Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 174

Wifey Wednesday: Making Sex Fun When You’re Trying to Conceive

Can sex still be fun when you’re trying to conceive?

It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you all can chime in in the comments. Today let’s tackle your sex life when you’re trying to have a baby.

One of the biggest problems when you’re trying to conceive is that it takes all the fun out of sex. Sex becomes so stressful–it’s a pass or fail thing, when you’ll either get pregnant or you won’t–again. It’s a job that you have to do at exactly the right time, according to the thermometer, if you want your best chance. It’s the source of all of your hopes, and all of your disappointments, and so it’s so hard to relax.

So how do you keep having fun when sex is stressful? Here are a few thoughts I have–but I’d love to hear yours in the comments, too!

Use a Lot of Lubrication

I was sent a sample of Conceive Plus® fertility lubricant, and it looks really neat! Here’s the issue: regular lubricants actually can hurt your chances of getting pregnant because the environment in the vagina is no longer ideal for sperm. Conceive Plus changes that. It’s an FDA cleared fertility friendly personal lubricant that is formulated to be isotonic (meaning that it’s the same chemical balance as the vagina) which also meets a pH range compatible with human sperm survival and migration.

I’m a big believer in lubricants. I think that sex is often just more comfortable when you’re well lubricated. And let’s face it–when you’re tense and you can’t relax, then it makes it hard to produce that lubrication naturally. And we could all use a little help!

They have two different varieties–an internal application that you can insert about 10 minutes prior to starting sex, and a regular lubricant (pictured above) that you just use as you normally would. The internal application ensures that the vagina is totally sperm friendly everywhere!

So this is cool–it’s a lubricant that’s also very fertility friendly. You can read all about it at Conceive Plus®’s website!

Find where you can buy Conceive Plus, and read user reviews from women just like you.

Have Nights When You Reach Orgasm–Without Sex!

When you’re trying to get pregnant, you’re often so tense. And we all know that women have enough trouble reaching orgasm during intercourse without the added stress of “will I actually get pregnant this time?” The longer you go without conceiving, the more tense it gets!

So here’s a recommendation: on the nights that are really not fertile anyway (such as a few days after your period), be really sexual with your husband without actually having intercourse. Have him stimulate you to orgasm in another way–and you do the same for him. Be as creative as you like! But make sure that you do get that release.

Why am I saying don’t have sex? A couple of reasons. First, for many couples who go months without getting pregnant, sex becomes a job. So let’s mix it up and not actually have intercourse! Second, because of all the tension it can be even harder to reach orgasm. Instead of trying through intercourse, then, try in a way that doesn’t have all that tension associated with it. And just have fun!

Play a Game

If you know sex is going to be awkward and you’re not going to get into it anyway, then try a game, like “beat the clock”. See how fast you can have intercourse–and then even bring you to orgasm afterwards another way. Make it your goal to see how fast you can make him climax.

But please note: this won’t work if you’re in a bad mood. Then it just seems like you’re rushing him! Instead, laugh a lot and just be funny. It makes it a lot easier.

Some of the awkwardness we often feel when we’re trying to conceive is that we have this idea that sex is supposed to be stupendous and intimate and loving, and it doesn’t feel that way at all. It’s just stressful. So we feel guilty about that, and we try to work ourselves up, telling ourselves, “no, this really is intimate”, even when it doesn’t feel that way at all.

You know what? It will be again. Really. And it can be on the nights that you’re not fertile anyway. The only way sex can be intimate is if it’s authentic, and if you’re stressed, you’re stressed! So own it. Realize it’s a chore right now. And throw yourself into it being a chore. Laugh a ton, get through it, and then later, when you’re not so stressed, you can start to explore and be really intimate again.

Pair it with a Reward

If sex is become a chore, then give it a reward! Bring some chocolate truffles upstairs and eat them–before, during and after if you have to. Or tell yourselves, “we’ll try one more time tonight and then we’re going to watch another episode of Blacklist on Netflix” or something. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that it’s gotten awkward and you just want to rush things. And then give yourselves a reward later!

Massage–A Lot!

Speaking of rewards, why not pair sex with a big massage session for both of you? You can even massage after sex, since sometimes before you just want to get to the main event. But help each other to totally relax. Touching each other is a great way to say, “I still love you no matter what. I still want to be with you.” It’s very intimate, even on those days when sex doesn’t feel particularly intimate. And it helps you destress!

Keep Dating and Laughing

Finally, keep spending time together outside the bedroom talking and laughing. It’s really hard for guys when we women get tense about getting pregnant, because it can seem like we really only need them as sperm machines, and then on our infertile days or when sex is over we retreat into ourselves, get sad, and push him away.

Don’t push him away! Keep emotionally close. Start a new hobby together so that you have something new to think about. Volunteer together. Go for walks together. Don’t let this be your whole life.

Remember: God knows you inside and out, and He knows His plans for you for children. But whether or not you have kids, He wants you to have an awesome marriage, and He wants you to serve Him. So throw yourself into service somewhere, like the youth group or a missions group or a soup kitchen. Cling fast to your husband. And know that whatever happens, the two of you will be okay!

Let me know in the comments: How did you stay close when trying to get pregnant? How did you keep sex fun?

If you have just started trying or have been trying for a while, Conceive Plus® fertility lubricant can help increase your chances of getting pregnant naturally! Now available from selected online retailers from just $14.99.

SASMAR Conceive Plus® sponsored this blog post. The opinions and text are all mine.

The post Wifey Wednesday: Making Sex Fun When You’re Trying to Conceive appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

When A Lovely Marriage Seems Like a Pipe Dream

I was browsing through Facebook recently when a cute picture came up. It was a selfie taken by two pretty women in their mid-twenties trying to show off their baby bumps. They were cousins, pregnant at the same time. They both had on a bit of makeup. They both had long, lovely hair. They both had lovely maternity tops on. And they both were covering their baby bumps with their left hands, with little wedding bands on them.

They weren’t rich. But they looked lovely.

(It’s not the picture above; these were real friends and I didn’t want to break privacy!)

A few other scenes popped through my head: In one, I was speaking to a bunch of teen moms in downtown Toronto about how to save money as they tried to establish a life for their kids. In another, I was helping out at a crisis pregnancy centre. In another, I was at a ministry with former prostitutes, many of whom had babies of their own. And then I thought of some of the teenagers my girls know, who have never lived with their biological parents, but have a variety of step siblings and half siblings and complicated families.

To my girls, that selfie with baby bumps is totally something they can envision. They’d love to be pregnant together some day and take a picture like that! And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they did.

But to all of those young women who raced through my head in that instant, that scene with the dual baby bumps would have looked like something from another world.

It’s as bizarre as looking at the magazine covers of celebrities. It’s something that happens to weird people “out there”, not to anyone I know. I can just hear them thinking, “It certainly would never happen to me.”

I know on Tuesdays I usually write a Top 10 post, but for some reason that one Facebook picture has been haunting me for a week, and I really want to write about it. So let me just rant for a bit, and then you can all chime in and help me make sense of what is going on.

First let me say something controversial, and please understand: I am not trying to make a value judgment here. I am just trying to report on the widening chasm between traditional families and nontraditional families. But these girls in the selfie had on lovely makeup and lovely tops. Almost all the girls I have seen who have come from difficult backgrounds and are trying to get back on their feet don’t dress like that. They often have very dark eye makeup. They wear clothes that are often very tight and that usually don’t flatter. They abound in tattoos and piercings. They don’t dress traditional “pretty”.

Why does that matter? Not because one is better than the other, but simply because increasingly we are becoming two different worlds. You can even see it in our appearance!

Are we becoming 2 cultures: One that loves marriage, and one that doesn't understand it?
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Now let’s go to something that’s less superficial. The girls from the crisis pregnancy centre or the former prostitutes have likely never lived in a family where they witnessed a healthy marriage–a marriage where people loved and respected each other, where they treated each other kindly, where the marriage was the centre of the family.

Instead, the only truly loving relationships they’ve ever had have likely been with a sibling or an aunt or a friend. The marriage–if there ever was one–was never the rock that held the family together.

And even thinking about those teenagers that my girls knew or worked with, or the ones I see outside the high school just around the corner from my house–most of them have never seen a marriage that has stayed together forever either.

Increasingly, then, we are dividing into two worlds: the culture of marriage and the culture of chaotic families.

I’ve written about this before–What if Marriage Really Matters? What if the real class difference today isn’t based on income as much as it is on family structure?

Statistics show that if two people with university degrees who each had parents who stayed married end up marrying each other, their chance of divorce is less than 10%. But if you have parents who divorced, suddenly your chance of divorce increases. And your chance of marrying in the first place decreases.

