One of my most shared posts is 8 Things I’d Say About Sex If I Had No Filter (Heaven Help Us All). In the same vein, I’m telling it like it is today.
I get a bit weary of seeing email and posts in which people blame God for their way-too-low sex drive. It usually goes something like this: One spouse announces to the other that they need to get over their objections to their very-low libido with “God made me this way.”
Stop it. Just stop blaming God for a sex drive that isn’t in line with His design for sexual intimacy in marriage. If your sex drive is keeping you from engaging in healthy sexual intimacy in your marriage, that’s on you, not God.
Now I’m not saying that those who struggle with libido are terrible people and we should throw stones and blame at them. Of course not! Some have very good reasons why getting in the mood and engaging in sex with their spouses is a struggle. If you have a terrible sexual history, abuse in your background, hormonal deficits, absolute exhaustion, or other issues, it’s not surprising that your libido isn’t what it could be.
But God didn’t make you that way. He made you as a beautiful person, a sexual being, a person worth pursuing in the marital bedroom. He made you to experience pleasure and ecstasy and intimacy. He made you to enjoy the gift of sexual intimacy He provided for marriage.
If that’s not happening, the answer isn’t to blame His workmanship. Instead, consider what He desires for you to have instead.
Look for answers to why your body, your mind, and your spirit are not cooperating. Be intentional and persistent about finding out why sexual intimacy is a struggle for you. Be honest with your spouse about what you feel and enlist their help in figuring it out.
I’m not going to tell you to Just Do It every time — because I think that advice misses what God really intends. He isn’t solely concerned about your higher-drive spouse getting their sexual needs met. You also wants you to experience the physical pleasure and intimacy that He created for the marriage bed. He wants you to enjoy the full feast of delights in your marriage.
“Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” Song of Songs 5:1 (ESV)
Some spouses find ways to remove the obstacles and awaken their latent libido. Others never experience an independent desire to make love but learn to awaken their love in the arms of their beloved. Regardless, please make it a goal to discover how your body can work in tandem with God’s design for intimacy in your marriage.
Don’t blame God — discover what He longs for your marriage to have. And then pursue it.
One place to start is my devotional book, Intimacy Revealed: 52 Devotions to Enhance Sex in Marriage. Other low-drive resources for wives include Bonny’s Oyster Bed and The Forgiven Wife.
Since the husband and the wife are an earthly analog of God and His Church, I suspect it’s especially grieving to Him when His children fail to embrace the ecstatic joy that Christian marriage provides. Each one of us has an obligation to not merely tread water but to BECOME. Do not allow yourself to wallow in complacency, but rather continually seek out the best that He has for you, and to be the best that you’re to be for your mate. You’ll either move forward or you’ll fall back–there is no staying in one place. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds, had a favorite expression: “When you’re green, you’re growing, but when you’re ripe, you start to rot.”
The key to progress is in your hands. Do not wait for God to start your car for you. Remember, when the Israelites entered the promised land, they had to cross the Jordan River, which God halted for them. But they had to take that first step, a leap of faith as it were, before God did it.
God will ALWAYS honor your commitment when it is in His will. So, the question then becomes, is it His will for you and your spouse to have a fulfilling marriage? Well, what do you think?
If God made me beautiful and worth pursuing in the marital bedroom, I wish someone would let my husband in on the secret. I get pursued, like, never.
My husband will have pity sex with me if I ask. ( I used to do 95% of the initiating, but once I started reading marriage advice and realized I was making a fool of myself as the husband is the main initiator, I stopped.) and so our sex life slowed down even more. Usually nothing happens until I get so hungry for intimacy that I say something, he takes pity on me, and proceeds to give me “pity sex.” Which does not make me feel sexy. It makes me feel like a burden, and unworthy as a wife and a woman.
Anyhow, I’ve prayed for my sex drive for my husband to go away, to make both of our lives easier, but it hasn’t worked yet.
I try to deal with it by telling myself God must have a plan in all of this. I just wish my husband had married a girl he was more attracted to, so he would want the satisfying sex life he could have, if he were more into it.
