You can definitely tell if a woman is aroused.
But what if some marriage authors or teachers don’t understand the difference between a woman being willing to have sex and a woman being aroused? Too often, teaching around marriage and sexuality centres the male experience, and portrays women as a passive participant whose needs and feelings are erased from the experience.
Evangelical sex advice often centers the question of, “how can a husband turn his wife on so that she will be willing to let him have sex with her?” The answer to this question is often presented as a man doing the bare minimum in a relationship: praying together, helping with housework, spending time together, etc…
According to these teachers, doing all of this is a surefire way to turn on a woman and will lead to sex. However, this advice skips quite a few steps in the female response cycle. It also seems to equate a connection with one’s spouse as the definition of “turned on.”
We talked about this in the podcast last week, but I wanted to turn it into a post for easy reference!
Let’s picture two different models of sex for women.
One is focused on getting her to agree to have sex with her husband–we’ll call that male-centric sex. And one is focused on making sure that sex is pleasurable and meaningful for both–we’ll call that couple-centric sex. Here’s what the two routes look like:
A few things about the graphic: It says that she orgasms first, which is the most common route when women do orgasm, but if she orgasms last, and you’re both happy with that, that’s fine too! The point is just that they both should reach orgasm.
Also, the consent line merely means, “don’t try anything at all.” But either party can still withdraw consent and the encounter can stop at any point passed that line, too!
Here’s the problem: too many teachers equate “willingness to let him use her for intercourse” with “aroused.”
And these are NOT the same thing whatsoever.
Let’s take a look at how this works out in practice. On the topic of how to turn a woman on, Emerson Eggerichs, author of Love & Respect has this to say:
You turn on a woman sexually by not having anything to do with her sexually….The irony of it all is that what turns a woman on sexually are the nonsexual things. This is a classic truth, an axiom, a basic principle. Gentlemen, if you’ve never learned that, I want you to trust me here… So notice the things that turn her on. It’s so easy to do. Reading a book together, praying together, helping her with the household. Why is it that your wife wants you to vacuum?
It isn’t necessarily because she’s this domestic engineer who has a whip in hand and wants you to abide by every command she gives to you. Maybe she realizes that it’s a sexual turn on to her, and so I want you to just be reminded here that it’s the nonsexual things.
He’s saying that it’s the nonsexual things that get her aroused, or “turned on.”
He obviously isn’t understanding the sexual response cycle.
- At WILLING TO START, you’re not feeling much of anything yet, except an openness to start being affectionate and seeing if it will go somewhere.
- At EXCITEMENT, you’re starting to feel tingly, and warm, and affectionate. This is when you want lots of kissing and touching (likely not in the erogenous zones) to lead to the next stage.
- At AROUSAL, her vagina is producing lubrication. Her nipples and clitoris are erect. This is when she actually wants stimulation in the erogenous zones, leading towards orgasm.
Now, doing non-sexual things, like connecting, being a fully engaged partner in managing the home and the children, spending time together, is definitely the way to encourage your partner to move from “neutral” to “willing to start affection.” But after that, if you’re expecting women to actually respond physically, you do have to do actual physical things.
Arousal is most definitely sexual, and there are marked physical signs of arousal. When Eggerichs says “you can’t tell if a woman is turned on,” this insinuates that he may not actually understand the sexual response cycle, because it’s hard to imagine that anyone who does would ever make such a claim.
Where are we at as a church when the author of the best-selling marriage curriculum in North American evangelicalism talks about sex by erasing women’s experience and just plain getting basic stuff wrong?
“Intercourse” and “Mutual Sex” are not necessarily synonyms
What happens if you see sex as merely intercourse? Women get the short end of the stick (and I didn’t mean that as a pun).
We found in our survey of 20,000 women for The Great Sex Rescue followed by our survey of men for The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex that we have a 47-point orgasm gap where 95% of men almost always or always reach orgasm in a given sexual encounter compared to just 48% of women.
Of the women who do reach orgasm, only 40% can do so with virtually no foreplay. Advice, such as the type Emerson gives, leads to a lower satisfaction rate for women because that advice removes sexual stimulation that she would actually enjoy from the equation.
