Customer Reviews

What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Sex: A Guide for Christian Men

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Imagine a how-to book written by three sex therapists who all happen to be both a) male and b) Christian. Does this shatter your paradigms or merely stretch them?

The authors of What Wives Wish fit both categories--male and Christian--while also serving various counseling, teaching and therapy roles at Fuller Seminary. Writing with an unflinchingly graphic attention to detail, these writers explain how Christian men can satisfy their wives sexually, while fitting sexuality into a balanced, nuanced place within the context of a loving, satisfying, mutually fulfilling relationship.

An excellent pre-marriage read for men, the book brings a relaxed, comfortable style to discussions of highly specific sexual techniques. While doing so, the authors are careful to explore the other dimensions of human relationships: spiritual, emotional and interpersonal. Although sexuality per se is given primary attention, men are encouraged and at times admonished to become more sensitive, more aware, and more patient.

If anything is missing here, it's the female voice or the feminine perspective, yet this is a book written by men and for men. At times it has a "Christian locker room" flavor, with some of the sex talk couched in metaphorical language drawn from Song of Solomon and other Biblical passages. Real-life couples may not be ready to rephrase their sexual language in Scriptural terms, yet they may be surprised to learn that the Bible is excellent source material for graphic, seductive sexual imagery.

The authors are clear in their intention to write for Christian married men, hoping to help Christian marriages achieve better depth and satisfaction in the bedroom. As such, they have written a helpful and useful guide that is worthwhile reading for its target audience of married and soon-to-be married males.

Armchair Interviews says: Unique perspective on marriage.

Honestly, we bought this book because one of the authors is an old friend of ours. But we were amazed, even after 12 years of marriage and good sex, how much our love life could improve. I also bought another copy for a wedding gift - why not start off great? I think this will become a standard wedding gift for our friends this summer. Read and enjoy!

Here's an up-to-date guide to married sexuality, written with rare candor and remarkable clarity. Be aware: this book goes places that previous books about sexuality within (Christian) marriage have not gone before.

A great gift for pre-married couples; a helpful guide for married couples who want to improve their communication about sexual issues or develop a closer and more unified sex life. This book is both prescriptive and descriptive; be aware of that also.

The authors remind us that great relationships are about many factors beyond the physical; there are tips and hints here that will help husbands and wives bond and connect outside the bedroom and away from sexual experiences. Even so, this is primarily a 'bedroom book' and is best understood from that perspective.

Given the explicit nature of these discussions, this is adult reading.

Dr. David & Lisa Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
Authors of: The Soul-Mate Marriage: The Spiritual Journey of Becoming One

Books attempting to bridge the presumed cultural divide between Christianity and Sex are becoming quite common. In "What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Sex," the authors attempt to do, from a Biblical foundation, just that.

They are certainly to be commended on several fronts:

1) They recognize that the Bible does affirm regular, fulfilling sexual relations between a husband and his wife.

2) They attempt to derive their main assertions from Scripture itself.

3) They encourage us to reject the extremes: prudishness and sexual excess.

4) They draw the connection between love (the kind of love at which Christians should excel) and sex. This connection means that Christian husbands, are called to be great lovers (non-sexual), which allows them to be great lovers (sexual).

Unfortunately, despite these positive points, much of what is contained in this book is, I fear, ultimately unhelpful to married couples. I don't want to belabor these points so I will attempt to be brief.

1) First, it is not clear that the authors have properly understood the context of the Song of Songs and how to interpret it properly. While I commend them for their rejection of the allegorizing of this book, I think they miss the progression from engagement to marriage to consummation. Because they interpret every passage as relating directly to a married couple, they draw conclusions that do not necessarily follow from the text.

2) Most importantly, I think the book advocates a view of sexuality within marriage that actually affirms, rather than rejects, dangerous cultural views about sexuality. The authors regularly insist that Christian marriages should be filled with "mind-blowing" and "hot" sex. Throughout the book the bar is set quite high in terms of the quality of sex Christian couples should enjoy.

