Have you heard the saying that, when it comes to sexual intimacy, “Men are microwaves, women are crockpots?”
The message is that men heat up quickly, while women take longer to warm up and reach readiness. Now some have argued this is a poor analogy since it assumes the woman will heat up, which isn’t always true for low-drive wives.
But it also misses the high-drive wives by a mile. Thankfully, we have a new appliance that captures the high-drive wife perfectly!
In fact, I discovered this quite by accident. I recently established a community for higher-drive wives, and as I was going through requests (yes, I’m behind), a number of them were also part of a Facebook group called the Instant Pot® Community.
If you haven’t heard of an Instant Pot, first of all, where have you been? Secondly, it’s much like a slow cooker in shape and plug-in, but it performs several tasks—among them, warming, sautéing, slow cooking, and pressure cooking. That’s it—the perfect metaphor for the high-drive wife!
She has higher sexual interest than her husband, but she still has sexual responses typical to a woman. It’s not that every single second she’s zapping with sexual energy. Rather, she goes through all of these.
Warming.
Sometimes the sexual interest of a high-drive (HD) wife is simply on warm. She’s not heated up and “ready to serve,” but rather she’s resting in that state of could be interested. For most higher-drive spouses, the sexual interest is rarely gone, but rather it hums in the background.
For most higher-drive spouses, the sexual interest is rarely gone, but rather it hums in the background. Share on XIt’s warm, but not eager. Ready, but not antsy. There, but not prominent.
Slow Cooking.
Even if she started out warm, sometimes an HD wife still needs to be “slow-cooked” in the bedroom. That is, having higher sexual interest does not mean her body necessarily cooperates with where her mind and desire are.
Many wives have more reactive than proactive sexual responses. That is, when the sexual cycle was originally proposed, it considered the male experience:
Desire → arousal → plateau → orgasm → resolution
But for many women, things can be less straightforward. For instance, this isn’t an unusual experience for wives:
Desire → arousal → arousal → arousal → plateau → orgasm → plateau → orgasm → resolution
As you can imagine, it can take longer for the wife to get there than the husband. Even if she started out with more sexual desire than he had. It’s often a good idea for husbands to slow down the arousal phase, even if she’s generally excited about making love.
Steaming.
An HD wife knows what being “steamy” feels like. Sexual awareness hangs over her like late-summer humidity by a Louisiana swamp. Sights and sounds and smells of her husband can trigger desire and even arousal.
These moments might coincide with hormonal peaks in her cycle, but that’s not necessary. The warmth she typically feels has risen to full-on heat, and she can be ready to initiate or respond in the same 5-7 minutes it takes to steam broccoli.
Sautéing.
Sautéing takes about the same amount of time as steaming, but it places the food closer to the heat and adds a little oil. While I’m sure I could draw some analogy from the inclusion of oil (oh, the possibilities…), I’m going to bypass that one and stick with the heat.
But this is when HD wives are very likely to initiate. They feel heated up, eager to make love, and want to sizzle in the marriage bed. Eagerness and excitement underlies sexual interest, and arousal is right behind or even taking the lead.
Pressure Cooking.
Slow cooking pinto beans takes about five hours, while pressure cooking them takes about 25 minutes. How does pressure cooking work? It keeps water and steam consistently above a boiling point, substantially shortening cook times.
Likewise, HD wives can reach the pressure cooker point when it’s been a while between sexual encounters. The steam and heat have built up, and they long for a release. This isn’t to say that lovemaking is merely physical for them, but oftentimes the longer a higher-drive spouse goes without sexual contact, the more they experience a physical urge. There’s an intensity and urgency to their sexual desire.
Now I recognize you all can tear apart my analogies if you feel so inclined, but the main points I want to make in this post are:
- HD wives (of which they are many) often do not fit neatly into certain stereotypes about female sexual desire.
- HD wives often do fit into other stereotypes about female sexual response.
- HD wives have varied responses, just like those multicookers we call Instant Pots.®
Does that make HD wives complicated? I suppose. But then aren’t all women a bit complicated? If you didn’t want complication, hubbies reading this, you should have gotten a dog. Mind you, it won’t care for you when you’re sick, you’ll have to pick up its poop, and you definitely aren’t getting sexual intimacy, but Fido will be easier to figure out.