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It should not be okay to erase women’s experience from our discussion of sex.
In the Christian world when you read sex advice, what you hear is, “You know she’s not going to want you. But here is what you can do to get her so that she is willing to let you.” What kind of a view of sex is that?
We need to get to a point where men in the Christian world don’t think it’s acceptable to write sex advice that makes it sound like they don’t know how to bring a woman to climax. Because when we accept that kind of advice that erases women, we’re damaging women. And it’s ridiculous that this is understood in the secular world, and it’s completely looked over by the Christian one.
We are normalizing women being erased. We are normalizing women not reaching orgasm. We think it’s so normal that Joshua Butler can write his book Beautiful Union calling sex which focuses on a man’s orgasm during intercourse as an icon of the gospel, while a woman’s orgasm is barely mentioned. Seriously, he talks about semen a ton, but the stuff that tends to bring a woman to orgasm? That, apparently, is not iconic of the gospel.
Please, church: let’s get to the point where it isn’t acceptable to talk about sex without talking about what women experience. It isn’t acceptable to talk about sex where we focus it entirely on a man’s climax during intercourse.
As we talk about in The Great Sex Rescue, sex should be mutual, intimate, pleasurable for both. That needs to be the baseline.
Right now we have this phenomenon of male centric sex across almost all of our resources.
It’s not an unreasonable request to ask for that to change, and I hope that the Christian world will listen.
What do you think? How have these teachers gotten away with saying such non-sensical stuff about women’s arousal? Do you think it’s changing? Let’s talk in the comments!
Even the stuff that talks about mutual enjoyment is often very focussed on the woman being a passive participant. When I was hunting around for Christian advice on sex for couples about to get married (which was how I found your blog – yay!), even the sites that talked about the importance of the woman enjoying sex framed it as her enjoying what was being done TO her.
Apart from your site, the best of the bunch I came across was stressing mutual enjoyment, but framed the advice to the groom as what he should DO to the bride so that her first experience of sex is as good as possible. There were also sentences about ‘allowing’ or ‘permitting’ her to do something if it made her more comfortable, which was obviously meant to sound caring but I thought sounded creepy and controlling. If one partner feels more comfortable having sex for the first time in dim lighting or under the covers, that should be something that happens automatically, not something that the other partner ‘permits’!
And when talking about intercourse for the first time, the advice to the groom was that if the bride started to experience pain, he should thrust ‘quickly’ since this would ‘minimise’ the pain she would feel… And the bride’s told that not tensing up will ‘reduce’ the amount of pain and make it pass quickly. NOTHING about how if she’s feeling pain they should maybe go back a step and try again later… So when even those who believe in mutually enjoyable sex are framing it this way, it’s unsurprising that so many of the ‘only-men-matter’ brigade are doing even worse!
Yeah, that’s so creepy. I think there’s this underlying assumption that sex just hurts, and that women really do’nt like it.
This was actually one of the longest learning processes for me after I finally got married. I had been abused by a “youth leader” a few years prior and I still had the idea from all the screwed up stuff he taught me that sex was just painful and something a woman would do sacrificially for the man she loved. Terrifying and 100% unbiblical, but I was young and “sheltered”(groomed) and hindsight is 20/20.
Deeply grateful that God blessed me with a husband who was equally horrified when I finally divulged that belief a year into our marriage. We’ve been on a journey since to re-evaluate the readings of scripture we were both taught growing up, and even outright dogma that had just…never been challenged. “The Great Sex Rescue” was a game-changer!
The way sex is talked about is creepy. It sounds very much like women are possessions belonging to men. Allow her, permit it, just makes me feel uncomfortable and creeped out. Thrust faster because you will finish and then she has fulfilled her duty of being your sex doll. Creeped out and angry, those are the emotions I feel when I read what women have to do and what men allow or permit from the women they treat like children, children they have sex with. It’s so wrong. I was so bothered about a mother last week mentioning how sex was painful for her daughter for a while during the honeymoon and after because she is “petite”, not that maybe something was wrong. This is also a woman who is very big into complementarian living and women being led by men. I felt so bad for her daughter who I know was probably coached to just endure the pain for her new husband because his orgasm was most important. Sometimes I think nothing is changing about the way women are viewed and treated. It’s depressing.
