BONUS: Transparency in Sexual Intimacy

I hope our Family Life Today listeners have had a chance to listen to the interviews that we've done with Ryan and Selena Frederick on the subject of their book, See Through Marriage. We aired a couple of those interviews on Family Life Today. They're great. Really good.

Solid stuff. I'd encourage you, in fact, you can go to our show notes here and you can find out how to link to those interviews if you've not yet listened to both of them. But we thought it would be appropriate, not on radio, but here on the internet for those who are interested, to talk about how transparency in marriage bleeds into the area of intimacy and sex in a marriage relationship. Because I'd have to say this is an area where, as I've spoken at Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways for years, couples are desperate for honest conversation on this subject, honest biblical righteous conversation on this subject.

They don't know where to go to get it, and they've got issues in their marriage that they're not sure how to deal with. And so we thought, let's have the conversation about what transparency looks like when it comes to marital intimacy. Yeah, and I mean, if you're going to write a book called See Through Marriage, you've got to talk about sex. I mean, it sounds like see through something. For those who don't know Ryan and Selena, they are the authors not only of See Through Marriage, but the book Fierce Marriage.

They've got a website and a podcast by that name, and we're glad to have them joining us again today. And Selena, when Ryan said, let's write a chapter on sex for the book, did you go, oh, no, I've already got that one written. I can't wait to talk about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Those are my words exactly.

How did you know? I remember it differently. This is an area where transparency and vulnerability, I mean, we're talking about the most intimate part of marriage. So to be kind of open in a conversation about that can feel risky and threatening, and we want to do it appropriately. Well, I thought this was an interesting beginning to this chapter. It says the nature and health of your sex life in marriage is a bit like piloting a drone through windy skies.

I've never considered that before in comparison, but tell us about that analogy. Oh, yeah. I tell the story in great detail in the book, but I'll make it short here. Basically, I got this new drone for Christmas, and I was so excited to learn how to fly it, and it wasn't like a high end thing. It was pretty cheap.

And I'd say low middle of the road. And I was flying this thing around our neighborhood. It was great.

We live in a windless neighborhood, I'll say. And then so I took it to my parents' house, who live kind of on this bluff, and I wanted to show my dad. I was like, Dad, check this out.

This thing is awesome. I'm going to take it out, and I'll fly it around, and I'll bring it back, and kind of land it on their deck. And little did I know that there was a lot more wind past a certain point, and I flew it out there, and I tried to bring it back, and it was just, it wasn't coming back. And I was panicked because this thing, you know, I didn't know how much it cost, but in my mind, it was like, you know, $500 at that point. It was your new toy. So, it's a new toy.

You can't put a price on that. And so I'm like, you know, struggling, you know, like a jet fighter, right, trying to get this thing back. And it just will not come back. In fact, it gets smaller. It goes further away.

So, the wind currents had caught it, and it just faded off into the distance, and eventually it just kind of, it was just gone. And what does that have to do with our sex life? Oh, yeah, right, right, right. Sex life. I think the point I was trying to make is that these things, they feel like they may be insignificant, like when they're happening, whether these divisions that we experience in our lives, or maybe sexual temptation, or maybe dissatisfaction in this area of our life. And, you know, sex accounts for a very small, if you look at just the time spent having sex for a couple, it's like 0.0625%, right?

And that's if you have a really active sex life. But if it gets away from you, it's just, it's almost, it's so hard to get back. I think a lot of couples feel like this has just gotten away from us. It's gone. It used to be great. It used to be a lot of fun.

And now it's just like, it's off in the distance somewhere, and I have no hope of getting it back. So, I think, so that analogy did come back around to that point at some time. So, as you guys think about the first two decades of your marriage, have your conversations about marital intimacy changed over those years? Have you had to bring issues to the surface that were hard to bring to the surface?

I'd say so. We have a pretty unique situation. I don't want to talk like we just have it figured out, right? Because we're just one couple. But we have learned kind of maybe some themes of how to have hard talks. We were both virgins when we got married, so we don't have as much baggage in that we haven't had previous sexual partners. Right.

And so, there's not issues to be dealt with there per se. Now, with that said, we dealt with some issues of pornography early on in our marriage. I'd say in terms of the nature of the conversations, what has really changed as we've matured is the nature of our expectations and the nature of how we express those expectations and pursue those expectations. I've come to the conclusion that I just want her. And whatever that looks like, I'll take it because I want you. I want to experience intimacy with you, see your heart, you know, like get to know you as a person. And so, the expectations have completely changed. Whereas a young, newly married man, it's like you have this vision of what sex could look like, and if you keep your eyes fixed on maybe the world's picture of it, then you are just setting yourself up to put wrong expectations on your spouse. Now, with that said, I don't want to paint the picture that we just have this vanilla sex life, because honestly, I feel like it's better than the world could have ever shown us.

