Last winter I did a survey of 20,000 married, Christian women.
Well, now it’s time to do a survey of Christian guys!
The survey of women was super comprehensive and super long, and we’ll be sharing our results in our upcoming book The Great Sex Rescue.
But now we want to know what men experience. How satisfied are guys with their sex lives? How happy are guys with their marriages?
And we’ll be sharing the results in our upcoming book The Guy’s Guide to Great Sex! Keith and I signed a contract with Zondervan for a companion book to The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and we’re so excited to be writing it right now.
It will be out next spring, but we need all the help we can get compiling more data. We really want this book, as well, to be based on data, and not just on what I think is true, or what Keith thinks is true (especially because we sometimes disagree and we need evidence!).
So can you help us by doing these 3 things?
- Fill out the survey (if you’re a guy) or ask your husband to fill it out
- Take this link and email it to 3 guys you know who would fill it out (or women who could get their husbands to fill it out) >> https://www.research.net/r/baremarriagemen ≤≤
- Share the link on Facebook or social media >> https://www.research.net/r/baremarriagemen ≤≤
It would help me so much! We’re so excited to have a companion to The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, to help guys understand sex as they get ready for the wedding–but also help them make sex so much better if they’re already married! I get asked so often for resource suggestions for women’s husbands, because they love this blog, but they want something geared more to men. So we’re going to try to provide that, to help build healthy sexuality in the Christian world.
I really appreciate all of you! (And don’t worry–the guy’s survey isn’t as long as the women’s!)
I want to be part of the men's marriage survey!
What would you like us to cover in The Guy’s Guide to Great Sex? Let me know in the comments! And thank you for getting people to take the survey!
It would be great if you’d cover something along the lines of dealing with the feelings of being rejected when the wife has valid reasons for not wanting to have sex as much as you’d like, i.e. trying to deal with vaginismus or other past traumas. I feel like there’s a lot more information to help men when it’s a libido issue on our end, but very little on how to understand and work with a wife who genuinely wants a better sex life but has baggage (especially of the physical type) that needs to be dealt with first.
I’ll see what I can do about getting my husband to take the survey, though he has very little patience for this sort of thing!
Will do, Becky! I also want to create a course about that. But it will definitely be going into our book, especially since that’s such a large part of our story, too (and we really didn’t handle it well).
As I’m in middle age sex usually takes more time for me to get into the mood. It is sometimes painful it’s something that hasn’t become a huge deal until my husband started taking viagra and this makes him reach his full girth which is over 6in average girth is 5. Big difference so sometimes I feel anxious when he gets fully excited or he takes the pill. He’s been given a compensation for an sex organ ininury from his past work so his strength of erections haven’t been at full potential for years until recently.
We navigate this by doing activities that don’t require penetration of any sort. Or when I’m sore and need a few days break. Oral sex or hand jobs work great in place of sex but still keep intimacy going in our marriage.
Just took the survey! Really hard to answer those questions without explanation.
I understand that. We had women complain of the same thing. The problem is that for a survey to be useful, we have to be able to look from above and make broad comparisons across all the survey takers, which means we need to be able to code it. So it has to be somewhat objective. That’s why we’re also hoping to do some focus groups, like we did with the women, so we can flesh out more of the “qualitative” aspects to it. We need both quantitative and qualitative! Thanks for taking it.
> > feelings of being rejected when the wife has valid reasons for not wanting to have sex as much as you’d like,
I understand that Mrs. Nathan isn’t always “available upon demand”, and I respect that. I can’t help but feel a little rejection when that happens, though.
Nathan, I don’t think Becky was saying “don’t feel rejected”. Unmet expectactions and hope denied are negative scenarios. We get that. I think what Becky was getting at is “helping men process the feelings that come from being told no so that healthy boundaries are maintained.”
In my previous marriage, if I said no to a, I was asked for b. If that was a no, then he asked for c and so on. Most times, I eventually gave in at some level and he still got his ejaculation. Blunt, but true. If I stood by my no, he literally pouted and often spent hours lecturing me or otherwise using talking to punish or move me to feel bad for him so I’d want to make him feel better. (I was a codependent enfp/enneagram 2/people pleaser.) Coerced sexual relations, which I now know was abusive. And he complained that I wasn’t enthusiastic enough about sex. *mind blown*
Now, I’m believing in faith that ex-husband is not an example of a typical male because I’m praying for a healthy, Godly marriage in my future. I also recognize that many of Sheila’s readers are women like me who thought we were the broken cogs, so there is a skewed dynamic here in that our sample isn’t truly randomized. The diversity of commenters, however, leads me to believe that the English-speaking world (especially the US where I am) has much emotional and spiritual growth to do.