Oh Suzanne, that is so sad – I hope the daughter gets some help if things keep being painful.
If anyone should have found first-time sex painful, it would be me. I was told by my gynae that sex would definitely be extra-painful the first few times due to physical abnormality, but the worst I ever experienced was mild discomfort – because my OH was determined that my first time would be good for me and was prepared to take as long as it needed to make sure that happened. Pain is always a sign that something is wrong – it should never, ever be ignored.
The way that women are infantilized both within complementarian theology and in porn makes it no wonder that pedophilia is so prevalent in our society.
I think it’s creepy that the things Emerson suggests should just be basic ways of contributing to the household, and instead, he says she asks for them because they turn her on. Ummm….NO. So…1. She has to ask him to “help.”. 2. If she asks him for “help,” she’s doing so because it’s a turn on.
Obviously he can’t see the disaster looming when he frames it this way.
Thank you for this article! I would love an article like this with more examples from popular Christian relationship books showing how that bad advice is pervasive.
Honestly, that’s what The Great Sex Rescue is! We’ve got so much of it in there.
I would love to see a study on husbands. Who believes this stuff, who heard it, who reads it, and then survey their wives to find out how often their wives orgasm and find sec to be satisfying.
I suspect that would never get done because men who don’t understand female biology would never volunteer for the survey. Nevertheless, I suspect that male understanding of female biology, as well as technique, patience, and willingness to learn are all crucial for women’s sexual satisfaction.
I still come back to our stat that 71% of husbands whose wives don’t reach orgasm very often still think they do enough foreplay. That says it all.
Don’t a pretty high percentage of their wives agree with them, too? That’s the really startling part to me-just how many women are that cut off from their own needs that they don’t realize they could have a better experience. It shouldn’t surprise me because I was one of them for awhile, but while I was there it felt like I was the only one.
Yes, 52%. So half of women think the problem with not orgasming is theirs alone.
Trust me Jane, as a man, I can tell you that we do NOT agree with the garbage that Love and Respect has to say about sex. We want our wives to experience the same pleasure as us, if not more, and we want our wives to genuinely desire us. How any man can have no issue with the way Eggerichs describes sex, female sexuality, and male sexuality is beyond me.
Emerson the Clueless. *sigh*
I thing EE is also confused about “turning women on” vs. actively turning them OFF. I have a feeling he is talking about how randomly grabbing a wife’s erogenous zones while she’s doing the dishes doesn’t typically work. Maybe that’s what he means by “don’t do anything sexual to turn her on.” Which is still a massive confusion of the steps, of course.
He is willfully clueless and needs to fade into obscurity. That is all.
Exactly! He’s confusing the steps. He’s talking about moving a woman from “neutral” to “willing to start affection”, and he’s confusing that with arousal.
Meaning that he thinks as long as you’ve got her willing, you can now do your thing and ignore her. Hence the second view of sex in the graphic!
Good grief. The “don’t do anything sexual if you want to turn her on” thing is so silly. The kindest interpretation I can think of is ok, yes, most women don’t want their erogenous zones touched as step 1. So it’s true a sexual encounter should start out with interactions that aren’t blatantly sexual. But come on, that is how it STARTS, not how it ENDS! And if the couple is actually communicating, then the guy would know that!
I have been talking with my husband a lot lately about how church spaces tend to view men and women almost as totally separate species. The ways sex, marriage and gender are talked about, splitting people into men’s and women’s Bible studies, treating cross-gender friendships as suspicious or dangerous- it all functions to keep people from communicating with each other. This feels like more of that same trend.
Yes! Thanks for saying this. The church has really messed this up.
It’s interesting to read this and suddenly realize what has been wrong all these years (when I was saying I was happy but didn’t know any better!) And at this point things will never be made right, because I know I can’t ask for change and expect anything. Sad.
