In "Solving Marriage Sexual Intimacy Issues!", we tackle how vital intimacy is for a flourishing marriage, highlighting the sexual health benefits and the overall improvement it offers to partners' well-being. Addressing marriage and sexual intimacy isn't solely about physical closeness but also about overcoming barriers like a lack of emotional connection and navigating through marriage and emotional neglect. These challenges can create a sense of distance, significantly impacting the relationship's core.
Our mission is to guide couples towards reestablishing both their emotional and physical bonds, turning their sexless marriage into a beacon of strength and happiness. Through fostering open communication, mutual respect, and dedication to mutual growth, couples can overcome these intimacy hurdles.
This episode provides essential strategies and advice for those striving to enhance their marital intimacy, making it an invaluable resource for anyone looking to heal their marital connection.
Subscribe for more insights on fostering a resilient, loving marriage. Build a more intimate and rewarding partnership.
Relationship Radio is hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.
Regardless of your situation, what we teach will not only make your relationships better, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself along the way.
Relationship Radio is released every Wednesday and is an extension of Marriage Helper.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. We love hearing from you!
For more resources about your specific situation, visit marriagehelper.com.
We have a new website for the It Starts With Attraction podcast!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
In "Solving Marriage Sexual Intimacy Issues!", we tackle how vital intimacy is for a flourishing marriage, highlighting the sexual health benefits and the overall improvement it offers to partners' well-being. Addressing marriage and sexual intimacy isn't solely about physical closeness but also about overcoming barriers like a lack of emotional connection and navigating through marriage and emotional neglect. These challenges can create a sense of distance, significantly impacting the relationship's core.
Our mission is to guide couples towards reestablishing both their emotional and physical bonds, turning their sexless marriage into a beacon of strength and happiness. Through fostering open communication, mutual respect, and dedication to mutual growth, couples can overcome these intimacy hurdles.
This episode provides essential strategies and advice for those striving to enhance their marital intimacy, making it an invaluable resource for anyone looking to heal their marital connection.
Subscribe for more insights on fostering a resilient, loving marriage. Build a more intimate and rewarding partnership.
Relationship Radio is hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.
Regardless of your situation, what we teach will not only make your relationships better, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself along the way.
Relationship Radio is released every Wednesday and is an extension of Marriage Helper.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. We love hearing from you!
For more resources about your specific situation, visit marriagehelper.com.
We have a new website for the It Starts With Attraction podcast!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
A common question we get asked and a common item that comes up from our team and in our workshops is my spouse won't have sex with me. Sure, you've heard it over the last 20 plus 30 plus years working with spouses over the last 150 years, that's 120.
Speaker 2:120.
Speaker 1:If you don't get the reference, dr Joe and I had many jokes about age, including my own, and how young I am comparatively, and we can joke like this. Dr Joe, thank you for having this conversation and being honest with me. It's an issue when a spouse refuses sex. Now, there are a lot of ways we can take this discussion, but can we start with the first one? What is the importance of sex in a marriage? It does several things.
Speaker 2:Okay, there are some interesting studies around the world as to the physical benefits to each person if they are orgasmic not just the sex, but orgasm itself. For example, as an Israeli study that indicates that women who are regularly orgasmic actually reduce the likelihood of ever having a heart attack ever, and that men who are regularly orgasmic no decrease the likelihood of having a heart attack, but it decreases the likelihood it will be fatal. I said that once, and it was in Indiana. There were several hundred people. About a year later I was back up there and.
Speaker 2:I was being interviewed on a television program and during the commercial, like it looked to me and she said I was in that audience last year. Oh good, my husband was too, and I said when we left there, we went and picked up our kids and as we were driving home my husband pulled off the side of the road and turned over to my kids and said tell your mommy to keep your daddy alive. I said oh okay, All right, so it can actually help extend life. There are other benefits as well. If sperm well, actually semen it doesn't have to be sperm it could be a vasectomy.