I filled it out. Again, I agree with the poster that said he wishes he could explain things. Maybe do some phone interviews so you could ask open-ended questions?
We left a spot for email addresses so that we can do focus groups!
Thank you for jumping in, B!
To clarify, Nathan, I’m absolutely not saying that feeling rejected in those scenarios is not a valid feeling, too. My experience has been that it’s hard for him to not take my hesitation about sex –because my association with it is physical pain and resulting emotional brokenness, and that is something I’ve been working on for years– as a rejection of him or our relationship. He’s honestly been great about handling it overall, but he understandably gets frustrated at how long this process is taking. And I’m probably not the best person to help him deal with that, since I’m the one who’s been carrying the extra baggage in this area. It might help him to hear from a guy who’s been there, too.
Ill put some good thought to this and reply here. Of course I will fill out the survey and of course I will help find some healthy men to fill out the survey too. I am up for focus group – sign me up.
I gave my email and you know me. I would be thrilled to do a focus study
[Editor’s Note: Again, I know some of the wording of the questions were odd, but we were quoting directly from some Christian bestselling books, and we’re trying to measure how accurately those books predict the inner thought life of men. So just know that many of the word choices, and the content choices, of our questions were not actually our choices. They were from bestselling books for men.]
Editor’s Note: We had to delete this comment because it was revealing some of the questions in the survey. And, yes, we understand some wording was seen as weird, but we’re actually trying to measure scenarios that are given in many Christian books, and so we had to include the wording that is in those books so that our results can’t be called into question. So just understand that often it wasn’t our own word choices!
[Editor’s note: we have to delete any comment that discusses any aspect of the information in the survey, sorry Chris!! But in order to keep from priming the audience we have to delete comments about the survey. Please know that your thoughts were noted and valued! :)]
Thanks, Chris. Again, I know some of the answers were odd–we were literally quoting from Christian bestselling resources that talk about how men think and act. We’re trying to test if this is true. We have a number of other things we’d like to measure, too, and we’re hoping to do so in focus groups. Again, we can never ask everything, and we wanted to keep the survey under 10 minutes, so we asked enough that we can make very interesting comparisons with the women’s survey that we did as well. Thanks for your time!
[Editor’s note: Doug, you have officially crossed a line with your arrogance and your patronizing tone for this website, for the writers, and for our ministry.
Over and over again you return to this site seemingly with one purpose: to criticize and demean our work and women in general.
We have been more than generous with you, we have been more than patient, we have been more than understanding. We have allowed more than 100 of your comments to go through, even though almost every single one was combative and telling us we were wrong, and they almost never helped the conversation move forward. In fact, your comments specifically have even been called out as harmful or triggering to women of past abusive marriages and we have had to apologize for allowing your comments through in the past, and have had to delete some after approving them because we tried to give you as much leeway as possible and it ended up doing more harm than good.
However, your pride and arrogance in this manner has now crossed a line when you purport to understand even our own research and our own research questions more than we do when you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Your comment was inappropriate in every way, puffed up with vanity, and frankly, you have been consistently an emotional drain on the workers on this site with your misogynistic and arrogant tone (many comments of yours we have not been able to let through because of their content).
We truly wish you all the best in your personal life. You have experienced much heartache, we understand. But it is on you to figure out how to move forward and find healing. And the way to do that is not to continue to act in an inappropriate, patronizing way towards women. Your healing will not be found in false feelings of superiority, but in true humble self-searching in prayer and with a licensed therapist.
Please seek real help, this blog is no longer the place for you.]
Sheila, I understand completely. I tried not to reference anything in the survey so it would mess with the results.
Thanks, Chris!
Also, I am changing my email address but it is still me.
