Well, what do you do if you want sexual intimacy and your husband doesn't? As women, we can get so stuck within ourselves that we forget to see really the man that God gave us as a gift the day we got married.
So when we can step back from that and really begin to understand him, his wiring, his physical makeup, how God wired him emotionally, that's where the hope lies, is stepping back into that place. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times best seller "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, what does a wife do when she has a greater sex drive than her husband? We'll talk about that with author and counselor Sherry Mueller. He's written our featured resource today titled, I Want Him to Want Me, How to Respond When Your Husband Doesn't Want Sex.
Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. As you might imagine, today's topic is probably not for young children, so I want to mention that here at the beginning of the program. But at the same time, I think this could be also a teaching moment for you and your kids when they hear about marriage and sexual intimacy.
So let me just throw that out here at the beginning of the program. Gary, we have talked for many years about the differences between men and women. But when I saw this title, it intrigued me because many of the calls we've taken through the years have been from women who have sexual needs that aren't being met in their marriage. Yeah, Chris, that's true.
And I think most people would probably not imagine how many women fall in that category. So I'm excited not only about the book but about having Sherry, the author, here with us today. So I'm looking forward to this discussion. Let me introduce Sherry Mueller. She's an author, speaker, licensed clinical professional counselor who works with individuals, premarital couples, and married couples in building and maintaining healthy relationships. Now you know why she can be on this program. She is co-founder with her husband, Jim, of Marriage Track and Growth Track Ministries.
She and Jim are high school sweethearts and they have two daughters, five grandchildren. Our featured resource is the book, I Want Him to Want Me, How to Respond When Your Husband Doesn't Want Sex. Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Well, Sherry, welcome to Building Relationships.
Thank you for having me today. You wrote an article that received a lot of response, but one woman's note to you was really the impetus, as I understand it, for this book. So can you tell us about that and what she said? Yeah, she responded to an article that we had in an e-newsletter that we send out through our ministry each month. And the article was called Going Sexless. And here's what she wrote.
She wrote, Oh, wow. I thought I was the only woman who feels this way. I get sick of reading or hearing from other women how much their men think about sex constantly and how much they want it because my husband is the total opposite. I found pornography on his laptop and he lies about it and shrugs it off is no big deal. I was blamed for looking at his history. We even went to counseling over this with our pastor and it was completely looked over. It's so frustrating that my husband gets to be this way and I'm the one who hurts deeply. I'm a wife who is neglected sexually.
He doesn't even kiss me anymore. So Sherry, you got that response and the book didn't come immediately from that, but you saw a need there, didn't you? I did. That article and that response was actually 10 years ago and it really sat with me and there's been more responses from other women along the way with similar articles, but I've also encountered it quite often in my counseling practice, which really also surprised me considerably. And what it did was it made me begin to think that there's something more here and something more that's not being explored in the faith community.
Many marriage books will address this in a paragraph or maybe a short chapter, but I wasn't finding anything where a whole book talked about this subject. So God certainly likes to do very uncomfortable taps on the shoulders. Well we are excited that you listen to God's tap on the shoulder, okay?
Thank you. Now through your counseling work, you say that you observe that husbands and wives are not wired to be completely in sync sexually, and that that's okay. Explain that. Well God wired each of us differently, not only in our personalities, but also very much in our sexuality. And the world around us, especially movies and television shows, wants to tell us that the only way to be compatible is to be exactly the same.
And I take issue with that. You know, being married as long as I have, we have gone through ebbs and flows, and that's an okay place to be. Different sexually, different in how we're wired.
We're not meant to be clones. And I have experienced that in the counseling room and have seen substantial differences that people just don't talk about. What are some of the false beliefs and narratives about husbands and wives and sexual desire? Well the primary one that I encounter is men should always be the initiators. They are always ready and able to have sex at the drop of a hat. Another big one that I hear quite a bit from women of faith is that all men look at porn, and that's normal. Sex should be frequent, several times a week. Sex is for my pleasure and my release.