Hello Sheila, please help save my marriage. Our marriage bed is a disaster. My wife seems not to love any form of fore play or touches whatsoever. When I ask her, she will barely respond. Most of the times I have to convince her in order to have sex. I will obviously reach orgasm. What about her?? I guess she doesn’t even know a thing about orgasm or hitting climax. We have been married six years now but the past 4 years have been hell.
Our relationship seems okay but not well. I wonder whether she is shy or lacks knowledge of sex and her part or involvement.
I have tried addressing my concerns but it’s not working. Am trying to understand her point in all this but still failing. She is the negative type when it comes to sex . Worst of all, she will run away from me, pinch or push me away. I feel I cannot abstain from sexual engagement. One of these days the devil is on my case to see me dump her and seek out other options yet am a Christian man who doesn’t want to loose my salvation and commitment to the Lord due to adultery.
I ask, does she love me? Is she shy about sex? I think I am a high sex drive and she is a complete opposite, and not only the opposite of high drive but a hater of intercourse.
Can my marriage work again or???
I am really frustrated.
Cephas, I’m sorry you’re so frustrated. But can I ask a question? Why are you pursuing sex where you orgasm and she doesn’t? If you have to convince her to let you have intercourse so you can orgasm, there is absolutely no way she is ever going to like sex. Every single time you have sex like that you cement in her mind and body that sex is not for her.
And if she feels like she has to pinch you or push you away, it sounds like you are verging on marital rape (if you haven’t crossed that line completely).
Also, threatening to have an affair is also a form of coercion.
Sex where you orgasm and she doesn’t and she obviously doesn’t want to be there is neither mutual, nor intimate, nor pleasurable for both.
Have you read The Great Sex Rescue? It may really help you pinpoint what the issue is, and help you both get in the right mindset about sex. Seriously, so many guys have found it really freeing and helped turn the whole thing around!
You don’t need to be stuck there, but you both need to learn to see sex totally differently, and I hope it can help!
You can also start with this series on how to turn a sex life around–although The Great Sex Rescue will cover this in much greater detail and help you understand the roots of the problem.
This might help too
https://baremarriage.com/2022/06/15-things-that-kill-a-womans-libido/
Sorry for the shame you probably now feel, after these responses. Issues in the bedroom are normally caused by issues outside it. You say “Our relationship seems okay but not well”, I’d strongly recommend getting couples counselling. My wife and I have been (maybe still are) in a very similar position and couples counselling is being very helpful, if you can find one you both trust, probably especially your wife. There is hope, but there is a whole lot of self work and healing to do on the way, for both of you. It’s going to take love, grace, strength, courage, patience and perseverance. The alternative is that no, your marriage won’t work out.
John, if your marriage has the same issues, you don’t actually need couples counseling, because there is marital rape and coercion involved. If she has to push you away, pinch you, or physically restrain you, that isn’t okay. If you keep having sex when she isn’t reaching orgasm, she doesn’t feel safe. This is all part of coercion.
Interesting and wrong assumptions on your part. Shame that an attempt to steer a brother onto a better path could be dismissed/attacked so easily. A brother who is at least looking at a blog that has a much heathier view of marital intimacy than others and a brother who was at least brave enough to post a comment, although I fear he won’t come back. If it was his wife posting, then that would be a very different situation.
The thing is, John, he admitted to things that are actually rape. I’m glad he’s here, but I’m far more concerned about his wife, and this does need to be addressed.
Yes true. My hope is that a couples counsellor would see that straight away and address it correctly.
Sheila gives some good advice in this blog. Also, perhaps you need to read The Good Girls Guide and The Good Guys Guide. Your story sounds like, perhaps, you are missing some useful information.
https://baremarriage.com/2022/02/6-stages-sexual-response-cycle/
I mean, sex education missed a lot of crucial information about how intimacy and sex mix and how our bodies proceed thru the sexual response cycle. Many of us have benefitted from more information about how our bodies and minds work to produce a sexual response.