Believe it or not I initially drew a blank on this! I have been reading so much around here I feel like you have already written the material, you just need to fetch it! I still have not taken the survey as I did not want to taint the results with my thoughts I promised here, and vise versa. This is what I came up with: I would think You cant do a book on great sex for men without addressing Porn. You could probably do an entire book on porn but I would think a chapter has to be covered. Quite a while ago I read this stat quoted by The Generous Husband that someone attempted to conduct a survey of men who have seen porn vrs men who have not. They couldnt find any men who havent seen porn to conduct the survey. The orgasm for women piece that we have been talking about more recently and how guys need to let her go first etc etc absolutely needs to be in the book. Giving the wife pleasure is an absolute key to great sex. I also think the 2 minute drill discussion needs to be discussed. You could have a cue code in the book that links you to the video flight of the concords Business Time and then YES – you might need to explain it. It is my belief that many men just dont understand it is supposed to last much longer. Actually cue codes to videos that you and Keith could make would make it pretty unique and interactive… I really think that a focus on foreplay is really a main key to great sex on both sides. For women it may take longer such as 20 minutes and guys well we can end much faster. Put the 2 together and well…long extended foreplay for both = great sex. Give us the blue print for that. I do also believe that self examination is also a key to great sex. Looking at yourself often reveals more. Anyway those are my random thoughts. I of course wish you all the best on your new venture and I am sure it will be a hit!
I thought I wouldn’t comment on this but I am still thinking about it days later… How comme this book will be “The guy’s guide to great sex” and not “The good guy’s guide to great sex” ?
Women have to be classified as either “good” or “bad” when it comes to sexuality (hello purity and mysoginistic culture), but men are just men ? No good/bad decisions when it comes to sex ?
I’m feeling disrespected by that title only…
I hear you. It’s not up to me, unfortunately, but I will try to make my voice heard! Part of the problem, too, is that someone has already taken an incredibly similar name for a book in the Christian world, after I published my one for women. So we’ve got limited options.
I understand, but I really pray that your voice can be heard on that matter. This is exactly what your message is about, to get a healthier and more balanced view of marriage and sexuality for both genders… And then to have it marketed as the usual “christian book” (ie “good girl” vs “guy”) totally misses the great point you are making.
I absolutely don’t want to burden you with my comment but I do think it is worth fighting for. It’s like the publishers are saying “ok, a little controversy is interesting, but let’s not shake the boat too much, we still need a clear stereotypical gender thing on those books”. I believe what you have to say has much more value than just that, and people looking for healthy christian books need to know that even by just browsing the title.
Hope I am not hurting anybody’s feelings by saying it, but I am such a big fan of what you have to say that I would hate for it to be put on a shelf looking and sounding like just any “christian book” 😉
I really will push for it! In fact, your comment cemented to me yesterday that I should, and actually made me feel much more excited about working on the book. I’ve had a bit of a block with it, and I think the underlying reason was just my discomfort with the whole title thing. So now that I know I’m going to push for it, it’s like it opened up for me, and yesterday afternoon I banged out two chapters. So thank you!
Oh ! I’m so glad to hear that ! It woke me up at night two nights in a row… And I am not writing the book 😉 Thank you so much for your hard work !
Took the survey. My only major complaint would be the number of questions that asked about what my wife thinks/thought; feels/felt. This meant I had to take my “best guess” to answer those questions, which makes them statistically invalid. If you had to ask those questions, then there should have been a “Don’t Know” option.
Hi, Anonymous Guy!
A “don’t know” option likely would have helped some men from the test-taker perspective. However, what we are looking at is men’s responses to these same questions we asked women. So adding or removing options would mean that we couldn’t directly compare them in the same way.
Additionally, we ARE looking for men’s best guess! And giving them a “don’t know” answer could, alternatively, cause many men to not think through the question and actually just choose the “neutral” response. In fact, many surveys don’t include “don’t know” or “neutral” responses for just this reason: we want people to actually answer, and best guesses are perfectly fine IF we are actually trying to measure best guesses, not actual lived experiences. 🙂 Which is what we’re looking for. We already know the lived experiences because we asked women earlier. So now we want to see how close their husbands’ guesses are, on average, to how women, on average, respond.
Survey development is complicated, and many things may seem “off” until you understand what the actual research questions are. But I can promise you, all the questions are worded exactly how they are for a reason! 🙂
Any word on when the book will be out?
I believe March 2022!