Intimate Covenant Podcast
Intimate Covenant Podcast
The Conflicts of Pursuit, Response & Rejection
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In this episode, we share a few more segments from our live Q&A at the 2025 Annual Retreat; all of these had to do with the pursuer-responder dynamic. Specifically, we covered questions about:
- What is God teaching me through the pursuer-responder dynamic?
- Is compromise the answer to sexual desire discrepancy?
- What if, despite the sterotype, the husband doesn’t want sex?
- How should a wife deal with the role of reluctant dual-pursuer?
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Registration for the 2026 Intimate Covenant Annual Marriage Retreat opens on February 14th. intimatecovenant.com/retreat
Warning: We cover necessary and important topics about the marriage relationship and sex. We use frank language without being crude or crass. Our approach is biblical and wholesome, but not intended for singles — especially not for children.
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Cherishing,
Matt & Jenn
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Intimate Covenant | Matt & Jenn Schmidt
Welcome Friends!
SPEAKER_01Hey Jen, want to talk about lessons learned from the conflict of pursuit and response? Rejected. Great. Today on the podcast, we're sharing more QA segments from the 2025 marriage retreat, including spiritual lessons learned from the pursuit and rejection in relationship. And a whole lot more to cover today, so let's do it. Welcome, friends.
SPEAKER_00Welcome. We're Matt and Jen, and this is the Intimate Covenant Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Where we believe the Bible and great married sex both belong on your kitchen table. That's right. We are talking about godly marriage with hot sex and emotionally fulfilling oneness. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00If you'd like to learn more about us, you can go to our website, intimatecovenant.com, and we would always love to hear from you. You can email us at podcast at intimatecovenant.com.
SPEAKER_01So what does God want us to learn from the conflict which is inherent in the pursuit, response, and rejection that married couples inevitably experience?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like how we're saying inevitably experience because don't most of us feel like this is an us problem, not everybody's experiencing this problem?
SPEAKER_01Everybody's going to experience pursuit, response, rejection. If you're in a relationship, that's just the way that it is. In your marriage, you are likely rejecting your spouse and also the one being rejected, at least occasionally, and probably more than you would like.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And so if you haven't stopped to consider what spiritual lessons there are to learn from this experience, then you might be missing the real point of marriage.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully, today we can help clear that up a little bit for you. Before we get to that, though, we have an exciting announcement. Our first marriage day of 2026. So we would love to announce that we will be going to Alabama.
SPEAKER_01Alabama. We've never been to Alabama before for a marriage uh weekend, but uh we want to announce the River Hills Retreat, Marriage Enrichment Weekend, which is happening in Hayden, Alabama, at you guessed it, the River Hills Retreat. That is not far from Birmingham. Uh many of you may already know where that is located. You may have already even been to the River Hills Retreat. Uh, they're doing a lot of good work there uh on a number of levels, and they have been good enough to uh invite us to that location. Uh that is uh, for those of you not in North Alabama, that is uh just outside Birmingham uh in North Alabama, and we are incredibly excited. We're always excited to go do these events, but we love it when you get to go somewhere new that we haven't been before. New places, new faces. We're just really looking forward to it. Uh the date for that is April 18th.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh. Saturday, April 18th. But there will also be an optional social event on Friday evening, April 17th. Um, and so we're just, we're just so excited to be going and looking forward to it. Thankful for those that are already registered to attend. If this is something you're interested in, if you're in Alabama or you're happy to drive to Alabama, you can go to intimatecovenant.com slash Alabama and you'll find out more information about this event there and a link to be able to register.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or you could just go straight to the River Hills Retreat website as well, and uh you can also navigate to uh that event there. Lots more details on the website, uh including um uh registration details, how to get signed up and how to get uh get in there. Uh the content that we're gonna be covering is a theme called enlighten. We've done this theme in a number of other places. It seems to be kind of popular, um and rightly so, because it's about identifying the spiritual purpose for your marriage and connecting that spiritual significance to all of the different aspects of your relationship.
SPEAKER_00So it's great material, um, really great introduction to us if you've never been um to an intimate covenant event. Um, I think it's a great material to kind of figure out who we are and what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, and and to that point, it is not a sex weekend. Okay. I mean the podcast, yes, that is the the primary focus of the podcast, but that is not the focus of these live events. We want to look at the entire relationship in much greater detail. Yes, we will talk about sex because that is part of the relationship.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but you can be assured that when we talk about sex in a live event, it is done tastefully and not obviously not putting anybody on the spot.
