Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 27

On Elisabeth Elliot’s Terrible Courtship–and Dating Men “Sold Out for Jesus”

Elisabeth Elliot’s book Passion and Purity is NOT a love story.

These last few weeks I’ve been reading the big books marketed to young women in the evangelical world for research for our mother-daughter book, and one of those was Passion & Purity.

I read it first when I was 16, and I really hated it. I remember reading that you couldn’t date, couldn’t kiss before marriage, couldn’t talk to a boy before he talked to you. I remember reading that you must always, always let a boy lead. And that made me feel like, if I were to date, I would have to hide who I really was. I couldn’t be myself. And didn’t God want me to be myself? (for the record, it wasn’t that I wanted to lead. I just wanted to be able to be honest and say what I felt, and it was quite clear that this would somehow be wrong and too forward of me).

(Here’s a picture of me on a Teen Missions International Trip in the Philippines, where it was assigned reading):

Me digging a hole. I think I was smiling because a guy was taking the picture.

When I read it this time, though, I wasn’t horrified for the advice that was given to me. I was horrified for how Elisabeth Elliot had been treated–and how she allowed herself to be treated.

For the life of me, I don’t know how Elisabeth and Jim Elliot’s story became something to emulate. It was toxic from the beginning.

For those who don’t know the history, Jim Elliot was one of five missionaries killed in Ecuador in 1956. The story made international news at the time, and it became the stuff of Christian legend when Elisabeth, Jim’s widow, and another of the widows (whose name escapes me now) forgave the tribe and went back and lived there and ministered to them anyway. You may have heard the story under the name “through gates of splendor” or “end of the spear.”

Anyway, later in her life Elisabeth became a prolific writer and quite the influencer, and she wrote, in 1984, the book Passion and Purity, to help Christian girls navigate dating. As she explains it, “It is, to be blunt, a book about virginity.” So it’s all about how to stay a virgin.

But what really shocks you is when you start to understand what their “courtship” was actually like.

Elisabeth noticed Jim around Wheaton College, where they both attended. But naturally she didn’t seek him out (because she’s the woman), and she had to wait for him to notice her. He finally does, and at the end of one school year they have a long talk during which he announces that he loves her, and that if he were to marry, it would be her, but he doesn’t think he’s going to marry. He’s going to become a missionary. And so they decide it’s best to not correspond.

So here’s this young woman whose been in love with this guy forever, he finally tells her he loves her back, and then he basically “ghosts” her.

A few months later they start corresponding, and over the next little while they see each other very sporadically. Their letters are filled with, “how can we make sure we don’t love each other more than God,” and about how they have to put any possibility of a relationship on the “altar” (alluding to when Abraham sacrificed Isaac). They would obsess over any physical contact they had shared and wondered if it was too much:

The physical contact Jim referred to was my taking his arm when we walked, our sitting with shoulders tightly pressed together, and on one occasion as we sat on a park bench his suddenly stretching out on his back with his head in my lap. My fingers entwined his hair.

Elisabeth Elliot

Passion & Purity

And yet, while they were separated for his senior year of Bible college, word got back to Elisabeth through several sources that Jim had been kissing and dating several girls. Her response?

“What more could I expect? Jim Elliot was a man. Men are sinners. That was the simple truth. He was my ideal, but I had to come to terms with the truth. He had disappointed me. Hadn’t I disappointed him many times?”

Elisabeth Elliot

Passion & Purity

I read that and I went, “WHOOAAAA.” How, exactly, had Elisabeth disappointed him? Occasionally she had ventured to write in her letters that she was having trouble because their relationship was so uncertain, and she wished she had something to hold on to, but she knew that it was in God’s hands, and she just needed to trust.

That was about it.

And him? After not kissing her (and making a big deal about it), after refusing to give her any sign that he would actually marry her, while continuing to toy with her, he goes and kisses several other girls.

That’s big. And she glosses right over it and forgives him.

Jim Elliot spends the next few  years avoiding her, while telling her that he would do differently if there was any possible way he could.

He writes letters talking about how miserable he is that they are apart and that they can’t marry, but that God hasn’t released him to it. And he never makes any effort at all to actually see her or to figure out if they could move on with their relationship.

He finally moves to Central America to start language studies, and she follows and joins the same mission. But he says he can’t marry her until she learns the language.

Even when they’re together they’re not really together. He goes down the river, inland, to minister, and he’s gone for months at a time. She desperately wants him back for Christmas, and he tells her that he’ll try. But he never comes. He just sends her letter after letter about how sad he is that he can’t be there, and she feels guilty that she is hurt by this.

He’s always sad that he’s not with her, but never sad enough to actually make her a priority.

And then, suddenly, they marry without a second thought when an opening in the mission organization comes, but only for a married couple.

The time from when he first declares his love and when they marry? Five years.

Five years of him leaving her in limbo, letters infrequent, sometimes declaring love, sometimes not, always talking about how tortured he is, never doing anything tangible to tell her that he’s important to her.

And the point that Elisabeth wants all women to learn while reading her book? That you need to put your trust in God and wait patiently, and never actually demand anything from a man.

Want to explore more some of the dangerous messaging surrounding sex and marriage in the evangelical world?

Don’t miss The Great Sex Rescue–with the results of our survey of 20,000 women!

This leads me to a bigger point I want to make:

Just because a man serves Christ well does not mean that he would make a good husband or that he is honorable in romance.

I feel like, when Elisabeth looks back on her life with Jim, which was, after all, tragically short, she has to conclude that it was the model of what romance should look like because Jim was so good and godly in his missions. Because he was so sold out to Jesus, then whatever he did must therefore have been Jesus-filled. And therefore, if, in our flesh, we have problems with it, it must mean that we ourselves are not sold out enough for Jesus and we must reassess.

But what I have found is that men who seem “sold out for Jesus” often make the worst husbands, and are actually quite selfish and hurtful to those around them.

The guy I dated before I started dating Keith was “sold out for Jesus.” He was older than me, and he was the one that everyone in the Christian group at our university emulated, because he was so involved in outreach on multiple fronts. He led the prison ministry (the university town where we were hosted more prisons than any other place in Canada). He was preparing to self-fund a mission for a year around the world to serve with Mother Teresa, among others; he was going to medical school to become a medical missionary.

When he started dating me, he wouldn’t let me tell anybody because I was younger, and he didn’t want it to get out. He told me he cared about me, but when he left for his around the world trip, he made me no promises.

But how could I complain? After all, he loved Jesus so much.

I started dating Keith when he was gone and learned what it was like to actually be someone’s priority. 

I’ve often said that if I were ever to write novels (and I’d like to one day), I would write one about what would have happened had I married him instead of Keith (and I would have married him in a heartbeat at the time if he had asked). It would not have been pretty.

A.W. Tozer was another man who was totally sold out for Jesus but completely neglected his wife.

Sarah Bessey wrote an amazing essay about how he had always put ministry before family, and left his family broken in his wake. He died fairly young, and his widow remarried. When asked about her two husbands, she said this:

 

“Aiden loved Jesus. Leonard loves me.”

Sarah Bessey

The (Successful) Pursuit of God, Fathom Mag

As Sarah put it, that one observation was utterly devastating. 

I have had similar thoughts about Billy Graham being on the road so much and not really knowing his own children. Does God call people to abandon their kids? To ignore their spouses? Does ministry ever justify being absent from your family?

I don’t have a good answer, because obviously there are some jobs that do need to be done. But I think Paul answered it in 1 Corinthians 7: 

“I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided.” 1 Corinthians 7:32-34a

Paul didn’t write this to criticize married men for having divided loyalties (and he writes of women later in the same way), but rather to make an observation about the way things simply are and should be: When you’re married, you need to be concerned about your spouse. You can’t be as wholly dedicated to God as you were before.

So many “great Christian”  heroes of the faith have terrible marriages because they never learned this fact.

If you are married and your interests are NOT divided then you are not doing marriage well. And as a Christian husband, you are supposed to do marriage well.

We excuse a lot of terrible behavior in our heroes of the faith, and in those we know personally who are totally “sold out for Jesus.” But what I have witnessed is that being sold out for Jesus often means that you are very, very bad at relationships.

Maybe part of the reason some are sold out for Jesus is because they have vulnerability and intimacy issues and can’t get close to anyone else. And so it’s easy and natural to be “sold out for God.” Or maybe they’re healthy people, but they simply should never have gotten married. I don’t know.

But I do hope that we start judging the health of relationships on their own merits, rather than assuming that if one person is “sold out for Jesus,” that is evidence that the relationship must, de facto, be a healthy one.

I think that’s how Elisabeth Elliot must have justified all of this to herself. Because Jim was focused on Christ, he rose above earthly relationships. I’m sure many wives and girlfriends have done similar things.

But in reading Passion & Purity, I saw a shy, lonely woman being strung along and deceived, constantly feeling like if she could just please Jesus enough, he would fix this for her. And I was very, very sad for her.

I know there are other articles written about Jim & Elisabeth Elliot’s relationship, and I know some will inevitably mention them in the comments if I don’t link to them here!

