When we talk about how God made sex to be mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both, and how, if women don't want sex, the answer is to figure out why, we invariably get people saying, "so you think women don't have to have sex then?"
Today on the podcast we look at the 90% problem vs. the 10% problem. In 90% of cases where women don't want sex, there's a reason. Let's focus mostly on the 90%! But guess what? We actually talk about the 10% too!
Our Sponsor:
The book Forgiveness After Trauma. A victim-centered approach to what forgiveness looks like after betrayal. Rather than pressuring a victim to forgive, let's examine what Scripture says about lament, anger, accountability, and what reconciliation looks like. I was so, so blown away by this book, and saw things in Scripture I never saw before. Check out Susannah Griffith's story, and this amazing book.
To Support Us:
The Products We Mentioned:
Things Mentioned in the Podcast:
Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:
And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.
When we talk about how God made sex to be mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both, and how, if women don't want sex, the answer is to figure out why, we invariably get people saying, "so you think women don't have to have sex then?"
Today on the podcast we look at the 90% problem vs. the 10% problem. In 90% of cases where women don't want sex, there's a reason. Let's focus mostly on the 90%! But guess what? We actually talk about the 10% too!
Our Sponsor:
The book Forgiveness After Trauma. A victim-centered approach to what forgiveness looks like after betrayal. Rather than pressuring a victim to forgive, let's examine what Scripture says about lament, anger, accountability, and what reconciliation looks like. I was so, so blown away by this book, and saw things in Scripture I never saw before. Check out Susannah Griffith's story, and this amazing book.
To Support Us:
The Products We Mentioned:
Things Mentioned in the Podcast:
Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:
And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.
Sheila: Welcome to episode 231 of the Bare Marriage podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.
Rebecca: Hello.
Sheila: And Becca, guess what we’re going to do today?
Rebecca: What are we going to do?
Sheila: We are going to dedicate an entire podcast to a comment that I often get that I’m a little bit sick of. And I just want one place where we demolish the argument so that I can send people here and say, “Hey, if you think that, go listen here.” So we’ve done this before. Your father and I did a podcast awhile ago on obligation sex, so everything you want to know about obligation sex. We did a podcast on why—if you are acting egalitarian, you should just call yourself egalitarian, not complementarian. So we demolished all those arguments. And today we want to look at the accusation that we often good, which I think is so silly. That we’re telling women you don’t ever need to have sex.
Rebecca: Exactly.
Sheila: Yes. But before we do that, we have a few thank yous. Do you want to start?
Rebecca: Our first one we want to say thank you to like we do every week, I think—or most weeks.
Sheila: Pretty much. Yes.
Rebecca: Pretty much. Anyway. Is our patrons. Thank you so much to everyone who helps support what we do here. Our patrons give a little bit of money every month, as low as $5 a month sometimes, and you get access to our exclusive Facebook group where it is the only place on social media I actually hang out.
Sheila: Yeah. Me too.
Rebecca: So yeah. Everyone is like, “Man, you never post on social media anymore.” I was like, “Well, I do all the time in my patron group but not as much anywhere else.” And so we’re there. And there are exclusive events. There is behind the scenes podcasts. There is all sorts of stuff that you can get access to including a huge backlog, at this point, of content. So if you join, we’d love to have you there. You can find the link for that in the show notes.
Sheila: Yeah. And a lot of our patrons came to join our party in our home town a couple of weeks ago, so that was really fun getting to meet some of them. And if you are in our home town, Belleville, Ontario, just a quick reminder that my husband and I are leading a study at St. Thomas Anglican Church on Wednesday nights, so you can come on by for that. We also want to say thank you to our sponsor, Brazos Press, and the book, Forgiveness After Trauma, which is right here if you’re watching on video on YouTube. But it’s written by Susannah Griffith. She was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. And I can’t tell you how powerful this book was for me. Just going through some of the common misperceptions that we have about forgiveness. And on the blog, we’ve been working through what it means to lament and hold people accountable, and so many people are just finding this really freeing in knowing that God is there in your pain. So please check out Forgiveness After Trauma. It’s, honestly, a wonderful book, and the link is in the podcast notes too. And if you want to support us, you can do so by rating the podcast five stars and leaving a review. It’s just something that simple can also help get the word out about the Bare Marriage podcast. All right, Becca. Do you want to introduce this topic? Or do you want me to jump in to it?
Rebecca: Sure. So we are going to—we’re not going to read the comment word for word because often what happens is that people go back and they find it. And then they go after the person. So we’re just going to paraphrase. But we get these kinds of sentiments quite frequently where it’s like, “I just don’t know about this because if we tell women that they don’t have to have sex unless they want to have sex then men will not get enough sex. These poor men will have all these needs that aren’t being met. And so they’re just—you guys don’t think about men’s needs at all. Men’s needs are being neglected. This is a problem. And if I only had sex when I wanted to, well, then I’d never have sex. So I think to myself, you know,”—and this actually is from the comment.
Sheila: Yeah. Why don’t you read the actual quote for this part?
Rebecca: Yeah. So please don’t go and find it. Okay? But she says this, “If I only did things when I really felt like it, my children wouldn’t have breakfast most days. They wouldn’t receive a great home school education. The dishes would be piled up, and laundry would be undone. But because I’ve experienced the loving transformation of Christ’s undeserving love in my life, I serve those around me.” And that’s a very common sentiment especially from women, I will say, because there’s a lot of women out there who do primarily have sex out of service. And they may have thought to themselves they’re not doing it out of obligation. They’re doing it out of service. And so then they get very angry when we suggest that women might have sex because they want it because that feels like a personal attack, right? Because sex is personal, right? Sex is really intimate. It’s personal. Like we say, it’s supposed to be intimate, mutual, and pleasurable.
Sheila: Mutual, pleasurable for both.
Rebecca: But intimacy is really, really scary. And it’s really, really vulnerable. So when you see someone coming with data saying, “Hey, what you’re doing only works until it doesn’t. What you’re doing is actually destroying your sex life from the inside out. You are causing your sex life to atrophy. Based on the stats, you’ve got a good,”—what is it? What did we find? About 10 to 15 years.