For women, I need a manly man to pursue me. Also, that when a husband fails to respond sexually, that it's primarily the wife's fault. So a lot of these have been what I would call filtered through our conscious and our unconscious. We hear it from friends, we hear it from girlfriends, we hear it in the media. I think a lot of our listeners, men and women, can identify with what you just said, because I think there are a lot of folks out there that have those perceptions. So what are the statistics of women who desire more sexual intimacy than their husbands? Well, when I started digging into this and looking at the research on it, a great deal of research over the last 20 to 30 years has been done by men about women's low desire.
And it hasn't been until the last 5 to 10 years that there's been a flip of that switch where there's women researchers now looking at men's lack of desire. And as I was doing the digging, the statistic of 1 in 3 women will experience this with their husbands. And in some research, the statistics have been even higher than that.
So I took an average of about 30%. And it was quite shocking to step back and take a look at that number. I think most of our listeners would be shocked to hear that statistic, because I think what you said earlier is more the common thought among Christians and non-Christians for that matter. As Chris mentioned earlier, we get calls to this program just about every month from women who say, I haven't been sexually intimate with my husband in several years. So when we get those calls, these women are not alone, right? Well, that's one of the reasons I believe God pushed me to write the book is so that women would not feel alone any longer in this space in their marriages.
I wanted to be that voice for the women, especially women of faith, because this is held very close and it's held in secret. Do you think that most women who do have this feeling, they don't reach out for counseling, they don't share it with their friends, they just really try to not talk about it? What woman that I've ever met, or maybe that you've ever met, would be open to saying, my husband doesn't desire me. So there's a great deal of embarrassment and fear. There's a risk of further feelings of rejection and shame, not only from their husband, but a pastor, a lay leader, a Christian girlfriend, who potentially might judge them if they were to come forward.
And I love a quote that it came across from Brene Brown. Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough. Sherri, you write, and I'm quoting from the book now, many Christian women today suffer in silence. They endure virtually sexless marriages and desperately want someone to address this issue from their point of view. How has the church helped or hurt these women? Sadly, with women who have shared with me, a large majority of the time, the church has hurt rather than helped. And Julie Slattery brings up, the church has offered sex education while culture is sexually discipling us, forming our opinions and worldview on everything sexual. So that message is very clear and consistent, but the message sadly within the church has not. And so there's been a great deal of misguided advice by pastors and lay leaders and small group leaders simply for the wife to try harder, to submit, to lose weight, to light candles and put on a negligee and entice their husbands with their favorite meal. And again, it goes back to she's responsible and the responsibility of the sexual well-being of a marriage actually falls on both partners' shoulders, not just one.
Yeah, yeah. You know, as Christians, we look to the Scriptures, of course, on any topic that we're talking about. So let's talk about what the Bible says about women and their God-given sexuality. You know, when you looked at the Scriptures, what did you find? Well a lot of Christians don't pick up the book called Song of Solomon or Song of Songs. And my understanding, it's a beautiful poetic book that's kind of snuck in there in its form. But it paints a wonderful and beautiful picture of God's design for sexuality. And it's just not picked up often enough. And when I went back through that and looked at the interaction between Solomon and the Shulamite woman, she pursued him.
She pursued him with her eyes, with her touch, with smell. And why wouldn't God give that to a woman? So it really made me go back and question some of my own perceptions as well. You know, I sometimes say about the Song of Solomon, it's the book we don't read in church. No, we don't. If we do, we're very selective, you know.
But I think you're right. In fact, I've encouraged couples at my marriage conferences. I say, why don't you read the Song of Solomon together? You know, I said I wouldn't suggest more than a chapter a week, but just, you know, work your way through that book because it speaks very overtly about sexuality for sure.