Frankly, most husbands think the puzzle of their wives is worth it. Especially when you both enjoy all kinds of intimacy in marriage.
For more on HD wives, check out the following posts:
I Am the Higher Drive Spouse (or Yes, Rejection Hurts)
Confessions of a Higher-Drive Spouse
A Letter to the Low Drive Husband
3 Things Higher-Drive Spouses Long For
For those wives who are lower drive, please don’t feel that HD wives have it easy. Every marriage has a lower drive and a higher drive spouse, and the couple has to work through that. And if you’re really struggling, please check out Sheila Gregoire’s Boost Your Libido course and/or Bonny Burns’s Unlock Your Libido book.
….aaaaand now there’s gonna be husbands and wives who are gonna look at their kitchen equipment in a whole new way. Gonna be some interesting dinnertime conversations this week, J! ?
Hahaha! “How am I like a blender?” “How are you like a toaster?” Yeah, that would be fun. 😉
What if your wife is an ice dispenser?
Then you have to figure out how to melt her heart. But that’s a different post (What Can I Do About My Sexless Marriage?).
J. Parker, thank you for your fun analogy of cooking devices and women’s sex drives.
Ecc 3:3 says “to everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under heaven”.
I am close to the ripe age of 70. I have been all of the women you describe in your analogy. Various seasons of life have changed my sex drive. God is infinitely creative and brings good from all of them. I have embraced the changes. One element remains, my attitude. I love sex. My attitude is the real cooking device. Insta pots are fun but I won’t give up my trusty crickpot!
This was very interesting to me, and I’ll have to agree that women are extremely complicated. As a man I most associate with the way you described the steaming, sauté, and pressure cooking aspects to being a “high drive” woman. On the other hand, the “warming” and “slow cooking” parts aren’t something I can say I’ve experienced at all. I think it’s so strange how consistent and straightforward my sexuality is when compared to this. In fact, I could almost break my sexual desire and responses down into a mathematical formula it’s so predictable.
I do wonder if the “typical” higher drive wife finds far more enjoyment in the sexual relationship of her marriage than the average woman. To me it makes sense that a wife with far more sexual desire than average would tend to be far happier because the average man has far more sexual energy. I would especially think this would be true earlier in the marriage, before some men lose testosterone or have other health issues. Of course a very small percentage of men will have a lot less sexual drive to start with, but these are outliers.
You’d think it would be easier, but I don’t think so. Nearly every marriage has an imbalance of sexual interest, and maybe that’s so we have to demonstrate greater love toward one another and grow personally.
Well, when I use the term “higher drive” for a woman, I’m specifically talking about a woman that has a far greater drive to have sex than the average woman. I don’t know what percentage of the females fall into that population, but I also don’t think that a majority of them have a higher sexual drive than thier husbands, at least not in thier late teens or twenties.
The small portion of women that do fall into the higher drive population have a statistically low chance of being with a man with a low drive. I’m not talking about men that use porn instead to meet thier needs, I’m talking about men that due to medical reasons such as low testosterone or have severe psychological problems due to trauma that cause them to not that a physical or mental desire to have sex as much.
So, just as a man with a low drive will probably have a far fewer arguments and sexual problems on average (because most women fall into the “low drive” category), the average “high drive” wife will most likely be far happier because most men are “high drive”. This doesn’t mean they won’t have other marriage problems by the way. Me and my wife figured out financial issues out early in the marriage and we’re probably as good at money stuff as any couple out there, but sex sucked. Every couple will have thier struggles but surely there must be a few lucky average men that end up with high drive women, just as some average women must end up with low drive men. You just won’t hear from men who have high drive women and you won’t hear from women who have low drive men because they are perfectly happy in that department.
Porn use is a whole other discussion. Some women might think they are with a low drive man simply because he doesn’t show much desire for her. It’s not that at all in these cases, just as a man having an affair might be having tons of sex and yet show little to no interest in sex with his wife.