Sheila: 15 years.
Rebecca: Of this kind of mentality. Of, well, I do it because I love him. I do it because it’s good for our marriage. I do it because—and I don’t want to have sex. I like sex very much. I don’t like it, but I’m going to do it no matter what because I do laundry. I do dishes. I do sex, right? It’s a part of your mentality. It only lasts for so long, and then your marriage is actually going to be destroyed. That is really personal. And that can feel like an attack, and people get really defensive, right? Because we all know, this is personal. But what we want to tell you is what we’re saying is not personal. It’s based in the stats.
Sheila: That’s right.
Rebecca: Okay. It’s based in data. And when people are really frustrated about this idea that, oh, if I only had sex when I want to, I’d never have sex, there’s two questions I want to ask. Okay. What do you mean by don’t want? And do you like sex? Because if we can answer those two questions, a lot of this just kind of sorts itself out.
Sheila: Yeah. Because what we’ve been saying is that our approach to sex is actually hurting and changing the very nature of sex. Because when people turn sex into merely being about men’s sexual needs and never mention that women can have needs and desires too—
Rebecca: I know. It’s so funny. It’s like you talk to any high drive wife. And it’s like, “Yeah. Girls have needs. Girls have needs.”
Sheila: But they’re talking about men’s sexual needs and the fact that our whole orientation towards sex needs to be serving by giving something that we don’t want. And then sex is no longer something which flows out of our relationship, which is an expression of how we are together, which flows from intimate connection. Sex becomes merely something that I do when I don’t want to. And that has repercussions both for your relationship and for how we frame sex and how we see sex and how we define sex. And that’s what we’ve been saying. We haven’t been—people are like, “But if you tell women that they only have to have sex when they want to, then men will never get sex.” To which our replay is?
Rebecca: The data does not say that.
Sheila: Exactly. And also if that’s your experience, then you’re doing it wrong.
Rebecca: Yeah. And that might not be your fault. You may have gotten terrible sex education. You may have had just life throw a bunch of crap at you all at once. The idea that we’re doing something wrong doesn’t need to mean you’re a horrible person. That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is—
Sheila: Yeah. The idea that you’re doing something wrong means, hey, this is something that can be fixed. We can do better.
Rebecca: Exactly. And this doesn’t need to be your forever. This doesn’t need to be what you just resign yourself to for the rest of your life. So first of all, we need to talk about the concept of need before we move forward. Okay. Because we hear this all the time. Men have needs.
Sheila: Yes. And before we even do that, you know what is a basic need?
Rebecca: What?
Sheila: Water. And we are drinking our water, for those of you on YouTube, out of our merch. We have these insulated thermoses that can work for water or something hot. And I am drinking mine out of our prayer and tent pegs and prophecy and leadership and preaching the Gospel to all that will hear. That is biblical womanhood.
Rebecca: Mm-hmm. And I have one of our limited edition runs from last year, which is not currently available. But it’s a good reminder that whenever we send an email out about a limited edition run they really are limited edition. But this is our anti rape raccoon mug. We honestly might bring this back for a 48-hour flash sale at some point because a lot of people have asked for it again. But I did a podcast where we were talking about the idea that—
Sheila: Boys can’t stop.
Rebecca: - boys can’t stop. And I was getting push back from the host saying, “Yeah. But once a certain point, it’s just really hard for guys to stop. And girls need to understand this so they can protect themselves.” And I said, “If a rabid raccoon were to jump into the room that the boy is having sex in, he would be able to stop have sex in order to protect himself from the rabid raccoon. Okay. That means that he is able to stop. That means he has the control to stop which means he should stop at her no.” Right?
Sheila: Yes. Exactly.
Rebecca: Anyway, so I did it better in the podcast, but that line became a bit of a viral hit among our patrons. And so we made anti rape raccoon mugs. Excellent transition into the merch pitch, by the way.
Sheila: Yes. So you can check out our merch. The podcast link is there. We have a lot of different designs. Two biblical womanhood ones, our biblical manhood, our love and respect. I don’t even know what’s up in the store anymore.
Rebecca: Jezebel.
Sheila: Yes. Our new Jezebel, which is really fun. They call me Jezebel.
Rebecca: Yeah. For all the women who have stood up for equality and been met with personal attacks.
Sheila: Yes. So all of those things are there. When you buy our merch, it helps support what we do too. Okay. So let’s talk about needs.
Rebecca: Yeah. Let’s talk about needs. So here’s the thing. We have taken sexual needs and, in the common vernacular, we don’t separate the two sides of a sexual need. Okay? So you have the physiological drive, the sex drive, the urge to have sex. And the idea that sex is a human need. It absolutely is. Okay? And a lot of people say, “It’s not a need.” Okay. Let’s all take a second and calm down. It is a need. Sex is absolutely a human need. It is. Everyone agrees that it is. Okay? You’re not going to find someone who says that there is not a biological, physiological need for sex. Okay? Because we have to have sex in order to reproduce. And organisms exist in order to reproduce and then die. That is genuinely—from a biological standpoint, that is the way that our bodies are made. We have so many things in our bodies that help us reproduce, get those little things that we made into adulthood, so that they can reproduce. And then we all die. Okay? What is not a need is to enact that sexual urge onto someone else who is unwilling. Okay? So the need for sex and partnered sex with an unwilling partner they don’t cross. Okay? So you can have sexual needs. And then you can have partnered sex. You don’t get to say, “Because I want to have sex, you have to do what I want right now no matter what you are feeling.” That is not a need. So when we say sex is a need, what people often hear is, “Well, then I have to do what he wants because I have to have all the sex that he wants because it’s a need.” No. The concept of sex is a need. Humans have sex drives unless something got in the way. And by the way, yes, that includes women too. There are studies on that we are about to talk about in a minute. But you do not have a need to use someone as a masturbatory aid at your own discretion. That is absolutely not a need. So let’s just separate those two in our minds.