Speaker 2:If semen enters the female's body, it can actually reduce the likelihood of breast cancer later or not. Oh, and particularly if she's orgasming and if a sperm is entering her body for at least six months before she gets pregnant, some of the problems from pregnancy do not occur Because in essence, pregnancy is your. Body kind of sees it as a parasite, because half of that being is not you. But if the husband's semen has been entering her for at least six months before she becomes pregnant, then the body sees it as it is you, and so some of the difficulties and problems go away from that. Now there's a ton of stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm just hitting some highlights here, and probably the most important one would be that the greatest amount of oxytocin released except at childbirth If a woman's having a baby, oxytocin starts the childbirth process, but other than that, the greatest amount of oxytocin released in both males and females is that orgasm. Now, oxytocin is a bonding chemical. It bonds you to the other person and, interestingly, at orgasm it enters the body in two different ways Into the bloodstreams of hormone, but also into the autonomic nervous system, and so it's actually a bonding process, that oxytocin. If you hold hands with your husband or wife, there's a little oxytocin If you hug and kiss a little bit more, but the greatest amount is at orgasm. And so, unless they're having sex under protest meaning I'm doing this just to shut you up or I'm doing this because I feel like it's my obligation still the oxytocin will be produced, but it won't have as much of an effect as if they really are enjoying each other. So it's a great strong bonding chemical.
Speaker 1:Interesting. My brain went five different places, so a little. Hopefully you know this as well. My wife and I can't have kids, so we, like can, really adopted our kids, so there's not a need for sex in the reproductive area. However, obviously we still have it.
Speaker 2:But we have to hold those other benefits, all the other benefits have been included, including decreasing her likelihood of getting breast cancer. That's a very interesting if the semen actually gets in our body.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:And I hope I'm not offensive by this, but it doesn't really matter where it goes in.
Speaker 1:Let's for those who may be joining us for the first time, let's go into your background of why you're such an expert in this, because I don't think we're gonna setting it up for something. Who made you know? We've had listeners for five, 10, 20 years to your radio shows, who know who you are. But let's give a little background on why what makes you the expert in sex and relationships?
Speaker 2:Okay, when I when I earned my PhD, my doctorate degree, from the University of Sydney in Australia, as a matter of fact, a very prestigious university, I was just happy that they led me in. I earned it from the faculty of health sciences, like here in America. It's like the psychology department over there, or faculty, since I'm a faculty of health science, researching the causes of and correlations between marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction, and so I had to do tons and tons of research into sex. On my computer and my studio I probably have somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 scholarly articles about various things about sex.
Speaker 1:That's impressive. That's very impressive. I know I've been a privilege to sit in both workshops and in other teachings that you've done, say at church stuff like that, where people are very open about asking those questions, about sex.
Speaker 2:Most fun was when I taught human sexuality at a university. I did it as adjunct professor, which meant I only taught that one class for eight years. The questions there became very interesting, I'm very sure. Plus, we had the PowerPoints with the anatomy and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:We're not going to have that one today.
Speaker 2:We're not going to do that here.
Speaker 1:No. So, with a typical thing hearing that you heard during workshops and our clients here and our team here this is when one spouse refuses sex. Why have you heard that happens? What are the reasons? People come to you saying my spouse refuses sex because X? Okay.
Speaker 2:If you think about the acronym that we use talking about pies physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual let me kind of give some reasons to each one of those. Okay, under physical reasons it can be, because sometimes it's painful, particularly for women. That can have a thing that's called vaginismus, for example, which means that the muscles inside of a vagina are clamping like a Charlie Whore should have in your calf, and it becomes extremely painful for her to do that. There are other painful things that can happen to the female as well. There are also some things that can happen to the male. The penis, for example, can actually be broken in a sense and it gets into a cronies disease, which means that it's kind of crooked and it becomes painful.
Speaker 2:So physically, under painful could be one Him, her, okay, that kind of thing. Therefore, about 3% of American marriages have never been consummated by vaginal penal intercourse About 3%, wow. Then physically, it also could be the other things in the sense that you know, one woman said to me my husband never takes a bath, he stinks, I'm not about to go to bed with him. So there was a physical reason, but it had to do with hygiene and even though people don't like to hear this and it can sound quite offensive sometimes it can be my spousalist has let himself or herself go to the point that I don't find them physically desirable anymore and therefore I don't want to have sex with him because I'm not attracted to their body. I don't mean to be offensive by saying that. And then another can be that people, when they get overweight, can actually lose libido, that the heavier you get, the less your body wants to have sex. Now we could go a hundred more things there, but that kind of gives some ideas physically, intellectually typically comes to when they have a very different idea about what's proper, not like what's right and what's wrong, but what should be done and shouldn't be done in a proper way. And so if she has been raised to believe that it should be nine o'clock Thursday night with the lights off, but he's been raised in such a way of thinking that it should be anytime we feel good about each other, then their disagreement intellectually no, it's supposed to be this way. So they're not talking about right and wrong, moral and immoral, but about my various understanding of sex. Now when you get to the spiritual so I'm going to skip over that for a minute, because emotional is the biggest one. It can be that sometimes people believe that certain sex acts are wrong, like my husband wants to do this, but I'm convinced that's a sin.