Yeah, it's spicy. Well, and then you get theological strains and some people allegorize it and say, well, this is this and that and the other thing. And, you know, there are some allegorical things in scripture, but it seems like if you don't see the sexual intimacy in marriage in that book, then there's something wrong.
Like you say, you know, it's a book that you don't necessarily teach in church or hear in church. And I wonder if that's not part of the problem, Sherry, in this whole communication thing, that if we don't, if we can't talk about that in church, then how do you talk about it in marriage? And how do you communicate, hey, it feels like there's something off here between the husband and wife. If you don't have those open lines of communication, you really have nowhere to go with this and you do stay silent, right? Absolutely. And communication is key. It's something, as a couple, that we absolutely have to sit down and talk about. And more often than not, sadly, it's avoided.
Yeah. I think this book will be a tool that husbands and wives can use to read through, you know, and let him hear, let him, she shares whether these are her feelings and how she feels and let him hear her voice. So it's a good communication book. I think it'll foster communication for couples.
That's what I'm praying for. Let me give you the title of it. I Want Him to Want Me by Sherry Mueller, How to Respond When Your Husband Doesn't Want Sex. You can find it at the website buildingrelationships.us. And let me get a phone number in here too. If you're listening today and you want to respond to what we're talking about, we may include your comment or question on a future Dear Gary broadcast. So let me just tell you the number 866-424-GARY. Call with any question or comment or response that you have to our topic today.
1-866-424-GARY. Sherry, you, uh, you in the book talk about several individuals, examples and all of this. So I'd like for you to share some stories of women who do struggle with intimacy in the relationship. Tell us, for example, about Hannah and her story. Well, Hannah decided to go on a weekend journey or get away with several of her college friends.
And of course, a lot of times, as we will do as women when we're hanging out with some of our besties, we talk about a lot of different things and we share and many times we can overshare. But several of the women in her group were talking about how often their husbands pursue them and how often they struggle with that themselves. But Hannah found herself staying very, very silent during this weekend trip with her friends. But she was sitting there and again, deeply embarrassed to even admit that she has a husband who doesn't pursue her, that she's always been the one to do the pursuing and oftentimes being turned down. And so she stayed silent, certainly out of her own embarrassment and certainly out of her own pain. And it was a pain she felt she couldn't share with the other women that were there with her that weekend. Did she in fact share or not? She did not.
She stayed quiet. I'm guessing that some of our listeners are thinking that would be me if I were in that setting. Absolutely. And then the isolation intensifies, you know, the shame, the silence. I'm all alone with this. I can't I can't trust anybody with this. I can't talk.
My husband won't talk about it and I can't talk to my friends about it. So that gives you just an inside look at the isolation that she feels. Right, Sherry?
Absolutely. And that pain runs so deep with regard to rejection. Another story that you include is a woman named Angela.
Tell us about her. Well, Angela had been married for many, many years and felt that she had done everything she could to have the communication with her husband, to take steps to break the ice, to go to counseling as well. But throughout the years, it had gotten to a place where her husband was modeling what's called indifference. I would call that that she didn't matter, that she was an important stonewalling or giving her the silent treatment. And Leslie Vernick, who wrote The Emotionally Destructive Marriage, speaks about how deeply destructive indifference is to marriages and that it is a form of emotional abuse. And this was the really hard reality that Angela wound up having to face in her relationship with her husband. Yeah. Sherry, you talk about Hannah and Angela.
Are these real people? Well, to protect the identity and the stories of the women that are mentioned in the book, I had to do what's called composite stories. And that was a really important aspect of that confidentiality that I did not want to break. And I identify that in the beginning of the book that these are composites. So with Angela, I do not know her final outcome in her marriage.
