Pursuing Intimacy with a Reluctant Husband

Don't hold on to the shame and blame of what you're experiencing.

This, again, is a we issue, and if your husband will not go to counseling with you, begin counseling for yourself. Have someone to talk to, someone that's safe, someone that's going to provide you with biblical guidance. I don't recommend that you go to girlfriends or to your mom or a sister to begin with. This is a really private matter that needs to be addressed.

With the utmost care, I'm not talking secrecy, I'm talking care. That's Sherry Mueller describing the pain and the anguish that a significant number of wives feel about a lack of intimacy, physical intimacy, in their marriages. This is Focused on the Family with Jim Daly, and this topic won't be suitable for younger listeners.

Thank you for joining us, I'm John Fuller. John, anyone who's been married for probably more than a few days realizes that men and women are very different. And typically we marry people who are opposite.

I mean, Jean and I even get down to, I like dark chocolate, she likes milk chocolate. But it's, you know, a morning person, a night owl, an introvert, an extrovert, all those things. Because typically we're looking for somebody, even unconsciously, that compliments our own abilities. And that's just normal.

I think that's what the Lord means by a completer. We complete each other in that way. There is intense passion and love that couples have, especially when you're first married. That infatuation stage where we're really overlooking all those differences and waking up with big smiles and looking forward to the new day.

But eventually that can wear off and then normal sets in. And oftentimes we cover, you know, the emotional differences, spiritual differences. It's always a little delicate to talk about physical intimacy, but we want to cover that here at Focused on the Family.

We want to be with you in that journey, make it as powerful as possible for each of you, and then also as a testimony to the Lord. So today we're going to talk about one in three women who struggle with their sexual desires being greater than their husbands. Not a topic that is often talked about, but we are going to go after that today so we can express some ideas, thoughts on how to manage that. Yeah, and we have two great guests with us. Sherry Mueller is a licensed counselor and an author. And she's written a book for Focused on the Family.

It's the basis for our conversation today and the title is, I Want Him to Want Me, How to Respond When Your Husband Doesn't Want Sex. And then we have our own Focused colleague, Erin Smalley here as well. She's an author, speaker, licensed counselor, and is a primary spokesman for the ministry with her husband, Dr. Greg Smalley, for Focused on the Family's Marriage Ministry. Sherry, welcome to Focused on the Family for the first time. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a great pleasure. Yeah, it's good to have you.

And Erin, welcome back. Always good to have you. Thank you.

Thank you. Always great to be down here with you. Is life busy right now? It's busy. We just returned from two weeks away. Oh, that's nice. That's always busy.

You pay the piper when you get back. That's for sure. Let's Sherry get into it. This is a really interesting topic. I read the book.

I read the prep that the producers have put together. You've heard from many married women who struggle in marriages where there is little to no sex. I'm not quite sure what the clinical definition I've heard. If you're having sex 12 times a year or less, that's a sexless marriage.

So I don't know, again, what those parameters are, but you can tell us. Share story that illustrates how these women are feeling. Well, to address that too, the term I believe is sexual anorexia.

But for the purposes of the book, desire discrepancy is also another term that gets used. And so one of the stories that I share is the story of Hannah. And she has been in a sexless marriage for over 10 years. And she's really desperate to feel loved and cherished and understood by her husband. And she went away on a weekend with a bunch of her college friends.

And just as college friends will do, we share, we tell stories. Sometimes we share too much about our husbands and our kids and things like that. And so a lot of times the women that she was with were sharing how frequently they felt their husbands were desiring, how frequently they were desiring, how they have one track minds, their light switch is always turned on. And deep down, she just felt she couldn't share, because it's the exact opposite of what she's experiencing in her marriage.

You know, and I think in a more traditional context, a lot of people struggle to even believe that's true, because so many marriages, it's the opposite, what I would call normative where the male sex drive is much higher than the wife's sex drives. Erin, you've talked about this a bit, but you and Greg have hit patches where that has been a struggle for you. What were the circumstances and how did you and Greg, you know, kind of cope with this and bring it to the surface and then begin to deal with it? Yeah, and specifically when Greg was getting his doctorate, so many years ago when we were first married, and his sex drive was low. Granted, we were about two years into marriage. And so I was like, gosh, I don't know, like, is this normal?

Is this, but typically what women do, and this is what I did is I began to internalize it that something was wrong with me, with him, with what was happening. And I went to him and asked, and he said, you know what, my stress level is so high. And he also was dealing with stress at school, feeling failed.