Speaker 2:I was being interviewed on a radio station once in Texas. I remember the regular host was sick so they had a guest host and he was asking me questions about sex because I'm a Christian sexologist, I'm a Christian program, and he asked about a particular I won't mention it here, but a particular way to have sex and I said sure, and he went ballistic. That's a sin, it's ungodly. If people do that they'll go straight to hell. It was a calling program, so all the people they called in were agreeing with me, which made him madder. It was really interesting and so so spiritually could be. You believe this is okay. I believe this is wrong.
Speaker 2:We have something available for people have been through our three day intensive programs as couples. That is a seven and a half hours of videos teaching about sex. It includes some PDFs that work out and there's even a thing in there they can use that if one of them wants to do something the other is not sure here she wants to do. There's actually a process for them to think that through, to make their decision about it, so we can help people with these things in the thing that's available. If, after they've come through our workshop, now go back to emotionally, typically it's going to be Either I have some kind of scarring emotionally from something that's happened to me earlier in my life I was molested when I was five or whatever it might be, or even it could be a disease. One woman that we were working with, for example, she said I had several UTIs. What does UTI stand for? Anyway, I forget.
Speaker 1:You're a very track infection.
Speaker 2:Thank you. You can tell I'm a PhD right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm here explaining what it is. And she had had several of those when she was a kid and so they had a bit catheters and all those kinds of things in. And so the first time she's making love with her husband, when he begins to touch that part of her body, all she can see in her head Is those, those catheters and the pain that was associated with him. And so it can be that kind of thing Emotionally like I mean emotionally reminded of something that was terrible, like abuse, or emotionally reminded of something that was painful. And but most often the emotional problems have to do with I don't like you Interesting, I don't like the way you treat me, I don't like the way you speak to me. As a matter of fact, you may not have any use for me whatsoever until you want to have sex and then all of a sudden you want to pay attention to me.
Speaker 2:I will not be your Prostitute, I will not be your mistress. Either we have a relationship or we don't. And so when I did research once, I surveyed 5000 people. To be in this particular research you had to be at least 21 years old, married, living with your spouse, an American living in America, because that's how you research a specific group and one of the questions was about anything that has significantly reduced your sexual attraction to your spouse, and by far. The number one was I don't like our relationship. Oh, but it does remind me of another one that was under physical. My spouse is a lousy lover. That was actually pretty high up there for when and listing that I don't want to have sex because he's not very good at this.
Speaker 1:I hope in my shocking audience I don't mean to, and for us, we've joked that when Kimberly took your class, this is kitchen talk to us, this is normal dining room table talk for, especially for our team. The reason I'm asking is people are searching it and people want to know the answer. So, really touching on how big, when we think about pies, when we talk about it publicly, people think it's just working on me, not the actual connection between me and my spouse. So for me, like when my wife and I went through the workshop, um, being part of the team and the big part of scarring, not in our sexual relationship, but just in general of her history, because we're not in a relationship, we're in a relationship but we're not in a relationship. So we're not in a relationship, we're in a relationship, we're in a relationship, we're in a relationship and I think that's an important part of our history.
Speaker 1:Because of her disease, she has a heart condition. So there are some things like water this is a we're going off topic from sex for a second but reasons why when we teach our daughter to swim, she is telling me I have to do it. Her surgeries and being put under and you know, open heart stuff. Certain doctor treating her a certain way most of them kind, thankfully, with our situation, but there is a scarring. There's an actual physical scarring for her but also the emotional.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, and so that control into not only person sex life but actually their full relationship, married or not very good point, which made me think of something else, but that's very good.
Speaker 2:But some men, after having heart problems, are afraid to have sex. If I have sex, I will die. Okay, so you can have that. Put that under both physical and emotional. And another one is that some people are afraid to have sex because they are afraid that they will let go. In other words, I'll open up and Be totally vulnerable to you and I don't want, I don't know that I can be totally vulnerable to anybody. It scares me interesting.