I wish I did. But when abuse is part of a marriage, there's a lot deeper issues that need to be addressed than just the dynamics of sexuality. Yeah. And I think all counselors certainly appreciate that reality because we do not want to reveal confidentiality. But there's enough of the stories, various stories, that kind of come together in a very, very similar way. But let's talk about the husbands now. What are some of the reasons why husbands may not be as responsive in the sexual area with their wives? What are some of the things that are going on in the husband's heart and mind? Well, I did not interview any husbands for the book, but I do have one at home who was a wonderful support.
He was open to even writing a short piece to husbands at the back of the book. One of the dynamics that I address is so often physical health and mental health challenges are present. And it's not something that men are openly willing to address.
In the book I call it pulling a root canal. Particularly, I find that a lot of couples when it comes to their physical health and mental health, they don't do it well together. And one of the big questions that I propose, especially when it comes to medications, is ask your doctor the question, how will this medication affect libido?
It's an embarrassing question to ask, but it's immensely important because so many things that we take and we put into our bodies, particularly for men, even when we're talking, let's say, with regard to diabetes, that's going to affect sexual desire as well. I've talked about a man who's been victimized. He was sexually abused. Even what has come up more recently, certainly in our culture, is that a husband may have not revealed gender confusion, bisexuality, or homosexuality. That's coming up a great deal, even in Christian marriages today. He's having an affair. The big one that I do talk about quite a bit is the use of porn. So neurodiversity, ADHD, autism, and certainly insecurities about his own body.
Men also struggle with that themselves. We had this call, Gary, that came in on our listener line. It was the wife saying, I knew on the wedding night that there was something wrong, but it took like 10 or 12 years for it to work out that she understood this.
Her husband was arrested down the road for soliciting a police officer, undercover police officer, a male police officer. She said, now I can see this looking back, what was going on, but at the time I couldn't see it. Sherry, so you hear those kinds of stories too, don't you?
Absolutely. I certainly wish that wasn't the case, but sin, even in our marriages, certainly gets hidden on many different levels. And it's something I encounter in the counseling room every single day.
I wish I didn't, but it really is the nature of the world that we live in. This is the Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman podcast. Thanks for listening and for telling others about the conversations we have here. When you go to FiveLoveLanguages.com, you can find more ways to strengthen your relationships. Just click the resources tab and you'll find the podcast there and our featured resource. I want him to want me. How to respond when your husband doesn't want sex. It's written by our guest, Sherry Mueller.
Again go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. You know, Sherry, in our last segment, you talked about physical and mental difficulties that men may be going through and that medications that they may be taking, you know, and for those situations would greatly affect them. But you also mentioned the use of porn. And I know in my own, looking back at my own counseling record through the years, this has been one of the major factors I've found is that if men are not expressing interest in being sexually active with their wives, it leads back to the fact that they are probably addicted on porn.
Tell us what you discovered about that. And later we can talk about how should a wife respond to that. For many marriages today, especially when I'm sitting with a wife, often doing a split session or a single session with her, she will admit that she knows her husband is looking at it. And when I address, well, how, how does it feel for you?
What's your experience with this? They will tell me that they see this as normal and this is something that all men do. And yes, Christian men do look at porn, even Christian pastors do. And it has infiltrated our society so deeply that a lot of women tell me they just have to accept it, even though they will tell me this feels like a form of betrayal to them. But if they want a man in their life, they're going to have to live with it. And I say, personally, I'm like, how can you live with that level of betrayal? How can you live with that level of comparison that as women we can never measure up to?
Yeah, yeah. I've had many women in my office say, what's wrong with me that he has to go somewhere else? Go into an unreal world because porn is an unreal world. You know, while some certainly may come to the place where they kind of press themselves to simply accept it, I think there are others that, that realize, no, no, this is not to be a part of a healthy marriage relationship. And I sometimes say to gentlemen and men who are involved in that, you know, Guy, if you follow that road very far down the road, it will be addictive, as addictive as cocaine. And you will need divine help to break that bondage and come back into the real world. I don't personally think that, that men find ultimate satisfaction in pornography. You know, ultimate satisfaction sexually for men is, as the Bible says, it's a husband and wife who have an intimate relationship with each other, you know, and it's one expression of our love for each other.