Yeah, that makes sense, but I haven’t found that to be accurate, Brian. Perhaps 15-30% of marriages have a higher-drive wife, and of those, many have husbands who have little to no interest in sex. Moreover, a big percentage of wives labeled “low drive” are really just “lower drive” than their husbands, especially since for so long we had this idea that female sexuality should start with desire, when many women experience their sexuality as more responsive than proactive. Point being that it’s not quite the way you describe, though I understand why it would seem that way.
And I’m basing this on quite a bit of research and hearing from a lot of HD wives, including the 150 or so in my Facebook group.
I completely agree that many wives categorized as “low drive” are just lower drive than thier husbands. Now, if the 10-30% number of marriages where the wife is supposed to the higher drive is true, how do you know that the wife actually has a higher sexual drive, and how do you know how many men really have little or no desire for sex?
Many women have no idea how much thier husbands watch porn and masturbate without them being involved. To a woman, the result is the same. A wife might only know that she wants to have more sex than she is having, but her husband doesn’t initiate or doesn’t respond when she initiates (which is likely far more rare anyway).
Now, I would be interested to know what percentage of these women are over the age of 40. Thier is a definite age factor for men that isn’t present as much for women. As a man loses testosterone he will lose sexual interest. I wanted to have sex multiple times a day every single day when I was 22. Waiting for sex a day or two was terrible. Now that I’m 38, once a day is usually fine, and as long as I know that it won’t be too long before the next time, I have no problem waiting a few days. That’s a pretty drastic difference (and a welcome one). If I had been paired up with a woman that was “higher drive” and we had the kind of sex I wanted from the beginning, I could definitely see how my current state would be a let down.
Brian, I know it’s not your intention, but it feels like you’re just arguing that higher-drive wives aren’t all that high and men really do/should have a higher drive. While I understand that your take may be true in some cases, how is this helpful to a HD wife or a LD husband? I really don’t want to debate all these particulars, and I just don’t fully understand why you’re pushing back against what I know to be true: A lot of wives have a higher drive then their husbands, and they’ve had that for the entire marriage, and it’s not because, or just because, he has seen porn or masturbated.
Just accept that it happens, that it’s true, and that it may not mean anything is abnormal for the wife or the husband. Thank you.
It’s harder because you are an outcast and a weirdo and all the stuff you read is addressed to men. And you can’t talk to your friends about it. And nobody thinks it’s amazing that you stay away from wrong things even when it gets really hard. But if you’re a man it is. We had a conversation lately where we both wish we were normal. There are seasons that we were, and we were happier in those times because there wasn’t so much to grapple with.
I can imagine that it would be hard if you aren’t what society considers normal. I guess it’s hard for me to imagine it being hard for a woman to be considered more sexual, because to me a more sexual woman is a great thing.
Kind of wistful reading this, J; my wife identified herself as high-drive before we married (she’d been married previously), and went to zero-drive on learning more about my past in private military contracting. Sex has been off the table for more than a decade, and now I’m too ill to participate anyway.
But if I can contribute something it’s this: appreciate what you’ve got, high-drive, low drive, or whatever. Our marriage is solid and loving in spite of a physical boundary, and I’ve learned to see myself from my wife’s perspective and understand her. I can be supportive and prayerful of her, and playful with her (I have more bad jokes in memory…). Love, in a marriage, isn’t about what you get; it’s about what you give.
This was kind of sharpened for me last week; I died and came back, and the experience was brutal. Wrote it up while memory was fresh, in you’re interested:
https://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2018/04/your-dying-spouse-465-near-death.html
A quick addition, if I may…part of that very real love is expressed in…cutting hair. Time constraints prevent my wife from visiting a hairdresser as often as she likes, so he’s entrusted me with cutting her hair, and that means a LOT. It’s maybe a different kind of physical intimacy?
On Saturday she wanted a new look, and she got one. She now looks rather like Mr. Spock. Fortunately, she’s delighted!
Though I would not classify my wife as a ‘high drive’ spouse, I do think she’d be interested in one of these cookers!
So I still got something out of this! ?