That selfie of those two cousins–they each came from intact families. They each had moms and dads and aunts and uncles and siblings who were thrilled about these coming babies. They weren’t rich, but because of their families, they looked wealthy. That’s their culture.

And I guess what I’m saying is that those of us who are like those two young women often have no idea how bizarre we seem to the rest of the world.

They have such a leg up on those struggling young moms at the crisis pregnancy centre, such a leg up on those women who were former prostitutes, such a leg up on those teens smoking outside my high school, with the heavy makeup and the attitude that masks the fact that they’re horribly lonely and don’t know who they are.

I want marriages to succeed.

I want people to have fulfilling relationships, to raise kids well, and to form strong families that become the backbone of our churches and our communities. But the whole idea of that typical, middle class family seems so bizarre and out of reach of so many people today because they have never experienced it.

Why should they wait to find a great guy to marry when they’ve never even met a great guy? Why should they want a husband before a baby when men are fickle but babies love you? Why should they wait for sex when no one they know ever has?

And so these young women encounter Jesus and come to Him, but all the rest of it–the family structure, the dreams, even the clothes for pity’s sake–seem so WEIRD.

For them, marrying well and having a strong marriage and raising great kids will be so much more of a challenge than it will be for my girls, for whom it will be natural. That’s all my girls have ever known. And yet so many of our young people have never seen it.

We’re becoming a society that doesn’t even understand each other. And increasingly the chasm is one of family structure.

When those young women encounter Jesus, it won’t be just a heart change. It’s a complete and utter culture change, much more than it ever was two or three generations ago when we weren’t divided like this. No wonder it’s so hard to integrate new believers into the church now! We really do seem like aliens to everyone else out there.

So what do we do? How do we help people who have not grown up with the expectation that marriage is good, that finding a good guy is possible, that waiting for marriage for children is worth it? How do we integrate them into a culture of marriage?

I don’t know. And it’s so sad, because I see so many who not only will never experience the love of family that my husband and I have, but don’t even believe it enough to even dream about it anymore.

What do you think of this two different cultures idea? Have you seen it? How do we help those who haven’t grown up with good families believe that a strong marriage is possible?

The post When A Lovely Marriage Seems Like a Pipe Dream appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Reader question: Do Stay at Home Moms Have To Do All The Housework?

When it comes to splitting household chores, does the wife really have to do all the housework if she stays at home?

Every Monday I like to try to answer a Reader Question, and today I’ve got two quite similar ones from two frustrated moms who feel that their husbands expect them to do all of the housework. One writes:

I heard the broadcast on Focus on the Family, and did it ever validate some of the things I’ve been feeling! I am also a homeschool mom, and I really struggle with the line of “his work and her work”. When the wife stays home, whether she homeschools or not, is all the housework her responsibility? I see a lot of discussion about homes where the wife also works, but not about homes where the wives stay home.

Here’s another woman:

I’ve recently became a stay at home mom. My husband was all for the idea of me being home with our boys and I was overjoyed, too, but here is my issue: When I ask my husband to do the tiniest thing (take trash out, Wash the dishes, change a diaper), he makes a statement such as “well you’re a stay at home mom now” or “Do you want to grade papers or do lessons plans for me?”, and doesn’t do the thing I asked of him OR he makes requests that are adding to my Daily tasks–such as feeding the dog both evening and morning, watering plants, or things he used to to. I’m just starting out being home and I don’t want to resent it. But I also don’t want to drown with daily “chores” and “tasks” and not be able to spend the time with our boys like I had intended. Please help me get my husband to understand that I don’t want to do it all on my own.

I get asked these sorts of questions a lot, and I actually wrote a book about exactly this–To Love, Honor and Vacuum. What do you do when you feel more like a maid than a wife and a mother? I’ve got all sorts of tips in there about how to divide household chores or at least how to talk about the issues, and so if you’re really struggling like this woman is, I’d really recommend getting the book, which goes into so much more detail than I can in this post.

But I’m going to share some general principles today which I hope can get people thinking and talking about it.

Story #1: Not Understanding How Much Work Being a Great Mom Is!

I was 28 years old and my husband was a resident at the Hospital for Sick Children in pediatrics. I was at home with a one-year-old and a three-year-old.

I went to a social function with all of the other residents and spouses, and one particular woman often talked to me because she had kids the same age as mine. The difference was that she and her husband were both residents (doctors in training), so they had hired a nanny to care for the kids.

She was venting and complaining to me that day that her nanny didn’t do enough housework. The nanny had dinner made every night, but the floors weren’t mopped and the laundry wasn’t always folded.

And I thought to myself: I’m at home all day and my floors aren’t always mopped and my laundry isn’t always folded either. Why? Because I do stuff with my kids. We go to the park. We go to gymnastics at the Y. We go to the library. And getting all that housework done with two kids underfoot is really hard. If she wanted a nanny who did all that housework, then she wanted a nanny who would ignore the kids.

Story #2: When You Stay at Home, You Home Is Messier

When my kids were about 3 and 5 I was involved in a small group at church with a bunch of other couples with young kids. One night we went over to one couple’s house for dessert. The house was spotless. Flowers everywhere; magazines fanned on the coffee table; toys in lovely wicker baskets in the corner of the living room.

My home NEVER looked like that.

I was despondent on the drive home, and then my husband reminded me: both parents work. They leave the house at 7:15 and drop the kids in day care, and get home at 6:00. The kids are in bed by 7:30. They don’t have time to mess up the house because they’re very rarely there!

And I did feel better.

The moral of the story? The house gets messier when it is lived in constantly, and being with kids is a busy job, in and of itself, if you want to actually spend time with kids, create memories, and teach them things.

General Principles for Dividing up Household Chores
There’s No Substitute for Talking

Sometimes people write in and I get the feeling that they’re looking for a MAGIC answer–that magic thing they can say that will change everything.

There really isn’t any such thing as magic.

You have to talk about how busy and overwhelmed you feel. You have to talk about what goes into running a house, and decide what is the fairest way to divide that up. I hope I can give you some direction in WHAT to talk about and HOW to talk about it, but you do have to talk.

Here are some possible ways that you can frame that conversation:

Talk About His and Her Work Hours

I’m a firm believer that being a stay at home mom is hard work. But at the same time, if we’re honest, we know that we don’t always take it seriously. I think we could get a lot more done during the day if we did decide to treat stay at home motherhood like a job, with things we wanted to get done.

But when you are a stay at home mom, what adds to the exhaustion is the fact that you are never off duty. So it’s not always WHAT you do–it’s the fact that you never get to breathe on your own.

So let’s talk work week. Let’s say your husband works 50 hours a week. Then you should really work 50 hours a week, too. And what counts as work? Any time you’re doing something that contributes to the family as a whole. If go on Facebook for an hour while the kids nap, that’s not work. But taking them to the library, mopping the floors, fixing dinner–that’s work.

If you had an hour and a half to yourself today during the day, then it really is okay to let him sit on his butt for an hour and a half in the evening while you make dinner and clean up. Don’t resent him for that.

But if you spend the entire evening working, and he really does nothing, then it’s time to have that talk about how long your work days are and what you can do to even it out a bit. Again, don’t measure minutes–you’ll only end up in fights and it will be hurtful. But saying, “I need an hour of downtime at night, away from the kids, while you clean up dinner and give bath time” is perfectly reasonable.

Work Together in Short Bursts

My grandmother had a rule, “When Momma’s working, everybody’s working”, and I adopted that, too. If I was cleaning the kitchen, everybody else had better be cleaning something as well! So we’d set the timer for 15 minutes and see how much we could get done (you can get a LOT done in 15 minutes when all hands are on deck).

If you have a general routine where for 15 minutes after dinner everybody cleans something (you can give everybody a different zone), and then after that you do something fun as a family, that can work well, too. “Come on, guys! Let’s beat the timer and get this all cleaned up, and then we get to play Life!”

Get Super Organized

I am a much better housekeeper today, at 45, then I was at 25. I’ve had more practice at housework. I’ve learned that it’s important to empty the dishwasher first thing every morning or my whole day is thrown off. I’ve learned to fold the laundry as it comes out of the dryer rather than dumping it on the floor (or the bed).

So learn how to be as productive and organized as you can be!

My husband has always worked long hours, and quite frankly, when he was home I didn’t want him cleaning. I wanted to goof off with him and have fun with the kids! So my goal was always to see how much I could get done on my own, during the day, so that he wouldn’t have to do stuff at night–because then I wouldn’t have to do stuff, either!

Sometimes the house got out of control and we’d all have a cleaning day. And we did that 15 minute thing a lot. But my goal was just, “get it done as fast as I can” so that we can have family time at night. When the kids were really little that did mean that Keith had to watch them while I did the big cleaning. But I got better at it, and it didn’t take much time when I knew there was a reward at the other end: spending time together!

