marriage. Sex is another aspect of marriage that will grow just like the other areas; it’s always going to be a learning process. One of the great blessings that my husband received because I was a virgin was that I will never be able to compare him to others. I’m satisfied with him because he’s *him*, not because he’s “better” than anyone else.

    1. Wonderful point, Elizabeth. Your sex life changes over the course of a marriage–either getting worse or better. I believe it’s the covenant attitude in a godly marriage that can ensure it’s ever better.

      (Yes, yes, short of unavoidable life circumstances and physical challenges; however, in that case other forms of intimacy can fill the gap for a time.)

  3. The whole idea sort of suggests that people are all the same sexually – what works with Jane works with Kim, what Frank hates Jon will hate, and so on. The truth is preferences and desires vary a great deal. To some degree even body parts differ.

    If anything, more partners means more confusion. It also runs the risk of developing a strong desire for something you spouse will not like.

    1. This is brilliant! In fact, now I wish I’d said it in my post. LOL.

      So aptly stated, Paul.

    2. When I first entered my marriage, because I was active before my husband, I made this mistake and it caused us a few hitches. I thought he was like “everyone else”. Once I figured out he wasn’t, our sex life got a whole lot better. 🙂
      Basically, I whole heartedly agree!

  4. “…the beauty of God’s plan for sex in marriage is that you have plenty of opportunity to learn, to grow, to experience a full range of lovemaking.”

    Love that quote! Could I append something to it? “…in an environment designed to protect and sustain it.”

  5. The implication here is that you can’t do this if you only do it 4 times a year.

    1. Yes, indeed. You don’t get good at anything you do just four times a year. It’s one of the reasons I recommend sex AT LEAST once a week to married couples.

  6. I believe that, for the most part, “sexual compatibility” is really just relationship compatibility applied to the bedroom.

    If you both are good at expressing your needs and meeting each others needs outside the bedroom, that carries over into the bedroom. If you are selfish or critical or overly passive outside the bedroom, that will carry over as well.

    Yes, good sex is much more about the relationship more than the skill. (Of course, in a good relationshp, you’ll WANT to have the skills to please your spouse!)

  7. I do think the hardest thing of all when you come to a marriage with “experience” (and many of us do, Christians or not), is trying to lose the image of past lovers. Each lover had something good and probably something not so good. However as the years make memories fuzzy, we tend to recall the really good stuff and the bad stuff fades. Still, those images are indelibly and powerfully burned into our brains and it is nearly impossible to lose them. Then our expectations for our spouse get unrealistic. The biggest impediment in the first 20 years of our marriage in the bedroom is that we never focused on making sex “ours,” we never talked about what it should look like. We had preconceived notions of those snippets of good experiences melded together into one super-human lover. In my case, I was trying to “re-virginize,” i.e. come to my husband with no expectations but praying that we would find our path together for making love. This included my mistaken notion that I should follow his lead and not ask for what was specifically pleasing to me. We grew stale fast, each of us expecting the other to be the mind reader, not wanting to hurt feeling by being exact about our needs for fear of exposing our past experiences. However, it was difficult accepting that my husband seemed clueless about the female anatomy, foreplay and ways to arouse me. I took it as disinterest or selfishness on his part. He sensed my disappointment over no sexual fulfillment with him so our enounters grew quicker and quicker and less and less satisfying for me, and less frequent. We danced this awkward dance for nearly 2 decades, and grew apart sexually and emotionally. I became an emotional eater, gained unhealthy weight and became very depressed.

    My blog details the journey we’ve taken in the past year to reclaim our marriage, right on the cusp of finding ourselves with an empty nest and potentially “free” to give up on and leave the marriage. A miracle happened. So I encourage everyone to pray and hang in there. There would be plenty of people thinking that a couple who was in their 50s wouldn’t have much of a chance to fix things… but it’s happening, Praise God! The marriage bed is such a very important glue in a relationship between a man and wife.

  8. Love this! My husband and I were both virgins when we married. We have been subjected to interesting comments from others if it gets brought up. I am grateful that there is nothing to be compared to. I am hoping our children will be raised and believe what we tell them about virginity and Godly sexual relations, not what the world says.

    J, your blog has helped us in many ways. We had ‘great’ sex the first 8 years. Then infertility became a huge issue and sex changed. Unfortunately, we had a child pass away and it all got worse. His death and other circumstances took our marriage to a very sad and lonely place. God, marriage counseling, and not giving up is what took us to an even better marriage than we had before Thomas passed away.

    Your blog has put fresh perspective on sex for this family. We celebrate 12 years on June 30. Thank you for your ministry.

  9. My husband and I started reading this blog BEFORE we got married earlier this year (other comments from a anonymous saying I got married in February, yeah, that’s me…:) and we were JUST talking about this TODAY! I was intimate with other men before my husband and while I try not to compare him to other men, basically the comparison comes out like this, “THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER, YOU ARE THE BEST LOVER I HAVE EVER HAD.” And it’s the truth. Sex within marriage (And we did wait for one another) is SO MUCH better, because 1. he truly cares about me, 2. I always wake up next to him, and 3. We can’t hide from one another. He knows when I’m faking it and I know when he really needs a break (I have a higher sex drive most of the time).
    With my husband, I never worry that I’m not pleasing him or that he’ll leave me if I don’t do something right, and I never ever want ANYONE else EVER because I’ll be honest, he’s just that good. 🙂
    And COMMUNICATING with one another is an amazing thing. We are just honest with one another. Some nights we’re both just to tired for sex, and so we shnuggle and go to sleep. And going into our marriage KNOWING that we have to TALK and be HONEST about sex has helped up a lot. 🙂
    Love this post and I can’t wait to read more and respond more too!

    1. Well, this comment was just AWESOME. Congrats, you two! So GLAD you’re experiencing the difference that commitment, communication, and openness can make when it comes to sexual intimacy. Blessings for many more wonderful years!

      (And hands down, no contest, my hubby’s my best lover too.)

  10. This was an awesome post J. Thanks. I always like your vulnerability, it makes it easier on the rest of us. I carry the baggage from several sexual partners and I’m surely not in agreement of this as some say, ‘for experimentation’ but it does give us a different information pool to pull from. It doesn’t matter how ‘great’ someone thinks they are in bed, when you don’t have the history that surrounds the relationship, there’s just no comparison.

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