Thanks J,
Bill
I can be pretty much instant heat when it comes to desire/libido. Arousal, too, but sometimes the “arousal where it matters” can take a while. I can be ready and raring to go, but actually climaxing take a effort
My wife loves crockpots, she’ll slow cook things for 8 hours or longer if need be, as the aroma adds to the anticipation of not knowing the exact time to indulge.
Sometimes, if I’m running late it stimulates my mind because I know she is keeping a close eye on the crockpot as she anxiously awaits for me to arrive.
It further stimulates my mind, knowing she is ready for me (with a calm urgency) willing to adjust the setting on her crockpot while her insides burn passionately, wondering when we will get to share what is inside the crockpot. So she continues to navigate around my exhausting schedule so the crockpot isn’t too hot or get too cold.
J, this post was fantastic and very, very accurate! I agree with almost all of it.
You very well know my story, so I’ll just say I really enjoyed this post.
150 high drive wives in your Facebook group??? Wow!!! You know I thought I was the one woman on earth with these issues. I know you’ve been telling me that I wasn’t the only one forever, but 150 seems like Waaaayyyy more than I’d ever imagined!
Sadly, I’m not on Facebook, so I can’t be in the group. But I really wish I was. What a great support system that must be.
Thanks again for this great post!
Well, you could get on Facebook just for this group. 😉 And yes, there are now 168 members with 49 more requests to join. (I’m behind on approving requests, but my assistant is working on it! I promise.) I knew those wives were out there, but even I have been a bit surprised how quickly this group has blossomed.
I’m really glad you formed that group for these wives because I’m sure they feel completely alone and don’t know what to do. I never argued that there aren’t some women in that situation. Of course statistically there will be some of anything at the tails of the distribution curve. I’m just saying that I’d like to know more about the root causes behind this number of 10-30% that I keep seeing. I don’t talk to women all the time, but I have been friends with men and I’ve been a man for a while. If 1 in 10 or 1 in 3 men had little desire for sex at all I would be shocked. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but it seems like a huge number.
By the way, I don’t want men to be more sexual than women. I wish all women were just as sexually driven as most men are. Mismatched sex drives (mostly with women caring little about sex) has been a huge problem in many marriages, including my own. So, I if so had my way it would be women with the huge drive for sex and as the persuers in the relationships. Getting rejected doesn’t feel good and being reliant on someone else to meet a need is pretty vulnerable. Also, bring so prone to fall into the sin of porn isn’t very good either. So no, I don’t wish that men were always the ones with more desire, it just seems that it’s usually the case.
Long story short: I’ve concluded that low-drive husbands fake it in male company. When the talk is all about how men are constantly revving to have sex, what guy is going to pipe up and say, “Nah, I’m good with once every two weeks. It’s my wife who can’t keep her hands off me!”? In his mind, he might as well just pull his man card out of his wallet and hand it over. I could be wrong (I have been wrong before, once or twice 😉 ), but having read a lot about this particular issue and hearing from various people, I suspect at least some of the HD wife/LD husband situations are like this.
By the way, if you’re a low-drive husband, I think your man card remains intact. In fact: A Letter to the Low Drive Husband
It’s certainly plausible that men would be less likely to admit that they don’t want sex as much as thier wives, but since I’ve never heard a single man even hint at it in person or even in an anonymous forum I really don’t know. I don’t know how men would react to hearing it either. I’m not so sure his man card would be called into question, and I think more than anything most men would be extremely envious. But, either way I’m sure you’re right in most cases. Just as women are afraid to admit that they like sex a lot, men would probably be reluctant to admit that it’s not as important to them.
An anonymous survey showed that many more men were low-drive than people often expected. I think the anonymity mattered. I know you want me to post the research, Brian, but that will take me a while to dig it up. But I know it’s out there, and I should probably do a post on that–showing the research I’ve seen on this topic. Just can’t do that right now!
I’ll try to research it on my own. My mind might change on this just as it did with higher drive women. I really didn’t think any women out there wanted and enjoyed sex for a long time, and I was wrong about that. It’s just that I would think some men in that situation would reach out for help and have some kind of online presence, and I’ve never seen anything like that. As much pressure as there is for men to conform and perform, it’s very strange to me that men who are low drive wouldn’t seek out solutions in droves. Especially if the numbers are as high as you are saying, that’s a huge number of men, so I would like to know where they are. The internet provides anonymity, and there are support spaces for all kinds of things.