So I wouldn’t get too upset about watering the plants and feeding the dog–if you’re still spending time together having fun as a family. But if you aren’t enjoying family time, that’s a different story.

Take Some Time to Yourself

I know some moms who NEVER have themselves in their profile pics on Facebook. Their profile pics are always of their kids, as if the kids are their whole identity. And sometimes moms take no time away from the kids.

Your kids need to see that you have an identity outside of them, and your husband needs to see that you are still your own woman.

If your husband just will not help with anything, and you really are run off your feet, then may I suggest that you take one evening a week and say, “I’m going to take this for myself, and you can put the kids to bed”? Go to a woman’s Bible study. Take a craft evening class at a community college (ours offers quilting, cooking, painting, and more). Or take another course–like computers, investing, pilates. Do something that gets you out of the house for two hours a week. Besides, your husband needs to watch the kids and develop his own relationship with them.

I really don’t believe that there is “his work” or “her work”. But I do believe in two big principles:

Both spouses should be contributing to the family at roughly equal amounts;
Both spouses should have their own relationship with the kids

And of those two things, #2, in my mind, is the most important. I never cared about doing most of the housework if it meant that when we were together, Keith got to be with the kids. So let’s not count chores, but let’s put in the most effort we can when we are working. And if there’s a big imbalance, then you just have to talk about it.

If you’re a stay at home mom, how did you decide on splitting household chores? Let us know in the comments!

The post Reader question: Do Stay at Home Moms Have To Do All The Housework? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

October Ultimate Marriage Reading Challenge!

I’m home from our speaking/RV trip, my laundry’s done, and tonight my brother-in-law gets married!

It’s going to be a good day.

Every Friday I like to post a Round-Up of what’s going on in my life, what was big this week at the blog, and more.

I actually shared some pics and some info of my life yesterday, in my raw post about why my husband and I have had a rough few years (and why our RV trip was such a blessing!). So today I’m just going to share what was big at the blog, and then launch into my October Marriage Reading Challenge!

Here goes:

What’s #1 at To Love, Honor and Vacuum?

#1 NEW Post on the Blog: Why We Grew Apart (I was really vulnerable here!)

#1 on the Blog Overall: Why I Didn’t Rebel (a post my daughter wrote when she was 19)

#1 on Facebook: 50 Best Marriage Quotes

#1 on Pinterest: Stocking Stuffers for Your Husband (bookmark this for later!)

I Know My Emails Have Been Wonky

If you read my blog via email, or you get the weekly roundups, I know that my emails lately have been wonky if you’re reading them on a phone. I’m really trying to get to the bottom of the problem. The weekly ones will be much easier to fix than the daily ones, but I’m working on it! So please be patient, and sorry for all the hassle! I am trying, but it’s hard to figure out all this coding. And I’d really like for you to be able to read them easily again!

If you don’t get my emails, you can! I send out weekly ones with highlights from the blog, all the new stuff, and what’s been big on social media, as well as monthly themed ones for parenting and marriage. Sign up here.

One of the best things about being signed up: When you open your emails, my newsletter provider makes a note of where you’re from. And then if I’m ever speaking within 100 miles of you, you’ll get an email from me letting you know!

Your October Marriage Reading Challenge

Yesterday I was really vulnerable on this blog. I talked about how my husband and I have had a rough couple of years because of our work. We just haven’t been together enough, and that really does drive you apart.

But earlier in our marriage, even though school and work were still busy, that wasn’t what was pushing us apart. It was all of this CRAP that I had brought into marriage from my childhood (and him from his). We had baggage.

And those past hurts can affect our relationships so much. They often keep us stuck. They make us react ineffectively during conflict, because we’re reacting out of past pain, not current pain. They can wreck our sex lives.

October is going to be all about confronting that pain and dealing with it.

This year I’m challenging everyone to read one book a month all year: that’s just 12 books. That’s not that hard. Keep it in your purse and read it while you’re waiting in line at car pool or in line at the bank. Keep it in the bathroom and read 15 minutes whenever you get a chance. In 10 minutes a night you can usually finish a book in a month. You honestly can do it! And what if these books can give you the tools you need to change your marriage for the better?

With every book I read I usually get one real nugget that sticks with me–one thought or idea that changes everything. Imagine what 12 thoughts or ideas could do for your marriage!

So this month I want to challenge you to look your baggage full in the face. Don’t ignore it. Don’t make yourself busy so you don’t have to think about it. Don’t give the excuse, “well, this is just the way I am.”

No! Jesus wants so much more for you.

And Paul says in Philippians 3:13-14 (I used this passage as my main passage at the retreat I spoke at last weekend:

Not that I have already attained it, or have already been made perfect, but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press to the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

I love how he admits that he ISN’T perfect yet. He ISN’T totally healed. But nevertheless he chooses not to dwell on what lies behind, and instead to rush forward at what God has for his life.

And he’s able to do that because, as we learn in verse 10 of that chapter, he seriously knows Jesus.

If you’ve got stuff keeping you back from having an abundant marriage, I’m encouraging you this month to DO SOMETHING about it.

I’ve chosen three books that look at different aspects of baggage, and that can help you move forward. Choose the one that suits your situation, and run with it!

Here they are:

Lord, Heal My Hurts by Kay Arthur

I did this in a Bible study over 13 years ago–and it really changed my life.

If you’re dealing with bitterness, rejection, or anger, this book will help you to see who you are in Christ and how to move forward.

Who should choose this book: Anyone who likes Bible studies! Kay Arthur is intense about having you study Scripture and glean for yourself the real messages that are in there. In our Bible study we had women dealing with divorces, suicides, mental illness, and childhood abuse. And we all learned so much!

Kiss Me Again by Barbara Wilson

Do you struggle with feeling truly intimate with your husband because of past sexual experiences before you were married–whether those experiences were wanted or not?

In this book Barbara Wilson takes us through the effects that sex has on our souls, and how sexual abuse and/or promiscuity can really affect our ability to bond with our spouse now. If sex has always been ho hum at best, and you’ve never really been able to be passionate, it could be because you’ve never dealt with the effects of what happened BEFORE you were married (even if what happened was actually WITH your now-husband).

Who should choose this book: Anyone who is struggling with feeling passion, and is wondering if perhaps their past sex life, or past abuse, is the culprit. A great book for finding real passion again!

Not Marked: Finding Hope and Healing After Sexual Abuse by Mary DeMuth

Do NOT let someone who stole your childhood or teenagehood from you have the power to steal your marriage, too!

If you were sexually abused, you need this book. Mary DeMuth has walked the walk, and she shows you how you can get from a shame-filled reality to a joy-filled reality. And her husband chimes in, too, with advice for men on how to help their wives deal with this.

Who should choose this book: Anyone who still feels stuck because of past sexual abuse. Mary DeMuth is compassionate, real and raw in this book–but she also points you to the way you need to go to find freedom finally.

 

How to join us for our October Reading Challenge:

Buy one of the books to read.
Join the Facebook Page so you can track new habits with us.
Leave a comment with any question you’d like to ask about dealing with baggage–and I’ll try to deal with them!
Pin this post, share it on Facebook, or tweet about it so more people can be encouraged to read–and change their marriages for the better!

Will you be part of our reading challenge this month to help us finally move forward in freedom?

 

 

 

The post October Ultimate Marriage Reading Challenge! appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Why My Husband and I Had a Rough Few Years

How do you stay close if you’re afraid you’re growing apart from your husband?

I’ve been writing a three-part series on porn, and I have more I need to say. But I feel like I’ve been talking ONLY about that all week, and so I’d like to put all of that on hold and come back to it later (I promise). And today I just want to be really vulnerable and share some things with you.

My husband and I have had a rough few years.

It’s not because of anything either of us has done; it’s just because of work schedules and geography. We simply weren’t together very much. And that put a huge strain on us.

We’re coming out of it now, and I’d like to tell you about it–my warnings for other people to avoid, and what made it possible for us to reconnect afterwards.

I’m honestly  just a real person like all of you.

I don’t want you, my readers, ever to think that I’ve got the marriage thing totally figured out. Some seasons we sail right through, and others we really have to work. I shared in 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage (my newest book) about some of the struggles Keith and I have had over the last few years, and what I had to do to change my own attitude and my own mind.

Sometimes when I meet blog readers I realize that there’s this perception that we have a perfect life. And we really don’t. And I think that this may be an encouragement to you–to know that EVERYBODY goes through rough patches. So let me tell you what happened with us.

Keith got a job in a different city.

For years his job in our hometown was so stressful. He had long hours, personality conflicts, and constant crises. They were chronically short staffed of pediatricians, but needed the call schedule covered. What do you do if there aren’t enough pediatricians? If you’re a caring, nice guy like my husband is, you step up to the plate and you do extra call.