SPEAKER_01We're not gonna make anybody uncomfortable. You're not gonna have to speak up yourself. You're not gonna have to share any details about your relationship with anybody else except your spouse. Uh, so that's what we're gonna try to encourage you uh is to start a conversation in your marriage, in this case, about the spiritual purpose for your marriage and how that connects to every other part of your relationship, uh, including the sexual relationship, but also uh how it connects to uh just your general purpose, your uh emotional well-being and and every other uh aspect of that uh marriage.
SPEAKER_00So if you can join us, we'd love to see you there. But you know where else we would love to see people, Matt?
SPEAKER_01Hmm. The 2026 Intimate Covenant Annual Marriage Retreat.
SPEAKER_00And how would they get there, Matt?
SPEAKER_01Well, the only way you're gonna get there is if you register. And as you already know, if you've listened at all to the podcast, registration for the annual marriage retreat opens on February 14th.
SPEAKER_00Valentine's Day. This episode is going to be dropping on the Monday of Valentine's week. So if you're hearing this right when we drop this episode, you should go ahead and put it in your calendar that registration opens on Valentine's Day. What a perfect Valentine's Day gift!
SPEAKER_01A perfect Valentine's Day gift. And I have been told this is top secret information, so don't tell anybody.
SPEAKER_00I'm not sure I even know this information.
SPEAKER_01The website and the registration forms are maybe already in place.
SPEAKER_00Oh, what would happen if someone jumped in before Valentine's Day?
SPEAKER_01Uh we're gonna find out.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna find out.
SPEAKER_01And I will also say there may be prizes for people who sign up first.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we're just dangling a carrot out there. Okay, we'll see what happens. This year's retreat is gonna be September 24th through the 26th. Um, that's a Thursday night to a Saturday afternoon, like every year. It's happening at the Houston City Place Marriott. That's just outside of the Woodlands, Texas. An easy Uber ride from the Houston Intercontinental Airport. Right. Super easy for you to come if you're local or not so local.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Our theme this year, this is one that uh I'm super excited about. I mean, I get excited about these themes every year, but this is one I'm I really am excited about. Uh, we call it Beloved, and it is about exploring love and romance from the Song of Songs. Uh so we're gonna dig into scripture like we do every year, but in a special way this year, really focusing our time on the song of songs, that one inspired book that is solely devoted to celebrating romantic and erotic love in marriage.
SPEAKER_00This isn't the first time that we have used material from the Song of Songs. So if you're like, I've already heard you talk about that, Matt and Jen, you should still come because we're gonna be taking a new, fresh approach to it. It will be new revised material.
SPEAKER_01This is gonna be different, and we're gonna challenge you in some different ways as well to try to dig into the book yourself, but also uh put it into some practical use uh even and stir up some conversation with your spouse while you're there. So that's that's our goal.
SPEAKER_00So if you'd like to join us, all that is required is fill out the registration form and pay a$200 deposit and the rest of the registration um money. I just lost the words.
SPEAKER_01The registration fee is right.
SPEAKER_00The the due at the end of August.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um the that uh that registration fee includes comfortable guest rooms in a luxurious hotel. It includes food, including some meals. It is a gorgeous setting in that hotel and the surrounding area. We're also gonna, like we alluded to, we're gonna have some challenging content. There's also gonna be gift bags, which include exclusive gifts and discounts from some of our affiliates and sponsors. So lots, lots to get. Uh, we feel like the value is um you're gonna get way more than what you pay for. Um, and we're gonna always gonna try to keep it that way. And it's just I hate to use the word magical, but it is a magical weekend. It is a very special weekend, and we just really want you to be there with us.
SPEAKER_00Our favorite weekend of the year. All right, so let's get into today's episode. And in today's episode, we are sharing some more questions and our responses from our retreat this past September. Um, we've grouped these particular questions because they were all asking about some particular aspect of the pursuer-responder dynamic. And since retreat registration is opening this week, we thought this would continue to give you, as a listener, a little sense of how much fun we have and the ways in which our guests challenge themselves and us with their questions. They're very good. These are good challenging questions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, these are some good questions. And again, we kind of I try to group them all here because they're all sort of on the similar vein or a similar uh general topic. But but the specific questions and topics we uh addressed in this uh in these segments are including, um, as we mentioned in the opener, the spiritual lessons that come from this pursuer-responder dynamic. In other words, why did God make us this way and what am I supposed to be learning from this? Um, also, we're gonna talk about um how to compromise or not when it comes to sexual desire discrepancy, that is, when uh one spouse wants to have sex more often than the other. That never happens, right? Um, we're gonna talk about what to do when the husband, despite the stereotype, when the husband doesn't want sex. What should we be thinking about, questioning, and how should we deal with that? And then finally, what to do when the wife is the reluctant dual pursuer, meaning the wife is both the emotional and sexual pursuer in the relationship, uh, and she doesn't want to be. What do you do in that situation? How do you get there? And how do you get out of that dynamic if that's where you feel stuck? So uh those are the topics we're gonna talk about. Jen, any final last words?