You know where you might find those “droves”? Boost your testosterone sites are big, and maybe that’s where lower drive husbands who want to deal with the issue end up right now–looking for the magic bullet. I doubt that works for most of them, but it’s a thought.
Hi Brian, I understand you’re seeing this through your own filter, based on your ideas and experiences. We all do that, I do that all the time.
A lot of people don’t want to admit they are “abnormal”. I’m not saying they are abnormal, but I sure felt I was, and I guess my husband may have felt he was as well.
I suffered in silence for a long time (as a HD wife) and my husband still doesn’t like to talk about this kind of stuff much. For the longest time he refused to talk about it, even with me. My husband grew up in a family where sex was never discussed. At all. Ever. He’s also an introvert. As we’ve grown as a couple he’s learned to open up a bit, but avoidance of uncomfortable topics was his go to response.
I’ve never discussed this with anyone but my husband and one time at counseling (which both my husband and the counselor kind of brushed over it which hurt me a lot. The counselor actually seemed unsure of what to do in our situation, like he was was more used to dealing with the typical HD husband/LD wife dynamic). I’m talking about face-to-face. Of course I’ve discussed it here and on a few other marriage blogs, it’s the only place I felt comfortable. What woman wants to say “my husband doesn’t like to have sex with me” to a group of women, most of who would respond with “wow you’re lucky! My husband won’t leave me alone!” I already felt ugly, worthless and repulsive – I didn’t need a bunch of frenemies to make me feel worse. (I don’t trust many women but that a story for another day).
My husbands not a computer guy, and I doubt he’s gonna chat with his work crews about his lack of sex drive. I think it bothered him a little bit. I think it bothered him knowing how much he was hurting me. I felt so unwanted. So very, very ugly. The lack of reason was painful. He wasn’t cheating, no porn issues, none of the “normal” reasons. I figured he just simply couldn’t be attracted to ME.
Although I have a very hard time believing I’m even okay looking, let alone attractive, I’ve been told I am actually attractive. I’m a little over 40, but most people think I’m 30. I’m a little too tall, but I am quite fit. I have issues with feeling ugly, but I’ve been told I’m pretty. So for arguments sake, let’s assume I’m not repulsive. So my husband has this attractive wife who loves having sex with him, is adventurous and enthusiastic daily, and he doesn’t want to have sex. What man really wants to go around admitting that? I think it hurt his ego and I think he wished his sex drive was higher. I think watching my confidence and zest for life slowly crumble was also a blow to him.
All of this to say, it’s way more difficult to discuss than you think. No one wants to admit they’re abnormal. And I’m a talker – but even I’ve never discussed this in person, and my husband hates the internet and he hates blogs (he associated my blog reading with my sadness – I think to try to shift the blame). My comment here is too long so I’ll wrap up here
B, I don’t disagree at all about it being difficult to discuss problems, especially for men. Men certainly tend to shy away from talking about anything that could make them look weak, both to other men and to women. I’m just very curious where these men go on the internet (which J gave one suggestion) to look for solutions. Or, do they not think anything is even wrong and so they never look for help? I just find it hard to believe that if there are that many men with low sex drive, with social pressure for men to be the sexual aggressors, that there wouldn’t be tons of them trying to “fix” themselves. So, maybe many men seek out ways to boost testosterone for sexual reasons. I’m going to be looking into that and it’s pretty fascinating to think about really.
Brian, thanks for engaging in this conversation. I do encourage you to do your own research. But honestly, it’s stuff like this that’s frustrating: “I just find it hard to believe that if there are that many men with low sex drive, with social pressure for men to be the sexual aggressors, that there wouldn’t be tons of them trying to ‘fix’ themselves.” Not because you mean it that way, but that viewpoint plays right into the worries of higher drive wives and lower drive husbands. So it’s just not helpful to say, “Ack! I can’t believe it!” And I’m here trying to do everything I can to get y’all to believe that this experience is not an outlier, but common enough that I have found 200 HD wives just through my little ministry.