If you have ever caused your wife discomfort or pain during sex, her body may feel that you are not safe. You may not have intended discomfort or pain but it can still happen. Some positions can be uncomfortable, penetration with inadequate lube can be uncomfortable.
If you have ever begged for sex or coerced her for sex when she said she didn’t want to, her body may feel that you are not safe.
When I say her body may feel you are not safe I mean she may feel a panic response when you mention sex. And for her sex is like something to be endured than an intimacy.
You need to slow down. You need to consider her needs. You need to kindly ask her if you have hurt her. You need to ask her if you have pressured her. Then you need to take time, it may be months or longer, to prove to her and her body that you are safe. Hold hands. Or cuddle while watching tv. Don’t expect sex. And don’t ask for sex. You need to show her you can be kind and gentle and consider her needs.
It sounds like, somehow, you (or maybe someone in her past) scared her. You need to be her place of safety and comfort. If you coerce sex, you won’t be safe and comfortable.
The education from typical christian resources was woefully inadequate. Totally correct in your summary that it’s basically often presented in the “duty sex” paradigm, is very male centric, and is often framed around what can be done to have the women engage sexually (essentially “agree” to have sex, even though it may not be great for them). Very very different concept from actually having her turned on and finding sex pleasurable, life-giving, bonding, and all the positive aspects that are very much possible! Very grateful for proper teaching and education that is now available. Would have been great to have this years ago! The chart is very on point — well done.
“In the Christian world when you read sex advice, what you hear is, ‘You know she’s not going to want you. But here is what you can do to get her so that she is willing to let you.’ What kind of a view of sex is that? “
^This.
How is this loving?
Also, I find it illogical for male orgasm to be positioned as “extremely valuable” but then the pressure is on women to make it cheap. Like, if you’re really going to serve orgasm as the chiefest and greatest transcendent experience a man can have, encompassing his entire physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health – then it should follow that men are encouraged to jump through insanely high hoops and standards.
It should be analogous to beauty for women. We tell woman if they’re beautiful everything in your life will go great, and then we hit them with impossible standards, expenses and protocols to achieve it. We don’t ask men to go get cosmetology degrees so he can make sure she’s beautiful.
It’s just fascinating the inconsistency in these messages.
Cephas, I’m going to answer this as a woman who is in a very similar spot to your wife. When a woman endures bad sex for years, it’s trauma. It lives in her body as trauma. Please read everything Sheila recommended for you.
And if you want to fix this at all, you need to not make this about you until your wife heals. In addition to Sheila’s resources, I would also recommend Andrew Bauman. You can educate yourself about what he calls a “pornographic style of relating.” Also MendingMe on TikTok or Instagram might be helpful for you to get a picture of what your wife endured.
I will add to that, Cephas, that your wife’s behavior as described sounds very much like she has been assaulted and is dealing with the trauma of that. I would encourage you to not retraumatize her in your eagerness for an orgasm. Seriously, you talk about being a Christian husband: lean in to the tenderness of Christ’s love for your wife and learn what He wants to show you both as you love her in that way. Please keep us posted as you move forward.
Exactly!
My situation is different. I am the one who wants intercourse with my husband. He has ED because of his medication. We still try, but he remains somewhat flaccid. He is a great lover otherwise. He knows all the moves to get me to that place, but I miss the intimacy of sexual intercourse. He even told me to get a toy to help myself and wants to watch me while I use it. I don’t have a problem with that, but I prefer the real thing. Even if I have some soreness afterwards, even with lubricant, I still prefer him. I’m 76 and he’s 62.
It really bothers me that he can’t climax with me. I know he says he loves seeing me climax, but it isn’t fair to him. We have been married for almost 34 years.
Is there anything I can do to help him climax, and with ED, how do we get back to being where we were when he didn’t? He won’t use a pud collar and we can’t afford a pump.
Have you tried medication? There is help available for ED and it is quite successful in many cases.
Sheila Wray Gregoire, Yes he has. He is on that medication, but it doesn’t help. At his urging, I got a toy we can use, but that’s for me. He is more into me being satisfied. He enjoys seeing me in the throes of passion.