Once again, I’m not sure where you heard this — “…once I started reading marriage advice and realized I was making a fool of myself as the husband is the main initiator” — but there’s no biblical or biological evidence that this must be the case. Yes, most wives would prefer their husbands to initiate many of the sexual encounters, but it’s perfectly fine for her to initiate sex in marriage.
I’d just like to normalize the continuum of desire for everyone out there. For years, maybe generations, women with high sex drives have been told they were wrong. They were treated medically and psychiatrically. Today, those of us who have low drives are told we are wrong, and are told to seek medical treatment or therapy. We are all different, and different is ok (until it starts causing you distress). I am so lucky that my husband isn’t one of those who demands that I have a huge experience every time we have sex. I’m one of those who, as you put it so well, J, “never experience an independent desire to make love but learn to awaken their love in the arms of their beloved.” I love my husband and I love being intimate with him; I didn’t know, before marriage, that I would enjoy the sensual pleasure of my skin touching his. The other part, well, I’m physically indifferent to it, but emotionally I enjoy it because I share my husband’s joy. I do believe that God made me the way I am and sent me the husband I have, and I am filled with gratitude every day. However – I had to determine, myself, before my wedding day, that I would be open and make an effort to learn and grow into the physical aspect of marriage. Otherwise, I think I would not have married. I didn’t think I’d ever make a man happy that way. So I am blessed! (And my husband is blessed – pretty much every other day!)
Well said. I think you’ve treated this very well. Too often, I hear about spouses who say, “God made me this way, so I’m not going to have sex.” I think our desire can look very different, and there isn’t one single standard that works — but God clearly wants us to enjoy intimacy in our marriages. Thanks!
We all have our natural tendencies, that does not mean that the tendencies are right or that we should stay in the same place. In fact, all of Christianity is bringing us outside of our comfort zone in one way or another. Same goes for our sex drive.
Discerning words as usual, J! The blame game isn’t productive. The decision by an individual to investigate their reasons for low-libido is a huge turning point. Thanks for pointing my low-libido sisters toward OysterBed7.
Great site! Happy to send readers there. 🙂
That goes for all sinful or negative behaviours, not just low libido. I’ve not heard the “God made me this way” line before, but it’s simply a variation of “that’s just the way I am” or “it’s natural”. That’s a cop-out, even as an unbeliever. Change is hard, you need your courage, not your excuses.
As a believer, you cannot use that line, ever. God made man perfectly able to obey him. Man decided to mess that up. Since then our natural state is sin and death. Naturally you are dead, enslaved in sin, wrapped up in your selfishness, eaten up by pride. That is man’s natural, post-fall state. Luckily Jesus came to set us free. We, who know the truth, cannot use the “naturalness” of a measure of anything. If anything, your first natural impulse should make you suspicious. You are called to love, selflessness, righteousness, joy and freedom. Not to wallow in your natural state.
Having a low libido is not a sin. However, what you do with it may or may not be a sin. If a low libido spouse refuses to engage in regular sexual intercourse (1-2 times a week) and is unwilling to try to overcome this issue, then I would say this person is in sin.
I certainly agree that it can become sin. We are commanded not to deprive one another. I also try to be compassionate about it, as Jesus was with people in sin. For many spouses, it’s a bit like the “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” But I pray that we can gently get those spouses to understand. Thanks.
Forgive me, I didn’t word that correctly. I didn’t mean low libido is a sin. I meant using your low libido as and excuse to be a refuse to have sex with your spouse is a sin. So yes. I entirely agree with you.
J –
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My theory is this – a person is mental, emotionally, physically healthy, and in a good marriage, they will want to have sex. That may or may not be about “sex drive” but there will be a desire to share in the deep, intimate form of intimacy reserved for marriage.
We get way to hung up on the physical sex drive and the physical side of sex. While nice, they are a part of the whole!
Good stuff. But super hard to take since I’m the one with the normal (I guess? Normal, in that I have one) sex drive and my spouse seems to be perfectly content that we should never have sex, which we haven’t. We’re working on creating peace between us so that we can finally consummate. But some days it’s hard to have patience – I’m aching for some intimacy!