It's something that has just become so awesome. And so, anyway, I'll end it there. Well, but I can resonate with what you're talking about, and I hope this is okay for me to share. I think Marianne would be okay with this. On our wedding night, I had in my mind a picture of what she would, when she went in to change, I had a picture of what she would come out wearing. Her picture of what she was going to wear was very different than my picture of what she was going to wear. Her picture was elegant. She wanted to look beautiful and elegant, and she wanted to look, I mean, this was special for her. She just wanted to look radiant and glowing.

And, I mean, radiant and glowing were on my list, but they were lower on my list than they were for her. And so, it's those kinds of expectations that we have about who we're going to be for one another in marriage that can cause us to miss one another and not value what's important to one another in this area. Absolutely. Yeah, and that's why I mentioned having the nature of the expectation. As you mature, I've just realized that that expectation is not the hard and fast rule. Now, with that said, learning how to have those conversations around expectations and, you know, because there are desires and wants in there, I think those can be really good.

And to express those in a way that's not like in the heat of the moment and you're saying, I just want you to be this way and you're not this way, therefore, you are disappointing me. You might not say those words, but being able to have those conversations, I think, is crucial to learn to have a see-through sex life. I think these conversations are hard, honestly.

I think maybe at the beginning when Dave and I were engaged, they were almost easier at times then than when you get into messy life situations where you're tired and you've got little kids. And I feel like it's an ongoing conversation because your marriage relationship and your sexual relationship are continually changing and life looks different all the time. Why do you think it's so hard to talk about it? Well, I think it's because it's so personal, right? Because it's the whole, I mean, we talked about this on the radio show, and when Dave, you're talking about being fully known, fully loved.

When you're naked with someone and experiencing that together, you're, I mean, you're about as, it's a picture of the gospel in a sense in that you are completely naked, you're completely known, and you're still trusting that they're still going to completely accept and love and be satisfied in that. Now, if they're expressing dissatisfaction, you're basically, it's rejection. The conversations are hard because you're afraid of experiencing rejection around this very personal thing.

Well, I don't think they're simple conversations either, right? We're bringing ourselves into it. There's a lot of complexities to each of us. And so, with the expectations often come like misinterpretations of, you know, we jump to conclusions of, well, she's tired, she must hate me. You know, kind of, well, no, maybe we're just tired and maybe there's some other things happening. She's not speaking from experience at all. You know, we can very easily jump to those conclusions and then start internalizing that rather than talking about it because it's difficult.

It's hard to put into words why you're feeling things. I mean, Ann's being super honest about me. I know that I've found it's much easier for me to speak as a pastor on a stage or as a marriage speaker to thousands of people about sex.

No problem. I mean, most people would say, hey, Dave and Ann are very open about that. They get excited about that. Let's go up and let's give God's perspective. But you put me in a bedroom with my wife and say, let's talk about our sexual relationship. Instant fear. I'm literally, I'll go work out. I'll go get a hammer.

I'll do anything. Because this means, okay, you said it's personal. It's vulnerable. It's like, oh, maybe I'm just talking about me, but I think this is universal. There's disappointments. There's expectations. There's all these things.

It's like, wow, we're going to go there. You talk about see-through marriage. That's going to be hard to talk about because I think in some ways, and I know you guys write about this, we talk about this, we've written about this, that whole love respect thing that a man really longs to be respected, a woman longs to be loved. I think that's big in the bedroom because I want Ann to want me.

That's respect. She wants me to be tender and love her. And so if I don't feel like she's interested, you know, and of course may have little kids, she may be exhausted. It could be a million reasons. But if for whatever reason I feel rejected several times over a month or a week or so, it's like, oh, do I bring that up?

Oh. And if she's feeling like you don't love me, you're not tender, I'm just a piece of me, you just care about the act, I don't feel loved by you, does she bring that up? It's easier to just pretend.

It's actually easier sometimes. Let's just do the act. I'm being really honest and never talk about it. And we'll just keep going and our marriage will be okay, but it won't be fully known and fully loved unless we're willing to take that scary step. And I mean, it's scary to go, can we be honest and let's talk? Now, that's what you're talking about, right? I mean, how does a couple get there?

Because that is stepping into scariness. Well, like any hard conversation, timing is everything, right? Well, I found it really helpful to break this conversation or these conversations down into two really distinct categories, and that's, I call them prescriptions, right? And descriptions, right? So, prescriptions for how sex should be, and then there's descriptions of how it can be.