Sheila: And we want to say even single people have sexual needs. Everybody has sexual needs. And we can learn to sublimate those needs into other things. That’s what a lot of life is, right? So yes. We understand. And maybe we’ll do a podcast on that at another time.
Rebecca: Yeah. We all have a need for food, right? I don’t have the need to take your food. Right? That’s the difference.
Sheila: And the need for sex is very different from the need for food and water and air and shelter. I mean there are more fundamental things. Yes. Yeah.
Rebecca: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s not the most base, but it is one of the base needs. And so we do want to, first of all, validate people who are in a situation where it’s like I’m not getting any of my sexual needs met. That is a valid and very, very difficult place to be in. And I know that that’s hard for a lot of people who have been in a position where they are the lower drive spouse and felt a lot of guilt. But also the people who have a higher sex drive, they also do struggle and especially a lot of women with the higher sex drive because they are never told, “Hey, you might have the higher sex drive.” They’re not prepared for it. And then they’re like, “He doesn’t want as much as I do,” and they are so caught off guard. And that can be very difficult to deal with. So we do understand that. But the two needs—they are separate. Nary the two shall meet. Okay? You don’t get to force someone because you’re uncomfortable.
Sheila: Or pressure someone or saying that because I have a need it is your job to fulfill it.
Rebecca: Or guilt them. Exactly. So I just wanted to get that off as we start this conversation that we’re saying we’re not saying that you’re not supposed to feel a sexual need. We’re not saying that. We’re also not saying that it’s your spouse’s job to fulfill your every sexual whim. Okay? We’re not. And so both the people who don’t like the idea of sex as a need and the people who are really, really want sex to be a need need to both recognize both those can be true. So now that we’ve gotten that disclaimer out of the way so that hopefully we can all be on the same page. Let’s talk about those two questions. What do you mean by you don’t want sex? And does sex feel good? And I think you have some stats about this.
Sheila: I do. So mostly, what they’re saying is if you tell women that they only have to have sex when they want it then women are never going to have sex. Okay? Because the idea is unless she is rearing to go, unless she totally desires sex, she’s never going to have sex. And since women don’t do that, that’s the assumption. Since women don’t like sex and aren’t rearing to go, then if we give women permission to say I don’t have to have sex if I don’t want it then they’re never going to have sex. Now the thing is we’ve never said that. No. And there’s a whole chapter in The Great Sex Rescue on how, hey, if sex is good for you, if you’re enjoying sex when you’re having it, if you’re feeling close to your spouse when you’re having sex, then how about we make this a priority in your life? But the thing is that’s a secondary question because how we handle how often we have sex and whether or not sex should be a part of your marriage or how much sex should be a part of your marriage we’re only allowed to ask that question once we’ve already ascertained are you having proper sex in the first place.
Rebecca: Yeah. And that’s where this what do you mean by don’t want comes into play. Because what we found is that among women who just don’t have sex, there are often certain things at play.
Sheila: Okay. So it is okay to feel like sex is a need. It is absolutely. It’s not okay to make someone else fulfill that need. That’s what we’re saying. Now the second question is what does it mean to want sex. And what is the sex that we’re actually experiencing? And this is what—I think this is actually—gets to the heart of the problem. And I want to work through this so that then we can get to what we’re actually telling couples to do. Okay? So here’s the issue. The way that this woman was framing sex was like, “I need to serve my husband in the same way that I don’t want to do the dishes, that I’m so tired to home school. I don’t want to do laundry, but I do those things. So I need to do him.” Right?
Rebecca: Yeah. Like, “I don’t want to scrape that oatmeal off the edge of the counter because my three year old threw it in a fit of rage when I gave her blueberries instead of strawberries. I don’t want to deal with the peas encrusted into my two year old’s neck folds, but I do. And similarly,”—
Sheila: Yeah. This is the problem. And when you’re framing sex like Jesus transforming power enables me to do things I don’t want to do and so I need to have sex and just as Jesus saved me even when I was undeserving so I need to give my husband sex when he’s undeserving—
Rebecca: This is a touch point for me. Let’s actually break down what’s being said here. Okay? Because often what we do in Christian circles is we use really theological language to say something outrageous. And it doesn’t sound outrageous because it’s real pretty. Okay? What she’s saying here is because Jesus died on the cross for you, you have to have sex with someone you don’t want to have sex with. That is the actual thing here. I hope we can all agree that is an outrageous logical jump. Okay? Jesus died for me so that I’d put out more. That is an outrageous logical jump. Also Jesus’ death on the cross is not meant to be used as a battering ram against His children. God is not sitting there with His Son smashing you over the head saying, “You should feel worse about yourself. Feel bad. Feel bad. Feel bad.” He’s not. Jesus’ death was a gift, not a guilt inducing weapon.
Sheila: “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
Rebecca: This is full on just condemnation. We do this when we say, “Well, Jesus died for you. Jesus died for you. He died. Are you dying? Is having sex you don’t want dying? Is it the same as dying because Jesus died for you? He died for you. You are so ungrateful. You ungrateful little wench who won’t even put out for her husband when Jesus died. He’s your husband. Put out. Jesus died for you. He died. Are you dying? Are you dying? Because if you’re not dying, it’s not enough. If you’re not dying, you’re never enough. Unless you’re actively dying, you’re not enough.” That is not what the cross is about.
Sheila: It’s not. It’s not.
Rebecca: It’s not. And I feel so sorry for people who see the cross like that because you completely miss the entire point of the Gospel. You miss the entire point of who Jesus is. And you’re serving a God who doesn’t even exist. It’s like you’re living out the parable of the talents with the servant who says, “Well, I knew that you were a fearsome and wicked ruler, and I saved these. I buried them so that you would not punish me if they were lost.” And God is like, “Well, that’s not who I am,” right? And he’s given over to the god that he did serve rather than the God that was actually there.
Sheila: And that’s what’s happening with sex is that we’re burying our talents, and we’re losing passion. And we’re losing joy because we don’t even understand what sex is. And so when people say to us, “Hey, if you only have sex that you want, then women will never have sex,” it’s like what kind of sex are you having?