Spiritual Lessons Of Pursuer–Responder
SPEAKER_00I don't think so. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, let's do it.
SPEAKER_02All right, here's another intriguing question. What is God trying to teach us with the responder dynamic? Often the responder has to work really hard to get into lover girl mode compared to the pursuer. Why? I love this question. In fact, we did a whole retreat, I think, one time, kind of centered around this pursuer-responder dynamic. And why is it that we are built this way? Why did God make us this way? Because that this didn't happen accidentally. I think you all can believe that. It is not a it's not a uh mystery that God made us different, he made us male and female, and even in that, he married you, or you married to someone who is different than you. And I think again, going back to some of our original points, that is the point that you are different, and that is supposed to teach you something. So, what is it teaching us? How hard did Christ pursue his bride? I mean, who is the best pursuer? That's Jesus. Right? That's God. God has pursued his people from the very moment that he created them. And how many times has Jesus been rejected? I mean, that number is uncountable. So who's the best pursuer? And I think that's as a pursuer, that's who I just have to hold my hope with. That's who I have to hold up as an example. I have to keep pursuing.
SPEAKER_00And if I'm a responder, praise God that my pursuer didn't give up on me. So, how do I respond? I respond as Christ would want the church to respond to him, right?
SPEAKER_02With affection, with admiration, with enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_00Incredible gratefulness that I am pursued. By acknowledging that pursuit, being thankful that that pursuit is there, and that's how I should also respond to my beloved. Thank you for pursuing me. Thank you for seeing the value in me and wanting connection with me.
Desire Discrepancy: Beyond Compromise
SPEAKER_02So, next question. I could have sex every day. Just every day? I could have sex. I could have sex every day. My wife would be fine once a month. How to work to a middle ground. I mean, desire desired discrepancy, that is, one spouse wanting to have sex more frequently or wanting to have sex with more variety. These kind of desired discrepancies are at the heart of the vast majority of conflict over sex in marriage. And it just simply boils down to the fact that you are married to someone different than yourself. Now, start with be thankful that you are married to someone different than yourself. That's a good thing. But it does mean that because your spouse is not you, that you're not going to see things or desire things in the same way and with the same level of intensity. So, how do you work through this? Do you just like, I don't know what the average is between daily and monthly, but does that mean you just should have sex every two weeks, and that's a pretty good compromise? Is compromise the answer? Let me tell you what compromise means. Compromise means nobody got what they wanted. And that is not a way to negotiate a relationship. It might be a good way to negotiate fighting over toys with your kids, or it might be a good way to negotiate conflicts in the workplace, but that does not work in a marriage. In a marriage, you need to work out, fight through, embrace the conflict until you can both figure out what is best for us and how can we both get what we want from this? So the answer I think boils down to what is the purpose of our sexual relationship. And if we've established and if you can agree that the purpose of your sexual relationship is for connection, then the answer to this question is what level of frequency provides the best connection in our relationship?
SPEAKER_00Which obviously means that has to be a conversation between the two of you.
SPEAKER_02It's not a math equation. It's a conversation.
SPEAKER_00Because there can be too much sex. I know that just becomes so hard to believe. Half the room thinks that's hard to believe. The other half is like, that is absolutely true. Too much sex just becomes about sex, and it's not about connection. Not enough sex is also not truly about connection. So you each people ask us all the time, how much sex should we be having? Like we have this magic number, and we can give that number to y'all and then check mark we're doing exactly what Matt and Jen said. No.
SPEAKER_02It's not that easy.
When The Husband Has Lower Drive
SPEAKER_00Because it's about your marriage and the connection in your marriage. And so the question you ask each other is how much sex equals connection for us?
