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Saying No When You Want to Say Yes
I never imagined I'd be writing about sex. If someone had told me even a few years ago that I'd be writing, speaking, and leading a ministry on sexual healing, I'd have had a good laugh. You see, I didn't enjoy sex very much, even as a young wife. It ranked right up there with doing dishes and changing diapers.
I thought I was the only one who felt this way, and I never talked about it with anyone. After all, Eric and I were the perfect Christian couple with the ideal family. The kind others might envy. We practically lived at church, and we attended a small group with other couples our age, learning and praying together. We served in our church, our community, and our children's school. We were great parents, great friends,
great Christians, and great partners.
My husband was faithful, a good provider, a wonderful father. He helped around the house, came home after work, and didn't squander our money at the casino or bars. He went to church with me, shopped with me, and cuddled in bed with me. He loved me, and I loved him.
So what was my problem?
I wanted more. Our marriage was okay, maybe even good, but it wasn't great. Certainly not what I'd dreamed it would be or hoped it could be. Sounds selfish, I know. Many women, particularly those who are single or in violent, loveless, or faithless marriages, might have little sympathy for me. Some might have a few words to say
to me. And I'd probably agree. In the museum of marriage, ours looked perfect. But as the saying goes, looks can be deceiving. In our case they were.
The struggle started early, within the first year, and twenty years and four kids later, it wasn't any better. Naively, wishfully, we would slam the bedroom door on our struggle each morning, hoping it would stay out of sight. Out of mind. But with our glances and glares, with our barely there kisses, and with the words we did and didn't say, we erected an invisible wall of wounds between us. No one knew we had a problem. Not even us.
It was easy for me to overlook this segment of our relationship when everything else appeared to be okay. But what I didn't realize was that the wall I was raising in our physical intimacy was blocking our emotional intimacy as well. And although I tried, I couldn't keep this part of our marriage isolated from the rest. It seeped into every part of our relationship, stealing our joy.
We didn't fight often, but when we did, it was always about sex. The fights always started the same way.
"Why don't you like sex?" my husband would ask.
"I don't know," I'd respond. I wanted to like it, wanted to want it, but no matter how many times I promised to try, it never got better. I loved my husband, but I didn't love
making love. So the fights usually ended up on my side of the bed. It was my problem, after all. I didn't like sex and avoided it with premeditated skill. When I couldn't evade it any longer, I was often unresponsive, longing for it to be over. If I never had sex again as long as I lived, I'd be
so happy. And since my husband seemed to want sex all the time, I couldn't stand him much either at times.
I didn't understand why until God led us to fast from sex for a month. During that time Eric and I talked, especially about our struggles with sex. God began to show me how my past choices were limiting my ability to enjoy sex and feel emotionally close to my husband.
This revelation changed my life and put me on the road to healing.
DAMAGE FROM UNMARRIED SEXYou see, I lost my virginity when I was eighteen to the first boy I loved. I told myself it didn't matter because we planned to get married.
For the first ten months of our relationship, we made out a lot but didn't go all the way. As our emotional and physical intimacy grew, I began to trust him more. I felt I could depend on him to take care of me and put my well-being ahead of his own. After all, I wanted to spend my life with him, have children with him. I wanted him to be my protector and provider.
Then one day it happened. He might have planned it ahead; I don't know. We were alone in a park, and he decided that we'd been making out long enough. It was time to finish the deal. It took me by surprise, and somehow I couldn't say no. Plus, I loved him and trusted him. He wouldn't hurt me right?
Wrong.
Too late. He was finished. And I would never be the same.
I learned something about sex and men that day. It stayed with me, impacting my life and marriage until recently, when God healed my wounded heart. I internalized that sex is just for men's pleasure and that they'll use women to get sex. I decided that men don't care how we feel as long as they get what they want. He loved me—so I thought. And yet what he did didn't feel like love.
If this is how a man treats me when he loves me, then men cannot be trusted, my heart whispered.