Maybe I can't do this. Can I hit the mark? And it was impacting his sexual desire. And so the good news is we were able to talk through it and navigate it and help me just to understand that this is what was happening. Sherri, I would think that'd be so typical in that situation that the wife says, okay, what have I done to be the problem here? Women are so good at looking at themselves first. Men's egos, I think we tend to say, yeah, this is the woman you gave me, God. You know, so in that context, dealing with the shame and the guilt, how does a woman kind of move beyond that and have maybe that discussion and start to talk about what's happening here?

Can we figure out what's going on? The problem is that, as Erin mentioned, we internalize it. So we look at ourselves as the problem. And we don't often do a really good job at coming back to our husbands and communicating what we're feeling or why we're feeling neglected or forgotten. And so we often internalize the shame.

We will blame ourselves. And we're afraid that if we bring anything up, even within the church or to another girlfriend, that we're going to be judged, misunderstood. And so this really has become a secret agony, a secret place of shame. And who, after all, wants to admit my husband has no sexual desire for me?

Yeah, because it feels like parenting. It reflects upon you, the woman. The reason he has no desires is because I'm not appealing and or whatever, fill in the blank. Erin, in that context, I think it's healthy to talk about God's design for sex. I think with couples that are dealing with this issue or the reverse, where the male, the husband's sex drive is much higher than the woman's.

You know, along with finances, this is always the top one or two thing that could push a marriage apart to the point of divorce. What is God's design for sex? He created it. We didn't make it up. And this is supposed to be a gift. And even at that, we kind of put our hands over our mouth and our ears. And yeah, it's a gift, but it's the Christmas present nobody talks about.

So often at marriage events, we begin seeing this pattern of these sweet ladies coming up and kind of whispering to us, we haven't had sex in months or years. And my heart goes out going, what is happening? But what I know about God's design is it's something that's worth fighting for. And it is not a me issue. It is a we issue that we can look at this together.

What is really going on? Going before the Lord and going, you designed us differently. However, you gave us this gift that is to draw us together and to bless. And it's something for pleasure for both of us. And so what do we do?

And so really it's starting there and going before Him and asking for His wisdom and guidance. Yeah, and it's really touchy when there's unhealthy stuff related to that. I mean, we recognize there may have been abuse of some sort, all those things that can contribute to a shame or wanting to cover or hide in that area of your marriage. And those are things you need to work through and get usually professional help to unleash what God has given you in a much healthier way. Some of those factors are important to understand.

So you touched on a bit with Greg and the pressure and stress that he was under. What are some additional things that can affect a man's drive? There could be a physical condition, maybe low testosterone, maybe high blood pressure, maybe a recent surgery, you know, it's looking at that. Or maybe, as you mentioned, maybe past abuse that hasn't been worked through. Or at times there can be pornography addiction. Of course, pornography use can be on a whole spectrum, but it's looking at what's really going on. Or maybe there's infidelity. So it really is going, okay, there might be something kind of up here, but what's really happening, I always say, underneath the water line.

No, it's so good. And it's so important to talk about that and to figure that out. There is, like the garden, you know, we were ashamed when we realized, Adam and Eve, that they were naked.

You know, and it kind of all started right there. We're like covering up and now we cover up in different ways. And again, God is not honored or glorified in this really important area of a relationship, especially in the marriage. Sherri, this topic is personal for you because you have lived it, you and your husband, Jim. There was a season in your marriage where Jim experienced a deep depression that began to interfere with your marriage. So that's another one, depression, which seems understandable, obviously, but seems episodic that you would have those good times as well.

What happened with you and your husband? Well first, I want to let you know, I didn't write the book to share my story. I wrote it to share the stories of women who have shared with me. It's really for them. And that's about one in three women, you say.

That's a big number. That's where my heart was in doing this. I wasn't thrilled with God's timing because my story and Jim's story came about during the writing of the book. So guess what, God? I'm going to... Wow. You know. He was like, you're going to write about it. I'm going to let you live it so you can write even better.

Yes. Wow, you don't like those lessons. So I wasn't amused by his timing in any way, but I had a really good conversation with Jim and I said, do you feel there's an aspect of this that we can share with the audience that will make us more relatable? And particularly in the Chicago area, we go through very, very dark days, very dreary gray days. And they call it the seasonal blues, but the real term for it is seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. And this one particular winter, couple winters back, this really hit Jim really hard. And so we started investigating with some doctors and different ways that we could treat it. And a lot of the medications that are given for depression really do have libido side effects. And it's not a question that couples ask their doctors together, because it's embarrassing to sit there and go, well, what's this going to cause for us? And for Jim, it completely drained him of his energy, not just for a month, but for months.