The Dual Pursuer Wife Dilemma
SPEAKER_02What if the husband doesn't really want sex and has to intentionally think about it, despite the stereotype that he typically wants it more? Awesome. I love this question because it hits at the challenging of stereotypes. Is it true that the majority of men, the majority of husbands, have a higher sex drive than their wife? Yes, that is true. That is the stereotype, but stereotypes don't apply to every circumstance. So I think the first, you know, I don't know exactly what the husband is asking about here. It's just sort of a what if, but I would say to that husband, number one, it doesn't mean you're broken. It doesn't mean that you're weird or even abnormal. It just simply means that you don't fit into the specific stereotype. You don't have to have a higher sex drive than your wife to be a man. That's not a requisite, that's not a requirement. And so if you're not the one who feels strongly about it, whatever, doesn't mean that's bad. Now, that said, if it's if you don't fit into the stereotype, it is reasonable, it is valid, it's maybe even a good idea to ask why. Because there are reasons that could be potentially bad reasons why that could be the case. It may just be that's who you are and that's who your spouse is. But it could be that you have some hormonal deficiency that needs to be addressed. You could have some health issue that needs to be addressed. You could be on medications that are suppressing your sex drive. Common medications like antidepressants, uh blood pressure medications, all of those things can have significant impacts on your sex drive. And that may be part of what the problem is. And if your doctor doesn't know that you're having these problems, then they're just going to keep prescribing. And if you don't like that side effect, then talk to your doctor and get new meds. So there's a lot of reasons why that could be the case. The other thing that is, or one other thing that could be a cause for this is if something else is stealing your sexual energy. If you're addicted to porn, of course you're not going to have a lot of sex drive for your wife. Or if you're constantly bombarded and flooding your brain with sexual images from social media or otherwise, yeah, you're not you're not going to have as much sex drive. So, yeah, it might that some of this might just be who you are, some of it might be what you're filling your brain with or what you've been influenced by. Um, so I think that's another important place to look and another place to understand. And then finally, you may also have a lower sex drive because you're dissatisfied with the emotional connection in your relationship. If you're fighting all the time or being around your wife makes you anxious because you're worried about what she's going to complain about next, or or whatever it is, if there's some dynamic in your relationship that has caused disconnection, then you're not going to be looking for that connection with your spouse. So those are at least three reasons why a husband could have a lower sex drive. Doesn't mean that's the case here. There may be no pathology here. It may just be that the husband, this is who he is. And acknowledge that if you are married to someone beside your wife, you might be the one with the higher sex drive. It's not that your sex drive is either low or high, it's a continuum. And whether you're lower or higher than your spouse depends a lot on who you're married to.
SPEAKER_00And and time of life. Sure. And seasons. Um, and I think also that the heart of this question is like an assumption that when something is hard, it's bad or it's broken. And that's not the case. So this this man is saying that he has to intentionally think about sex. Okay. That doesn't make you broken. And frankly, that's okay because that is the prompting that maybe you need to be in a place of connection with your beloved. Um, that's that's okay. For anybody who is a responder, you are going to have to do intentional work to think about sex and to desire sex. That is your role. So we talk about the pursuer is the one who's pushing forward, stepping on the gas. The responder is the one who responds to that. Well, you that is your role. So you you have the responsibility of response, but but in order to respond, you got to sometimes put in the work to put yourself in a place where you're ready to respond. That means being intentional with your thoughts. We we just love to let Hollywood give us the script, right? That that that sex just happens and this totally organic, and everybody wants it the exact same, and you just can't wait to rip each other's clothes off on a Tuesday night. Woo! That may not be what your Tuesday nights look like. But don't be afraid of having to do intentional work to desire sex. That's not wrong, especially when you understand the purpose of sex, which is connection.