So if you want to know more, you can read:

The Purity Hoax. Elisabeth Elliot was the evangelical sex guru because of a love story. Did it happen?How Elisabeth Elliot messed up my love life (behind a pay wall)

 

What do you think? Have you ever read Passion & Purity? What was your takeaway? Or do you know guys who are “totally sold out for Jesus” but who neglect their relationships? Or women who do the same? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Communicating Your Perspective When Your Spouse Isn’t Interested in Sex

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The post On Elisabeth Elliot’s Terrible Courtship–and Dating Men “Sold Out for Jesus” appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Did You Set Boundaries for Yourself as a Teenager?

Healthy teenagers learn how to set boundaries.

Well, healthy PEOPLE learn how to set boundaries! And it’s good to learn while we’re still young.

Rebecca and I are deep in the throes of writing our mother-daughter book combatting harmful teachings for girls in the church, and talking about how to raise girls who are emotionally healthy, spiritually mature, and wise. That’s why I haven’t been as active in the comments here and on Facebook lately–we’re just feeling a tad overwhelmed!

All week I’ve been working on our boundaries chapter, and I’ve been thinking deeply about how girls are taught about boundaries–how we’re taught that God wants us to love others first; how we’re supposed to be nice and kind; how we’re supposed to be at peace with everyone around us. And that can make girls feel as if they have no right to their feelings. If the most important thing is other people praying the prayer and letting Jesus into their heart, then we can’t cut anyone off, and we can’t end any relationship, because what if we were supposed to show them Jesus?

But this lack of boundaries can lead to girls making very unwise decisions about relationships and even marriage. And it can lead to a lot of anxiety.

So I asked on Facebook, “Anybody have an example of setting a boundary with a friend as a teenager?”

And I got some great answers! I want to post some below, and then leave it open for all of you to comment.

​My daughters have set some boundaries with a friend.

After giving her and her boyfriend a ride home and being uncomfortable with how physical they were being in the back seat (at ages 15 and 16), we told the friend’s mom that she wouldn’t be driving the two of them together anymore.

A friend tends to spend all of her time on the phone with online friends even when my daughters are at her house in person. They’ve now told her that they love to spend time with her, but they’ll leave if she is constantly on her phone.

I had a band director that repeatedly selected underclassmen for leadership opportunities despite me showing up for all the trainings my senior year. That particular director would make passive aggressive comments about me to other students and parents, so I decided it would be good for me to step away from that group. In doing so, I established a standard for how I would allow myself to be treated, even with adults and authority figures. It really helped.

I had a friend who, whenever we would hang out, it would inevitably turn into a sobbing cry-fest about whatever drama was going on in her life. I eventually got tired of trying to be her emotional sponge and one day told her “Look, I care about you and I want to be there for you, but this is too much. I can’t handle all of your problems, and I actually want to have a good time with you when we’re together. Maybe you should find someone to talk to who can actually help you, like our guidance counselor, but I just can’t take this anymore. I’m sorry.” Unfortunately, she did not like hearing that and we parted ways soon after.

My oldest is quick to stand up for what she thinks is right even if she’s alone or loses friends over it. She told the drama teacher that she didn’t think it was appropriate to do a play about a girl being raped despite pretty much the entire rest of the class declaring that she’s wrong and they’re old enough to deal with it. She had a few friends thank her later cause they had been raped and it felt like they had someone in their corner.

As a teen, I worked in a male dominated work environment. They were quite crude at times. When they’d tell dirty jokes, for example, I’d leave the circle and find jobs to keep me occupied. I sought to work hard and represent Christ by my actions first, and of necessary, my words. They’d ask me why I didn’t swear and if it bothered me. I would explain that only the words related to God bothered me because I’m a Christian… Because of the way I carried myself, they stayed treating me with respect and became super gentlemanly towards me. They also started to encourage others to respect my boundaries too. It was really neat to watch.

I asked the probationary driver of a car I was a passenger in to stop and let me out as I didn’t feel safe with the aggressive way he was driving. He took it well and drove safely after that. Had to speak up again as a young adult and the much older driver was mortally offended and wouldn’t talk to me for years. Be prepared to lose relationships but remember your boundaries are more important than their ego.

I had a friend who, whenever we would hang out, it would inevitably turn into a sobbing cry-fest about whatever drama was going on in her life. I eventually got tired of trying to be her emotional sponge and one day told her “Look, I care about you and I want to be there for you, but this is too much. I can’t handle all of your problems, and I actually want to have a good time with you when we’re together. Maybe you should find someone to talk to who can actually help you, like our guidance counselor, but I just can’t take this anymore. I’m sorry.” Unfortunately, she did not like hearing that and we parted ways soon after.

What if I told you that not all teenagers rebel?

And what if I told you that a lot of typical parenting advice makes rebellion more likely?

I interviewed 25 young adults, trying to figure out what made them rebel or not.

Here's what I found!

And here, as an example, is why boundaries are so important:

I had a friend in highschool who was very clingy, needy, and manipulative. Though I’m not certain she was aware of her manipulative and gaslighting behavior, it was there, and it was a catalyst for me going down a not so great phase/path. Anyway, at the time, I was friends with her and remained friends because she didn’t have, like, any. My mom sort of enforced this not realizing how bad she was for me until I had a complete emotional breakdown, shaking and bawling under a blanket on the living room floor. Then we attempted to set boundaries. If mom noticed a phone conversation going to a point that I wasn’t comfortable with, I could use my mom as the excuse to get off the phone. I stopped hanging out outside of school. And after school, I ended up blocking her for a long while. I got back in touch with her more recently and now have some quiet boundaries. I won’t give her specific details about where I live. I won’t agree to hang out. I won’t call or talk on the phone. And I leave a text convo whenever I darn well please and for however long I please. Having that incredible distance helps me to keep grounded and maintain a sort of acquaintance-ship with this person. Nothing deep. Just some pop culture stuff. Which, honestly, is somewhat refreshing sometimes when most of my people are close, deep, also talk about my life people. I kind of like having someone left on the surface level.

Many people gave a variation of this one, which I think is important!

I never set boundaries with my friends that they knew about, but I had a code word for my mom to just say “no” if I felt uncomfortable doing something. I would call her in front of my friends to ask to “hang out” (which could’ve meant anything), and if I said “pretty please”, she would say no and give some excuse. Got out of a lot of parties and situations because my mom was “mean”. I wish I was brave enough then to set boundaries with friends, but I’m not sure many teenagers are.

And I really liked these two pieces of advice, or guidelines:

Red, yellow, and green light people. Green we can trust (empathetic, honest, and authentic), yellow we trust with some things (I can laugh with this person) but perhaps not everything (don’t share intimate secrets) , and red lights – they’ve broken trust in many ways and I need to not have them in my inner circle.

Former high school principal here (and huge fan of teens) I always suggested them saying (when in a tough spot) “it’s not that i wouldn’t like you/don’t like respect you/participate in x it’s that I wouldn’t like me, thank you so much for understanding.” Then get out. Leave.

They can use (and have) in peer pressure situations or w adults who push too hard.

When I’ve “befriended” post graduation or if someone is sharing too much etc a good reminder on both ends is a smile and jokingly say, “oh boy on this one you are staying in your lane and I’m definitely in mine.”

I thought those were great! But I’m left with a few more questions:

Was there something particular that you believed in high school that made it harder for you to set boundaries?

Did you feel like boundaries would be “mean” or unChristian in any way? And if so, can you explain what you mean? Or did you just never have an example of it in your own life so you had no idea how to go about setting boundaries?

Did your parents ever help you set boundaries?

And if so, what particularly did they do?

Boundaries are the foundation of emotionally healthy relationships.

And if we aren’t taught from a young age that our own safety and comfort matters, it’s so much harder to set those boundaries later in life. 

It’s always going to be a balance: we do need to love others, and we do need to live lives that are not focused primarily on our own comfort and our own happiness, but rather with bringing the kingdom of God to earth. That means we need to be others-focused. 

But if we’re so others-focused that we lose ourselves, and we feel exhausted, sad, overburdened, and everything else that goes with living a boundary-less life, we won’t be able to do the things that God has specifically called us to. 

So how do we teach our teens? I’d love to hear from you!

You may also enjoy:Why boundaries are biblicalThe “boys will push your sexual boundaries” podcastIron sharpens iron: how to draw firm boundaries with a spouse’s bad behavior

Let me know: What made it harder for you to set boundaries? What made it easier? Or anyone else have a good example? (And thank you for helping us with our chapter!)

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Why Doesn’t My Husband Want to Make Love

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A Real MIshMash of Podcasts for the Week!

We’re taking the month of July off of The Bare Marriage podcast, but I’ve got some other podcasts to share with you today.

Until July, when I’ve tried to give myself time to slow down, I’ve been recording roughly four other podcasts each and every week since the beginning of January. It’s a lot! And I haven’t shared most of them with you yet.

On Thursdays, then, when we’d normally post the next Bare Marriage podcast, I like to post links to three other podcasts I’ve been on, as well as one of my favourite Bare Marriage episodes from 2021.

So here goes!

Public Theologians: They called me a firebrand!