One of the biggest problems in the culture today, and not simply relating to sex, is the constant pursuit of bigger, better, faster, more. We lack a cultural perspective on what it means to be satisfied. We must be careful not to allow this to creep into Christian bedrooms.

One pastor I know uses the analogy of steak and burgers. Steak is wonderful - we should all appreciate a great steak. But we can't have steak every night. Sometimes we're going to get burgers and we need to be able to appreciate the burger rather than resenting it for not being steak.

Or think of giving your wife a spectacular gift for your 10th anniversary. On the 11th anniversary you also give her a gift, but it cannot possibly match the prior year's. Does the wife have the right to reject the gift because it does not meet or exceed the quality of a previous gift? Of course not. She needs to be satisfied with both gifts.

So it should be with sex in marriage. All couples should know how to give their partner steak and they should enjoy and cherish that steak. But there is a time for steak, and there is a time for burgers. If we cannot be satisfied with burger-quality sex, not always - but regularly, than we will put tremendous strain on our relationships.

I have little doubt that the authors would agree with this but the bulk of the book seems to ignore this most important point.

3) Finally, and perhaps this is a minor point: it troubles me that the authors perpetuate the "Scarlet Letter"-derived attitude which claims that the Puritans were total killjoys who had no use for sex, beauty, fun, etc. The authors set the Puritans up as the source of the extreme anti-sexual bias in some elements of the church. They have not done their research. Helpful correctives can be found by googling "puritans and sex."

Also on this point - I think it is irresponsible of the authors (even ignoring their Puritan-confusion) to indicate that prudishness is as dangerous as sexual impurity or excess. The authors suggest that the (im)balance of sermons (more sermons warning against lust than encouraging vibrant sex-lives) is out of line with the Scriptures. While I hope Christian marriages will include enjoyable sex, I'm not aware of any Scripture passages which suggest that "The prudish shall never inherit the kingdom of heaven." Scripture is, in fact, quite "imbalanced" if you think that kind of statistic is important.

This book provides some very helpful, practical insights to the world of sex and marriage. On top of that, I laughed out loud several times and I appreciate their "get right to the point" writing style. I HIGHLY recommend this book to any married couple no matter how long you've been together.

I've been part of the male Christian culture all my life. When it comes to the subject of sex, I well understand the dark silence that often accompanies that culture. The authors of this book strike back by not just breaking the silence, but by diving right in as though sex is the most natural thing in the world for us to have an open and frank discussion about.

The book gives us everything from an anatomy lesson, to a discussion of techniques, to a look at our own connection with God as it relates to our sexuality. I highly recommend this fresh and fun book that puts sex back out in the open where it belongs. Sex is a gift from God that Christians have often refused to open because of fear, shame or whatever. This book encourages us to tear open the gift and celebrate what's inside.

In general I am not a fan of Christian sex books. Most books either hold people to a impossibly high (and usually non-biblical) standard (a man should be able to train himself to never look at a woman or all dating is wrong, etc.) or promise a 'mind-blowing' sex if you just follow the book's directions. While this book occasionally veers into the 'mind blowing sex' territory, I think it is good at trying to understand the biblical standards and then leave everything else open. (By the way, I picked this up free from Amazon on kindle. When I first bought it that it was the James Dobson book "What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women" and almost did not get it. It is not that book. It was published in 2007 and is very current in language and references.)

Honestly, there is not much new info here. While authors are all psychologists that specialize in couple's therapy, the advice is fairly run of the mill (woo your wife all day, she is more turned on by cleaning the house than roses, etc). There is a short section on biology but most of the book is on relationships. The advice does not really need to be new (and probably is more helpful because it is not new). Sometimes we just need a reminder.

I just finished a fiction book that veered into the romance genre. I kept thinking throughout that book, that people in love often do stupid things. (Mark Gungor says the reason people should not have sex before marriage is that sex makes people stupid and God made us that way. Inside of marriage it is good for people to be stupid about the other person. Outside of marriage, it is not good to be stupid about the other person.)