Rebecca: There’s another logical option here, bud.
Sheila: Yeah. That’s a problem. And so let’s go through some new stats.
Rebecca: Awesome.
Sheila: I actually have some new ones. There’s two sets of new stats from Joanna today. And Joanna really wanted to share these with you, but she has laryngitis. And so she told me, “Sheila, you’ve got to do it.” So I’m going to try. I’m going to do my best. Okay? But we’re currently working on a peer reviewed paper. And to do that, Joanna created the sexual satisfaction scale out of our survey of 20,000 women that we did for The Great Sex Rescue. And she put three things in that scale. Okay? How likely you are to feel aroused during sex whether you anticipate being aroused, whether you frequently orgasm, and whether you feel emotionally connected during sex. Now the way scale works—maybe you should explain this? Because you know more about stats than me.
Rebecca: Yeah. There’s a lot of different types of validity testing, and they all converge around this idea making sure that you’re actually testing what you think you’re testing. And so one of the ways that you can do that is you can measure the correlation between different questions. And if the correlation is high and they all—that means that they all move together.
Sheila: So here is what Joanna did. We used questions from the SSSFI.
Rebecca: FSFI. Yep.
Sheila: FSFI. The Female Sexual—
Rebecca: Sexual Function Index.
Sheila: That’s it. That’s it. You did the survey part, not me. So you know this better. And then Joanna created a subscale out of three of those questions. And basically, the point is this. If we’re trying to measure the same thing, if the questions are measuring the same thing, then the answers should move together. So if people say yes on one, they should also be saying yes on the other. So if the scale is going to be accurate, if the scale really is a proper measure of female satisfaction, then all of these things should be move together. They shouldn’t move apart or one of them shouldn’t stand on its own. And the way they tell that is you want to see a correlation of about 90%. So when one moves, the other is like 90% likely to move too. Right? They’re going to move together. And that’s what we did for these three measures. Arousal, orgasm, feeling emotionally connected. Now we didn’t have a correlation of 90% though. We had one of—
Rebecca: 96%.
Sheila: 96%. This stuff really moves together. Okay? So here is the thing. People who are saying she should have sex even if she doesn’t enjoy it, even if she doesn’t like it because it’s going to help their marriage, no, it doesn’t.
Rebecca: Shooting yourself in the food there, bud.
Sheila: You’re hurting yourself. Because if she has sex where she doesn’t enjoy it, if she’s not getting aroused, she is not going to feel intimately connected. If you take out the arousal, if you take out the orgasm, you also lose the intimately connected.
Rebecca: Yeah. And we actually found in our first survey for The Great Sex Rescue that typically you can do this whole thing where it’s like I have sex because I serve my husband because Christ died for me. And so I need to die as well, right? So you can have that mindset, and it quote unquote works for about 10 to 15 years. And often not even that much. There are people who it seems to be that around the 10 to 15-year mark it breaks. It breaks.
Sheila: Or the 20-year mark. Yeah.
Rebecca: Or the 20 year. But it’s not the whole marriage. It’s like you can just keep going, and everything is totally fine. It does seem like it’s one of those things where it works until it doesn’t. And you know what? There’s a way that works. And it just doesn’t stop working. And so let’s stop giving the advice that works until it doesn’t and start giving the advice that just works.
Sheila: Yeah. And we measured this. In our marriage book, which is coming out next year, The Marriage You Want, we measured a number of different things. It wasn’t just sex. But there’s a number of different areas of marriage where you’ve got this unfairness thing going on in some way. It’s not always the woman. Sometimes it’s the guy whose got the unfairness thing. But you can put up with it for 15 years. But at 20 years, you’re not putting up with it anymore, and something just breaks.
Rebecca: We say that because a lot of people are saying, “Yeah. But I do this. I give service sex, and my marriage is great.” And we’re like yeah. We’re not saying you don’t exist. What we’re saying is that statistically speaking it’s very, very likely that those marriages are just on an earlier point of a very negative trajectory. Right? So it might be working great for you now. Statistically speaking, that is not necessarily the case in 10 years. And I think we’re all here because we want marriages that don’t only last for 10 years. Right? We don’t want marriages that are only—
Sheila: Or you’re just miserable. You can sweat it out for the first 15 years. You can convince yourself this is good. You can convince, hey, I enjoy serving my husband. But at 20 years, you don’t enjoy it anymore. Even if you keep doing it, you don’t enjoy it.
Rebecca: And you’re just burned out.
Sheila: You’re burnt. And you get more and more bitter, and then you feel guilty for being bitter. And it’s all just ugly. And I don’t want that. And this is what we’re trying to do, people, is we’re saying, “Hey, there’s a better way.” And so can we talk about that better way? So what we’re doing here at Bare Marriage is we’re addressing the foundation stuff. We’re saying, “Hey, maybe you’re just thinking about sex wrong, and your experience of sex is wrong.” So we’ve said this a lot. I say this on almost every podcast I’m on where I’m a guest. We said it in The Great Sex Rescue. But we found there’s five things. Okay? Five things that when these things are present frequency takes care of itself. All of the fighting we’re doing about whether or not she should have sex if she doesn’t want to—if you’ve got these five things, none of that’s an issue. Okay? And here’s those five things. Are you ready? She frequently orgasms during sex. There’s high marital satisfaction. She feels emotionally connected during sex. There’s no sexual dysfunction. And there’s no porn use in the marriage. All right? When you get those five things present, then we’re no longer having conversations about frequency. It’s very rare that that happens. Okay? And I want to demonstrate how rare it is.
Rebecca: Awesome.
Sheila: Okay. So Joanna decided to do the stats in a totally different way just for fun. She thought, “Let’s just do this exercise for fun.” Okay? So she looked for our new marriage book because we had a new set of respondents. Okay? And she looked at the number of women in that marriage survey who had very low libido. Low libido. They said, “Yeah. My libido is really low. I just don’t really want sex.” So she starts off with 1,351 women, which I think was roughly—
Rebecca: Yeah. Very low or low sexual desire.