Here’s a podcast where we delve into the story of the The Great Sex Rescue, and what distinguishes it from other books. What I loved about this interview is that he was the first one I can remember who actually had passages from the book that he wanted to highlight and read aloud. That meant a lot to me. And picking the Jodie and Tyler story was special, because that story always makes me cry (even though I made it up and it’s fictional! I kept picturing all my readers who have left comments like that over the years).

 

Listen in! Fight for Love with Rosie Makinney

Fight for Love was one of the podcasts I recorded first. Rosie is an amazing advocate for wives of sex addicts, and we had a great talk about the book in general and about the problematic way that lust is talked about in evangelical circles. She says that this episode is consistently her most downloaded every week!

 

Listen in! The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! And now for something completely different: Rebecca talks Why I Didn’t Rebel with Anchored Motherhood!

Before there was The Great Sex Rescue, Rebecca was already a published author with her book Why I Didn’t Rebel! Based on in-depth interviews with dozens of millennials, some who had left the faith and some who kept it (and some who came back after leaving), Rebecca identified 7 big trends in families who raise kids who are less likely to rebel (there are NEVER guarantees). But even if your child does rebel, if these seven principles characterize your parenting, they’re more likely to stay connected with you anyway.

Here she talked with Shannon from Anchored Motherhood about “why reasons over rules are the secret to peaceful parenting.”

 

Listen in! Bare Marriage: Dissecting Emerson Eggerichs’ Sermons Where He Gaslit Abused Women

I don’t know if it’s just that I’m in a bit of a funk this week or what, but this podcast episode will always come back to me as an important one. Connor analyzed a two-part sermon series Eggerichs gave on his book Love & Respect, and shows how Eggerichs gaslights abuse victims the entire time. We simply must be more discerning when listening to sermons. This isn’t okay.

 

Listen in!

Hope you enjoyed some of those! As always, let me know what YOUR favourite Bare Marriage podcasts were, and I’ll try to link to them next week!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Even IF Women Want Love More than Respect–Is That a Good Thing?

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Can Christians Use Sex Toys?

Today I want to revisit a rather controversial topic. Except “want” is really not the right word. I’d love to run as far away from this one as possible. But I keep being asked about sex toys, and I haven’t written about them in a long time, and my thinking has evolved a little bit. And so I’m going to jump in.

So here goes: Can Christians Use Sex Toys?

I want to make it clear from the outset, though, that I am giving my opinion. I do not claim to speak for God. When I was researching The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I had to think about this and give my opinion in the book, and I did. So what I have to say has been the conclusion that I have come to after speaking at marriage conferences, reading, and praying.

First, the context.

I believe that God created sex to connect us on three levels: the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual.

And sex works best when all three are involved! That doesn’t mean that every time you make love the earth has to move and you have to feel like you don’t know where one of you ends and the other begins, but the sum total of your sex life should connect you not just physically, but spiritually as well. You should feel connected when you make love.

As I’ve been thinking through some of the most common thorny questions I get, then, like masturbation or sex toys or whether a certain sexual act is permitted or not, I tend to come back to principles, not to rules (because I actually don’t think there are a lot of rules for this stuff). So let’s start with a few principles:

We’re talking about wisdom, not about sin

I tend to rely on Paul’s logic when he said:

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.

1 Corinthians 10:23

In fact, Paul meant that so much he said it twice! (He says something very similar in 1 Corinthians 6:12–everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial).

Because we’re talking about wisdom and not about sin, we each need to come to these answers ourselves. You don’t have to agree with me; you should wrestle through it. And what works for some may not work for others, because we all have different weaknesses and different strengths and just plain different circumstances. So I’d like to focus on how we can think this through with wisdom.

Why are Sex Toys So Popular?

Maybe that’s a dumb and naive question to ask, because likely a lot of people are saying, “If you don’t understand, maybe you should try some!” And I get it. But let’s just take a philosophical step back for a minute.

Sex without intimacy is only about orgasm.

Now, orgasm is great! Everyone wants great physical highs. But when we disconnect the physical from the intimate we lose something.

I have a theory about what’s happening with sex in the wider culture, and it revolves around this intimacy aspect of sex. We know that vulnerability is the key to passion. When you’re able to truly bare yourself in every way, you feel closer on every level, and that fuels desire. We found, for instance, in our survey for The Great Sex Rescue that women who felt emotionally close to their husbands during sex were far more likely to orgasm and have a higher libido. But vulnerability can’t just be produced on command. You need to have trust, and you need to have emotional and physical safety in a relationship. When that’s missing, sex won’t seem as passionate. And in the wider culture, many having sex do not have that emotional and physical safety because there’s no commitment.

So what’s one to do? Push the physical boundaries to try to recreate that erotic high that’s missing because vulnerability is missing. Incidentally, I think this is often why BDSM and physical vulnerability plays such a huge role in sex play. You recreate physically what should be true emotionally, but isn’t. And you get that erotic high in another way. (Again, that’s not to make a pronouncement on BDSM in your relationship; only to say that I think there’s a bigger picture going on here).

Now I’m not saying it’s wrong for for christians to have fun, or to stretch your limits, or even to stretch during sex :)! I’m just saying that our culture emphasizes the physical, and misses out on the deep spiritual connection from sex that we should experience.

Because the culture emphasizes the physical, it’s easy for us as Christians to start thinking that way, too. And if we’re concentrating just on the physical, it’s also easy for sex to become shallow. Where you don’t feel valued or loved; you just feel used.

That’s the background. Now for some questions to help us navigate this ourselves.

1. Do sex toys detract from intimacy or enhance it?

Are you having a great time in your marriage, but you just want some spicing up? You feel super close to each other, but you just want to increase the fun quotient, and you find sex toys do that? That’s great.

Or are you suffering from some physical issues that make certain sexual acts, like intercourse, prohibitive? And sex toys (in this case I’d almost prefer the archaic words “marital aids”) help things happen? Or help you feel like you’re still connecting? That’s awesome.

But I still have a few more questions:

2. Are sex toys enabling shortcuts in our marriage?

Most sex toys (not all by any means) are really masturbatory in nature. They help you have an orgasm.

Now, like I said, orgasms are great! But if sex toys are allowing you both to avoid doing some serious work in your sexual and emotional relationship that needs to be done, then they’re actually detracting from intimacy.

Are sex toys allowing you to take physical shortcuts?

We talk in The Orgasm Course about how it’s really important to know what an orgasm feels like in order to learn how to reach orgasm regularly with your husband. If you’ve been married 15 years and you’ve never had an orgasm, and you want to go buy a vibrator so you just find out what it feels like, that can help you learn to reach orgasm because at least you know what feelings to look for.

But just because a woman can orgasm to a vibrator does not mean that she can orgasm to anything her husband is doing. And if he finds it easier to use a vibrator on her than to figure out how to actually stimulate her, in the long run that’s probably going to feel empty. (And I’ve got a longer post on vibrators specifically, too).

Similarly, many couples where he suffers from premature ejaculation will use sex toys to help her get hot and heavy before they start anything that will stimulate him. Again, that can be a good plan. But if they then don’t put the work in to find exercises to help with premature ejaculation or explore any treatment options, then eventually this may feel like it’s a poor substitute.

The Orgasm Course is Here to Help You Experience Real Passion!

Figure out what's holding you back. Open the floodgates to orgasm.

Tell Me More about It! I Need that Now! Are sex toys allowing you to take emotional shortcuts?

Some sex toys are so powerful you’ll orgasm pretty much no matter what. Some are used in “play” that create a scenario where you don’t feel like yourself and you’re able to enjoy sex almost as someone else (or at least with a different dynamic with your spouse).

This means that sex can technically “work”, and everyone can feel physically great, even if there are major problems emotionally in your relationship. You won’t have to feel emotionally or spiritually close for sex to work. You won’t have to be emotionally vulnerable, but you can hold back.

And that can end up widening the gulf between you.

The need for emotional intimacy to make sex great is one of the drives that helps us bridge our emotional gaps. If we want to connect sexually, we’ll have to connect emotionally too. Make sure the dynamic in your marriage is not one where you’ve avoiding having those hard conversations, but you’re still having hot sex, so you feel connected when you’re actually not.

3. Are sex toys fuelling dissatisfaction with each other?

Most guys aren’t that big. And they can’t vibrate like that. You don’t ever want to start preferring something else to your husband!

Or is sexual play revolving so much around role play that you’re starting to worry that you don’t actually want each other anymore?

Or is one of you way more into them than the other, and once you’ve said yes to one thing, suddenly a big catalog on a website keeps being pulled up and more packages are arriving in the mail, and the other is feeling distinctly uncomfortable. If consent is becoming an issue, then step very, very far away from them. If a spouse uses a sex toy on you without your consent, even if you orgasm from it, that is still a form of sexual assault, and it isn’t right. We talked about this at length in The Great Sex Rescue as well.

4. Are sex toys dehumanizing?

This is a hard one to explain, because there is such a primal element to sex where it gets “hotter” when you are just using each other sometimes, or feeling used. When you become pure pleasure. I get that.

But when power becomes its own aphrodisiac–either having power over someone else or someone else having power over you–there is a disruption in intimacy. Intimacy means that you are completely seen. As I said, that vulnerability can be recreated with sex toys, but it can be a false vulnerability. Intimacy is two people wanting to truly know each other, which means both people matter. If sex becomes primarily about one person degrading the other, or treating the other like an object, that can become a problem, especially if this becomes the main way you relate to each other.