Brian,
I think you’re missing two really critical factors:
1. Low / high drive are relative WITHIN THE RELATIONSHIP. It doesn’t matter if a “high drive wife” wouldn’t seem high drive to you, if she simply has a higher interest in sex than her husband. She doesn’t have to have a higher sex drive than every single man ever — just higher than her husband.
2. It DOES NOT MATTER what the reason is for the lower libido, to a large extent. Yes, a lot of times it is because of porn or cheating or medical problems or something else. Very, very frequently, someone isn’t “low libido” in general, but they have no desire or attraction to their spouse. You can’t just hand-wave and say, “oh, well, I have decided that this specific reason does not count as low libido, ergo no men have low libidos.” Yes, it does count. It is affecting the relationship.
FWIW — and I’m going by a non-scientific sample of the DeadBedrooms subreddit — fixable reasons for a low libido tend to be a female thing. A woman has relationship problems, complications from pregnancy, depression, fatigue, past abuse, whatever — and (IF she chooses) they can work on those reasons as a couple and the relationship improves. I’ve never seen a case on the DB forum where a low libido male fixed his issue and improved the relationship — those tend to end in divorce or adultery.
Hi Brian,
I’m a woman, and I’ve always had the higher drive. I did almost all of the initiating for most of our marriage, until I read that was backwards. I felt very ugly and silly and tried to hold back.
And what J said here was accurate
“A lot of wives have a higher drive then their husbands, and they’ve had that for the entire marriage, and it’s not because, or just because, he has seen porn or masturbated.”
I’ve been through every emotion. Sadness, feelings of ugliness, feelings of unworthiness, unloved, pain of rejection, wondering what’s so wrong with me, jealousy of women with husbands with normal or high desire, praying to have my sex drive taken away, bitterness, etc. I tried for a very long time to figure out what my husband wanted and why I wasnt good enough. It caused a lot of problems because he did love me and didn’t want me to change – he just struggled for a long time with low drive. Mostly due to stress, workaholicism, and warped views about sex from his family of origin.
We are working through this and things are getting better. I have to be more forward than I’d like, and I’ll probably never be pursued the way I wish, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel truly desired. But when I pursue him he is often (now) more than happy to oblige. I don’t want it to be this way, but maybe God put us together for a reason. Perhaps if he were married to a regular drive wife or a low drive wife, there wouldn’t be much sexual intimacy at all. And sexual intimacy is a good thing in a marriage. So maybe I am the way I am for a reason.
Would I love to be the pursued instead of the pursuer? You bet I would! I think that would help a great deal with my feelings of not being beautiful and not believing him when he calls me beautiful. Maybe someday that will happen. He is trying to be more expressive and that helps a little. We are a work in progress.
My point is we are definitely a high drive wife and a low drive husband and it is by no means all sunshine and roses. But we do exist! It does happen.
This is a beautiful comment, B! Thanks so much for explaining so well.
And yes, Brian, I hear comments like these ALL THE TIME. You probably don’t hear them as much because (1) these women are reluctant to talk about it, because they’ve often felt alone or received feedback that implies they’re weird; and (2) you’re a guy. 😉
B, can I say, I am so glad that some of the dynamics are changing in your relationship? I know how painful the rejection is, and I am glad that it is at least tilting a little more toward intimacy and partnership.
Oh, B. I teared up reading this because your words could have been written from my own heart. Yes, I’ve felt every emotion, from the deepest of hurts to bitterness and then hopelessness – praying to have my desire taken away (thankfully God knows that’s not the answer ;). From the day we were married until now sexual intimacy has been a constant struggle – I feel as if we never even had a “honeymoon” because we spent the days strolling through the town and stores rather than in our room where I desperately wanted to be. Thankfully God has done a work in ME and softened my heart so I am not bitter, but there are still times I have to work at it. My husband is an AMAZING, godly man and he is working at this area of our relationship, but it does NOT come easily. I’ve given up on the dream of ever having sex twice in a day – I count it a victory and a blessing if we have sex twice in a week.