Sheila: Yeah. Roughly 20% of our matched pair survey. Okay. So 1,351 respondents. Then she asked, “Hey, do you orgasm when you have sex?” And now all of a sudden we only have 575 respondents left because Joanna is saying, “How much of this low desire can I explain away,” right? So you start with do you orgasm every time you have sex. And all of a sudden, you’ve only got 575 women left.
Rebecca: Who say yes. So of that 1,351, 715 said, “No. I don’t orgasm.” Well, that would make sense that you don’t want sex. So that makes sense.
Sheila: Yeah. So that explains it. All right. Then she said, “Do you feel emotionally connected during sex with your spouse?”
Rebecca: And of the 575 women who do orgasm during sex, 119 said, “No. I don’t feel emotionally connected during sex.” Well, then that’s probably why you don’t want sex. That makes sense. If sex is an impersonal, nonintimate experience, even if you orgasm, that doesn’t mean that you’re enjoying it. Arousal nonconcordance, right?
Sheila: Right. So now we’re left with only 440 respondents. So then she said, “Hey, do you have pain during sex?” Okay. And 162 said, “Yeah. I do.” So now we’re left with only 271 respondents out of the original 1,351. So out of those 1,351, only 271 either orgasm during sex, feel emotionally connected, and don’t have pain. Okay. So those three things have already explained basically 85%. Okay? And that’s before even asking about pornography. That’s before even asking about marital satisfaction in mental load. So the people who are like, “Well, women just don’t want sex.” It’s like no. It’s that women don’t want sex where they’re not reaching orgasm, where they’re experiencing pain, and when they’re not emotionally connected. And so this is what we’re trying to say. If you address the foundational problems first, then frequency and libido are going to grow, and it’s going to take care of itself. We are addressing the 90% problem, and people are getting upset at us for not addressing the 10% problem even though we do as we will talk about in a minute. But this is the 90% problem. Can we please understand this? If we also accounted for porn and if we also accounted for marital satisfaction, you’re looking at about 90% of low desire being explained.
Rebecca: Very easily too. Not like it’s a reach. It’s very easy. I don’t think that it should be very difficult to understand why if someone’s experience of sex is completely anorgasmic and impersonal or is painful or is in a relationship where she feels unvalued or taken advantage of or just frustrated because she doesn’t have an equal partner, those things—it does not take someone with a university degree in human sexuality to understand why she might not want sex as much.
Sheila: Yeah. And so, people, if you want women to want sex, then give her sex that’s worth wanting. This isn’t rocket science. Okay? Good sex is intimate, mutual, pleasurable for both. Good sex does not involve porn use in the marriage where she feels betrayed or where she feels like she doesn’t measure up nor where he’s channeled his emotional needs into pornography and doesn’t even know how to relate to her anymore. And so they don’t feel emotionally connected. Good sex does not involve all of these things. And so if you want her to want sex, then deal with these foundational things. That’s the 90% problem, and that’s we’re trying to say. And this is the issue is that in the vast majority of sex books, in the thing that Josh Howerton did that we talked about on the podcast last week with Jay Stringer—they’re portraying the main problem with sex is that women don’t want sex. And what we’re saying is no. That’s the 10% problem. The 90% problem is that you’re not even dealing with sex because sex is something—true sex is something which is intimate, mutual, pleasurable for both. What you’re dealing with is one-sided intercourse. You’re telling women, “Hey, you need to have one-sided intercourse.” And we’re saying, “No. You can’t do that anymore. We need to get back to what sex actually is.” And that’s the whole point of what we’re here for.
Rebecca: What I find so funny too is that what a lot of studies—and we’ve talked about these in the podcast before. But because I’m sure this is going to be one that people kind of send people to talk about this issue about, I want to say it again. There’s been studies that show that women, who have an orgasm the first time that they have sex, have the same rates of high libido as men. So if you take all women who have had sex and all men who have had sex and you only compare the people who orgasmed the first time they had sex, they have the same rates of wanting sex a high amount. They have the same objective measures of libido. The problem is that that’s a very, very small number of women. So it’s not that women are not sexual. It’s that women were given crappy sex from the get go, right? And if you’re sitting there and you’re like, “Well, my wife doesn’t want sex,” and like, “Yeah. We didn’t really figure out orgasm ever, but I still have needs. It seemed kind of unfair for her to not give me my needs when she’s the only one who cane,” I’m sitting there. And I’m saying, “You’re telling me that you have a woman who God created to be able to have multiple orgasms, and you’ve given her none.” This is a situation where we need to figure out whose needs are not being met. Right? What are we missing out on here? And why on earth are you settling for terrible one-sided sex when you could just figure out how to make sex good for both of you? And then have the sex that everyone actually wants. I’m sorry. The only people who actively want sex that you’re—that their partner doesn’t want are on Law and Order: SVU. No one wants—if you crave sex that your partner isn’t into, you need therapy, not sex. Okay? Most men, even men who are having one-sided sex, claim that they want or they would prefer if their wife was into it. Right? So couples where orgasm has been difficult, where sex has always been he has the libido and she needs to be, “Okay. I guess it’s been a week. Let’s go for it,” right? Those kinds of couples. He wants her to want it. He’s not sitting there being like, “Yeah. I love how you give me nothing.” That’s not a thing that healthy men, who love their wives, want.
Sheila: Yes. And I do want to say that it is a thing in abusive marriages.
Rebecca: That’s exactly what I was going to say.
Sheila: We’ve seen this a lot where as soon as she starts enjoying sex he doesn’t want it anymore because—
Rebecca: Because he wants the power.
Sheila: For him, he wants the power. And Doug Wilson talks about this. How sex is not an egalitarian pleasure party but it has to be a conquest and a conquering and a taking. So her desire or her sex drive is actually a turn off because then it’s no longer a taking. And that’s really toxic and scary.