If you have to humiliate someone else, or make them feel uncomfortable, to get aroused or truly enjoy sex, there is an underlying issue there that needs to be addressed.

So there you have it: my big picture questions about sex toys.

For some of you they won’t be great, and for some of you they very well may be! I’m not saying you shouldn’t use them. You may be even thinking to yourself, “the thing that I want to use wouldn’t even fall under those categories”. Again, wonderful! I’m not trying to pronounce a blanket statement. I’m just trying to issue a cautionary warning: remember, studies have shown that what feels the best is two people in a committed marriage feeling emotionally connected during sex. It’s not two people stretching more and more boundaries.

There is nothing wrong with fun; fun is good. Driving your spouse wild is great! But there is something wrong with making sex into something that’s purely physical, or that’s degrading or detracting from intimacy. How you find that line is really between you and your husband. But I just urge you to think about those things, and make sure that intimacy at all levels is always the focus.

If you really want to make sex hot, think about trying 31 Days to Great Sex! There’s lots on how to feel connected in every way, how to talk about fantasies, how to spice things up–but all while feeling very intimate. 

Do you want MORE for your sex life?

The 31 Days to Great Sex Challenge was written to help you spice it up in the bedroom! 

Try new things, explore each other, and turn on those fireworks!

Let's Have Some Fun! Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts “New Evangelicals” and Podcasts about The Great Sex Rescue!

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The post Can Christians Use Sex Toys? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Communicating Your Perspective When Your Spouse Isn’t Interested in Sex

What do you do if your spouse isn’t interested in sex?

Often when I write about how to spice things up in the bedroom, or how to make sex more fun, the emails start to arrive:

What do I do if my husband doesn’t want to have sex? What do I do if my wife won’t read this series with me?  What do I do when my spouse just doesn’t think sex is important?

That’s such a lonely place to be! I’m looking this week at what to do when your husband doesn’t want sex, though today’s post could also apply when it’s not the husband with the lower sex drive, but the wife.

Often, in a marriage, it can feel like the spouse who wants sex the least has all the power.

You know when you’re dating someone, and you feel like you’re more invested in the relationship than they are? You constantly check notifications on your phone to see if they’ve texted. You jump at the chance to get together any time they want, but you’re desperate for a new date on your calendar.

The one who loves least determines the relationship.

And it can feel that way with sex, too. If you’re the higher drive spouse, and your wife or husband doesn’t ever seem to want sex, then you can feel as if something that’s deeply important to you is out of your control. That’s a difficult place to be.

In The Great Sex Rescue, based on our survey of 20,000 women, we found that couples who were the happiest were those who reported roughly similar libidos. But we also speculated that it was less that their libidos were exactly in line, and more that they had grown their relationship to focus on each other, and they’d naturally fallen into a good pattern. If you start to make out after the Netflix movie, and that turns to sex, who initiated? Who was the one who wanted sex more? It’s hard to tell, but you’re in this groove. That’s a lovely place to be!

But what if you’re not? How can you talk to your spouse about how you feel? Let’s take a look at that today!

Do you feel lonely and rejected when your husband doesn’t want sex?

I received a comment on this blog that pretty much sums up what many of the spouses who email me are feeling:

My husband has low testosterone and it is a huge struggle for us, even though he is being treated for it. The biggest thing is that he just doesn’t really see sex as an issue at all; it’s as if he wants a complete marriage, but if there was no sex, he’d be fine with that.

I am a Christian and love my God. However, at this time, I am struggling with being very angry with God because I am a “good girl,” raised in a Christian home and although I dated a lot before marriage (and fooled around), I saved myself for marriage and for my husband. Now I feel like I’ve been cheated or robbed. I know life’s not fair, and that there are worse things people are dealing with, but for me, I feel lonely, rejected, and bitter. He is a fabulous man, father, and husband, but it breaks my heart that he doesn’t see any need for sex in marriage. He’s not into porn, addicted to anything, etc….just apathetic towards sex. In a way, it’s worse, because there’s no “addiction” to stop, no “sin” to confess, nothing that can be “fixed.” Even with his testosterone levels raised to where they should be, he doesn’t really care about sex at all.

He still makes love to me because he knows it’s something I need, but I wish it was something HE actually needed, too.

She’s a little more fortunate, because at least her husband does acknowledge his wife’s need for sex and tries to meet it. Many people who wrote me don’t even have that. Their spouses have basically checked out (and we’ll look later this week at what to do if your marriage is truly sexless).

But today let’s deal with this problem: how do you help a spouse who does not have a drive for sex or an understanding that sex is important understand what your needs are? How do you talk to a spouse who doesn’t seem to want to have sex at all? Now, as I mentioned yesterday, a lot of the times when spouses aren’t interested in sex pornography is the root of the problem. If that’s the case for you, then here are 4 things you need to do if your spouse uses porn. For the rest of this post, I’m going to assume it’s not that your spouse is getting sexual release elsewhere, but it’s honestly that your spouse just plain isn’t interested.

3 Thoughts if Your Spouse Isn’t Interested in Sex1. If Your Spouse Isn’t Interested: Get Your Heart Right First

Don’t enter a conversation angry or bitter. If your spouse has wronged you, go to God with that anger. You need to have a conversation where you pursue what is best for you as a couple. Having a conversation where you’re trying to get him or her to acknowledge how much they’ve hurt you won’t necessarily help your relationship. There is a time to bring this up, once things are looking better, but if the desire is to move your relationship towards greater intimacy, that is what you should be focusing on, not vengeance. God calls us to love our spouses wholeheartedly, even if they don’t meet our needs.

2. If Your Spouse Isn’t Interested in Sex: Focus on Intimacy, not Sexual Release

Your spouse has an issue with sex. Chances are they find it a somewhat distasteful–if not very distasteful–obligation. It could be because they have really negative attitudes about sex; or it could simply be because they’re tired, they’re sick of having things on their to-do list, and they don’t want to have to do something energetic that they have to “get in the mood” for. Or, of course, it could be that sex just plain doesn’t feel very good to them. One of our big findings in The Great Sex Rescue is that women who don’t orgasm regularly during sex often have lower libidos. She won’t want something unless there’s something to look forward to, and if that’s your issue, the orgasm course may be a good place to start! 

But assuming it’s not porn, and assuming that sex, when you have it, does tend to result in orgasm, what then?

If you talk about your sexual needs to your spouse to try to resolve the issue, chances are this is what your spouse will hear (or at least this is what they’ll read in to what you’re saying):

I have sexual needs because I have never really developed self-control the way you have. I am a slave to my body, unlike you, who is able to focus on the important things in life. And now, because of my desire and lack of self-control, I want you, who are already busy, to get energetic and to pretend that you actually want sex so that I can get some release.

Not exactly a very attractive proposition, is it? Obviously that’s not what you mean, but even if you simply said something like this:

I desire you. I find you so attractive. You excite me. I want us to experience this together. I want to feel loved.

Your spouse will still hear the first bit and interpret it like that, especially if this has become a big area of conflict in your relationship.

So what should you do instead? Focus on the real issue–the one that both of you share. You want more intimacy, and sex is a doorway into intimacy. I would say something like this:

I really believe that God created us to long for each other and to be able to experience major depths of love and intimacy. I believe that God wants us to feel passionate about each other, close to each other, and truly intimate, so that we know that we’re not walking through life alone. I want us to feel so madly in love, and I want you to feel how much I love you. I want us to feel like we’re totally one, and I believe that the way that God made us to express that is through sex.

I know sex can be difficult for you, and I know you’re tired a lot of the time. I know you feel like you don’t have a lot of desire. But I’m worried that our lack of intimacy is actually partly the cause of some of that exhaustion. If we could really feel passion and really feel as if we were truly connected, perhaps much of the angst that we have both been feeling lately would evaporate.

I think God wants you to live such a big life. God wants you to enjoy everything that He created you for, and I think that we’re robbing each other of the gift of passion that God put in us. Do you think that we could try to rediscover passion together? I know it’s not easy, because you feel like you don’t have a sex drive. But it’s not just about sex; it’s about feeling so close to each other. That’s what I really want. Can we talk about how we can feel that intimacy, that passion, that closeness? And how we can make it easier for you to feel it? Because that’s what I think our marriage needs.

You’re focusing on intimacy and love, and not on release. The conversation doesn’t become about sex, or what you do in bed, or how often is enough. It focuses on how we can feel love for each other and how we can really experience passion.

Don’t argue about sexual release. Don’t argue about sexual needs. Don’t bring up 1 Corinthians 7:5, about how your spouse’s body belongs to you. Instead, bring up your desire for intimacy–an intimacy that will empower you both, energize you both, and equip you both to deal with the world together. When a couple is really experiencing that, they can take on the world.

Then the discussion can turn more to overcoming roadblocks for sex, like I’m just too tired, or I don’t really enjoy it, and you can start looking at how you can address these things to make intimacy easier. If your spouse is nervous about it, you can talk about it in a loving way, saying something like,

“I understand you’re tired, but I want so much more for you. God created you to live a big life, and I think He put me here to help you do that. Can we talk about how we can break through some of these issues?”

