Why are so many evangelical authors trying to convince married women not to have sexual boundaries?
In episode 260 of the Bare Marriage podcast, that dropped last week, Rebecca and I had one of my favourite convos so far, when we looked at how too many evangelical thinkers have accused women of being prudes for having sexual boundaries and not wanting to be treated like objects.
It was likely one of the best podcasts of this season, so listen to it if you haven’t already!
But every Friday Rebecca writes our weekly email, which goes out to over 40,000 people. And it has an incredibly high open rate, because what she writes is amazing. In fact, more people read her every week than read my most recent articles.
You won’t get her thoughts unless you sign up for our emails! (and the email has recaps of all of our posts and podcasts from that week, too, as well as info if we’re doing a speaking tour near you).
I really enjoyed what she shared last Friday, and I wanted to run it for you all today too!
Here’s Rebecca.
Are sexual boundaries in marriage taboo in evangelical circles?
One of the things that surprised me (Rebecca) the most when reading popular books about sex was how many of them opened with examples of Christian couples “doing the deed” in public places.
Whether it’s on a football field or in someone’s hot tub or getting caught by the cops while parking somewhere, there seems to be this theme of these books really emphasizing that the ideal sex life includes risky sex in potentially public places.
I was raised in the middle of purity culture, which obviously had a lot of things wrong with it. But there were some honestly beneficial teachings that came with it, too (otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten so much popularity, frankly!).
One of those is the idea of seeing sex as sacred.
The church taught us that a non-sacred view of sex is focused on just meeting your carnal needs by any means necessary—it uses someone, consumes them, doesn’t care about how what they are doing really affects someone else but just is focused on hedonistic delight rather than long-term goodness.
Now, we can argue about if that’s accurate or not, but it’s what we were taught.
What is so ironic to me is that it seems like many of our best-selling authors and voices in evangelicalism have that same opinion of married sex.
Because here’s the thing: there’s nothing inherently wrong with a lot of what is used as examples in these books. If you really want to have sex in your car where you think no one can see you, fill your boots. I don’t care.
But it’s telling to me that when many evangelicals talk about “holy” sex, they immediately start talking about sex acts that push the boundaries of what is safe or acceptable.
Sex requires context before it can be declared to be “good” or “bad.” We know this intrinsically—the difference between sex and rape is the context of consent, the difference between a couple giggling and being flirty versus an act of coercion isn’t necessarily the act done as much as it is the level of enthusiasm.
So why, in so many of these books and sermons and materials we review, is “good sex” measured by Christians in terms of how many boundaries you’re willing to cross, rather than how many boundaries you’re willing to honour?
Good sex isn’t about whether or not you’re freaky enough.
God sex isn’t measured by what percentage of the day you’re ready and rarin’ to go.
Good sex isn’t dependent on your willingness to have sex be a part of banal, normal parts of your day like chores (seriously, the number of books that talk about cooking naked together…).
Good sex is about whether or not you are honouring and loving the person in front of you, and whether or not that person is honouring and loving you right back.
But the end result of promoting an ideal of sex that’s more focused on acts done than it is each person’s experience feels like a facade. It feels forced, not true, not real.
Research has shown that people who have great sex and really enjoy sex tend to naturally be more experimental (we talked about that in this podcast). You don’t have to cajole them to try new things, they just naturally want to if they’re in safe relationships. These couples may find it helpful to have lists of things they can try, or to talk through together and figure out what their boundaries are, but they don’t ned the benefits espoused them.
So I’m not knocking books that teach people ideas to spice up their love life, or lists of ways they can try new things, I think those can be really helpful, especially for people who grew up with religious ideas around sex that make them feel really afraid or ashamed to enjoy it or be creative.
But I do have a problem with coercing people into trying new things.
I have a real problem with Christians holding up “super sexy” couples who do super hot, boundary-pushing things as the Christian ideal, like we’re back in high school and “all the cool kids are doing it.” (this was a major critique we had of the book Married Sex.)
I have a massive problem with the implication that women who are willing to do a greater variety of things are better, hotter, more sexually desirable wives than ones who aren’t comfortable with acting out specific fantasies.
And I hate seeing women judged, once again, by what they are willing to let men do to them rather than judging men by how eager they are to protect their wives’ sexuality in this pornified culture.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with helping couples who are wanting variety to change things up. There’s nothing wrong with giving practical advice on how to try new things. For pity’s sake, we’ve got tons of posts (and products!) about how to do just that!
But it needs to be done with the underlying foundation that good sex is built first and foremost on respecting each other’s boundaries, not on how far past them you’re willing to go.
It needs to be done with the foundational belief that sex is made good not by increasing its intensity, but by increasing its intimacy.