But that takes a toll.

And finally he said, “enough”. He took a job at a bigger teaching hospital an hour away.

It was the perfect job. My husband is such a good teacher, and the job entailed teaching medical students and residents. He won some awards. He was having the time of his life.

The problem is that he had to about eight calls a month. Those calls were infinitely easier than the ones he used to do, because instead of going in to the hospital in the middle of the night, residents now took care of things and only phoned him for orders and advice. But it also meant he had to stay in that city for eight nights a month.

There was a long commute–and he had to be at work at 7:30. That means that we no longer had breakfast together.

He was home much later often, especially when he had periodic meetings.

And at the same time I still had speaking engagements.

We tried to work his call around my speaking, because our daughters were still at home.

So think what that did: he’d be gone eight nights a month. I’d be gone maybe five. Take a few more nights for his meetings. Then we had church commitments (we ran the youth quizzing ministry at church which required four weekends a year where we’d take the kids away to a competition. Four weekends doesn’t sound like much until you realize how few weekends we’d have).

Suddenly we had very little time together.

We didn’t realize it would be this bad (he was only supposed to do five calls a month when he took the job). But that first month he had his full call load, plus he had two weekends for conferences and training courses. I spoke for a weekend. We had maybe seven nights together all month. And I started to get scared.

Of course, when your schedules are bizarre like that, you know what always happens, right? When you finally have a week together, in its entirety–that’s when your period comes. It doesn’t come when he’s on call. It doesn’t come when you’re away traveling. It’s when you’re finally together again. And I was having major issues in that department and getting chronically anemic, and the stress was horrible.

And it just got hard. So hard.

I started getting used to living my life alone.

Keith used to be my confidante–the one I bounced everything off of and the one who helped me through all my decisions. But when he wasn’t home for days at a time, I got used to thinking about things myself. I’d take walks and process my thoughts. I’d call my mom and bounce things off of her. I talked to my girls a lot.

And he’d get home, let’s say three days after whatever crisis had begun, and it would feel like too much work to fill him in on everything. So I’d just share with him the “short version” of the story.

Within a year I felt like he didn’t really understand my heart anymore. When he didn’t even know 90% of the things that were bugging me, then how could we feel like we’re one?

We tried talking more, and sharing our “highs” and “lows” of each day, and that certainly helped. We called each other more when we were in different cities.

But when someone isn’t there in the day to day, you really start to feel like you’re walking through life alone and unsupported, even if that is not anyone’s intention.

And I know that Keith felt the same way, too.

The seasons of distance were draining us.

Finally Keith realized he was just too busy. He had no time for his hobbies, and he had no time to connect with me. And we really wanted to spend more time together and see more of the world. So he made a decision last winter that he would go part-time and we’d buy an RV so that we can spend several weeks at a time driving around for me to speak, and then return home for several weeks so he can work.

He arranged for a part-time job, we bought the RV, and we just got back from our first trip.

Was our trip ever great! We drove a grand total of about 70 hours in just 19 days, which is a lot of driving. We had several 8 or 10 hour days. But those days were great because we got the chance to just chat. It’s been so long since we’ve had that kind of time (after all, we had our daughter’s wedding this summer, too, which took a lot of our time!)

We stopped at places improptu just to explore and take pictures, whenever there was a sign for a waterfalls or a scenic lookout or a hike.

We planned this trip to Presque’ Isle park in Pennsylvania:

But then we found these waterfalls by accident when driving through Northern Ontario on our way home:

We stopped at a tiny town that had a giant goose statue off of the highway, because all bird watchers have to take a picture under a giant goose statue and then text it to their daughters:

We pulled over at various birding hotspots to see some new species of gulls:

And we stopped at the Terry Fox memorial outside Thunder Bay–close to the very spot where Terry had to abandon his cross-Canada 1981 run to raise money for cancer because the disease had returned.

That meant a lot to Keith especially, since he’s seen far too many patients die of childhood cancers.

None of those moments was really planned. But we had a chance to take them because we were together again.

It was easy to pick up where we left off, because nothing had been seriously wrong in our relationship–no affairs, no secret texting, no porn. But despite that, we were definitely growing apart because we just didn’t have time together.

So here’s what I’ve learned:

What Kept Us Together During this Season of Growing Apart?
We had a great foundation for our marriage

We were best friends before this started, and we had a good sex life. We were always close to each other. So when we started to spend less time together, we knew that the relationship itself was still stable.

Conclusion: when life is relatively easy, cling to each other and seriously grow your friendship! Work even harder! That way when a tough time comes, you’ll weather it much more easily.

We knew for certain that we were staying together forever

There was no point in letting resentment grow because we knew we’d be together forever.

Conclusion: Don’t feed negative thoughts! When you know you’re together forever, then treat each other well to preserve that relationship.

We kept pushing through–it was hard work

I had to teach myself to share things with Keith about my day–even when I didn’t want to. If I had had a big issue that I had worked through, I wouldn’t necessarily want to relive it all again to try to explain it. But I learned that the work was worth it, even if it wasn’t easy.

Conclusion: Sometimes marriage IS nothing but work. When you have to deliberately keep each other in the loop it’s work. We think marriage should be easy, but often it isn’t.

In some busy seasons of life, marriage becomes work. Do the work! It stops you from growing apart.
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We told ourselves it wasn’t forever–and we made specific plans around that

When we saw what our work schedules were doing to our marriage, we knew that we had to take steps to make sure this was only temporary. And it was.

I know not everyone has that option. Keith and I have been extremely blessed. But there have been periods of our lives that were intense, work wise, and we just had to get through them. Keith’s training, when he was gone 120 hours a week and I had babies; Opening up his practice; and then the last few years. I can’t imagine, though, if any of those stages was permanent.

Conclusion: If you’re in a position where a job is making your marriage super tough, then ask yourself: are there alternatives, even if those alternatives won’t come for a few years?

Sacrificing some financial security so that you can keep marriage security is often worth it, though I know it’s not always possible. But I really don’t think I could live like we did for the last three years indefinitely.

So that’s where we are! We were growing apart, but we’re growing close again. Sometimes marriage strain comes not because of sin or neglect but just because of LIFE. If you see that happening, double down, work harder, share more–and see if you can make that period of your life shorter.

Thought #9 in Nine Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage is that drifting in marriage is natural; it’s staying together that takes work. I experienced that firsthand while writing this book, and lots of my stories are in there (I think I’m more vulnerable in this book than I even was in my sex book!)

If you’ve been drifting and growing apart–pick it up to stop the drift NOW!

Let me know in the comments: have you had a season of your marriage where you were growing apart? What did you do about it?

The post Why My Husband and I Had a Rough Few Years appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Wifey Wednesday: You Can Recover from Your Husband’s Porn Use

Can a marriage recover from a husband’s porn use?

That’s the question a reader is going to answer for us for today’s Wifey Wednesdsay!

A reader recently sent me this beautiful email about porn, redemption, and hope. I wanted to share it with you today, because I know so many of you struggle with your husband’s porn use. Tomorrow I’m going to write a wrap up post on how to fight the porn, not fight your husband, but for today, I thought a story may help.

Recently my husband sent me a text and told me that he wanted to share some things that he had been keeping from me for our entire marriage.

As you can imagine, I let my lady brain take over and had all kinds of scenarios going through my head. He sent the text at 9AM and I wouldn’t be home until after 6PM! All day I kept thinking “Am I ready for this? Can I handle what he’s going to tell me?” We will be married 15 years this June and we have been together since we were 15! So what could he possibly tell me that I don’t already know?

When I got home that night he was in his chair writing, the kids came up to me and asked if Daddy was ok? He told them not to bother him and asked them to play quietly in their bedrooms. He didn’t even look up at me when I walked in the room, didn’t ask what was for supper, just kept on writing and writing.

After supper he asked the kids to go back to their rooms because he needed to talk to me. We cleaned up after dinner and went to sit down in our chairs. He handed me a note book and asked me to read it, he decided that it was going to be easier to write than say the actual words.

He told me of a day when he was 7 or 8 years old, the day started as many summer days for boys of that age.

He had plans to meet up with friends and tear up the town on his bike. One of his friends suggested that they sneak into an abandoned barn that they always rode by. It was a typical old barn full of rusty tractor parts and tools. But this barn was different–it held a secret that would change the world of all the boys. In the loft of this barn where piles and piles of pornography. This started him on a path that no little boy should have to walk.

Now let me fast forward to year 2 of our marriage.

We are fighting all the time, mostly about sex and how he hates my body and how fat I have gotten. I had gained about 50lbs going through fertility treatment and he was disgusted with my body. In that 6 page letter to me everything that we had fought about and almost divorced over made complete sense to me. I knew that his perception of women was warped because of the things he saw on those pages. I knew that his idea of a sex was skewed. He had no idea how to deal with it so he just got angry and when we did have sex it was just that, there was no love involved.