The point is to make the topic of the discussion that you love your spouse and you don’t want them to miss out on intimacy–it isn’t only about your sexual needs. It’s about your needs as a couple.

That’s actually what by book 31 Days to Great Sex is all about. It starts slow, helping couples just have some conversations about what they want sex to look like and what they believe about sex, but then has some “quick wins” in the first week where you do something fun that gives you both hope that things can get better.

Then, before we move on to things like how to make sex feel great or how to talk about how often we should be having sex we build up the relationship to focus on flirting, making each other feel wanted, having more fun, etc. We bring the tension level down early!

Now, some people are bound to chime in and say that I’m being too easy on the spouse. If they’re not meeting needs, they’re sinning and they need to be told to shape up.

Well, in an ideal world we could just say to someone, “you’re doing wrong”, and they would cease. But I have very rarely seen that happen in real life. What I am proposing is to talk about it in a way that is more likely to get your spouse to understand your heart, and more likely to get your spouse involved in seeking a solution. And to me, that is more important than telling your spouse that he or she is wrong and you are right. If you’re not at the point where you can do that, and if you’re still too angry, then I’d suggest you work on your anger before you bring any of this up with your spouse.

It also could very well be that your spouse has good reason for not wanting sex, and having a conversation about it that focuses on your relationship rather than you feeling deprived is more likely to elicit what’s really going on.

Do you want MORE for your sex life?

The 31 Days to Great Sex Challenge was written to help you spice it up in the bedroom! 

Try new things, explore each other, and turn on those fireworks!

Let's Have Some Fun! 3. If Your Spouse Isn’t Interested: Build Passion by Focusing on Intimacy in Other Ways

Intimacy should be the main focus of your conversation with your spouse, because as your spouse recognizes a deeper need for intimacy, he or she will likely recognize more of a need for sex.

But intimacy is deeper than just sex, and if you work on building intimacy in other areas of your life, you may very well also fuel your spouse’s desire for sex.

So work on your friendship. Spend time together. Develop hobbies together. Take an interest in what your spouse is doing. If your wife is overburdened with the house or with kids, take on some of the load. If your husband is overburdened with work, do what you can to help him. Help each other calm down, de-stress, and spend time together.

And then work on your spiritual intimacy. Our spiritual health is very related to our sexual health. When we feel close to God, we’ll simultaneously feel more like reaching out to our spouses.  As you serve God and worship God more, you tend to reach out for your spouse more.

I have found that in my own life, too. When my husband and I read Psalms before we go to bed, or pray together before we go to bed, I’m always more ready to jump him! So work on developing spiritual disciplines together. Go to church together. Read the Bible together. If you’re uncomfortable praying out loud, get a book of prayers and read those (that really is allowed). In many ways, sex is a picture of our longing for God; our longing to be deeply connected and deeply known. As we open ourselves up to spiritual passion, we’re more likely to feel other kinds of passion.

Pursue intimacy in all areas of your life: physical, relational, and spiritual.

And then talk to your spouse about how God wants you to live lives of passion and intimacy. That is His desire. If we as a couple aren’t experiencing that, we’re missing out on something beautiful. So do we want to live small lives, or big lives? And what can we do to work towards that big life?

Will framing the conversation about sex like this work?

No, not necessarily. You can never change another person; you can only change yourself. However, I do believe that focusing on your goals as a couple and what God wants for you as a couple will often yield better dividends than just telling your spouse what they are doing wrong.

Again, that’s the aim of 31 Days to Great Sex: to grow on each lesson, little by little, to feel closer, find more passion, grow vulnerability, and get to the root of desire in your marriage. I hope it can help you as you try to navigate this, because I know it can be difficult!

Have you ever tried to have a conversation like this? How did it go? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts “The Church Needs a New Sex Talk”

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The post Communicating Your Perspective When Your Spouse Isn’t Interested in Sex appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Why Doesn’t My Husband Want to Make Love

What do you do if your husband doesn’t want to make love?

That’s such a lonely place to be in a marriage–but it’s far more common than we might normally think.

When we were conducting the research for our book The Great Sex Rescue, we asked 20,000 women who had the higher sex drive: she or her husband (along with other questions). Then we asked men the same thing in our men’s survey for our upcoming book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex. And while in 58% of marriages the husband has the higher sex drive, in 19% of marriages the woman does (and in the others they’re roughly equal).

So what do you do if you’re a woman, and you’re married to a guy who doesn’t want sex–or at least doesn’t seem that interested in it very often. You wonder “why doesn’t my husband want me?” What’s wrong with me?

I initially ran this big series on women with the higher sex drive because husbands didn’t want sex back in 2012. I keep pointing to those posts, but I’d like to update them this week and rerun them, because higher drive wives is an important topic, and I want to make sure we’ve covered it well!

This week I want to talk about what to do when your husband doesn’t want to make love.

And before we get going, I want to assure you that usually the reasons your husband doesn’t want sex have nothing to do with you–and much to do with him. Maybe he has an abnormally low sex drive; or maybe it’s some other relationship or psychological issue. We’ll talk about how to understand what’s going on better, and then give some strategies about how to deal with this.

For the first part of the week, too, we’re not addressing marriages where she simply has the higher sex drive, but he does want sex. We’re not looking at marriages where they both want sex, but one just wants it more than the other. We’re looking more at marriages where the husband honestly doesn’t want sex very much–when he’s always turning her down. He doesn’t just have a lower sex drive; he seems to have hardly any sex drive.

I believe that God created both men and women with sex drives. We both should yearn to make love. However, in general, men tend to have more spontaneous libidos, while more women have responsive libidos. If men don’t ejaculate for a period of time, their bodies will actually do it for them during the night. Men tend to be aroused more quickly and easily, because biologically, they need to be in order for intercourse to even work.

That’s why men tend to have higher felt libidos. But “tend” doesn’t mean always. In any given population, some will have extremely high sex drives, and some will have extremely low sex drives. However, look at any bell curve and you’ll see that these extremes are quite tiny. So in most cases with a very low male libido, something else is going on.

What could those issues be? I want to look at the four main categories of reasons for low libido, and then we’ll turn to what to do about them later this week.

1. Betrayal Issues: He refuses sex because he has transferred his desire elsewhere

The category that is rising the most right now are men who are not interested in sex within marriage because they’re getting release elsewhere, especially with pornography.

A man who is using porn will slowly find that it consumes more and more of his life, and more and more of his sexual energy. Porn changes the sexual response cycle so that what is arousing is a picture or an image, not a real, flesh and blood person. And you often need more and more porn and more extreme porn to give you the same high that you felt when you started using it.

When men use porn, in general they masturbate as well. And so it becomes quite likely that eventually they will stop desiring their wives in the same way. That’s why the idea that porn can be exciting in a marriage is so off base. Porn steals the natural desire you have for each other. Sure, you may get aroused by the porn and then act it out with each other, but that’s not really making love anymore. The source of the desire was the image, not the person, and you’re still thinking about that image while you’re with your spouse.

Now, it’s not just men who use porn; around 15% of Christian women have struggled with it too. But an overwhelming majority of men had sought out porn, and it is hurting many marriages.

If your husband has a really low interest in sex, and you can’t figure out a reason for it, verify that he isn’t watching porn. Check his computer and his phone, and have a talk with him about it. Here’s a post on what to do if your husband uses porn.

2. Psychological Issues: He doesn’t want sex because of low self-esteem or stress

This one’s a big catch-all for a number of things that can affect his emotional state, and thus affect his level of sexual desire. Anything that causes stress can take up so much emotional energy that it can drown out libido. A rough patch at work, stress of exams or finding a job, stress of a new stage of life, all of that can impact whether or not a man wants to make love.

Also, a man’s sex drive is all wrapped up in his concept of manhood (just like ours is similarly wrapped up in how we feel about being a woman). A guy with a healthy masculinity will feel confident, will feel capable, will feel able to take initiative, though this may look different with different personalities. A man with a healthy masculine identity, then, tends to want to make love. But if he doesn’t feel like a man, he won’t. If he isn’t sure of who he is, isn’t sure of his purpose, and isn’t sure of his role, he could easily have no sex drive.

For instance, I know a woman who is walking through this right now. She married her husband a little later in life when he was working part-time. He has never worked full-time. He tends to spend his life on the couch, not doing a whole lot. He has very low motivation for anything, and doesn’t get excited about very much except video games. He isn’t very involved with his children.

When you look at his life, you can see that he doesn’t seem to have a “will” to do anything. And if you look back at his childhood, you’d see that he was rarely affirmed in anything. He was rarely told by his dad that he was doing a good job. And so he was never sure if any decisions he made, or any steps he took, were the right ones. So he simply stopped taking any. To anyone on the outside he just looks extremely lazy, but I do think there’s more going on there. I think he fundamentally was scarred.