It needs to be done in a context that sees sex in marriage as sacred, not one that sees marriage as the green light to finally act out your hedonism on a religiously allowed outlet.
So if you’re someone in a great relationship who’s happy spicing things up and trying new things, awesome! Good for you!
And if you’re someone who’s also in a great relationship but you’re not comfortable with trying new things, awesome! Good for you for showing love to each other in respecting those boundaries!
If you’re someone who’s willing to try some things, but not others, way to go for knowing yourself and standing up for yourself. And I can’t think of anything more romantic than a partner who fully and enthusiastically honours and protects those boundaries.
You are not a better or worse spouse for having sexual boundaries.
You’re just a person, who exists in their own context, who is allowed to decide what you are and are not comfortable with as dictated by that context.
Increasing variety is not going to fix your sex life. Doing hotter things is not going to make your marriage suddenly healthy if there were problems before. And no, taking naked photos isn’t going to make your spouse stop looking at porn.
If you want a better sex life, focus on the basics.
Does it feel good for both people? Is it in the context of a relationship that is healthy and actively benefits each other’s lives? Are you being intimate, or is sex an emotionally distancing experience?
And instead of cajoling women to act out arbitrary fantasies, let’s challenge Christians as a whole to divorce sex from pornography entirely, and see it truly as an act of love rather than a competition of who can be hotter: us or the atheists.
For some reason, The Great Sex Rescue is under $10 right now!
We have no idea why, but Amazon in the US has put it on major sale. Sometimes they just do that when a book has been selling well.
So if you’ve never read The Great Sex Rescue, now is a great time to pick it up! Or to buy it for your pastor, your small group leader, your women’s ministry leader, even your sister.
Pick up a bunch for Christmas! I don’t know how long they’ll stay at this price.
Rebecca’s emails always pack a punch.
So subscribe if you haven’t already! And let’s keep this convo going. It isn’t okay to shame women for not wanting to be objectified, or to talk about sex as if it’s merely a commodity.
Let’s get back to seeing sex as an expression of who you are as a couple, rather than something we have to do right to beat the atheists!
I think so many of the people pushing sexual boundaries are the ones that really promote the “rules” of the bible and have a rigid do’s and don’ts list. Maybe they feel sex in marriage is the one place they can have actual freedom? If your heart is focused on the rules instead of the Creator and His creation, then it tracks that you would want to push boundaries because you aren’t seeing their value, only what you can get away with (like a 4 year old pushing boundaries). To me, that showcases a lot of spiritual growing up that needs to happen.
It’s like we’re back in high school with boyfriends pushing their girlfriend’s boundaries…only now it’s men who couldn’t do that in high school (or won’t admit that they did it). So they collectively write books to teach others that high school boyfriend behavior is normal in marriage because, “hey, I deserve the high school sex experience so I’ll just label it sacred and we’re all good” 🙄
Painfully accurate analysis.
But MEN get to have boundaries:
• I don’t want to clean up my thought life and heart attitudes to become a better human being, let alone a better husband, father, or Christian. (This is just the way God made men.)
• I don’t want to give my wife the specific stimulation she needs to orgasm. (Why does she need something beside PIV, which is all I need?)
• I don’t want to do the specific stimulation my wife needs to orgasm for as long as she needs to actually orgasm. (She takes too long when I do manual or oral stimulation.)
🙄🙄🙄🤬🤬🤬
Yes. Interesting how that makes it more about a power-over another than an actual relationship. “I decide what is an enforcible boundary or not, not you.”
I definitely agree with this post! But I’m not really sure what to make of it, because it seems to conflict with some of what you said in “The Great Sex Rescue.” In “The Great Sex Rescue”, you said that it’s not okay to have a sexual boundary of never wanting to do PIV- for example, if a woman has vaginismus and PIV is painful- “The Great Sex Rescue” says in the short term, you shouldn’t push yourself to have PIV sex, you don’t need to consent to sex that is painful, but in the long term you need to get treatment for it and then you need to do PIV, you can’t be married and never do PIV sex. (Correct me if I’m wrong on this.)
The point, I think, is that in the long term you do want to be healed. Obviously there are some health conditions which make PIV impossible (accidents too). But so many people don’t seek treatment, when there is treatment available, and that’s not fair.
But in this post we’re talking about sexual boundaries when it comes to how hot you’re going to get, and that’s really what we were getting at in last week’s podcast.
Yeah if the issue is people not knowing what vaginismus is, and that there’s treatment for it- it’s really important to talk about that and tell people they shouldn’t just accept that it’s “normal” for sex to be painful. And I’m glad you talk about this a lot, because the main Christian resources on sex are all saying “well it’s painful but you have to do it anyway because men need it, that’s just the way it is.”