I prayed for years that God would change me, that I would wake up one day and be the perfect wife for this man that he had clearly chosen for me. I would throw fits and beg my husband to tell me what he wanted from me, but he would never tell me. I know that I sound naïve and the fact is I was, I had no idea that my husband struggled with pornography. He worked nights and I worked days for the first year of our marriage so he was home all day and I never knew what he was up to. I knew that he would spend hours online, he would get angry with me for asking him questions about his online activity. We spent the first 10 years of our marriage hanging on by a thread, not wanting to give up, but not wanting to do anything to make it better.

Then one day about 5 years ago God clearly spoke to me and told me that I needed to stop praying for one of us to change and just start praying for my husband.

I have never really just prayed for him in general, I always wanted him to change or be something different. So I started praying that he would allow God to work in him, to show him who he was and what he was put here to do. So I did just that, I prayed for this man that God picked out just for me, I thanked God for him. I stopped seeing all the things he wasn’t and saw what God saw. I stopped criticizing, pushing buttons just to get a response out of him. I let him know that I loved him and that was all that mattered.

Yes I was still struggling with not having a husband in all ways, but slowly God started working in me about that.

Fast forward to the Monday night he told me his secret.

I read his letter to me, I cried, I understood, my heart broke for the little boy whose innocence was stolen from him.

I got up out of my chair and went to his chair, crawled up on his lap and cried some more. Then I spoke to the little boy, “I’m so sorry” and my big, tough as nails husband cried.

“My heart broke for the little boy whose innocence was stolen from him.”

We held each other and cried.

I wasn’t angry at him for keeping his secret from me, I wasn’t hurt.

Honestly, I think I was relieved to know that all those years of sleepless nights fighting had nothing to do with me.

I know that sounds a bit selfish, but I always felt like it was my fault. I knew that in that moment we were going to be ok and that the enemy who stole his innocence and told him the lie to keep it a secret no longer had any power over us. He could no longer steal the joy that we have found in each other over the last 5 years. He could no longer hold the sin over my husband’s head. There was healing for both of us in the moment that he shared his dark secret with me.

I know no everyone can have the same healing experience as I did, but I wanted to let you know that sometimes, God asks us to do things that will make us uncomfortable, but yet there is so much cleansing that takes place afterwards. I look at my husband today and I see a light in his eyes that I have never seen before, a joy that has never been there.

He looks at me differently now too.

He sees a woman who stood next to him when she didn’t even know what was going on. He sees a woman who loved him through everything and never gave up on him. He told me that I saved him, that God didn’t make a mistake when He told my husband to marry me at 15yrs old.

I don’t know how long it has been since he lasted looked at porn, and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that God has delivered him from this and that I all I care about.

What a great story! I’m so glad she shared it.

I’m not writing it to say, “you should do everything like she did.” I DO think it’s important to get an accountability partner, and I do think setting something like Covenant Eyes up on your computer are important steps.

But I share this partly because healing doesn’t look the same in all cases.

The bigger reason, though, is because of her testimony of compassion for this man.

Tomorrow I’m going to share some other emails, and encourage women to fight the porn, don’t fight their husbands (if their husbands are repentant and take it seriously). But today, listen to her words:

I read his letter to me, I cried, I understood, my heart broke for the little boy whose innocence was stolen from him. I got up out of my chair and went to his chair, crawled up on his lap and cried some more. Then I spoke to the little boy, “I’m so sorry” and my big, tough as nails husband cried.

When husbands use porn, we get disgusted.

And it IS disgusting. We feel shame. We feel humiliation. We feel anger. These emotions are all normal, and likely important to go through if we’re going to honestly deal with our own grief, too.

But I ask you to add one more emotion in there: compassion.

Compassion for a man who was likely led down this path at a very young age. In this guy’s case, he was only 7 or 8 years old. Imagine what pornography does to a 7 or 8 year old child. They don’t even understand about sex yet, but they see these images, and those images get imprinted on their minds. Those images get tied to the sexual arousal process in the brain–and now THAT becomes what is arousing. And they didn’t even really go looking for it; it found them.

For so many young boys (and young girls), porn finds them. It’s very different from an alcohol addiction or a drug addiction. You have to make a deliberate decision to drink alcohol a lot; for many young kids, they see porn and it starts changing the way the brain thinks of sex. And they’re drawn to it. With alcohol, people usually enjoy it for a time, sometimes years, before it takes over and they start feeling shame and can’t stop. With porn the shame starts almost immediately–and yet they can’t stop.

When you talk to guys who have used porn, almost all hate themselves for it.

I have known a teenager from a GREAT Christian family (parents were missionaries; he knew Scripture; he was talented and musically gifted) who committed suicide because he could not break his porn addiction. He didn’t want the porn; but it had him hooked.

I am not saying that guys are powerless against it.

I am only saying that the stories of so many of our husbands start very similarly to this 7 or 8 year old boy.

He wasn’t searching it out. It came for him. And he always, always wanted to stop. He hated himself.

So be his ally in stopping! Tomorrow we’ll look at how to deal with some of the after-effects of porn (the withdrawal of emotional intimacy, which this writer and Robi Smith both mentioned yesterday; the secretiveness; and the sexual rewiring). But for today, I just ask you to feel compassion on these men, who were once little boys who got sucked in.

And, if you’re a parent (whether it’s boys or girls, makes no difference), don’t let this 7 year old’s story become your child’s story! Protect their eyes when they’re too young to understand. Please. Think about their future marriages. Don’t let them grow up with this as their story. Think about getting Covenant Eyes, and as they get older, keep open conversations about porn!)

Now it’s your turn! Do you have any marriage thoughts to share with us today? Link up the URL of a marriage post in the linky below! It’s a great way to get more blog traffic. And then be sure to link back here so that other people can see these awesome posts!

Marriage isn't supposed to be blah!


Sex is supposed to be stupendous--physically, emotionally, AND spiritually.

If it's not, get The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex--and find out what you've been missing.

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Top 10 Ways to Help Your Husband End His Porn Addiction

Can a wife actually help her husband end a porn addiction?

Porn is the number one problem that women write in to me about, so I thought I’d spend three days talking about different aspects of it.

Thanks for all your comments yesterday on when to invite your husband back into your bed–sorry I didn’t join in the discussion! Another twelve hour day in our RV. And today we’ll be HOME! So as I’m wrapping up my first RV speaking trip, I’ve invited Robi Smith from the blog Hopeful Wife Today to share 10 steps with us for Top 10 Tuesday about how to help your hubby end his porn habit.

Many marriages are ending due to the effects of pornography. The marriages that are staying together after a pornography addiction are spending years to heal and rebuild trust. Husbands are being trapped in this powerful temptation. Many men see no way out of porn. Many women are hopeless to even try to help their husbands.

Certainly the husband must be the one who is willing to change. He must have the desire to quit viewing porn. However, most Christian men do not want to look at porn. In fact, they are desperate to quit! But they find themselves in an impossible cycle that is just too hard to stop. That’s why wives are in a unique position to help their husbands end a porn addiction.

I went through this cycle with my husband. He spent all his teenage years, young adult years, and married years addicted to pornography. For ten years I did not know he even had a problem with lust. It was that hidden. When I finally discovered his struggle, he felt free. He thought finally, after all this time, someone can know! Someone can actually help me beat this!

So here are the top 10 ways to help your husband end a porn addiction:

1. Confront him about his porn addiction

Porn addicts thrive on secrecy. Porn users typically cover their tracks by deleting history and viewing only when they think they will not get caught. If someone actually knew what they were doing, most of them wouldn’t do it at all. There is so much shame involved in this sin. That is why if you know your husband has been watching porn, you must tell him.

2. Daily Prayer and Bible Reading

The most important thing that helped my husband overcome lust was a daily prayer and Bible reading time. Not only did this help my husband, but it also helped me to heal and our marriage to be restored. This was a time that we set aside to specifically pray over our marriage. Moreover, we prayed for my husband’s struggle with lust. We found specific Bible verses that he could read and pray over in order to defeat lust. He calls this putting on the armor of God. He prays for God to protect his eyes and his body throughout the day. He does this every single day.

3. Use Internet Filtering to Avoid Porn

Internet filtering is so important to have on any computer and on his phone. We use Covenant Eyes because it has worked wonderfully. I knew that I could not have peace in my home unless I knew that the access to pornography was blocked. This also helped my husband so much with temptation. He knew it wasn’t even an option. Many people say that you can get around computer filters. This is probably true to some degree. However, you have to really try to get around Covenant Eyes. For my husband, he greatly wanted to quit watching porn, so he never put in all the extra effort to pass filters. He felt so relieved to know that someone would find out what he was doing on the internet.