Yes, high-drive wives married to low-drive husbands definitely do exist. And it’s not fun, but every couple has their battles. If the biggest struggle we have to deal with is not having as much sex as I’d like, but I have a husband who cherishes me, is a great father, and loves the Lord, well, I am grateful. I chose him, and I choose him for life.
Nadia, your words really struck a cord with me, because your mention of your honeymoon sounded like it came from me. My honeymoon was the most disappointing week of my entire life. I’d struggled, and failed, with sexual purity and with lust my entire life up to that point. Although I was extremely nervous about getting married, the one thing I looked forward to more than any other was the end to having to hold back a huge part of who I was.
When I dreamed about the upcoming honeymoon, all I wanted to do was make love over and over and over again. In my mind, we would take short breaks to go eat and rest just a little before going back to the room. Back when I was 22 years old, I was capable of 5 to 10 orgasms a day, but I just wanted to be naked with my new wife and give her nonstop pleasure as we started a life together.
We had messed up a ton prior to getting married, and so I had no reason to think that she wouldn’t be up for just as much sex as me. Unfortunately, sex suddenly wasn’t a priority, and I was in shock. So, we spent most of our time shopping or sitting beside the pool, or doing all kinds of other things.
Brian, I truly understand the incredible letdown that was. Believe me I know it is easier said than done, but the rawness and vulnerability of disappointment in sexual intimacy of one’s marriage is a great opportunity to reflect the grace and goodness of God to our spouse. He loves and forgives us although we fail Him, disappoint Him, and hurt Him. It doesn’t necessarily make it easier to love and respect our spouse when we feel wounded, but it does make it feel a little more worthwhile, knowing that there’s a higher purpose as we are made more like Christ.
Please go look up Redeemer of the Rain by the Collingsworth family on YouTube. I hope it will be a blessing to you as it has been to me. And if you haven’t already, I hope you’ll look to God to bring beauty out of the brokenness you’ve felt. He truly can.
Thank you for your comment Nadia, and it truly means a lot. Unfortunately, I didn’t act with much grace for much of the time I was denied what I felt I deserved. I reacted with shock, bitterness, anger, resentment, thoughts that I’m ulgy, and such hurt towards my wife. It drove me to make terrible decisions that almost destroyed my marriage, and I was so close to ending a marriage that I thought couldn’t be saved.
But thanks be to God, a true miracle happened. Much like Paul on the road to Damascus, I was spoken to by God and had my eyes opened. The shock of almost losing me changed my wife’s heart towards sex as well, and we are on a journey towards a great marriage and a great sex life. The hurt isn’t gone, but I’m working through it and it gets better each day. I’m living proof that with God, nothing is impossible.
J, I would playfully challenge you on that Instant Pot/ where have you been if you haven’t heard of it? comment, except….. you’ve probably heard of air friers too, which was (like the Instant Pot) totally new to me until we got one recently. My wife loves the air frier: it saves her a lot of time cooking, and no I can’t cook. Or I could, if I didn’t have to multitask. I know, that’s as silly as it sounds.
Anyway…. I agree with what others have said about varying sex drives, between couples, and even within individuals according to seasons, decades, or other times of life. We were not all that young when we married, but we still went through our time of barely being able to keep our hands off each other, and “anything goes, as long as it’s not truly perverted and we both enjoy it”. Now her drive or desire has diminished, and with the help of God (and only the help of God) I’ve learned how to handle any frustration – long story there, but one thing remains: through our dry seasons, when she does want it, she wants it all the way. No holding back. She told me very early on in our dating relationship, she is an all or nothing kind of girl.
So I can’t say I wasn’t “warned”, but I’d be interested in any further analogies this brings to mind. I like your Instant Pot comparison; in the meantime, I’ll see if I can come up with any non-stereotyped or unique descriptions of men’s drives to share with the group, beginning with my own.
Yes, we also have an air fryer. I bought the fryer, my husband bought the Instant Pot. And since many men like to grill, I’d like to see a husband write an analogy for that one. 🙂
My wife awaits in anticipation for me to grill the very first wild caught salmon to swim through our waters. To her (and to me) it seems like an agonizingly long process as the boat isn’t going out few days to set the net into the water. First the holes need to be patched to make sure there are no escape routes in the web, otherwise the salmon will swim through and we’ll have to wait another day.