But I also think it’s possible that some women aren’t interested in PIV sex, and for them, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble/pain/time required to get treatment for it.
The important thing is it should be an informed decision. To know what treatment is available, to know what you want, and make a decision based on what you want rather than what people tell you you’re “supposed” to want.
I do feel this is similar to some of the situations in this blog post, because it’s a case of “people are telling me I’m supposed to be interested in this or that sexual act, but I’m really not”.
I think it does have to be balanced against the general health of the marriage and the wishes of one’s partner too.
It’s often said that it is wrong for the husband to refuse to do something that brings his wife pleasure just because it doesn’t do anything for him. But what if PIV is the only thing that really gives the husband pleasure? It seems equally unfair to deprive him of that IF the issue is one that can be worked on.
Obviously, in an unhealthy relationship, the harmful behaviours and attitudes need to be worked on first. But in an otherwise healthy relationship, I don’t think it’s right for the wife to permanently withhold PIV sex just because she ‘isn’t interested’ and it’s ‘not worth the trouble’ of seeking help to fix the problem. If the issue isn’t fixable, then that surely comes under ‘for better, for worse, in sickness or in health’. But to decide unilaterally that she’s not even going to make the effort to try is unfair, unless this was something that was agreed to pre-marriage.
How often would a man really *only* get pleasure from PIV? And what if a woman gets treatment for vaginismus or whatever was making intercourse painful, and still doesn’t like PIV? I think Perfect Number’s point is valid. Women don’t need to have a health condition or be in unbearable pain to be allowed to say that any given sex act doesn’t work for them. That might be really challenging in a partnership, and I suppose some couples in that situation might end up deciding they were sexually incompatible. But I still don’t think it’s fair to assume that wanting PIV is more normal or valid than not wanting it.
I think there is a clear difference between PIV and any other sexual acts. For one thing, until very recently in most countries, a marriage could be annulled (by either spouse) for non-consummation – i.e. failure to have PIV sex. That wasn’t the case for any other sexual act. And for another, it doesn’t just affect sex life but ability to have kids. Also, while many people may not expect specific sex acts to be a part of their marriage, I’m guessing that the vast majority of people who walk up the aisle assume that PIV WILL play a part in their marriage, unless they have previously agreed that it won’t.
I think it’s great that there has been a real move away from viewing PIV as the ‘only’ way to be intimate. But at the same time, there is a huge difference between saying ‘you don’t have to consent to weird, risky or boundary pushing sex acts if you don’t want to’ and saying ‘it’s fine to get married and never have PIV sex’. For most people who take marriage vows seriously, being denied sex permanently would still not permit them getting a divorce. So I do feel it’s unfair to get married to someone who intends their vows to be for life and then go ‘oh, sorry, forgot to tell you our marriage won’t include intercourse. Hope you weren’t wanting to have kids. It’s not that it causes me any pain, I just can’t be bothered.’
Ideally this is something they would discuss before getting married (this is why I’m glad I had sex before marriage).
But in that situation, if you have 1 spouse who had the assumption that they’re going to be having PIV sex a lot (but then their spouse doesn’t want to), and the other spouse had the assumption that PIV sex was this amazing mindblowing thing (but it turns out it’s not), both spouses’ feelings should be taken seriously. I don’t think we should automatically say the one who doesn’t want PIV is the one who needs to change because PIV is “normal.”
In an otherwise healthy relationship, that wouldn’t happen. Unilaterally deciding to withhold is probably an indicator that it’s NOT otherwise healthy.
So in your view, is it equally acceptable for a husband to refuse to bring his wife to orgasm manually because he doesn’t find that ‘mind-blowing’ either? Because I see an awful lot of comments on this blog from women calling such men ‘selfish’, which seems a bit of a double standard if the wife is allowed to behave that way!
Perfect Number, it’s an interesting question. I guess I’d compare the encouragement for women with vaginismus to seek treatment as being on par with encouraging a man with PE or ED to get treatment so that he can have PIV with his wife, if for no other reason than to give them both the opportunity to have children, as Angharad said. I guess I’m envisioning a younger couple, maybe without much sexual experience, and with a reasonable expectation of having children.
I would also qualify that there is a difference between sex acts that actively cause pain, embarrassment, revulsion, anxiety or degradation to one partner, vs acts that a partner can accept without distress, but doesn’t find interesting, which is what I understood your objection to be. Both partners should feel pleasure, but that doesn’t mean that they need to feel equally pleasurable throughout every moment of each encounter. A healthy sex life can include boring or uninteresting moments, but most things worth doing do. That’s definitely different from a sex life that only or mostly has one-sided pleasure, or is inherently distressing to one partner.