And we see those patterns in Scripture. So, Hebrews 13, 4 says, Let marriage be held in honor above all, let the marriage bed be undefiled. So, Dave, what you just described is, I feel like a really pure desire for a husband, right? A husband can purely desire for his wife to want him and to be kind of enthralled and enamored in him around the marriage bed. And that's good and that's pure, but a lot of guys, a lot of young guys in particular, especially with the advent of internet pornography, they're bringing into the marriage bed things that are defiling to it, right? They're wanting different things that they've seen elsewhere, and they're expecting their wife to act like women they've seen act elsewhere, and I use the word act intentionally because they are acting.

And they are expecting these acts to be performed with them or on them, and that's all very defiling. It's very unhealthy. And so, I think the first thing to consider in heading into this conversation is how does the Bible prescribe a healthy sex life? What does it look like?

And how do I get there? So, there's obviously a lot to be said around that, but that's the first baseline is like, okay, what healthy expectations am I bringing in? What unhealthy defiling expectations am I bringing in?

I need to slough the unhealthy ones, keep the healthy ones. And then we talk about descriptions. So, how sex can be, so we talk about what it should look like. Now, how can it actually be?

What is the potential here? You're saying that's a conversation you have with one another? Yeah, I mean, as a husband, you kind of have to do some of that between you and God and between you and your spouse. That is part of being see-through, right?

And saying like, listen, this is my past, these are the expectations that I have, they're unhealthy, just so you know, I'm dealing with this, help me deal with this, help me get this out of my expectation list, right? It's not good. But now we can look at God's description of how it can be. And for that, I just love the book of Song of Solomon. I mean, if you read that book with full clarity and full charity, you see a really, honestly, it'll make you blush with the picture of what's happening in Song of Solomon. And the rapturous love and the push and pull and the chase and the pursuit that happens between a lover and their beloved and a husband and a wife is just a beautiful thing. So, you kind of have to erase the world side of it. It's really hard because of our sexualized culture, and then embrace a biblical vision, which is not in any way lame. It's not in any way like boring, it's exciting, it's fulfilling, and it's pure, and in that it will exceed anything the world could ever paint, anything they could ever offer.

So, I think just looking at it in those two different categories is really helpful in terms of what is prescribed for health and what is described for what can be. And so, if you're trying to be super honest in this area in your marriage, do you share fantasies? Do you share thoughts that might go through your mind that would be, you think, harmful to the marriage, but you're like, wow, I've got to be honest.

I actually thought about this person. Again, I'm hypothetically here, but I know that I've talked to men who have asked me that question. You know, I think it's better probably for my marriage for me to deal with that and get rid of that rather than to share with her, because then she's going to think next time we make love, that's where my mind's going to go, and it isn't every time, but it is sometimes. So, again, you're the experts on see-through marriage, so how see-through do we get?

Jared Oh, man. Okay, so I think any of these conversations are so personal and so difficult, so my cop-out answer is going to be like, work through this, like, with discernment, with the help of the Holy Spirit, with counsel if you need it, a biblical counselor or pastor, mentor, elder, whatever that looks like in your life, a friend who advocates your marriage. With that said, there are, I won't use the example of another person, but say you have a fantasy of maybe some, like we mentioned earlier, some sexual reality, right, an act or something that you want to experience with your spouse and presenting that to him or her. Our rule is, and we encourage young couples in this, is that in general, like anything that is degrading or anything that could be painful is just not edifying. And so, how could I, in the spirit of loving my spouse, whether it's a wife loving her husband or vice versa, how could I advocate for something that's going to degrade, cause pain, or cause humiliation, right? And so much of, again, I'm speaking to the couples who have dealt with the pornography thing. In that case, I wouldn't bring it to Selena saying, hey, this is something that I want to give it a shot at some point.

In that case, I would bring it to her and say, I recognize that this is not healthy. I want you to know this because I want you to have access to that part of my heart, but just so you know, like, this is not an expectation that I'm holding. In fact, I'm trying to release it and give it to you in that way. And we've had those conversations. And I can tell you that it's been an amazing, liberating thing for her because now it's spoken.

It's no longer like, what is he like? What is he expecting right now? Instead, it's, I know that he just wants to love me well, and he is leading these things out.