Speaker 1:I can see that Because so, because of my wife's condition, mm-hmm, I had surgery, so my wife actually having surgery to tie her tubes was, it's, considered high risk. Because so I had to beset me. For several months following that, my wife and I've had these discussions openly. She was afraid to have sex with me because for her to get pregnant would be a medical emergency.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm for her, even though you've done everything that you knew to do, the possibility, no matter how minor, could be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Another. Another topic that comes up when we talk about spouse refusing sex. We'd see mothers refusing sex because they're typically tired. You've said this either in a workshop or in our training, that they feel Overtouched because they have young children.
Speaker 2:So they're there, they're physically finished when, plus on their, again under physical, particularly would win. If they are fatigued Physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, it becomes almost impossible for them to become aroused. So even if they're trying to get into it, they can't. And that's actually we know that in sexology. She's not, she's not refusing her husband, she's not refusing sex. It's like she's like I, I just can't. And she's telling the truth, she really just can't.
Speaker 1:So if somebody is having these issues with not only the pys of attraction Physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and their spouse is refusing sex with them. Let's talk about them first, because I think we have to talk about both parties. Right, we have to talk about both parties. If this is happening, what can somebody do if their spouse is refusing sex with them?
Speaker 2:to some degree it's gonna be Based on what inhibitions. If any of this about hats, okay, we can actually test those kinds of things, find out how inhibited a person is. But if, if she I say it's her, it could be him, but if she's so inhibited that she can't even talk about sex, then it's gonna be a tougher situation. Because if I'm gonna be explaining to my wife you know, here's I need this. Let me tell you why I need this. But it's not just my physical gratification as we for us to connect, to be one, all those wonderful kinds of things. If she is inhibited about sex for some reason, then that conversation is not even going to happen because she's probably gonna say to me I can't talk about that, I can't, it scares me. And people in that kind of situation probably may need therapy, somebody, not necessarily a sex therapist, but at least somebody who can help them start Feeling comfortable, open and talking about it, because the ultimate solution to all of this is talk.
Speaker 2:The vaginismus thing I mentioned earlier. You know where the, the vaginal tight net, like that. I talked to a young lady once I was, you know, working with her and she said I'll never, ever go to a gynecologist again and I said well, that's kind of dangerous, don't you think? She said no, no, I'll never go again. She had vaginismus and this gynecologist for whatever reason thought to will you fix that? He took a metal round bar and remmed it into her like I'm gonna make your muscles relax and and so it's like nobody's ever gonna touch me there again, including a gynecologist, because of that. So Getting the right kind of help means that even the professional has to be comfortable and knowledgeable and not do stupid things like that guy did.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, you know she's not going to get married.
Speaker 2:No, because she's going to be afraid of what would happen if she had sex with her husband. So this kind of college has ruined her.
Speaker 2:Now, if I were she, I would have probably done something about that, but that was her business, not mine. I'm just saying. There's so many things here, but the ultimate solution is talk, which means that if he had known what he was doing, it wouldn't have been ramming a metal bar into her, he would have been let's start exploring this. And then he would send her to somebody who would help her learn various relaxation techniques so she could relax those muscles. And then it would be somebody who could talk to her maybe another woman about sex, in a way where she didn't feel threatened and that she wasn't about to be asked to do anything which she might feel if she's with her husband. And then finally to the point where she could talk. This one wasn't married, but if she were, where she finally then could talk to the husband. These are my fears, these are my hangups, these are my et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:One couple I dealt with, for example, she just didn't want to have sex at all, and of course he was very frustrated about that. And so she went to see a good godly man in their church, one of their church elders, and he said it's simple you just get some candles and you run a warm bath and everything will be fixed. It didn't fix it, and so when I was working with her with them actually as a couple I said what was your very first sexual experience? And she said I don't know if it was sex or not. I was about three, I was in the barn with my cousin and my pants were off and I was crying, but that's all I remember. Okay, now we can suppose. Okay, this is something you cared since you were three years old. You're not going to fix that by learning a new position. You're not going to fix that by taking an aphrodisiac, and so sometimes it's a matter of talk.