Find out more about Covenant Eyes, or download some of their free ebooks on the effects of porn and how to quit, here.

4. Be Honest and Open to Each Other About Your Struggles

This was the most difficult area for my marriage when my husband was recovering from porn addiction. Porn watchers are usually secretive, deceptive, and keep their emotions closed. My husband had never been open to anyone in his life– ever. God has led me to urge my husband to tell me anything even if it really hurts. My husband doesn’t want to share things with me that will bother me. But honesty is so important in marriage. I am not talking about every lustful thought. I am talking about important things that happen in his day to day life that he should share with me. It might be about his struggle with lust. It could be an inappropriate conversation someone had with him. Sometimes it is when he feels like a failure at work or at home. This area will greatly help your husband overcome watching porn. He needs to be able to release his stress and have emotional intimacy with his wife.

5. Set Aside a Time to Talk about His Day

Before I found out he was watching porn, my husband very rarely shared his day with me. He most often said, “I don’t want to talk about my day, I’d rather hear about yours.” That was fine with me. But, I realized he never wanted to talk because he kept his emotions so closed from me. Now, we talk each night for about 15 minutes about our days. He tells me all about the events of his day. I tell him about my day. Additionally, we tell each other our “highs” and lows”. This is the best time for him to relieve any stress that is building up.

6. Find him Accountability

Many people will argue that a wife should never be an accountability partner. We feel differently in our marriage. I do agree that some things are too harsh for a wife to hear. That is true. No husband should be telling his wife random lustful thoughts he struggles with. My husband brings his thoughts before God and prays all day to “flee” from lustful thoughts. But, with other things, I am a part of my husband’s accountability. First, I needed to be a part of this. There was so much lying and deception in our marriage that I wanted to know when something came up. My husband agreed with this because it has helped us to rebuild trust so immensely. He tells me things in his life that are a temptation. He tells me where and when he struggles the most. This is something that he will always share with me.

7. Keep Your Reaction Godly

Hearing about a husband’s problem with lust hurts deeply in a wife’s heart. I can still feel the deep, overwhelming pain from when I found out my husband watched pornography. However, when I am listening to God, I know that I want to help my husband. I want our marriage to grow. I want to be in love with him. Therefore, to help him overcome porn, I have to have godly reactions to what he tells me. When he shares something about his past or his struggle with me and I react in anger, it closes him up more again. And I do not want that. Now, when he tells me something that is making him struggle with temptation I try to follow God. I pray with him. I ask him what he’s doing about it. Each time that I choose this reaction I am helping my husband. I know that this is not the easy or natural response. It takes practice. It takes drawing close to God. I have failed at this many times. But, God is helping me grow in this area.

8. Draw Close to God

This means for you, as the wife, to draw close to God. Knowing that your husband had an addiction to pornography is very devastating. We need to spend time with God to overcome this hurt. We can pour out all of our feelings to God. We also can pray for our husbands. We can cover them in prayer all day.

9. Trust him again by Trusting in God

My husband’s deepest regret is that he lost all of my trust. It has been over three years since I found out about my husband. There are still situations that I do not trust him in. There are things that I do not want him to do because I think “what if.” I can set boundaries in my marriage. These are normal, healthy boundaries for someone that is overcoming temptation to porn. However, I cannot keep my husband sheltered in a world where he cannot be a part of daily life. He has to go to work each day, the store, the gym, etc. He has to use the computer for many work related things. He even has to use computers at work that are not filtered at all. This can be very scary as a wife. I can let doubt control my life. But I choose to trust my husband by trusting in God.

I tell God that I don’t completely trust my husband yet. He lied to me for many years and betrayed me terribly. But, I do trust You God. So, I pray if there is something You want me to know that my husband does not tell me, please bring it to light. I can tell you that anything that has ever happened that my husband was too scared to tell me, God put it in my heart. God was the one who originally led me find out about the pornography. God will not let me down now. It might not be immediately, but He will show me. Knowing this has helped my husband want to be a good man.

10. Give Him a Second Chance After the Porn

Even after we make this decision, we have to carry it through with our actions. If your husband had a problem with pornography and he is truly repentant to you, what is stopping you from giving him a second chance? Is it fear, anger, or a desire for revenge? I have felt each one of those. But, in the end, they left me feeling dead. I could only choose God’s way. I looked at what Jesus did on the cross for us. I deeply studied the Gospels and read the words that Jesus spoke to sinners. His whole message to us is about redemption, restoration, and forgiveness. How could I claim to love God and not forgive my husband?

It may be the most difficult thing you ever have to do. But, God will bless you. He will take your marriage that was so broken and messed up and he will make it beautiful. He can only do this if you give your husband that second chance. And when you do that, you will be helping your husband in more ways than you will ever know.

Let me know in the comments: Have you ever struggled with rebuilding trust or with ending a porn addiction? How did you do it?

Robi blogs at Hopeful Wife Today, a site dedicated to bringing hope and healing to hurting wives dealing with their husband’s pornography use and unfaithfulness.

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Reader question: When Do I Invite My Husband Back into our Bed after His Porn Addiction?

If your husband has been battling a porn addiction, when do you invite him back into your bed?

Every Monday I like to put up a Reader Question and take a stab at answering it. Today I thought we’d do a 3-part series on battling porn in marriage (since that’s the most common problem in the huge backlog of questions I have), starting with this one: how do you re-establish a sexual relationship after pornography?

A reader writes:

My husband has had an addiction to porn for our entire 13 year marriage. He lied, deceived, blamed me, neglected me and I only found out it was porn by accidentally walking in on him one night. That was more than two years ago. Since then he promised many times to seek counseling and support groups but nothing changed. About a month ago I asked him to separate. He refused but he did move out of our bedroom and into my daughter’s room (she’s bunking with her brothers for now). He now sees a counselor weekly but I have not gone with him yet. He asked me last night when he can move back into our room. I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know what criteria to use or how to know. We haven’t had sex since before my last baby was born and she’s almost 9-months old now. The time we were intimate it was obvious he didn’t want to do it and that he was trying to simulate something he’d seen in porn in order to reach orgasm. It didn’t work. I felt like filth afterwards. How can I answer him when I don’t know what it will take to get comfortable with him back in our bed?

First, I am so, so sorry that you’re going through this. But I’m also so glad that your husband is getting counseling! That’s wonderful.

I know I’m going to get pushback on what I’m going to say today, though, because so many people believe that men only turn to porn because their wives won’t have sex. That may be true in a few cases, but from what I’ve seen and from the people that write to me, that is not usually the case at all. Usually the porn use PRECEDES the marriage, as it does in this case. He was using it during their entire marriage.

And because porn rewires the brain so that what becomes attractive is an image rather than a person, porn often STEALS a guy’s libido within marriage–

As this woman writes, her husband couldn’t even reach climax without fantasizing about porn or doing something that porn had. Just being with his wife was no longer enough.

This is especially true for younger wives who got married after the internet generation started. So, please, no comments about how he wouldn’t need porn if she would just put out! That is simply not the case with the vast majority of marriages, especially young marriages. And even if that is the case in some marriages, it is not those marriages that we are addressing here. We are looking at marriages where guys have used porn the entire time, and who have NEVER actually made love, because sex has become so warped in their brains.

I’d really encourage people to download this free ebook from Covenant Eyes that explains how this process works:

Now back to the question.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a good absolute answer. So much depends on your relationship, your ability to communicate, his openness with his struggles, his repentance, and more. So let me just give some general principles for people to think about.

Rebuild Trust After a Porn Addiction First

You can’t just jump into having sex right away. (Now, some people may not have stopped having sex; I think that a sexual fast can be a good idea as he “resets” his arousal process, and most counselors and discussion forums for guys coming out of porn have said the same thing. But it isn’t absolute, and so much depends on your relationship).

But let’s say that you did stop sex and confronted him about porn.

In this reader’s case, the husband was reluctant to stop the porn and only did so when drastic actions were taken by the wife. This is quite a different scenario than one in which a husband confesses and takes the initiative to heal.

So there’s extra trust broken here.

Get an accountability partner

A counselor is wonderful, but a counselor is only there for a short time. He needs a guy who can hold him accountable and who can meet with him periodically and ask him honestly how he’s doing.

Be completely open with computers/tablets/devices

You must have complete access to his phone, his devices, and his computer. If he says that he’s stopped using porn, but he won’t let you see his phone, that’s a HUGE red flag. It doesn’t mean that you have to check on him all the time (that’s what an accountability partner is for). But it means that you should be able to pick up his stuff and use it without him freaking.