A man can have his masculinity scarred in other ways, too. The root to his scars lie in his family of origin; but even within a marriage he may feel beaten down. There’s nothing wrong with bringing up issues with your husband--and you should do that! But please make sure that your relationship is not characterized by constant negativity, but instead that you also encourage where appropriate.  I have heard so many women constantly pick at their husbands, constantly correct their husbands, and I don’t even know if they realize they’re doing it.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! 3. Medical or Physical Issues: His libido is low because he has low testosterone or other medical conditions

Another big category for those with low sex drive is an actual physical issue with the hormone that causes sex drive. If he has low testosterone, he won’t desire sex as much. But low testosterone can also be caused by other physical problems, like diabetes or even some pain and depression medication–or depression and diabetes itself! Obesity can also lower libido.

The problem with this category is that because he doesn’t feel the need for sex, he likely isn’t upset about it, and so it can be difficult to get him to talk to a doctor about it. The good thing is that this category is the easiest to fix–if you can get him to go to that doctor’s appointment. So many women have told me that they suffered for 10 years, having the same back and forth fight over sex, feeling undesired, him feeling attacked–until he went to the doctor and got testosterone treatments. Things changed overnight. Their big reaction was, “why did we wait so long!”

Medical conditions themselves aren’t the only culprits that can impact our brain chemistry. Drug use, alcohol use, or any other addiction (even video games) can also impact libido. When something else replaces the high our brains get for sex, it can cause libido to shut down. In this case, it’s not a medical treatment that’s required as much as addiction treatments.

4. Sexual Issues: He doesn’t initiate sex because he’s nervous about his performance

Finally, there’s a category that’s a combination of #2 and #3. Let’s say that a man is nervous about the relationship and nervous about his own sense of self. One night you make love, and he can’t keep his erection. A week later it happens again. He was already feeling nervous; he was already feeling slightly humiliated within the relationship. Then erectile dysfunction hits, or perhaps premature ejaculation, and it becomes too much to bear, and he shuts down.

Or perhaps it wasn’t the relationship that was causing him to feel uneasy; maybe it was his ability to earn a living, or his relationship with his parents, or something else. If he then can’t finish intercourse, it can become a vicious cycle, where he’s afraid of trying again because he doesn’t want to fail, so he just shuts off.

Other relationship dynamics can similarly cause sexual performance to suffer. A common by-product of a wife having an affair, for instance, is a husband’s intermittent erectile dysfunction afterwards. He may feel as if he doesn’t measure up, plus he may feel an intense amount of grief and lack of trust. And that can cause some men to stop being able to perform, because they’re nervous and they’re sad. Another dynamic I’ve frequently received messages about is marriages where she’s spent years  rejecting her husband’s overtures. Maybe when the kids were little sex was on the back burner, or maybe you had relationship issues where you felt unappreciated and didn’t want to make love.

Then something changes and your libido returns, or you decide you want to prioritize sex. But he’s spent so long turning off his libido that he now is uninterested.

The message that I want you to take from this is that his low sex drive is usually something that can be addressed.

I’ve received many emails from women lately whose husbands fall into one of these categories (or else into almost all of them!). And these women feel humiliated. They feel as if they must be freaks, because everywhere else in our media it says that men are desperate for sex. Why don’t their husbands want them?

But there are many reasons for a husband’s low libido that have nothing to do with whether you are attractive, with whether you are desirable, or even with whether he loves you.

Now, these are very broad categories that I’ve mentioned, and they do often overlap, but these tend to be the issues that we see: betrayal issues; psychological issues; medical issues; or sexual performance issues. These are the things that impact libido.

We’ll look tomorrow at how to start tackling some of these things. But today, please know that you are not alone. And in The Great Sex Rescue, we wrote at length on how to navigate libido differences in a healthy way. Increasingly we’re realizing that it is not always the woman with the lower libido. We need to talk about male low libido more openly, and what to do when your husband doesn’t want to make love. This week, let’s tackle this head on!

If you’re in this situation, what specifically would you like to know? And do these categories resonate with you?

Other Posts in the Low Libido Husband Series:What to do when your husband doesn't want to make love (coming soon)Communicating your needs when your husband doesn't want sex (coming soon)10 things higher libido wives need to know (coming soon)You may also enjoy:8 Questions to ask if your husband doesn't want sexTop 10 Effects of Porn on his Brain and Sex Life

 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Can Churches Make Room for Stay at Home Dads?

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Even IF Women Want Love More than Respect–Is That a Good Thing?

We’ve all heard the trope that men need respect while women need love.

It’s in the best-selling book Love & Respect, which I have critiqued copiously. 

And as we pointed out in a podcast on the problems with unconditional respect, the whole foundation for the “men need respect while women primarily need love” is based on a survey by Shaunti Feldhahn that she published in For Women Only, which Emerson Eggerichs references as support. That survey was highly problematic, but most importantly, they only asked men (when other researchers asked women the same question, women also chose respect). 

This week, in our Patreon group, a reader gave another perspective that I felt was so interesting I wanted to share it. 

For those of you who may not know, we have a Patreon that supports our research and knowledge dissemination. The money doesn’t go to me or the blog; they’re self-sufficient. They go to fund the things we can’t monetize, including Joanna (my co-author for The Great Sex Rescue) working to get our research in peer-reviewed journals, and Rebecca working on new social media channels that I have no way of monetizing. 

When you become a supporter for even $5 a month, you get access to the Facebook group. And we have other perks, like unfiltered podcasts where Rebecca (and sometimes me) say what we really think; and merchandise; and autographed books; and more.

Anyway, in that group, a member wrote this:

 

I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking. I’ve come to a conclusion.

It doesn’t even matter if Shaunti Feldhahn’s survey was performed properly, up to standard or not. It doesn’t even matter that she ignored the [survey expert]’s warning that her conclusions were invalid.

Suppose I took a survey. I ask 1,000 employees of Walmart, Target, or some other huge corporation, half black, half white. I ask black employees if they have a need to feel respected by their white co-workers, and ask white employees if they have a need to feel respected by their black co-workers.

Let’s say my results are:

80% of white employees need to feel respected by their black co-workers.25% of black employees need to feel respected by their white co-workers.

Have I solved the problem of race relations?

Do I write a book telling black people that of course everyone needs to feel respected but white people really need it more? Do I start a massive industry, going around the country, speaking at corporate events, giving trainings to black and white people so they can learn to get along better at work by making sure black people show respect to white people? Because white people need it more and they haven’t been receiving it?

Of course not. We KNOW this would be utterly ridiculous and HARMFUL.

Many years ago, I taught at an inner city school, 98% black students, vast majority living below the US poverty line.

I think I learned more from them than they learned from me. If I had asked them if they needed the respect of the teaching staff (mostly white), they would’ve said, “hell no.” They were focused on avoiding peer humiliation (it was middle school), friendships, and safety. Does that mean they didn’t need my respect? Deserve my respect? Absolutely not. Even more, I NEEDED TO RESPECT THEM FOR MYSELF. I cannot bear to think what it would have done to me if I had believed that they didn’t need my respect as much as I needed respect from them. It was absolutely essential to the well being of my soul to know that those students NEEDED my respect far more than I needed theirs.

To say that an entire group of people (black teens and pre-teens) didn’t need respect as much as I did, that would have been a cancer inside of me.

And I’m terrified for the people who believe that half the planet doesn’t need respect as much as they do (men who believe the love & respect dichotomy).

Of course, it does matter that Shaunti Feldhahn’s survey was done to high school standards. Of course we should expect more from a professional book, published by a respected publishing company with funds to edit and fact check. Of course we should expect more from Focus on the Family, etc. But why are so many okay with a caste system in the church simply because of a SURVEY? We would never stand for this if the topic wasn’t gender, but race.

Lisa M.

Just because the world is one way does not mean that we need to conform to it.

Behind the scenes, Rebecca and I often have this conversation about the problems with the way all too many resources talk about gender relations.

As I’ve said before, I do not think that Shaunti Feldhahn’s research question accurately distilled men’s and women’s respective needs for respect vs. love. I don’t think we should take that survey question as authoritative at all.

But EVEN IF–as Lisa said, EVEN IF–it were true, where does this leave us?

Let’s say we did a survey that found that 80% of men had pedophilic tendencies (of course that’s not true; just using an example). What would our response be? That women and children need to understand that’s just how men are, and adapt to it?

Or would we say, “wow, there’s something seriously off with the way men are being conditioned to think of their sexuality, and we need to do something about that so children are protected.”

The sense I get from a lot of Shaunti Feldhahn’s work, and from works like Every Man’s Battle, is that they feel that because this is the way men are, women need to understand it and adapt to it.

But is this the right approach?

Maybe the right approach would be to start at Christ, and realize that His desire is that we all be transformed into His likeness (Romans 8:29), and that the kingdom of God is about serving, not being served (Matthew 20:25-28). And if a survey finds that a particular group of people–be it a gender, an age group, a geographic group, an ethnic group, whatever–isn’t living up to that, then our response should be, “what can we do to make the kingdom of God more a reality here?”

It isn’t to conform to what fallen people want; it’s to say, “how can we enter into this dynamic and transform it for Christ?”

Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong for men to want respect. But to say that women don’t, and thus men need it more than women, is to set up a very unhealthy dynamic that does not reflect Christ. And it is not only about respect that we see this play out in Christian marriage books. These books (like HIs Needs, Her Needs) as well often give a laundry list of what men want, and what women want, but they don’t talk about the dynamic this creates, or that we should really be focusing on what God wants.