Rebecca: But I want you to know. That’s not normal. If someone enjoys the fact that you don’t want it, that is the reddest red flag you could ever—that is—I would say—
Sheila: Yes. The red flag guy on TikTok needs to be jumping around here.
Rebecca: The red flag guy on TikTok be like, “My sister in Christ.” Yeah. Goodness gracious. That is not normal. And so if you’re one of the guys who is not an absolute piece of work, who is like, “No. I do want her to want sex. I just have given up hope that that’s even possible,” don’t give up hope that it’s possible because the more that you have this one-sided sex the more you’re teaching her brain this isn’t for you. This isn’t for you. This isn’t for you. And some people have done that for 17 years. And I have a hard time knowing what to say in those cases. But if you’re at the beginning of your marriage especially and you’re like, “Yeah. We’re on year two, and it’s been kind of rough. And I wanted marriage to be better than this,” stop. Stop whatever you are doing. Don’t keep going. Do not pass go.
Sheila: Do not collect $200.
Rebecca: Stop. Figure it out. Okay? Because this is the kind of thing that you can fix early on pretty easily. But there’s been a lot of research out there that shows that when women have orgasmic sex and when their marriages are equal and they don’t feel like they’re being used as a maid or a housekeeper, guess what? They have high libidos. They desire partnered sex. They want to have sex with their partners. When they’re like, “Yeah. You make me feel good, and you give me a good life,” they want to have sex with those people. And so that just means something is missing here. That something is missing here. We need to figure out what that missing piece is, not just tell women to say, “Oh, well, I guess we’re just never going to have a good sex life then. So you might as well just give me orgasms anyway.”
Sheila: Yeah. I think there’s just a lot of negativity and hopelessness like, “Yeah. This is never going to get better. And so I guess—but I still have my needs. And so I guess we just still need to go through the motions.” It’s like no. You don’t. You don’t. You can stop, and you can figure this out. And that’s all we’re saying. Okay? And that ends up best in the long run. And I think the people who are reacting to us saying, “You’re just emphasizing women’s needs over men’s needs,” no. What we’re saying is you’re not having real sex.
Rebecca: Well, you’re having bad sex, guys. I’m sorry. Emphasizing women’s needs over men’s needs. What we’re saying is not, “Hey, give women orgasms while you don’t get any.” We’re saying, “Hey, men, make sure your wife has at least as many orgasms as you.” Those are two very different messages. And what I find so funny is that any time that anyone asks for women to just get the same stuff as what men are getting in sex it’s all of a sudden, well, women are more important than men. No. Women being more important than men is you don’t get any. You get maybe one orgasm every quarter while she gets as many as she asks you for. You have to do all this other stuff, and you never get an orgasm. And she has to get all of them. And that’s because of how the Lord designed you as a man to function and this is—and Christ died for you. So why can’t you do this for her? That would be putting women above men. The message that we typically give to women given to men would be putting women above men. But that’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is sex should be good for both of you. That means both of you. As in both of you. As in both of you. As in man and woman. As in woman and man. Both of you. Whoa. That’s not putting women above men. That’s just putting women at equal footing to men in this situation. And, again, why on earth would someone not want their wife to orgasm unless they had a weird power issue here?
Sheila: Yeah. But I think a lot of men—and we’ve done a podcast on this—honestly don’t believe that women do orgasm or can orgasm or that it’s just a big deal to women. I think a lot of men figure that women’s pleasure is secondary and that women just weren’t built for pleasure. In fact, a lot of our resources say that, right? Jimmy Evans in XO Marriage. “God gave men the need for six and women the gift of sex.” So women have this gift to give men. Emerson Eggerichs never once mentions women’s pleasure. So even if they believe that women can feel pleasure, they just don’t think it matters enough to women. So we don’t need to prioritize this.
Rebecca: I will honestly say. This is a personal, subjective opinion. Get ready. If someone says that they believe women can feel pleasure but that it’s just not subjectively important to them, I highly—I’m highly suspicious of if they’ve actually ever experienced a woman experiencing pleasure because that is not typically the experience of women who have orgasms.
Sheila: No. Exactly. It’s like you are telling on yourself. Do you not realize you’re telling on yourself. It’s like when we did that podcast on where Emerson Eggerichs said that you couldn’t tell if a woman was aroused. And it’s like okay. That’s a take. And we’re considering you an expert on sex to give sex advice. And so this is what we’re saying, people. We’re saying this is the 90%. And if you deal with this stuff, it takes care of itself. But if you simply tell women you have to have sex that you don’t want, then you end up hurting the marriage in the long term. You might get more sex in the short term and more sex that he wants, more intercourse, more orgasms for him. But you don’t actually build into your marriage. And so we’re saying, “Hey, how about if we take a healthier approach?” So we’re addressing the 90%, and they’re getting really mad at us for not addressing the 10%, which is when sex is good for her, when there is high marital satisfaction but she still doesn’t wants sex.
Rebecca: Except—
Sheila: We do address the 10%.
Rebecca: In fact, we actually kind of—I’m going to be honest. We make a lot of our money addressing the 10%.
Sheila: I know. This is what I find so strange. People, we have a Boost Your Libido course.
Rebecca: And people really like it. And it seems to really help a lot of people. We have a whole chapter on that in The Great Sex Rescue about how to prioritize sex in a healthy way. We talk about this idea that, hey, if sex is good for you, but you just can’t seem to want it and that frustrates you, let’s figure out how you can get wanting it more because this brings us to the main crux of the question for me. Once we figure out all this stuff about do you even like sex, right? Is your marriage even one in which sex is a logical solution choice?
Sheila: An outflow of your relationship.