So, the point is not what sex acts you should be interested in, but what is healthy vs pathology. Pain during PIV, ED or PE are all pathologies and have the potential for treatment. Yes, the alternative could be skipping PIV altogether if both partners are in agreement and are happy with other activities, or if perhaps circumstances like finances or medical resources make treatment inaccessible.
Unfortunately, American evangelical Christians have decided to distinguish their sex lives from the world merely quantitatively (you can sleep with one person only) and not qualitatively. Qualitatively, they embraced the worst of the world, its pornographic style of relating. I say the worst of the world and not the world in general because during the years of my profligate youth I did not have difficulty finding men in the world who liked warm, affectionate, human sex. I think that one major difference might be attributed to how parents talk to their kids about porn. In the Christian world, it’s just don’t do it and if you keep pure God will reward you with a porn star wife. But secular mainstream publications, such as The New York Times and The Atlantic, publish articles for parents on how to talk to their boys about porn and the main advice is “do not EVER do anything you’ve seen there to a real life girl.” They even have the perfect analogy for it: learning how to have sex from porn is like learning how to drive from watching The Fast and the Furious.
When one of my sisters’ husbands (an assistant pastor, go figure) was pressuring her into various pornographic acts and she asked for my opinion on what kind of sexual acts between a married couple were a sin, I told her that there was nothing inherently sinful about any sex act as if it exists in a vacuum, but that PRESSURING your spouse to do something she finds degrading was most definitely a sin. I think that’s the answer we should be giving these women who are looking for an out.
I saved a Christianity Today article from over a decade ago that discusses the fallout of TGC quoting Doug Wilson’s rapey rhetoric, specifically Rachel Held Evans’ strong response to it, and it just ends up bothsidesing it. The last line is: “After all, we’re all naughty by nature (original sin, anyone?), whether we’re down with egalitarian sex or not.” Um… the “not” = rape. The author’s name sounds female, here’s the link: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/julyweb-only/sex-outrage-internet-doug-wilson-rachel-held-evans-and.html
Finally, if you want to read an excellent secular book criticizing porn culture, I highly recommend Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy. The line that stuck with me was that female sexuality in our culture is not about pleasure but about performance.
JoR from above…
> > (This is just the way God made men.)
This is the ultimate, never-ending, get out of jail free card. No matter how bad I am, no matter how many mistakes I make, no matter how much I hurt and abuse people, I’m a man, and this is just how God made me, so deal with it. And of course, no matter how faulty I am, God also made me to be in charge, and anything bad that happens is my wife’s fault anyway, so she should clean it up. Maybe she should pray more and try to be a better Christian.
It really is wild that they say this. But they do!
So how come women can’t also say “This is just the way God made women”? Especially about that whole not-liking-sex thing?
Oh, that’s right. Because a woman’s opinion is irrelevant, she’s not in charge of anything (except the house, the kids, and every boring adult task her husband can’t be bothered to do), and we all know women don’t mean what they say.
Also, goose gander, pot kettle much?
Appreciate your awareness of this as a male. It is refreshing to hear a male acknowledging the awfulness of it.
Thanks, but just be aware that I’m not perfect. I have faults enough, but I didn’t start going to church until I was about 12, so I never got immersed in the whole male patriarchy thing. And I can be a bit more objective that some who grew up in that whole thing.
I agree with Angharad above. Most people likely assume that PIV sex will be a regular part of the marriage, so they often don’t even discuss it first. That assumption is likely no longer a good idea, and expectations like this SHOULD be discussed before you walk down the aisle.
And Andrea’s analysis of how many Christians distinguish themselves on a quantitative basis from the rest of the world as opposed to qualitative is excellent. Sure, I demand that my wife be a 24-hour porn star, but she’s the only one I ask!
Yep! That really sums it all up.
I just reread Laura Robinson’s review of the pornographic chapter of Butler’s book, and a commenter on her substack wrote this: “I think that the Christian sex advice business up until Gregoire et al has gotten all of their “knowledge” from porn or other people who received that information second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand from porn.” I love how this blog is changing things!
My rant ends (so far, anyway) with discussing the nature of those who keep pushing others boundaries but claim that they’re doing this as good Christians.
I believe that some of this, at least, derives from the same forces that oppose allowing people in marriage to say “no” when they just don’t feel up to things. At least one person said “if I give my wife permission to say no, then she’ll ALWAYS say no”. By the same token, may some feel that if they allow their wives to set boundaries, they’ll keep expanding them until there’s no sex in the marriage at all.
In that case, I would suggest that there are other, deeper issues going on, and the couple should examine those rather than just covering over the symptoms.
You nailed that!