Use Covenant Eyes or something like it

Install the Covenant Eyes program on your phones and computers and devices. It’s accountability and filtering–meaning that everyone in your household gets their own account, and that allows them to access the internet based on their age/issues. So a 6-year-old sees less than a 13-year-old who sees less than an adult. But if you don’t want to use it for filtering like that, you don’t have to. You can only use the accountability side, where if anyone tries to access a site they shouldn’t, someone of your choice (the accountability partner, preferably) gets sent an email.

This helps you know that when he’s online, he won’t be searching for porn anymore. Or at least it will be a lot harder, and the temptation will be largely limited.

Get Covenant Eyes here.

Go to counseling with him

If he is seeing a counselor–wonderful! But it would be a good idea to do at least a few sessions with him so you reassure yourself about what he’s hearing, and a counselor helps you talk through some of the trust issues. You may also need some counseling yourself to work through your grief.

Rebuilding your sex life after a porn addiction takes LOTS of trust. Here's how:
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Rebuild Your Friendship

When I speak, I often say this: when you lose the ability to talk about the little things in marriage, it becomes even harder to talk about the big things.

When you’re friends, you talk and share about your day. You laugh together. You do stuff together.

When you’re battling porn that often goes away (and with many of these couples they never had that because he was so secretive, living a double life, and just wanted to get away from his wife so he could have some time on the computer).

But that friendship provides the goodwill so that you can talk about the big things. Without that goodwill, each big issue seems even bigger. Is this the one that will break our marriage?  Your marriage becomes all about tension.

You need that friendship again so that you can be honest about sex and how you’re going to rebuild it.

So go on walks together everyday. Talk about your day. Start a new hobby together that doesn’t involve a screen! Play some board games as a couple. Do something where you spend time together with low stress.

Talk About How to Rebuild Sex

Here’s the challenge with starting sex again: you can’t resume where you left off. You have to do something totally new, because your sex life in the past, if it was based on porn, was corrupted.

You want to begin to experience real intimacy in the bedroom–something you likely never have. In the past, sex has been only physical, because he hasn’t been mentally present (since he needs the fantasy about porn to get aroused). So we have to rewire his sexual response so that what becomes arousing is YOU, not a fantasy of replaying porn in his head.

That takes time.

I’ve written before about how to restart a sexual relationship after pornography, and how to rewire your brain after pornography. Both are difficult, but they are totally doable! And God absolutely wants to help you have such an abundant life in this area.

But you can’t until you’ve got some honesty.

So talk to him about how we need to rewire his brain so sex is about intimacy, not pornography.

That means that if you’re making love and images enter his head, he should stop, and you guys should start touching and talking again so he can refocus on you. That may mean that sex takes a long time–but if he keeps going if the fantasy is there, he’s feeding the fantasy, and he’s actually working AGAINST healing.

It also means taking a lot of time just touching and learning how arousing it can be to just be naked together as you talk and touch and become vulnerable. It’s not a quick, dirty thing; it’s an intimate thing.

But you have to talk to him about this BEFORE you start having sex again. Don’t expect him to just “get” this. Talk about your expectations and your plans.

31 Days to Great Sex is a wonderful tool for rebuilding your sex life after pornography. The first few days help you to just talk about your sex life. Then you spend a few days just touching each other and exciting each other that way–which can help him to experience how arousing just touch can be. Then you learn how to flirt and be affectionate again, which is such a key component of a good sex life.

As  you move through the month and try some of the spicier challenges, you also get the opportunity to talk about how porn may have rewired his brain, and what you are going to do about it. So if you have trouble articulating some of these things, 31 Days to Great Sex can help you start these conversations–and it’s a great way to start into sex again carefully! And the ebook format is only $4.99–so you can’t go wrong.

Find out more here.

I Know You’re Hurt–But Sex Can Also Help Healing

One last thought–I don’t know how long the above steps will take. For some people, this will be a quick thing. For other couples it will not.

But here’s what I will say:

once a guy has really repented and is taking steps to change, then don’t take too long to invite him back.

He’s fighting the battle of his life right now.

You can be one of his best weapons in fighting that porn!

And with him feeling like you’re on his side, fighting WITH him, not AGAINST him, it will be so much easier to heal.

I know you’re hurt. And you need to work through that. But don’t prolong that process too long, because you want an intimate marriage. And that’s largely up to you.

Of course this can’t be rushed. It would be foolish to jump back in bed if he’s not serious about healing, or if he’s still secretive about computers. It would be foolish if he doesn’t acknowledge that porn has changed his arousal process and that he needs fantasy to get aroused. But if he does acknowledge this, if he is trying, if he is in recovery–then be his ally!

What do you think? Any advice for this woman? If you’ve ever walked through a marriage with a porn addict, what helped you rebuild your sex life? Let us know in the comments!

The post Reader question: When Do I Invite My Husband Back into our Bed after His Porn Addiction? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

On Slavery, Sadness, and Hope

We’re back in Canada!

We crossed the border from North Dakota into Manitoba on Wednesday, and later today I’ll be leaving to speak at a women’s retreat for the weekend north of Winnipeg while my husband goes bird watching.

Then we have a REALLY long drive back to southeastern Ontario!

Our RV has lots of stickers on it, though! We put a sticker up for every state/province we either sleep in or speak in (so just driving through doesn’t count). We’ve added a bunch of stickers this trip.

Before I get to some of the thoughts I’ve had this week, and some of the things I’ve been doing, let’s take a peek at what the top posts were on To Love, Honor and Vacuum this week!

What’s #1 at To Love, Honor and Vacuum?

#1 NEW Post on the Blog: When Christians Make It Sound Like Sex is Only “For Him”

#1 on the Blog Overall: 50 Most Important Bible Verses to Memorize

#1 on Facebook: 14 Ways to Play As A Couple

#1 on Pinterest: The 43 Folder System:  Organizing Your Paper Clutter

On Abraham Lincoln and History and Women’s Dignity

One of the coolest things we did on our trek while I’ve been speaking is we stopped into the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum on our way through Springfield, Illinois.

Probably the best museum I’ve ever been to! It had amazing exhibits, but it also had these cool special effects with music and voices and even holograms that helped you FEEL what it was really like back then.

But of course the most moving part of the display was the record of slavery. I’ll let these words speak for themselves:

And there was this gripping scene as a child is wrenched away from his mother:

It was impossible to walk through there and not be so saddened and even pierced by what was allowed to happen.

What scares me even more is that it was justified using the Bible.

Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as a hero today. He ended slavery. Anyone who did that deserves our praise. In surveys he is usually ranked as either the best president or the second best president. He’s always high up there.

And yet, in his time, people HATED him. The vitriol was immense. The museum shows all the editorial cartoons and all the things that were thrown at him–even by his own cabinet. He was fighting a battle that was largely unpopular. It wasn’t even clear at the time that he would win–win the Civil War, and win the fight against slavery.

But triumph he did, even if he gave his life for it. And today people celebrate him. The ideals that he was fighting for seem like “no brainers”. Obviously slavery is wrong. Obviously human rights and human dignity are close to God’s heart always.

I was reminded of this this week on a much more minor scale. Too often I think that the biggest battles have been won–obviously people aren’t racist anymore; obviously people believe that women have dignity and that “in Christ there is no male or female” (Galatians 3:28). And yet that is not obvious, as I had people arguing in the comments of my post on Monday that women do not have the right to refuse something in the bedroom even if it causes them physical or psychological trauma. The husband has authority over the wife’s body, and so she must yield it to him absolutely.

I wrote a response to this yesterday which was more or less positively received (you’ll never convince everybody).

But it reminded me: people have been using the Bible to justify all kinds of evil for far too many centuries. And when they do that, it turns people completely off of Christ. I have other people who have commented over the years on this blog who have said, “I grew up in a super conservative Christian church, and I decided never to marry a Christian because the men treated their wives horribly–ordering them around, ignoring their opinions, never helping around the house. I married a wonderful, non-Christian man who treats me so much better than anyone in that church would.”

And my heart bleeds.

The Bible is never about deciding who has power. The Bible is about teaching us to serve.

If we EVER start using the Bible to say, “I’m in charge” or “I get to call the shots”, we have missed the mark completely.

Abraham Lincoln got that when it came to slavery.

I just hope we don’t have to fight these STUPID battles (because fighting for women’s dignity really should never be an issue) for too much longer. There’s too much work to be done in spreading the kingdom than to get sidetracked with this absolute nonsense.

On Winnipeg and Winnie The Pooh

So on Wednesday night we arrived in Winnipeg, and yesterday we went out exploring. We met one of my honourary aunts who took us to Assiniboine Park, which was lovely.

They have a Winnie The Pooh exhibit, because the original bear who was the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh may have been in the London zoo in England, but she was named after the city of Winnipeg.