So, wow, this is, this is such an important, important issue. During the writing of the book, you share a personal experience that occurred and some things that God revealed to you. Share some of that with us. Well, I always love how God wants to give you a sense of reality as you're writing, writing stories about others, and then he wants to integrate one of your own.
And I didn't find it amusing. But during the winter months here in Chicago, my wonderful and loving husband Jim really struggles with the winter blues. And the technical term for that is seasonal affective disorder. And there was one particular winter that this really hit him hard with lack of energy, with deep sadness. And we had to tackle quite a few doctor visits together to get to the bottom of it.
And this girl was not a happy camper, because winter blues, they hit around early October, and they like to last into April or May. And it just made me cry out to God. It made me ask a lot of questions. It made me have some come to Jesus meetings with the doctors. I went to all of those appointments with Jim, a good majority of them, because I had to advocate because he was in a really hard place when he was struggling to advocate for himself. And it helped me learn a lot about my own mindset with regard to our sexuality as a couple, that I had to love my husband's heart more than his body.
You know, I think when we go through things, I say we as counselors and pastors and Christian leaders, God intends not only to walk with us through that, but he wants to use the difficult times we've gone through to help other people. So thank you for being vulnerable. My wife and I years ago said if we're ever going to help people, other couples, we have to be honest about our own struggles and things we've been through. So thanks for sharing that.
You're welcome. What are some of the fears and some of the feelings that wives have about coming forward and communicating these concerns with their husbands? The biggest fear that I hear is that their husbands will continue to push them away further if they come forward to talk about this.
The other fear and concern is that they will be met with anger. And the biggest fear that I also hear from men is that they will be perceived by their wives as weak, but they'll also, if another man were to find out that their desire is low, that they're also going to be perceived as weak by other men. So this topic and addressing it is coming forward with a place of, I care for you, I care for our marriage, and I care for our sexuality. A lot of times those conversations tend to happen in the bedroom, not the best place.
They need to be in a quiet place or even over a cup of coffee together and share it in a way that communicates empathy for the struggle. Doesn't that, though, also, you have to be careful with that because the woman can feel like if I don't say this the right way, then it's my fault again. Absolutely. You get right into that cycle again, like the hamster on the wheel. So there's a fine line with that in that communication, isn't there? Absolutely, yeah.
So how do you navigate that then? Let's say there's a wife listening right now and the husband pushes back, he's a little defensive. You could either say, well, he's been to pornography or he's having an affair or whatever, or it could be something that's out of his control, medical, as you mentioned. What does that wife say? How does the conversation look?
I would describe it as my heart is for us to be the best that God has asked us to be in our marriage, that I want and desire connection with you, even if it isn't going to be intercourse that we are experiencing other types of love and touch and connection. Can you meet me there? Can we find a way and a path forward? Can we look at getting some help together with regard to this? And you may get pushback.
Absolutely. But don't just leave it sitting on the table to never be discussed again. If you need to, as a wife, go and get your own counseling for a little while and process all of these feelings of hurt and rejection and pain. And maybe sometimes doing that first before coming back to him will give you a greater sense of how you can express those feelings with him. That goes back, Gary, to something that you've said for a long time, and that is, if you are a conflict avoider, if you grew up in a family where there's a lot of conflict and you don't want that in your marriage, then doing this hard thing of bringing up this topic is going to be like climbing Mount Everest.
It's really hard, isn't it? Yeah, I think that's true, Chris. And that's why I think this book can be very, very helpful to a wife. For example, the wife, just reading those things that you shared earlier, Sherry, about the different kind of things that might be going on with the husband physically and mentally and medications that he might be on. And if she realized that, oh, well, my husband has this or my husband has that or he's taking his medication, it may help her realize, oh, that may be the source of this. That's probably an easy place to start in bringing up communication.