So in Chicago, winter blues start showing up in September, and they love to last till May. That's a great length of time. And I was not a happy camper about this. I didn't like how the doctors were approaching it. And we did this together as a team. Like Aaron said, it's a we issue. And a lot of times, we don't think that this is an issue to go in together. And for me to be there as an advocate, a second set of ears for my husband. I mean, if it's cancer, we're going to go with our spouse. If it's rheumatoid arthritis, if it's another ailment, we're going to go. But most men are going to be pretty embarrassed to go in and address this issue.

And wives want to tackle it. So I certainly had some, what I called some come to Jesus meetings with the doctors. And it really took a while.

But what God brought back to me during this season, just sitting at my desk one day, and really pouring it out to him. We went through another season together after the birth of our youngest daughter. And I went through a series of six surgeries after her birth. And that was a season of discovery for us. And learning, oh, my gosh, what do we do if intercourse isn't part of our marriage for six months, a year, and in that case, for us, it was longer. And so all of that led me to a place of, I had to find a way to have compassion for Jim. I had to switch my heart gears, I would call it, my head and my heart weren't matching up.

And it was a great place of God showing me some things that I honestly hadn't discovered about myself. Yeah. That's what this life is about, right?

Yeah. And my mind was more focused on Jim's performance than it was on caring for his heart. And I needed to switch it over and care for his heart.

What a revelation. And Sherry, in your book, I Want Him to Want Me, you're really trying to help married couples recognize that intimacy is meant to be more than just sex. And you use a candy bar analogy.

Go ahead and explain that. Well, when we first get married, I call it, we're good with the Hershey bar, because it's inexpensive and we can have as many as we want, right? Over and over and over again, life changes and life gets in the way and work gets in the way and kids get in the way and keep on going. And so, for me, as life and marriage has gone on, and Jim and I are celebrating 48 years of marriage this Wednesday, I compare it to having Godiva. There's a certain richness and a sweetness in our intimacy together. And creaminess and luxury and time and all of that kind of goes into our dynamics together today.

And that's what I love about it. It may not be what we first had when we got married in 19 and 20. Our eyes got opened. And God wasn't with us when we first got married, too. We were married 12 years before I became a follower of Christ and 15 before Jim became one. So Hershey versus Godiva, life is better.

Hopefully Godiva says, just went through the roof today. But Sherry, let me ask you this. I understand you often ask couples a certain question during that counseling.

What is that question and then what's the importance of asking that question? Well Jim and I were pre-marriage mentors first. And I became a counselor. I didn't go back to college until I was 51.

So this is my second half of life. And so a lot of the premarital counseling that we do, there's a question that we ask is, if your intimacy was taken away from you due to illness or other health issues, would your marriage survive? What would building intimacy look like for you if you can no longer have intercourse? And it's a pretty shocking question that really opens the eyes of couples of will our marriage survive if this isn't part of our day-to-day or week-to-week, even year-to-year. So it's one that they sit with and they don't always have the answer to. A lot of times we come back into a second session after they've had some time to mull this one over.

Yeah. So the purpose, what does that drive the couple to do or to think about? Frequency or commitment or heart issues? Where do they end up after they answer that honestly? Well, faith-based couples and non-faith-based couples still struggle with their sexuality before marriage. And so a lot of them build their relationship on that first. It helps them think about how can we build our relationship differently?

What are we going to integrate other than that? No, that's good. I'm thinking of 1 Corinthians. I think it's in chapter 7, but there's a little warning that we're given by Paul for married couples not to deprive one another of sexual intimacy. And certainly in taking that break from sexual intimacy, gear it toward praying and fasting, but don't go too long there and deny one another in case the enemy should come in and work his havoc within our relationship. That's a paraphrase. Speak to that, Erin, because I think, again, this is something that creates such friction within marriages, within couples. And I think Paul had it right there in terms of the need to understand one another. It's not abusive. I know a lot of women that struggle and a lot of men, obviously, that struggle are going to say, now you're using the scripture to beat me over the head. But there's a caution there for us because, obviously, mischief could come and something could happen, whether pornography, an affair, those things. They're not justified.

Make sure people hear me loud and clear. I'm just saying that door is cracked and then we have potential for greater issues. And I would say it's important that a couple is talking about this and seeking professional help. Again, a wife, if her husband's sex drive is low because of pornography or an affair, and granted, that can go both directions. Yeah, right now, if I understand some of the data that I've seen, about 29% of Christian women are now viewing porn.