I LOVE Winnie the Pooh! So it was great fun to walk through the exhibit:

And see some of Shepard’s original sketches:

Then we went out to the Children’s Garden:

And saw the Winnie the Pooh statue!

How My Girls Fare When I’m Gone

Thought you may enjoy the caption on this instagram update of Katie’s.

The story behind it is actually very tragic. The girls had a good friend whose mother was killed suddenly in an accident two weeks ago. They came home for the funeral and to spend some time with their friend. So they made it back to our hometown when we weren’t even home to welcome them. But my heart just breaks for their friend.

What happens when Becca and I come home for the weekend, but @sheilagregoire is on tour so she’s not home to make dinner for us.

When Christians Make It Sound Like Sex is Only “For Him”

Did God make sex primarily for husbands? Are wives supposed to be quasi-sexual slaves?

I’d say, “absolutely not, that’s absurd!” But this week that view crept up again.

I wrote a post on Monday about what to do if there’s one part of your body that your husband likes sexually that you just can’t stand him touching. Perhaps you have pain, or flashbacks from abuse, or something else that makes it creepy. I talked about finding compromise while working on the root issue. If anything, I thought I’d get some grief from people saying, “If there’s something she doesn’t like, he has to live with it.” And I did get a bit of that.

But the commenters who said, “the husband has authority over her body, so she has no right to deny him that” really surprised me.  I let a few of those comments through; several men left incredibly disgusting ones, while still claiming to be Christian, and I deleted those ones.

It’s similar to the comments I got in this series of posts about how it’s okay for a woman to say, “I need to wait 6 weeks after childbirth”, or “not during my period.” I had several men saying the waiting six weeks wasn’t justified because it wasn’t “by mutual consent”.

This astounds me. I thought that we were beyond that. But because we obviously aren’t, I want to address this view today. I know that this is a fringe view, and that 95% of you reading this would find it abhorrent. But the underlying philosophy behind it–that women were created primarily to serve men–is still prevalent, and it needs to be debunked.

So let’s jump in.

My critique here is from both Thought #5–I’m not in competition with my husband; we’re aiming for oneness instead–and Thought #8–Making love is not the same thing as having sex–from my new book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage.

No passage is as absolutely clear about the mutuality aspect of sex than 1 Corinthians 7.

My commenters used it to say, “she has to do everything he wants, regardless of her feelings,” but a clear reading of the passage shows that this is not what Paul meant.

The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Look how many times “mutual” is mentioned or implied. Every privilege given to men is also given to women. Sex is about “us”, not him or her.

In fact, it is the WIFE’S sexual concerns that are mentioned first. “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife” is the starting point of this passage.

And if the wife has authority over the husband’s body, that means that she can also ask him not to use it in a way that denigrates her.

Nevertheless, some people insist on reading this to mean that women can never say no to anything a husband wants. I even read a post written by a man recently arguing that there is no such thing as marital rape, because of the husband’s authority over the wife’s body.

So what does this idea do–this idea that sex is primarily for him? Let’s look at it together.

Anyone who thinks God created women only to serve men does not understand the heart of Jesus for…
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It Denigrates Women

If you believe that a wife should give a husband sexually whatever he wants whenever he wants, even if it causes the wife trauma of some sort, then you are saying:

His momentary pleasure is more important than her psychological, sexual, or emotional pain.

Do you know what that reminds me of? Rap music. Have you ever listened to it or read some of the lyrics? Rap music celebrates men using women as they want for their own pleasure, without regard for the woman’s well-being.

We have a serious problem if we are using Scripture to encourage people to view women the world the way that the rap industry sees women.

It Denigrates Marriage

What I was arguing in the article was this:

Both spouses have legitimate needs. So let’s see how she can find ways to meet his needs as much as she can, while she also maintains some boundaries for her own emotional health and works on her issues.

Let’s have the wife giving to the husband, and the husband giving to the wife, and let’s have them working towards real intimacy and health.

And then the commenters said, “no, she has to give to the husband, period.”

I was arguing for mutuality; they were saying that only she has to give.

One of the basic misunderstandings we have here, I believe, is mistaking the means for the ends.

What is it that Jesus prayed for for his followers? “That they may be one.” (John 17:21). Or what about 1 Corinthians 1:10, that we be “perfectly united in mind and thought”, or 2 Corinthians 3:11, that we be of “one mind”? And when we marry, we become “one flesh”. Oneness is God’s plan for us.

And how do we get there? We serve each other. We submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21)–women to their husbands, while husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church.

The goal is oneness; the means are serving, submitting, and loving.

Some people read these “means” as very hierarchical. The woman is to do what the man says. Oneness is no longer the goal; having the husband calling the shots while the wife obeys becomes the goal. And this makes marriage into a hierarchical relationship, rather than an intimate, loving partnership where both support each other.

I deal with this line of thinking quite a bit on this blog, but especially in Thought #5 of 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage. You can also read more about what submission means and what submission doesn’t mean. 

It Denigrates Sex

One of the big critiques I make of our culture is that it makes sex into something which is only physical. Sex was supposed to unite us physically, spiritually, and emotionally. It is not only a physical experience, and in The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex I show how sex is really a spiritual experience, too.

However, if you believe that women should give men what they want sexually, with no regards to themselves, then you make the same mistake the world does. You cheapen sex, making it only physical.

And if you are of the mindset that women were created to serve men (as Debi Pearl argues in Created to Be His Helpmeet, for instance), then it’s easy to make this leap that sexually women were created to serve men, too.

For emotional and spiritual intimacy during sex there has to be mutuality. Sure, sometimes we can have sex just for him–there’s nothing wrong with a quickie, of course! But on the whole, sex should reflect a deeply loving relationship. If sex for you, though, means doing something that you hate, then sex can’t be loving. Sex is only one-way giving. That’s not mutual. That’s servicing someone. And now sex is only physical once again. You’ve wrecked the whole point of sex, which is a deep “knowing” of each other. You can’t get to that level if she’s in pain, if she’s scared, if she’s having flashbacks–and then add to all that, if he doesn’t care.

It Diminishes the Reality of Emotional and Psychological Pain

I sometimes think that these commenters don’t understand that people honestly can experience trauma and pain. People who believe as these commenters do see Christianity as harsh rules: you have to do this or else. Emotional trauma is irrelevant. It’s not important what you feel. What’s important is that you do what God tells you!

But that’s not the picture the Bible gives us. Read the book of Psalms sometime; David was in complete emotional anguish writing most of it. Jeremiah went through bouts of depression; so did Jonah and Elijah. And God never once said, “stop your complaining and just do what I said!” Instead, he gently talked to these prophets and comforted them and showed them who He was and that He cared.

God cares about your emotional and psychological pain.

And He doesn’t want you to go through that pain. He wants to heal it. And healing can’t be done by forcing it. I shared this quotation from the Eldredges on Facebook this week which sums this up perfectly:

Sexual trauma works like this: we are at our most vulnerable sexually, because during sex we completely bare ourselves, physically and emotionally. When there’s trauma, then, it sears us. And if you pressure her to do things that are difficult, you cement in her mind that sex is a negative, horrible experience. If a woman has vaginismus  pain during sex), for instance, and you tell her she has no right to refuse, and she has to “let him” have intercourse several times a week (or everyday), and the whole time she is crying, then she is associating pain, degradation, and fear with sex. Not only is it just physical pain; it’s also a ton of emotional pain as well. That makes healing so that she can enjoy sex and live life abundantly even harder.

Sex is Supposed to Be For Both of You!

Let’s do a thought experiment. Picture a little girl growing up in a family where she’s often dismissed and forgotten. She has an uncle who is drunk a lot who likes to feel up under her shirt. She squirms and tries to get away but she can’t.

When she’s 15, and he’s totally drunk one night, he forces her to perform oral sex on him.

She leaves home shortly thereafter, pulls her life together, and gets married.

Now, when her husband touches her breasts, she’s taken back to that drunken uncle. She feels panicky. She squirms. What she wants, more than anything, is to bolt from the room.

Now picture Jesus standing there.

I don’t like asking the question What Would Jesus Do very often because I think it’s become trite. But sometimes we need to, because we debate theology and interpretation of Scripture so much that we forget about the person of Jesus Christ with whom we actually have a relationship.

So picture that Jesus. Would He say to that panicky woman, “Your husband has authority over your body. You need to repent of withholding, and you need to gladly let him delight in your breasts from now on, whenever your husband wants.”

Or would He say, “I am so heartbroken that someone stole the beauty of sex from you. But I created marriage so that you can understand real intimacy again. Right now, let’s learn to give to each other and love each other as best you can, while you work on healing from this trauma. Because what I want for you, my child, is an abundant life and freedom, and that can come when you run to me.”

Quite frankly, anyone who thinks Jesus would say the first simply does not serve the same Jesus that I do.

 

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