Rebecca: Outflow. Thank you. Yeah. Because there’s marriages where she might orgasm, but, gosh, he’s just a terrible husband or they have horrible communication issues they’re working. Or they both kind of have some negative stuff brought in from their family of origins. There might be other things going on in the marriage even though the physical act of sex is good that makes her not want to have sex. Or their marriage could be pretty good, but sex has just always been terrible. There’s things that make sense. So if you’re not one of those, if you’re like I don’t know why I don’t want sex, we talk about that a lot. We talk about it a lot. But here’s the question that I want to ask. What do you mean by don’t want? Right? Because this is what I think we often get tripped up on is people say, “Well, sometimes I,”—you have a conversation with two different women. And they’ll say, “Well, sometimes I have sex when I don’t really want it, and it’s really good for us. And it’s really good for our marriage.” And what she means is sometimes I would rather watch reruns of Criminal Minds on the couch while I eat a snack, but then my husband wants to have sex. And I’m like, “Oh, it’s good for me. I know it’s going to feel so good, and I’m going to feel great once I do it.” It’s the cost to start up that’s the problem. It’s the start up cost. It’s the but I just sat down, right? It’s that kind of cost. And she says, “No. You know what? I’m going to do it. Let’s go. Let’s go have sex.” And they have a great time, and she’s confident she’s going to orgasm. They have a great time. They feel connected. And then afterwards, she’s like, “I feel so nice, and I still get to watch my show.” That’s one side of don’t want. And so when she says, “I have sex I don’t want to have, and then it helps my marriage,” what she means is my start up cost was a little higher. But I knew it was a worthy investment because I knew I was going to get more than my fair—I was going to get more than what I put in back. Right? I knew I was going to get more energy. I was going to have orgasm. I was going to feel connected to my spouse. I was going to feel confident, feel great, feel sexy, all these different things. And so that’s one side. The other side is, “Well, I have sex that I don’t want to have, and it helps my marriage.” Well, what does she mean? She means I’m exhausted. I do not have enough help around the house. I don’t even know who I am anymore because I’m a shell of a person because of how much the last five years have taken from me. I have never experienced pleasure during sex, and I don’t think I ever will. But I’m so incredibly terrified that if I don’t have sex I’m going to be the reason our marriage falls apart. And so I’m going to have sex even though I’m exhausted, and I’m going to end it feeling even more disconnected from this person. But I’m going to look at him, and I’m going to say, “Yeah. But he loves me, and I should like this.” And I’m going to convince myself it’s good for me.
Sheila: And, at least, he had a good time because this is a really interesting thing that a lot of studies have found too is that women—when women judge their sexual satisfaction, they often judge it in terms of how happy he is, not in terms of how happy they are.
Rebecca: Men don’t do that, by the way.
Sheila: Men don’t do that. But women are like as long as he is satisfied because the whole point of our sex life is to keep him satisfied and to keep his sexual needs met. So if I’m having sex every 72 hours and he’s feeling good and he’s filled up—his cup is filled up as they often say—then our sex life is good. And they’re not asking themselves how they feel about it.
Rebecca: And so those two women can use the same words and mean wildly different things. There are a lot of things in life that make you feel energized and great and happy and have long term health benefits and get you to end goals that you want to get to that have start up costs in the moment, right? Like big ones are things like going for a walk instead of just sitting on the couch or using your free time to start a new hobby instead of just doom scrolling on your phone. There’s lots of things that it takes a little bit more energy to get going, but once you’re going that’s a catalyst. And it’s easy to keep going because it’s like, oh, I love this. Oh, I’d forgotten how much I love painting. I’m so glad I started doing this again when what you wanted to do is just sit on your phone in bed and watch Instagram reels, right? That kind of thing of the idea of a start up cost versus an actual real cost. Right? So sex. You say, “Oh, I don’t feel like sex right now, but it’s only a start up cost problem,” is very different than, “I don’t want to have sex right now,” when it’s a cost of sex problem. Is the sex going to cost me? Or is there a slight start up cost and then I’m going to get that back? That’s the question that I want people to ask is when you say, “I don’t want to have sex,” what do you mean? Because if you mean start up cost, say that. Say, “Oh, it’s hard to motivate myself to have sex. But once I have sex I’m always like, ‘Man, that was great. I’m so glad I did that.’ And I always feel more connected.” If you’re going to be talking to people about your sex life and giving advice, at least be specific.
Sheila: Yeah. Because what other people are going to hear is not I have sex even when there’s a great start up cost, it’s that I have sex that costs me something. That costs me a lot. That makes me feel less emotionally connected. That makes me feel used. That makes me feel less important in the marriage. And I do that over and over again because I know it’s good for the marriage. And it’s not. It’s not.
Rebecca: And I think we’re often—the thing about women too versus men is, by nature of how sex works, we’re very, very, very hesitant to talk about pleasure. So men, they say, “I had sex,” and it’s implied that they had an orgasm. It’s not the same for women. Right? And I think what has happened a lot of times too is women give each other sex advice, and you talk to friends. And you talk to your Bible study leader. But talking about orgasm feels really personal. And I think that’s kind of funny because you’re already talking about sex. I’m not saying describe the orgasm. I’m not saying say how many. I’m not saying anything. Say like, “Yeah. And then when he did X, Y, Zed, then what happened to me was,”—that’s not what I’m saying. But what I’m saying is if you’re talking about these things already, please be explicit about if you experience pleasure or not. And I don’t mean pleasure as like, “I felt good.” I mean orgasm.
Sheila: Yeah. Because if you’re giving advice to women about how they should be having frequent sex because it’s good for their marriage, but you’re not saying, “But that sex should be orgasmic,” then what women are hearing is even if I’m in pain, even if he’s using porn, even if I don’t experience orgasm, I still need to let him use my body. And those are two such very different things.
Rebecca: Yeah. And that’s I’m a really big fan of actually not giving personal advice. And that’s why we don’t. I mean we’re also a mother daughter team. We’ve put very strong boundaries around here.
Sheila: Yeah. We just talk about research. We don’t talk about our own experiences.