I’m thankful we have that kind of intimacy, but I still feel for him not being able to climax. I talked to him about my concerns for that. He just said that he is happy when I do. I am blessed that he is so understanding, though.
Something that some men experience in addition to ED is low testosterone. Medication for ED only helps with erection, but testosterone is the hormone that assists with libido (for men and women). There are testosterone pellets to shots to help with that aspect. I used the pellets and it helped tremendously.
Ugh, No! EE…. A woman is NOT turned on by you just being a decent partner: /. He just perpetuates duty sex, “I did something for you (cleaned, cooked, took kids to park, etc etc), now you do something for me (ie sex)
Even talking about mental load is framed as a transaction, too…. As it’s seen as taking Something off the woman’s plate, but for a majority of men, like EE, it’s just to add something else to her plate, not for equality, but again to get something he apparently “needs”.
These “Christian” teachings on sex are part of the reason I’m now in therapy. I’m currently rather numb to the fact that I was told point-blank that I wasn’t allowed to say no to my husband at all, and that I needed to learn to enjoy the things he was doing that I hated.
My therapist’s reaction to what I was told showed me just how horrible the instruction was, and that I wasn’t crazy for hating sex and crying silently half the time back in those days.
Also, how does EE not see what an idiot he is? It has to be intentional, to keep women oppressed. Nobody can possibly that stupid as to think that not arousing a woman is the way to arouse them? The bigger question is, how have so many people applauded him for his teachings?
Churches need to stop harming women!!
Maybe it’s because these men have a platform like Focus on the Family and we think yeah they must be ok. Not!!! They need to be called out for the wrong teaching.
Not EE but along the same lines when talking about male-centric sex… when Jimmy Evans talks about having servant spirit. (Now I know we’re all supposed to be serving each other. Mutual servant hood.) What I have an issue with is when he says that if one spouse wants sex 12x a month and the other wants it less, if that lower drive spouse has a servant spirit, they’ll meet you at 12. (Spiritual abuse much?) What is NEVER said is that perhaps the higher drive spouse can use THEIR servant spirit to decrease their desire to meet their lower drive spouse. It’s always that the lower drive (presumably the wife in 70-80% of marriages) meets the higher drive. But wouldn’t husbands laying down their own desires to serve their spouse be the ultimate servant spirit? But it only makes sense in these Christian minds that the wife’s desire to relax after a stressful day and say, read a book is trumped by the husband’s desire for sex. She needs to lay down her desire to not have sex to meet his “need” for sex. Because resting isn’t a need?? No wonder so many Christian women are turned off by sex. Their needs don’t matter in SO MANY Christian resources.
Not to mention the fact that, in these men’s world, the wife is expected to “have a servant heart” in this area even when she is sick or in pain, when in a normal world we might be acknowledging that her *needs* are for rest and getting better!
I am totally appalled by all this. New to complementarian thought though – I cannot believe women attend churches that preach this stuff. Please don’t let this male-centric world of complementarian church life oppress women further. There is nothing in the Gospels or NT about all the second class person (woman) and sex roles stuff – it is just made up by men, for men, and they are selfish, power mad and frankly inadequate men (see E E who wrote the sex book for example). It teaches women that they do not count sexually or any other way. What ordinary decent man would feel the need to do that, let alone live like that. It is sickening to me (I live in the UK where this is not common, and the minority of churches that are complementarian are very low key and not as extreme as in the US). This sex book would be laughed out of town.
What about if the woman always orgasms but the man rarely does due to deadening his own senses from a history of porn usage etc? Is the woman obligated to work overtime to get her husband to orgasm every time she does?
In that case, he really needs some healing, and likely a break from orgasm to reset!
I will admit that the beginning of my marriage has me very clueless about trying to please my wife. One I became comfortable with the idea, and familiar with techniques that for her needs, I decided I would try to make up the orgasm deficit I had created. Now, I can’t imagine engaging in sexual intercourse without at least providing one climax for her minimum.
Of course, none of this matters now, as she decided to leave me for another man 6 years ago, but I essentially learned much of what is discussed here through trial and error.