Especially when it comes to sex. Feeling humiliated, vulnerable, and used, I subconsciously erected a guard around my heart that day, telling myself that I would never let anyone hurt me again this way. At the time I denied my feelings because I loved him and we were getting married. We were young, and we eloped without my parents' blessing, unaware that the sex we'd had before marriage had sentenced our relationship to a rocky start.
When our marriage ended after two shaky years, my life began to crumble. By the time I was twenty-one, I had experienced marriage, divorce, promiscuity, pregnancy, and abortion. Not what I, a pastor's daughter, had envisioned for my life.
Then I met Eric. He was my do-over. My second chance. I determined that things would be different this time, but once again we had sex before marriage. But it was no big deal, I reasoned. After all, sex is just sex. Right? And getting married would clean the slate, make all the wrongs right. Right?
It sounded good. But it didn't work. The sexual experiences I'd had with my first husband and with men after my divorce caused me to associate sex with something unpleasant. Whenever Eric and I had sex, I couldn't shake the old feelings of being used, humiliated, and vulnerable. And the shame, condemnation, and regret I felt because I'd had premarital sex with Eric, and others before him, caused me to shut down emotionally and physically. Not only did the wall keep me
in, it also kept him
out. I'd brought these negative associations into our marriage and into our marriage bed. It inhibited my desire, enjoyment, and response to sex with my husband.
Can you relate? Is your marriage good, except for the sex?
As I speak on this topic, I hear similar stories over and over, all with this common thread: having sex before or outside marriage. Does that surprise you? With all the sexual pressures on us today, being a Christian doesn't guarantee virginity. It didn't for me, and I loved God and wanted to serve Him. A recent survey found that 95 percent of people will have sex before they get married, Christian or not.1
Of course, sex before marriage isn't the only cause of marital sexual struggles. You can have problems with sex even if you were a virgin on your wedding night. After all, sex is a complex, changing dynamic in marriage, and many things can contribute to its challenges. Male and female differences in sexual need and desire, outside pressures, hormones, pregnancy, unmet emotional needs, and parenting can all play a role in fluctuating desire and enjoyment of sex. Emotional and sexual intimacy will also be impaired if one or both spouses have been unfaithful or have an addiction, whether it be to pornography, alcohol, drugs, gambling, or something else.
However, after talking with numerous virgin and nonvirgin couples, I've discovered that the struggles for the nonvirgin greatly exceed that of the virgin. I often hear things like
• "Why was it a struggle to resist sex before I was married, but now that I am married, resisting it is all I do?"
• "Why could my husband turn me on before marriage, but now he turns me off ?"
• "What happened to the great sex?"
• "What's happened to me?"
Can you relate to these women who love their husbands but don't enjoy sex? Your body is there, but your mind is elsewhere. Lying stiff and unresponsive, you long for it to end.
Whether your past is mild or traumatic, whether you've had multiple partners or one or two—and even if the only person you've had sex with is your spouse—sex from your past can haunt you in the present, impacting you and your marriage in a negative way. If in the past you had unmarried sex, in the present,
sex has you. JUST SEX? HARDLYSex is a big deal. Our culture has told us that it is just a physical act, that we can have sex and then move on without consequence to the next partner, repeating the cycle until we get married. However, sex doesn't work that way.
Arlene started having sex when she was twelve. Unbelievable, I know. Who knows anything about sex at that young age? She didn't, but the fifteen-year-old boy from her church youth group did. While luring her with romance, he stole her innocence and childhood with sex. For several years they carried on a secret sexual relationship, one she
despised and enjoyed at the same time. She knew it was wrong, yet she felt trapped. Still, she felt special, loved, and desired by someone older and more experienced than she. Although the relationship ended, Arlene's sexual activity was just beginning. With her view of herself now wounded and twisted by this experience, she went on to experiment with alcohol and more sex throughout her teen and college years.
When she was in her thirties and married with two children, she came to me seeking help. "I want to love Sam wi...