Rebecca: If you’re in a position where you have to give sex advice because maybe you were asked to do a sex module in a women’s Bible study or something, the main thing is—my advice for you—because this is—I do think this is important to say with this topic because this topic is typically taught from other women. The big thing is if you’re uncomfortable talking about sex just don’t make it personal. Talk about research. Use our stuff. Say, “There are five things that if these are taken care of sex kind of automatically flows pretty darn well from the relationship,” and then focus on those five things. And you don’t have to say, “Well, when Brad and I,”—that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying use the research, but it needs to be explicit that if you are not having an orgasm it makes sense if you don’t want sex. If your marriage is not a good marriage, it makes sense that you don’t want sex. These things have to be explicitly said because we’ve been talking about it so much in these Christianese terms. And women do not have the benefit that men do of assumed pleasure. And so we need to actually be a little bit more explicit when we’re talking about women’s sexuality and about sexuality in general because of that lack of implied pleasure for, specifically, women. That’s just a little thing that I would say is if you have to talk about sex please do not make it implied. Please don’t assume people—oh, they understand what I mean. No. Actually. We found in our study for She Deserves Better that many, many women did not actually even realize that the female orgasm existed until after they were 18. If you have a young marrieds group where you have people who married at 18, 19, 20, you may actually have a lot of women who are in a marriage and don’t even realize that women are able to orgasm.
Sheila: Yeah. 30 to 40%. It’s a lot in the evangelical church.
Rebecca: So this stuff needs to not be implied anymore because that’s when we get comments like this person, who we’re talking about, where it’s like, “Well, I don’t want to do the dishes, and I don’t want to do him. So have to do them both.” Well, what if she had been told at 19 that, hey, it’s weird that you don’t want to do—if she got married at 19. I’m back on the early marriage stuff. But what happens if, in the first year of marriage, she had been told, “Actually, you should want to do him.” What if she had been told, “Actually, sex should feel like you also got a need met, not that you’re just proud of yourself for meeting his need,” right? What if she was told early on, “Actually, if sex feels like a chore, maybe we should look at whether or not there’s just too much on your plate? And maybe you just are overwhelmed and burnt out, and that’s a valid and normal response to a lot of the expectations put on, especially, moms and wives.” What if we had those conversations early on instead of saying, “Christ died for you. Put out”?
Sheila: Exactly. And so I think that’s just what we wanted to say is that we are often accused and told, “Hey, you’re saying women don’t have to have sex,” and it’s like no. No. No. No. No. We’re saying that when you address the foundations this isn’t a problem anymore. And so can we please just address the foundations? And we have an Orgasm course that can help you do that. So we have courses for those foundations. The Great Sex Rescue addresses those foundations. Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex address those foundations to help couples start well. And so if we can get the foundations right, then we wouldn’t be talking about this all the time. So, please, let’s address the 90%. And then as for the 10%, yeah. If you think something is awesome and you’re experiencing as awesome when you do have it but it has that high start up cost, then you got to figure out a way to prioritize it.
Rebecca: Yeah. Because it’s good for you and you’re going to enjoy it. You’re going to be a happier, better—not better in terms of moral but in terms of my life feels better because of it.
Sheila: Mm-hmm. And when you are in a good marriage, that is part of a good marriage. And it is legitimate. When you are in a good marriage and your spouse is in a good—is also experiencing a good marriage, okay? And you’re both supporting each other, and sex feels good. But one of you—and it could be her. It could be him. It’s not always him. One of you feels like sex isn’t happening enough have that conversation. Say, “What can I do to make the start up cost lower for you? Does it mean that we have to teach the kids to sleep better? Do we need to get to bed earlier? What do we need to do,” and address that start up cost. That is totally legit. We have a whole chapter on that in The Great Sex Rescue.
Rebecca: A whole course on it.
Sheila: And we have a course on it, Boost Your Libido. And so I just—I’m not going to stand for people telling us that we’re saying this when we’re not. Our plea is this though—to the evangelical church. Please stop talking about the 10% when the 90% hasn’t been addressed.
Rebecca: Exactly.
Sheila: Okay? You don’t get to talk about the 10% until you’ve addressed the 90%. And so you don’t get to rail on women for not wanting sex until you’ve addressed the 47-point orgasm gap. You don’t need to rail on women for not desiring sex and not filling their spouse’s needs when you haven’t addressed the 50% porn problem or the 23% vaginismus problem. We’ve got to address the foundations. And that’s what we do here at Bare Marriage, and we’re just so happy that so many people are finding freedom. So we wanted to take this podcast and address that critique because we think it’s silly. And we’re not going to stand for it. So there you go. And before we leave, just a couple of notes of what’s coming up. She Deserves Better is almost one. It is one, I think, in two weeks.
Rebecca: I think something—I don't know exactly when this podcast is coming out. But it’s one on the 18th of April.
Sheila: Yeah. So it is almost one year old, so that is really exciting. And we’re just so pleased with what we’ve heard from women in the last year about how much that book has helped heal them from some of the messages they got as teenagers. And so we’re going to be talking about some of those things in the next few weeks as we celebrate. And, again, please check out the book Forgiveness After Trauma. We’re so grateful to our sponsors, who are helping get this message out. And if you could support our sponsors, that would make us really happy as well. And this is a sponsor that is worth supporting. Please read this book because we’ve heard such terrible teaching about forgiveness in the church about how bitterness is wrong. You have to have a good attitude. If they apologize, you have to forgive and reconcile. And that’s not what the Bible says. And I really struggled with some of the emphasis that I saw in the Bible about how you’re supposed to die to yourself and none of your needs matter. And as Susannah Griffith, who is a pastor and who has taught at seminary, as she worked through a lot of those Bible passages I saw them in such a rich way that I hadn’t seen before especially the John passage about, “If you forgive the things on earth, they’re forgiven in Heaven. If you retain sins on earth, they’re retained.” And I could never figure out what that retain means. And it’s fascinating. I think the book is just going to be so healing for people who have gone through infidelity or porn use or abuse or things from your parents, whatever it is. But even if you haven’t gone through those things, we need to learn how to talk about this better so we’re not further retraumatizing people because that’s what Susannah found is that people in her church community where continually retraumatizing her by telling her she had to forgive and what they meant by that wasn’t actually the biblical concept. So let’s pick up Forgiveness After Trauma, and let’s do that better. So thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage podcast, and we will see you again next week. Bye-bye.
Rebecca: Bye-bye.