Here is how I think this book is helpful. 1) It is ok to be a man. Men think about sex differently than women. Being a man does not make you an animal or wrong. 2) Men need to spend time with other men. They have a good little section on why, and it includes the fact that there are actual bio-chemical changes (primarily testosterone) when men spend time with other men. 3) This book has realistic and biblical suggestions about what is appropriate in the bedroom. It actually encourages people to experiment more (but this is where it might veer into the 'mind blowing sex' problem.) 4) They attempt to be biblical in their use of Song of Solomon and why it is not primarily (or even secondarily) a metaphor about Christ and the Church. 5) The book encourages people to seek a language to talk about sex that is not either clinical or pornographic. People will always use euphemisms, and some euphemisms are better than others. The authors spend about 5 or 10 pages showing how graphic scripture can be and that it is ok to use graphic euphemisms about sex. I appreciate that the book is straight forward, direct and a bit funny. 6) It is also very good on forgiveness within marriage. It says you should not confess first to your wife if you are having an affair or addicted to porn. Instead you need to find another man, confess to him, deal with the problem and then figure out when and if to confess. It also has a good section on guilt about sex prior to marriage. 7) It is good that the book focuses on what the Husband's role is. With sex (and pretty much any other relationship issue), it is easy to focus on what the other person could do in the situation. This book focuses on what the guy should do. It does not claim that the guy is 100 percent responsible, just that he can do things to help make their sex life better.

On the negative side, there was not much of a female voice here. All of the authors are male. They reference their wives and quote them, but I think a fourth, female author would have been good. I also think the intro was pretty bad. It was the worst about the 'mind blowing sex' problem. Just because people are Christians, did not have sex before marriage and work hard on their marriage does not mean that they will have 'mind blowing' sex.

Overall, it was a good read. I think it is important to remind myself to pay attention and focus on my marriage. I am pretty internal in my processing, so I need to read books like this to remind myself how I can be doing better (even if there isn't much info that is new.)

_______

By the way, the Puritans were not actually puritanical about sex. They were fairly open and were pretty healthy in their views of sex. It was the Victorians of the mid to late 19th century that really had the views about sex that we associate with the Puritans. Small point, but it is worth noting.

[...]

This delightful book takes THE SONG OF SONGS, also called THE SONG OF SOLOMON, and deconstructs it to show that the writers of the Bible, in conveying God's message to humanity, included real, explosive, joyful sex as part of the rules. Although we normally hear the "thou shalt nots" but avoid the "thou shalts" of the Bible, the "thou shalts" are in many ways the most important parts of the Bible in relation to the marriage of two devout Christians or Jews. In many places in the Bible, men who neglect their wives' sexual needs are informed that they are cheating their wives by so doing. A man who works hard at his job should still find time in the week for enjoyable sex. I'm in the middle of writing a novel in which the bride keeps wanting her husband to quote from THE SONG OF SOLOMON at the most inconvenient times, and I was very pleased to find writers who saw in that song what I saw in it as I wrote that section of the novel. No, it isn't a bodice-ripper, it's a historical, and I don't know when it will be available. But this book is available right now, and if you are male and married and call yourself a Christian or a Jew, you should read it--NOW. I don't care how old you are, as long as you're of legal age to get married. I'm 67, and I was very pleased to find this book, although it has nothing to teach my husband, who is a dedicated Bible reader with a tendency to assume that the Bible, including the Song of Solomon, means what it says.

And we've been married for 4 years. It helped me personally with understanding God's view of sex and made me not feel bad for loving it with my husband so much. I wish all Christian Couples would read this book

An informed, witty and vigorous discussion of marriage. The authors catch our eye with the title's focus on sex and then set out to lead us into the realization that sex involves much more than functioning in the bedroom. The book is a call to Christian men to move beyond whatever limitations they may have regarding their sexual role, and explore their God-given capacity as sexual men. The discussion is never timid but rather boldly addresses what men often contemplate but seldom verbalize. A chapter at the end is written to wives, but the book's title and the fact that it was written by men intrigued my wife. She read the entire book and has recomended it to friends. If any Christian man reading the book incorporates even one or two helpful concepts, both he and his wife will happy benificiaries. I highly recomend this book to all married or soon to be married Christian men.