And because of that, the reciprocated love is so much better. Selena, you're talking to a lot of wives and women that are dealing with sexual dysfunction, sexual struggles in their relationship, or even being see through and honest. What are the issues right now? And how are you helping them to be more see through in their sex life? Yeah, um, I think a lot of, you know, the issues are the expectations of, you know, I'm not enough. I don't want to or I'm afraid or there's been abuse, right in the past and not really knowing how to engage, I think sexually. The biggest thing I think for me has been to just be honest, I think and encourage that honesty.

You know, we we talk about, at least I wrote in the book that personally, I say I found sex to be the most enjoyable when I'm giving myself to and for my husband. So this idea of selflessness, and being emotionally vulnerable, it takes risk. And I think that I think that we need to do exactly what Ryan said is just bring our spouse into that and say, Hey, this is really difficult for me. And not just try to do it on our own, not just try to like, I'm going to do this, we're going to do it, it's gonna be great, like, okay, like psyching yourself out for it, right? But really saying like, we're struggling with this or I'm struggling. I don't feel connected with you, even though I know we're here naked and we're doing the act, I feel like it's just, there's reasons that I might not be able to explain, can you help me understand some things or can we walk through this together? I feel like being open like that has been the most transformative, at least for us. For the wives that may be dealing with a husband who has an addiction, I feel like the Lord really led me to be sort of his accountability partner for lack of a better term.

And what that looked like was not policing, it was very much, I love you, you're my spouse, you're my husband. And I want us to get through this together. I want you to just battle it and I'm going to check in with you, but I want us, I want to know, yes, when those times happen, but how can I love you well in this? When you're confessing to me, yes, it's going to hurt me, yes, I feel shame, yes, I feel brokenness, but by God's grace, I don't want to live there, I don't want to stay there, I want to move forward in this.

So what does that look like together? Well, the Bible says that I'm called, you know, to forgive and I'm called to extend grace. But he's coming to me again with the true repentance, he's coming with that meaningful risk of saying like, these are the things I'm struggling with, not, yeah, I did it again, you know, shoot. It's not, and I'm not trying to laugh and make light of that. It is, I'm really, I've had a hard time, I'm struggling with this and I'm, as a wife, that hurts me. You know, it hurts me that you feel like you need to go there and I take it very personal, but I want to love you through this. How can we be better at this and conquer sort of this addiction together?

Because it's us, it's not you versus me, it's us. I know that when our kids were real little, I wanted to be intimate more often than she did in our marriage. And, you know, even in that moment, I was like, of course, she's not interested. She's got little kids hanging on her all day.

There's snot, there's poop, there's diapers. I'm just another guy trying to hang on her. You know, it's just, I did not want to bring up this idea like, I just don't think you're as interested in it as I am because I understood her life and I get it. And so it was that tension of, I'm just going to keep this to myself, I'm just going to, you know, bear this cross for this season of our marriage.

But here's what happened. I did bring it up. I don't know when or how, but I said, you know, I feel this, I feel a little frustrated, and she brings up her desire to be loved. I just said, I would love it if you would touch me during the day, non-sexually, like just kiss me or hug me, because the only time you touch me is when we're in bed together. And so that was really honest and that was hard for you to hear.

Yeah, and the reason I bring it up is sort of as an encouragement, because I almost didn't. And so, because I did, and I did not want to hear her answer, that was not what I was looking for, but when I realized what she said, I was like, oh my goodness, she wants the same thing. And I'm not expressing what makes her feel loved, I'm thinking it's only sex, and it's like, it was a revelation to like, oh my goodness, I am called to lay down my life and love her as Christ loved the church. I preach that, I write about it, and yet all I'm thinking about is, can we have sex?

And she's like, can we be in love? And it changed our marriage, because here it is, because I was transparent. I learned and our marriage got better, not just in the bedroom, although it did affect the bedroom, it affected our marriage. And so it's, again, I reflect on what you're trying to say in your book, not just in the bedroom, but everywhere. Go there, you're not gonna be the only one that gets blessed, you both are gonna be able to go to somewhere, you may never go if you never bring it up. So bring it up in a, like you said, in an appropriate way, tender way, the right time, and then listen, and maybe God's gonna meet you in a different way, and it's gonna be even more beautiful than you thought. And I would add this too, Dave, is let's bring God into it. Let's bring God into our bedroom to be transparent with our Father who loves us, who created sex. Like, I think it's so important, because I didn't do that for years, because I didn't grow up in the church, I had a sexual past with people other than Dave. I was so damaged, I felt so much shame, and I didn't talk to God about His plan and His vision for our own intimacy in our marriage. And I think when I started bringing God into that, into my prayer life, and talking to Him about my own fears, my own brokenness, and then bringing God into our bedroom, and we started even praying about our sex life. I think that made a big difference too.