And let's discuss this with your doctor and let's see how this medication is affecting you. I think this book is going to be a real resource to ladies who are struggling in this area and may open up communication. In fact, if your husband sees you reading the book, he may ask you, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? Yes.
Exactly. And you can say, well, honey, I'm glad you asked. I've kept a lot of stuff inside, but this book is revealing kind of who I am and I'm realizing I'm not alone. There are others that are going through this, but I just believe it could be better. It's an open conversation that's not condemning, but seeking to understand. And yet, of course, you can't make a man be sane or respond in a sane way.
He may get angry, and angry is probably one of the more common responses because he may feel like, you know, you're kind of judging him or putting him down or whatever. Let me ask this question, Sherry. How long is too long to wait for a husband to come around to adequate desire for sex in the marriage? That was a tough question I had to wrestle with for a little bit, to be honest with you, but adequate is going to be different for every couple. And perhaps God is saying, stop trying to fix things and redesign your husband. Let me do the work in him.
Pray, watch, wait, listen patiently. If the only goal is intercourse, then both the wife and husband will be deeply disappointed. If the goal is returning to intimacy and redefining, really redefining what that looks like in small steps in your relationship, because so many of us define intimacy two ways, sexually and emotionally. And we really stunt our description of God's design for intimacy if we're only looking at it through those two lenses. So in severe cases where it's been years and years, where there's been indifference, where there's been abuse, I put this in the book that I do recommend a time of healing separation. And that's a very structured time that is worked through with either a pastor or with a counselor, especially when you have a husband who absolutely refuses to get any level of help. So there is a time for tough love.
There is a time for tough love, yes. Now look who we have in the studio. Jim, the husband of Sheri for 48 and a half years.
Can you believe that? Co-founder of Marriage Track and Growth Track Ministries. When Sheri mentioned this, Jim, that you wrote this chapter to men at the end of the book, I thought, I got to hear what you have to say.
So jump in here. What do you say to men at the end of her book? Essentially, I don't want to make it sound like it's easy for a man to know what's going on in the relationship. I think most men are not tuned into that.
They're clueless sometimes. When I had feedback from Sheri, I would say in the beginning, I wasn't picking up on what Sheri was communicating. And so I would just let it go and probably said, if I just ignore it or empathize a little bit, this will get better. And as time went on, I think Sheri provided less feedback to me, even though the problems were still there. Eventually, I know that there was a point where I pursued some outside help. One was with the depression.
So do you remember when that happened? Well, we had gotten through the holidays together, and I just observed you being very absent with me and absent with the kids, just not really enjoying it. And so after the holidays were over, I just sat down and said, I'm missing you.
I'm missing us. I'm missing the connection that we've often shared together throughout our marriage. And what are we going to do to get some further help for this? And I'm just grateful that you were open to getting that further help and exploring what we needed to do to get you feeling better.
I would first say that this was just not about our sexual relationship. It was about intimacy, you know, from a high level, also spiritual intimacy. It was communication. Part of that also was the empathy that I had. I think I wasn't really equipped for that, didn't care about it, wasn't listening to you. There was a whole package of things that I was kind of missing the boat on. I love this.
I love the bullet points that you were talking about. You say, do not pull away from your wife physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Try to understand her needs, empathize with her feelings, listen, be patient, never give the silent treatment, accept your help and take the feasible steps necessary to maximize the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of your relationship. And it goes on from there, initiate prayer with your wife, even better, making praying together a part of your routine. So there are a lot of practical helps in here, Sherri, that Jim brought along for men to read and to say, look, you don't have to retreat or get angry here. She's doing this because she loves you, right?
Absolutely. And that she wants to remain married and she wants to find a way. She doesn't want to blame you or shame you or embarrass you. That's never, in my case, that was never my heart towards Jim. I think the other thing that strikes me is that what you had mentioned earlier and what Jim reiterated there briefly, is that intimacy is more than sexual intimacy. It's intellectual intimacy, sharing thoughts, ideas, and things.