The goal of the Christian life is not to make everyone get what they naturally want; it’s to transform our relationships into kingdom ones.

When we did our research for The Great Sex Rescue, it wasn’t to say, “this is how women are, so everyone needs to adapt to it.” No, instead we started with the biblical truths about sex–that it should be mutual, pleasurable, and intimate–and then we looked at whether this was a reality in a woman’s life, and why not.

In other words, we started with the truth, and then we asked, “how can we get there?”

I feel like many other studies, and many other books, start with, “here’s what men want, so here’s what women should do.” They measure the reality on the ground (though, as I said, I don’t actually think many of these surveys are accurate), and then they want us to conform.

But we’re supposed to conform to Jesus. (Romans 12:1-2)

Personally, I think we should start with what God wants.

And if we do a survey that finds that our natural inclinations, if played out, would take us further away from that, then the question should not be, “how can we make everybody happy?” It should be instead, “How did we stray from what God wants? And how can we get back there?”

What do you think? Does Lisa have a point? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts What Women Believe about Stay-At-Home Dads–Despite What the Church Teaches

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“New Evangelicals” and Podcasts about The Great Sex Rescue!

We’re taking July off of The Bare Marriage Podcast, so I have some other podcasts to share with you today!

Even though I’m not recording my own (I just need a bit of a rest!), I’ve been doing non-stop interviews on other people’s podcasts since January.

So I thought every Thursday in July I’d share a few of them with you!

1. The New Evangelicals

So many of the podcasts that invite me on are talking about getting back to the essentials of faith and finding Jesus again after being burned by the church. That’s the story of The New Evangelicals podcast and Instagram account.

This was a wide-ranging discussion where I told the story of the blog and the book, as wel as some of our big findings, and Tim and I had a great discussion. He also at one point called Kristin Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne) and Beth Allison Barr (author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood) and me the trinity taking down these lies, and I loved that because Beth and Kristin and I are hoping to do a big webinar in August where we interview each other!

Keith and I listened to this podcast yesterday on a long drive and quite enjoyed it, and I hope you will too.

Listen in!

Or watch on YouTube!

2. Holy Heretics: Rethinking Christian Sex Advice

The Holy Heretics Podcast, put out by the Sophia Society, is all about how to deconstruct your faith without losing it. I really appreciated this discussion as well.

Listen in! The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! 3. Gravity Leadership Podcast: Exposing the Lies We Believe about Sex

Gravity Leadership is all about talking about the things affecting the evangelical community today and how they relate to those in leadership, especially in the workplace. They were doing a series on how women are treated, and asked me to join that series.

Listen in! BONUS: Bare Marriage & Feeling Spiritually Homeless

I like to share one of my own podcasts too that you may all have missed. So many people have told us how much this podcast meant to them. It’s from last December, and it was one of our top 10 podcasts from 2020. But I thought some of you may appreciate our conversation, because it fits in with this idea of desperately wanting a new experience of faith where it’s based on everyone being focused on Jesus, rather than on power.

Listen in! It seems to be a lot of “new evangelical” type podcasts that keep inviting me on.

That’s wonderful! I love doing them.

I’ve recorded over 120 podcasts I think so far, but I hope that more mainstream ones will start to talk about this stuff, too. We need to change the conversation across the evangelical world, and it should not be controversial to simply say that sex should be intimate, mutual, and pleasurable for both, and that women are not responsible for men’s sin. This is common sense. This is biblical.

The book is selling incredibly well (thank you all! Keep talking about it!) and it’s resonating with people. So I hope that more mainstream podcasts will be open to talking about this soon. There have been some–and I’ll focus on those ones next week! But let’s keep them coming, because this is a conversation we ignore at our peril.

And let me know–do you have a recent podcast you’ve really enjoyed? Which one should I feature next week?

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Don’t Tell Women to Have Sex So He Won’t Watch Porn

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“The Church Needs a New Sex Talk”

“The church cannot continue to treat sexual desires as a male-only issue.”

That’s in the conclusion of a big article in Relevant Magazine about The Great Sex Rescue.

The three of us–Rebecca, Joanna and me–were all interviewed for the article, and I’m so thrilled they went into so much depth.

The author of the article really picked up on what we were saying about how Christians books present sex as something that men want and women don’t, and ran with that:

Historically, when a pastor or religious leader discusses sex, either from the stage or in a book, it is often geared toward men. Men are “tempted visually” and have life-long battles with lust they can barely control. A wife is charged with helping her husband with his battle by offering her body to him, no matter how she’s feeling that day. This narrative is pushed in popular Christian marriage books, such as Every Man’s Battle, Sheet Music and Love and Respect. However, this message goes against what the Bible has to say about sex between a husband and wife….

By focusing the conversation of sex primarily on men’s desires, the Church has caused immense damage to women. Women often feel as if they have to squash their own sexual feelings to elevate their husband’s needs, creating an unequal balance within marriages. Additionally, by making sexual desire a “male-only issue,” women feel an added layer of shame when battling lustful thoughts.

"The Church Needs a New Sex Talk"

Relevant Magazine

They talked about how women are made to feel shame if they have sexual feelings, and how women’s pleasure is emphasized over male need.

I’d say that the biggest problem with this is that couples don’t learn to prioritize her pleasure and she doesn’t realize she should feel pleasure, but because Relevant’s audience is often single, they really focused on another aspect: that women can struggle with lust and porn too, and yet this isn’t talked about and women are often made to feel shame about this.

It was interesting to see our findings and the discussion turn more to what singles might experience.

In all the interviews I’ve done, I’ve really been focused on more of the marriage aspect. After reading this I think I really should write more about our findings for singles!

And I love the way they framed the ending:

While the Church needs to acknowledge and reconcile with its harmful messaging, many members of the Church already understand this framing is not Biblical. The average evangelical would likely not agree with the male-only narrative in such rigid terms, but the fact of the matter is that the message is presented through the male lens by best-selling authors and pastors — and that has to change.

"The Church Needs a New Sex Talk"

Relevant Magazine

They gave Rebecca and Joanna the last words (which is likely wise, since Joanna is the most pastoral of all of us): 

Realizing there is a problem with the way the Church discusses sex is only the first step. Repentance must come next. The Evangelical Church is losing more and more young people each year for a variety of reasons, one being that they are tired of hearing a message about someone else trying to control them. A study from Lifeway Research showed that two-thirds of American young adults who attended a Protestant church regularly as a teenager drop out for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22. In order to counteract this decline, pastors and religious leaders must not only stop promoting this narrative, but also listen to women and men who have been damaged by this message to determine how the conversation specifically needs to change.

Lindenbach said she hopes the Church changes its message from a fear-based and shaming message, for both men and women, to a message full of freedom and the grace and love of Christ, “even if it’s a little bit messier, because I think that at the end, we’ll end up in a better place.”

Although the Church may not be able to wipe away the hurt and abuse women have experienced, it has an obligation to protect women moving forward. Gendering sexual desire — or any sin for that matter — has caused too much damage for too long. It’s time for the Church to begin reconciling their damage.

“My hope is that the Evangelical Church will listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd,” said Sawatsky, “which means having hard conversations, which means that using Bible verses as cudgels, is inappropriate and must end. Repentance is required. And I just hope that they’ll do the brave, and hard, thing.”

"The Church Needs a New Sex Talk"

Relevant Magazine

Read the rest of the article! It’s actually kind of fun to read an article based on a wide-ranging interview and see what they pulled out and considered important.

I really appreciated being featured in Relevant, and I hope that our calls for the church to do better–to have a new sex talk–will be heeded! 

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! I’ve said that my whole goal with The Great Sex Rescue is to “change the conversation about sex in the evangelical church.”

It was really neat to see Relevant Magazine frame the article that way–even in the title. 

But this is really hard for us to gauge while we’re in the middle of it. So I’d love to know from all of you: Do you think the conversation is changing? Are there things that are giving you hope? Have you heard The Great Sex Rescue come up in conversation–or have you seen it in other places than just on this blog?

Funny story from Joanna about that:

A friend from a previous church in a previous city was talking to one of the pastors at that church where Joanna had been quite active. The pastor was asking after Joanna, and the friend told him about this new book project she had just worked on. He stared at her for a moment, ran to his bookshelf, and pulled The Great Sex Rescue off of the shelf and stared at the author names. 

Apparently he had bought it just a few days before because he had heard it was such a good book–but he hadn’t even realized that one of the authors had once been his friend and colleague! So that was really cool for him (and for Joanna when she heard the story). And that made us feel like the book was being talked about in bigger circles than just ours!

What do you think? Is the conversation changing? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Big Question Podcasts about Evangelicals and Sex

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The post “The Church Needs a New Sex Talk” appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Can Churches Make Room for Stay at Home Dads?

I was blown away by the many great comments on yesterday’s post on stay at home dads. 

Across my platforms I had a lot of feedback, and i was going to write something else today, but several themes kept emerging from the comments, so I thought we could talk about it a little more. 