SPEAKER_02What to do if the wife is the dual pursuer but does not want to be? And that is an interesting dynamic. That's a difficult dynamic, that's a very difficult dynamic. We already talked about the difficulties when one spouse is pursuing both sexually and emotionally, that the entire burden of pursuit is on one spouse. That's an incredible burden, and that also in some cases, it's a burden even on the responder because they become flooded and overwhelmed by that constant pursuit, and sometimes the constant um need to be the one who puts a halt to some of the bids for connection. So they're the one that always has to say no, and that becomes a burden as well. Specifically, this person is asking about what to do if the wife is the dual pursuer. And even more so, not only is she the pursuer, but she doesn't want to be the pursuer. Which to me begs the question why, number one, why does she not want to be a pursuer? And number two, then, if she doesn't want to be the pursuer, why isn't the husband pursuing in any way, also? And I'm gonna have to read a little bit into the question. Um, obviously, having more details about the dynamic of this relationship and how they got to where they are currently, that would be very helpful in help in answering this specific question. But this this is definitely a problem, and men are much more prone to this um behavior than women, which is men sometimes just become apathetic. And men often are willing to just coast. Like I'm getting what I need, I'm getting what I want, which for some men, thankfully, is very little as far as what they think they want or need. That's a blessing, but it's also a curse because it's easy for men to get complacent then. I have what I need. When I come home, there's food, my family's still here, they like me, and so therefore, I'm not going to invest in anything because I don't need to, because I'm getting what I want. And as long as my wife keeps giving, then that dynamic is never going to change. Change only happens when we become uncomfortable, and when we become uncomfortable enough to motivate us to go through the difficulty of change. So I'm not necessarily picking on husbands. Wives do this in other ways as well. And there are good and bad reasons why husbands become the dual pursuer in some relationships as well. But this is why that happens. Now, what does that mean for the wife in this case? What to do is her question. What should she do? Well, one thing you can't do is stop pursuing. Now, you can you could potentially change the way that you are pursuing. And the other thing that you need to do is be very vocal. If you don't want this job of pursuing, then you need to let your husband know I am not going to bear all the burden in this relationship any longer. And there needs to be some accountability. Um, and if he is not willing to step up and be responsible enough to pursue her in some way, to make her life better in some way, to meet her emotional and physical and mental needs, if he's not willing to do so, then you as a wife need to hold him accountable. And if he won't listen to you, find someone he will listen to. And this is where church leadership is so crucial and so underutilized and frankly negligent. We don't hold couples accountable. We don't hold husbands especially accountable for their failures in their marriages. And we let men get lazy and we let men get away with things that should they should not be getting away with. We let them sin against their spouses. And it goes both ways, of course, but the question is from a wife, so I'm gonna pick on the husband.
Gratitude, Feedback, And How To Reach Us
SPEAKER_00I think some advice I would offer to that wife, maybe in the meantime, um, is just think of things that can be done that will help take the pressure off. We recommend, and especially in this kind of situation, like Matt has already said earlier this weekend, to schedule sex. If you both know that this is going to be happening, then there's less pressure in the pursuit and in the response. Um, and so this might be a case anytime you have a dual pursuer, whether it's the wife or the husband, um, that might be an even better place than that you are utilizing that place of scheduling, maybe not just sex, but also then scheduling when are the times that we emotionally connect. I mean, that's again going back to that covenant conversation that you guys all should have practiced yesterday in your breakout. You know, when you know that there are regular places of connection that you have together purposely built in, then it takes less pressure. You know, yes, somebody still has to be putting, pushing on the gas pedal. That is your role as a pursuer. Sometimes that's exhausting, and but it's a little bit easier when you know we already have that destination in mind. We already know, okay, hey, it's time for us to set aside the phones, turn off the TV, let's have our little covenant conversation time, or reminder, we scheduled date night, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02I I would also add, it's possible that your husband doesn't even necessarily believe that you are the pursuer in both realms. There are certainly situations where the husband thinks he's pursuing, but the wife is just not realizing it. And so he's there, he's available, he's constantly putting out these bids for connection. She's not necessarily seeing it, but when it comes time to actually, for example, have sex, she is allowing it. So she feels like she's the pursuer because she's the one who makes sure that it happens with some regularity. He's always available for it, but he's not necessarily being explicit about his intentions and about his pursuit. So I would the the the conversation starts with hey honey, I feel like I'm the one who's having to do all the pursuing. Just see where that question goes.
SPEAKER_00All right, some really good questions. Um, since it got upvoted 22 times, we'll go ahead and read it. We love you. What you do and what you have done for so many is so important and encouraging. We're thankful for what you do for God's kingdom. Thank you. Thank you for kingdom. Thank you, guys. Thanks for listening, and especially thank you to those who attended the retreat last year and those who submitted these impactful, thoughtful questions. We hope that our answers helped you think through some of these scenarios and and we hope you're thinking about how you would have answered these questions.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. If uh there's something that we missed, we would love to hear your feedback. Contact us by emailing podcast at intimatecovenant.com or to submit anonymous feedback and questions, go to our website, intimatecovenant.com/slash podcast, and there you can submit an anonymous submission form.
SPEAKER_00Thanks to all of you for listening, subscribing, rating, and sharing the podcast. We are truly humbled by all your encouragement and your support. Thanks especially to our Patreon subscribers for coming alongside us in a very real way. If Intimate Covenant has blessed your marriage, we'd love to have you join us too. Subscribe at patreon.com slash intimate covenant.
SPEAKER_01Please support our affiliate businesses who help support Intimate Covenant. And some of those uh businesses incidentally have some great Valentine's Day sales going right now.
SPEAKER_00That's right, take a look at it.
SPEAKER_01Linked, that's right, links and exclusive discount codes to these marriage centered businesses are in the show notes. Until next time, keep striving and don't settle.