It's social intimacy. It's doing things together outside the home and spiritual intimacy, which you shared. Praying together is certainly one way to do that. I've sometimes encouraged couples who have never really prayed together, try praying silently. Hold hands with each other, pray silently. When you get through, say amen and wait until they say amen.
Well, anybody can do that. But if you come to God every night like that, just for a few minutes, you cannot come to God together and not begin to affect the way you treat each other, the way you feel about each other. And I think that's why Christians have more help than non-Christians because we have the help of God when we're working through situations like this. Well, a healthy and growing marriage integrates really numerous kinds of intimacy, which requires, to me, requires intention, attention, and action. So Gary, you touch about several other different kinds, but I do mention some more within the book about creating an atmosphere of touch, and that's non-sexual connection outside of the bedroom. A lot of times just working side by side together on a project in the home or hanging out in the garage, even volunteering together, that has brought wonderful connection in our marriage when we volunteered in marriage ministry together.
Time alone for us, no kids. There's one other that I describe as awe and wonder. So in nature, you know, being at the beach together, being on a hike together in the mountains, where do the two of you most experience God together? And I know nature and being by the beach and listening to the waves is one that we always connect really well on.
Yeah. So it may be in some of these areas would be the place even to start, you know, if we can develop some of these things in the relationship, because all of that does affect us sexually. You know, we begin to feel emotionally close to each other because we're sharing life in all these ways. So yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think it's important, too, to understand what activities tear down intimacy.
For example, on our way over here this morning, I was reminded that anything to do with directions, for example, looking at a map or talking about, you know, what's ahead programming the Apple Play or something like that can cause conflict. So that's a different topic. We're just being honest. It's real life. That is real life.
I love it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think learning how to solve conflicts, you know, without arguing with each other. But all of us have had a history of that.
And learning the strengths and weaknesses of each other. You know, on directions, my wife is super, super at that. So I don't ever tell her, we need to turn up here, you know. I'm asking her, now honey, where am I supposed to turn?
Yeah. Well, Sherri, as we come to the end of our time together today, just speak to the ladies out there who may be, in fact, struggling in this area. What would you like to say to them as we close our time together here? My heart is for hope and for understanding, not only of themselves, but other husbands. Just in the writing of this book, I really came to understand men in a new way. And I also, believe it or not, after 48 years, came to understand my husband, Jim, in a new way.
He supports me incredibly. And yet, as women, we can get so stuck within ourselves that we forget to see, really, the man that God gave us as a gift the day we got married. So when we can step back from that and really begin to understand him, his wiring, his physical makeup, how God wired him emotionally, that's where the hope lies, is stepping back into that place.
Yeah. And allowing our husbands to be a husband and allowing the wife to be a wife. And we are all different.
And so, negotiating the differences is a part of any growing marriage. Well, this has been a wonderful discussion. And I want to thank you for being with us today, both you and Jim today. And also, I want to encourage our listeners to get a copy of this book. I think it will help you. And even those that are not struggling in this area, you likely have friends who are, and this book would help you help them. So make the most of this. Use it, because it's an excellent book.
And you don't find a lot out there like this book in the Christian community. So again, thanks for being with us, Sherry. Oh, thank you. Well, if this issue affects your marriage, our hope is that this conversation has validated you, that you're not alone in the struggle. If you go to buildingrelationships.us, you'll find our featured resource, I Want Him to Want Me, How to Respond When Your Husband Doesn't Want Sex, written by our guest, Sherry Mueller, with a cameo appearance by Jim today. Again, go to buildingrelationships.us. And next week, moving from the shame of a pornography addiction to authentic intimacy. Don't miss the conversation with Dr. Julie Slattery in one week. A big thank you to Steve Wick and Janice Backing for their work behind the scenes. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago, in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