Yes. Recognizing, though, that you're not responsible for your spouse's choices in both directions. However, it's something that we can work at together and agreeing. For this season, for a reason, maybe it is we're working with a licensed Christian counselor and we're choosing to set intercourse aside. However, as Sherry's talking about, it's so important that we're looking at, how are we building spiritual connection, intimacy, emotional intimacy, intellectual, and all of these things. Granted, those are not a replacement for sex because sex is this amazing gift that God has given us. However, there are times when there's been a lot of pain or something else, a medical issue, that for a season, we choose to hit pause.

Yeah. Erin, let me start with you on this last question, which is most important. And again, we want healthy functioning as Christians in all areas of our marriage. So for those of you that are doing the Adam and Eve cover up right now, how are they talking? Why are they talking about this?

Why would they open everybody up to this conversation? It's to be healthier, to be better in relationship with your spouse as your witness to the Lord, to your spouse, to other people that might see your joy or lack of joy because of this area. Let me ask each of you to speak to the wife who's feeling this overwhelming frustration, perhaps guilt, shame about her marriage in this area of physical intimacy. She may have lived with this for a while, this pain in her heart.

What does she do after hearing this to start a healing process, which may or may not involve her husband? Very much so. One of the things I recommend is educate. Educate yourself. Begin reading. Even listening to this program is the beginning of educating yourself. Don't hold on to the shame and blame of what you're experiencing.

This, again, is a we issue. And if your husband will not go to counseling with you, begin counseling for yourself. Have someone to talk to, someone that's safe, someone that's going to provide you with biblical guidance.

I don't recommend that you go to girlfriends or to your mom or a sister to begin with. This is a really private matter that needs to be addressed with the utmost care. I'm not talking secrecy. I'm talking care.

And if you can build up the confidence as a woman within yourself to realize we can do this and we can do this together, a lot of times the communication shifts or changes between a husband and wife. Let's also add anything you want to that, Erin. But let me, you know, like I do, the last question.

Oh, but there's one more. You can address that issue of the husband who's struggling here because we really haven't talked to him specifically. What should he be thinking about if he's going, oh, they're describing my marriage.

Yeah. And you think about she might be feeling some shame and guilt and I'm not good enough. Imagine what he might be feeling. I mean, there could be a lot of shame if he knows there's a hidden secret or just I'm not hitting the mark and I want to be successful in my marriage. I want to be a good husband. And so for both, like Sherry is saying, educate yourselves, talk to trusted, safe individuals, like a licensed Christian counselor who can care both for the individuals and the marriage because two whole healthy individuals are going to make up that healthy connection.

So, so important. And as you talk to each other, it's really figuring out what do we want our sex life to look like? What do we want our marriage to look like?

You know, a great time to evaluate all areas of intimacy. How are we doing and what do we want it to look like? So we have a goal that we're working towards.

So good. And we've really scratched the surface. We've just started talking about the content in the book. So let me encourage you if you're living in this space and maybe you can translate it.

If you're the shoe is on the other foot, it's still great content. If the husband has the drive and the wife doesn't, they're very similar in their core issues. But most importantly, if you're that wife that is struggling, your husband's desire isn't there, let's get you a copy of this book to start that journey together. Also, you can call Focus on the Family. We do have caring Christian counselors who can help you. They'll talk with you. They'll pray with you.

They'll provide additional resources. And let's get the ball rolling, so to speak, to move toward a healthier relationship. You can do that making a gift of any amount to Focus on the Family. We'll send you a copy of the book, I Want Him to Want Me, as our way of investing in your marriage.

And you can invest in others through a gift of any amount. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459, where you can find details about the book, I Want Him to Want Me, and our counseling team, if that's needed, in the show notes. Also, John, Hope Restored, which I'm really proud of, something we've been doing for a long time now, 80% success rate after two years going to the Intensive. Get ahold of us and ask us about that program.

And that will really address many, many of these issues and equip you with the tools to do this better right away. And if that's something you need, get in touch with us. Yeah, we provide intensive counseling over several days, typically four days, for couples who are seriously concerned about their relationship. They may feel like they're on the brink of divorce. Some of these couples have already signed divorce papers. Focus wants to help save your marriage if that's where you're at.

So call 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes for details. Sherry and Erin, thank you so much for being with us on such a difficult topic. You did it very well. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

And thank you for joining us as well today. Well, coming up tomorrow, an important conversation about technology in your family with Arlene Pellegane. A lot of times we'll think, well, we just want to give the screens because it makes it, let's be honest, easier on us, easier for the kid. But guess what?

What kind of character does a kid create when they just have an easy life? Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed, even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.