The grill is ready to be ignited for the salmon, but where is the salmon?
I too am getting antsy, You see, I look forward to accommodating her desires which are also my desires as well, and she knows it.
It soothes my mind that she is at a state of passionate readiness, like she is always ready for me as those desires continue to grow, not knowing when the moment will be right.
It soothes my mind that she loves and desires me the way she does.
We don’t keep those desires a secret, we freely admit to one another, that we want those desires to merge together. Being unafraid to expose the magnitude to what the other is feeling, adds to the urgency.
I love it when she is feeling that urgency for me, as nervous energy created by her desire to be with me, begins to overflow and put her on edge.
Finally, I place the salmon on the grill. I know she likes a little crust on the outside but moist and not overcooked (or undercooked) on the inside. We know how to mutually stimulate our taste buds.
She is now helping with the place settings while dealing with the flirting gentle but piping hot fire going through her veins, as she awaits to taste the finished product.
By the time we finally sit across from each other, sipping on blue nun then together we savor every morsel, large and small on our plates creating a romantic ambiance that ignites our inner passionate juices to flow as we look forward to cuddling as our bodies merge closer together.
The soothing aftermath is also a beginning as the cycle slowly starts again as we hold one another in each other’s arm every night. As we bond we may not know when those desires will finally merge together again, but it is worth the journey. It stimulates my mind, that she is taking this journey with me!
🙂
This is the first thing I’ve ever read about intimacy in marriage that describes me accurately to a T. I don’t feel like such an anomaly. I so appreciate your blog and the time you take to tackle some hard topics. This one was light-hearted, but still made me feel affirmed as a woman – and a higher-drive one at that.
How wonderful to hear, Amanda! Thank you. ♥
After reading this, I’ve got to say I LOVE YOU!
Like the above poster, I now feel affirmed. It’s kinda frustrating for both of us when I really want sex… but it’s going nowhere without Hubby putting a fair amount of effort in.
Love you back! 🙂
Thank you so much for this post. It really helped me and validated some of what I’ve felt for a long time, despite my husband’s insistence that I am in the “low drive wife” category. I don’t know what I am, but I‘m learning to not care what “category” I fit in.
This post describes me perfectly. The irony is my husband would tell you I am a recovering refuser and gatekeeper, and he believes wives with a high sex drive are really rare because we don’t work like he does. If he saw this post, I doubt he would be able to consider the possibility that it relates to me at all because it talks about “high drive wives,” and he didn’t get lucky enough to have one of those, he thinks.
But some of these comments concern me. There’s a lot of comparing and stereotyping, which is a very dangerous thing in marriage.
I think our marriages would improve a great deal if we stopped trying to peg what is “normal” and just look directly at our spouse and figure out that one person a little more every day. Try to figure out what makes that one person happy. Does it matter if they fit into a 10-30% or a 70-90% statistic, or if that number is correct? Does it matter if other people have a higher drive? Are you married to a stereotype or a person?
Are you looking to replace your wife with a new one that you think “works” better, or are you committed to the wife you have? How other wives act doesn’t matter if you’re committed to your own.
Your spouse is an individual, and what gets them going is the only thing that actually has any impact on your life, not whether they are “normal” or even what “normal” is. Even if they’re the most abnormal person in the world, it makes no difference.
Rachel, why would your husband think that you are a “lower drive” woman and a recovering gatekeeper and sexual refuser? Do you consider yourself to actually have a lot of sexual desire, but that your husband thinks you don’t?
There’s a lot of truth in what you say about not caring about what normal is within the confines of our individual marriages. For me, I just have a lot of curiosity about sex in marriage in general, even if this “higher drive wife” discussion has nothing to do with my personal situation.
Rachel, your “sermonette” is the best that I have read in a long time about sex in marriage. Plus, I needed to hear this message again…too many times comparing marriage relationships is not helpful. I need to focus on my marriage! Thank you!
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