A few women said that they would hate the idea of a stay-at-home dad, because it would make him effeminate and would emasculate him and they’d lose respect and attraction for him, but that was definitely the minority. 

I’ll start with this great story that encapsulates so much of what goes into decisions that couples make:

​Following fertility struggles, when I finally got pregnant, my husband floated the idea of him staying home with the kids instead of me. I am the Mom, I just assumed I would stay home! But his logic was sound:
– I’m a teacher, which is an amazing job for a parent. I’m home for a year with the baby on maternity leave, I’m home every evening and weekend, I can pick them up from school, and continue working after they are in bed.
– He is a paramedic, which is a high stress, dangerous job that requires shift work and an incredible tax on mental health
– I hate laundry, cleaning, etc
– He enjoys the instant gratification of ‘it wasn’t clean and now it is’.
– I need grown up interaction to be a balanced human
– He is quite content to enjoy quiet
– when I had our first, he was making more money, but we knew that would shift as I had more earning potential.
– there was MUCH higher likelihood he would get hurt at work than me, and if we lost his income, it would take years for me to get back into teaching
– my pension is way better
So I took the 8 months off with my son, and the first year with my daughter. He got better parental leave than I did, so he took his leave as well to bridge the rest of the year home with our son. I still breastfed both kids for a year, and exclusively bf both for 6 months.
– he dropped to part time and worked Friday nights only for a while.
– Now that the kiddos are older he works more, but still part time so there can always be someone home with them.
– He gets to go on field trips, and be one of the “hot lunch ladies” at their school.
– he took our daughter for a manicure this week. When she was little, he took her to the hairdressers for a lesson on doing little girl hair, which they all thought was adorable.
– we both cook
– he still does the stereotypical gender role things: car repair, garbage, lawn care, BBQ-ing, etc. I do Christmas, birthdays, homework, vacation planning, etc.
– his buddies are all jealous of him. He gets play time, nap time, cuddle time, etc.
Here’s the thing: we are both leaning into the skills that God has blessed us with, and that positively impacts our children. They get a Dad who is not burnt out, mentally healthier, loves to engage with them. They get a Mom who is demonstrating how you can have a career and a family, who also has to make sacrifices to be a good Mom, but has an amazing support system allowing her to learn and thrive in her career.

Jaci

Now, there is an element in her story that many people brought up: It makes sense for the woman to stay at home in the beginning.

Only women can breastfeed!

As a Canadian, we easily do what the couple here did–have the wife take a year long maternity leave first, and then have the husband stay home after that. We get a full year of maternity leave (it can be stretched out to 18 months if you choose, but the money doesn’t change; it’s just stretched out). In addition, dads can take up to 40 weeks of paternity leave (though together they can’t each take it). Many couples have her take 9 months, and then he tops up an extra 3 months.

As an aside, I just have to say, when I read about American maternity leave policy only getting 2 weeks, or 6 weeks, or even being thrilled with 12 weeks I get so, so sad. I seriously tear up and can’t handle it. At 12 weeks Rebecca wasn’t even healed yet from the delivery. The baby still isn’t sleeping through the night. To me, proper maternity leave is a human rights issue. We’ve had year long maternity leave in Canada since before Rebecca was born (I took a year off of my Master’s program then), and I know Europe and the UK have similar programs. I honestly feel so, so badly for American moms. I honestly can’t imagine. I just can’t.

And there’s another element too: they were able to afford for the dad to stay at home.

This couple both had well paying jobs, so it worked. I understand that this isn’t the case for everyone, and many of you need two full-time incomes. This post isn’t meant as a judgment on that, but rather a plea that we allow people to do what works for their family, rather than trying to slot everyone into one mold.

In fact, as we shared in The Great Sex Rescue, we found that ACTING OUT traditional gender roles did not impact marital satisfaction one way or the other. But as soon as you believed that gender roles were assigned by God, bad things start to happen. So it’s not that traditional gender roles are wrong, but feeling as if there is only one way to do family and get God’s approval does hurt people.

That’s something else that came up in the comments: People enjoyed finding creative solutions to work/child care:

 

My husband was stay at home dad for several years. He was not at all emasculated or threatened by me earning $ for our family. He is by and large a very blokey kind of guy. It was the best thing ever for us. He brought a different element to our home, bonded with our kids, taught them to be adventurous. He also learnt about the mental load of running the house, became a far better partner, and gained lots of respect from me and our kids. Allowing me to advance my career for that few years while he explored new options without the burden of just earning an income have lead us both to a place where I can work in a fantastic part time job and he has a new full time job he would never have been able to get without those years of SAHD. The only down side we found was judgement from some church friends who assumed the dynamic we had was “unbiblical” and emasculating….

Denise

My dad was a cop and my mom a doctor. It made sense for dad to stay home with me when I was little, and he did a great job. I’m very thankful for those years with him. And even more thankful that he was secure enough in himself and his relationship with Mom to be able to make that decision for our family. He has always been our protector and provider, even when it wasn’t by producing income.

Laurie

The best scenario I saw was a married couple I’m friends with. she took one year off, then her husband took one year off, then they both dropped to part time. I was blown away by this, which saddened me, coz it shouldn’t be that mindblowing.

Karlee

In some ways this last scenario is what Rebecca (my daughter who is often on the Bare Marriage podcast with me and who was co-author of The Great Sex Rescue) and her husband Connor plan on doing: everyone working part-time so that they both can enjoy time with the kids.

Right now Connor is mostly working full-time for me (he’s working on a huge migration for the blog when we rebrand soon) and Rebecca is home with Alex. But Rebecca and I (and Joanna, our other co-author) have a book deadline of September 1 for our moms of daughters manuscript. So Connor’s been switching his work hours so he still works 8 hours a day but he doesn’t start until 10 or so, and he gets the first few hours with Alex. And he says he’s so much happier starting the day with his son.

When you can juggle something like that, it’s great! When Katie was a year old and Rebecca was 3 1/2 Keith finished his residency in pediatrics, but we were waiting for a job to open up in his home town. So for six months we each worked part-time. I earned the same as him because I was doing database programming, and those six months were some of the most fun of our lives. We were each doing important and challenging work, but we were also each getting time with the children. And the girls loved it.

Unfortunately, all too many churches don’t acknowledge that the stereotypical way of doing family is not the only one.

It’s clear that most people believe that doing what works for you as a family is best. But if churches don’t start acknowledging that this is a good thing, then more and more couples will head for the door, feeling unwelcome.

My husband has been the one cooking, cleaning, and doing the majority of care for our toddler since he lost his job shortly after she was born. And I am the breadwinner with the career job for now. He’s not felt that he fits in at churches, since stay at home dad issues are never addressed and few other men are in that position. He’s been wanting stay at home dads to be acknowledged & affirmed at our church for a long time.

Jennifer

One of my closest friends has this arrangement – she is the primary breadwinner, and he stays home with the kids. He’s a licensed MFT who had his own practice – but this choice made the most sense financially and for other reasons for them, and both of them are happy with this arrangement, particularly while their kids are very young. When they first made this decision it was quite unusual for our church community – but most people were generally supportive. However, they did also have multiple people confront them to say they were not making a “biblical decision” and express concerns about her husband. So apparently those people would not only agree that having a stay at home dad isn’t as good as having a stay at home mom – but would further suggest that God doesn’t approve of situations with stay at home dads.

This is a side issue – but I’m honestly so tired of people using the word “biblical” in front of nouns (biblical womanhood/manhood/decisions, etc.). In my experience this is primarily a way for people to say that their opinions are God’s opinions, and therefore disagreeing with them/their interpretation is disagreeing with God. It’s manipulative and in some cases spiritually abusive, and I would love to see that language dropped out of Christian vernacular altogether.

Charissa

The reason I walked away from my old evangelical church was because my husband ended up being a stay-at-home dad. When we got engaged, my pastor called us into to talk to him and said he had concerns, one of which was that my husband didn’t seem career oriented and wasn’t in a place to provide for a family, in his opinion. He said that while there’s “nothing wrong” with a man staying home with children, it’s not truly God’s path.

Fast forward 3 years later when we had our first child, and both were sort of in between careers. It was terrifying, but I started praying. I used to pray specifically for my husband to find a job, but then I switch to praying that God would provide for us. When my son was 6 weeks old my old boss called me and offered me one of two full-time positions available in that workplace.

I don’t need a paradigm of conformity to tell me I’m doing God’s will. My husband has been an amazing father, has contributed to the home in more ways than being solely a homemaker, and we’ve been able to make a true partnership. It just irks me that some would see that as a sin.

Side rant; we need to get changing tables in all men’s bathrooms!

WC

It really was interesting reading the comments and seeing how many people were finding creative solutions, or were supportive of stay-at-home dads. The culture is definitely changing.

I just hope that the church as a whole wakes up and starts supporting families, and not just judging them. And remember that “the church” isn’t just elder’s boards and pastors, but us as people. How do we all treat families who find a different work/child care balance than we do? Maybe we should all ask ourselves that!

What do you think? Would a stay-at-home dad be welcome in your social circle? Would a working mom? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts You’ve Got to See These “Fixed it for Yous”!

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The post Can Churches Make Room for Stay at Home Dads? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.