Speaker 2:But here's the problem with that. Suppose that, uh, that she's lost interest in her husband because of his hygiene. I don't want to make love to you. You stink Bringing that up to him. If he doesn't get it and understand it, if he becomes offended by it, they're not going to resolve their issue. Or, for, men, doesn't want to make love to his wife because she's become obese, let's say, and and he's just not attracted to that. And if he says something to her about it, then she becomes very hurt. So sometimes you have to have some help having those conversations. But by and large, the primary solution is talk where you can be understood, where you can explore your own emotions, explore your own history in a very, very safe environment. And that's why it will often require professional, or at least as a couple, learning how to have those really tough conversations where the other person knows what not to say and what not to do. And that's where we can help.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and that really falls into our seven steps the reigniting intimacy and passion, because sex is really only one piece of that, where in a marriage it's not only the intimacy part of you know the sex. I think you define it as the passion right, and intimacy is the friendship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, intimacy is the openness, transparency we call it into me, see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, For me and my wife we have. We were not clients prior to learning about marriage helper. However, for us, the workshop still gave us the tools to have these open conversations. I don't think we talk about sex enough in in this sense of it being a healthy, normalized conversation. I was meeting with somebody last week and even thinking through my family history, there are a lot of things in my life that we did not normalize. We joke and I'm gonna say this, when you go speak for certain organizations, sometimes we remove the word sex from the title Because they freak out, Because they freak out. This should be common language in a safe environment, and I think communication, both from whoever's teaching you about it, but also helping you work through it and giving you the tools the tools that I was given during the workshop even helped me and my wife have open conversations with our friends about it and making sure we had a safe place, not only together but individually, to talk about stuff like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember speaking once for church in the Houston area where I did my love, sex and marriage and talked openly about sex. The next morning, which was Sunday morning, I was gonna stay where and speak for the church on Sunday morning. This young lady walked up to me and she was with her and she was grinning from ear to ear and she said we just had the best night of our life. I was well happy Congratulations, she said, because, based on what you said, you said yesterday we were able to talk about things we've never talked about before and that's what led to them having a great love making session, not technique, but being open and transparent and vulnerable. Here's what I like, here's what I want. Why don't you want that? And not yelling and screaming and arguing, but understanding each other. So I know it can happen.
Speaker 1:What I hope our listeners are hearing is another concept which you and Kimberly teach a lot is push-pull. So the refusal of sex is a push, but being able to openly and honestly talk about it can be seen as a pull, a major pull, which would then lead to, like they said, the best sex of their life Right.
Speaker 2:And if a person can't talk about it right now, like that woman could not remember what had happened to her when she was three. Now I'm not a sex therapist so I had to refer on to somebody else to help her dig into that. But she would have to have professional help before she could talk to her husband and sometimes that has to happen. It's like I need a stage in between. Yet many times we've had people who come to our three-day workshop and because, well, as you were saying a minute ago, their communication opens up so much, even though we don't teach about sex in that workshop, it winds up where they can talk about anything, including sex, and they don't need to go talk to a professional, Like talk to each other and their sex life just gets better because they can communicate, understand each other, not be afraid.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You'll hear Dr Joe Kimberly and myself talk about our three-day workshop a lot. If you want to have these same tools, if you want to have a path to be open and having this communication framework to openly talk about sex in a safe environment, talk to our team. We have a whole team of intake specialists who are going to help walk you through the path to restoring your marriage, whatever it may look like right now. To do so, to book your call, go to marriagehelpercom slash book now. That's B-O-O-K-N-O-W Side joke, that's also BOO. No, anyway, a random marketing stuff we joke about. And, yeah, it's book now. So go to marriagehelpercom slash book now to sign up for a time to speak with intake specialists today to talk about our workshop.
Speaker 1:Joe, this was fantastic. I think it normalizes how the refusal of sex is not just the refusal of the action Exactly. It's a combination of someone's history, someone's how they see themselves in the attraction, so how they see themselves in the pies, but also how the pies interact with that relationship. What would be one of your if no one listened to anything else? Say they skipped the end. What would be your biggest takeaway for somebody dealing with this in their marriage?
Speaker 2:Learn how to talk openly with your spouse without being afraid. But that means that both of you have to be very secure for the other, and if your spouse says I see you as beautiful, believe it. They really do.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that encouragement today, Dr Jill, Thank you for listening or for watching this episode of Relationship Radio and remember there is always hope.