Building intimacy in marriage is about a lot more than just sex. In this episode of the Love Hope Adventure podcast, we’ll talk about creating an intimacy beyond physical. It will encompass emotional, spiritual, as well as a non-sexual physical relationship with your spouse.

Transcription for this episode:

Hi. Welcome to the love hope adventure podcast, where we talked about the marriage relationship, intimacy in marriage, and how you can go deeper with your spouse. Today, I want to talk about intimacy and marriage. And I’m not talking just specifically about sexual intimacy. 

And one of the reasons I want to talk about this is that a lot of times, I have people write in, and they’re all asking very similar questions about how to get their spouse to be more engaged with sex. Be more adventurous, and try new things. Yeah, initiate what have you all, like, whatever the thing is, right? They just want more out of their sex life. 

And then I always want to ask the question, well, what are you doing? That’s really intentional, and the rest of your life that’s intimate, and rebuilding that intimate connection with your spouse? Because I think sometimes, and this is often men writing in, I’m not saying women never write in; they just usually have different questions. But most often, it’s men. And the first thing that comes to their mind when they’re trying to build intimacy with their wife is it’s very sexual. Unfortunately, I think the word intimacy has come to mean sex exclusively. 

Yeah. Which, which is unfortunate, is because it’s such a richer word than that. But I mean, we talked about, I mean, just listen to when we used the word intimate, right? You know, we’re talking about intimate apparel; what does that mean? Lingerie, you know, like, you know, all these, the word has been stripped so much of its meaning. 

And really, it just, it just speaks to a closeness you can have, you can have an intimate relationship with a friend, right? Where it is a deeply meaningful relationship that’s very close, has a lot of tight bonds, and is completely a friendship and platonic, no physical, no sexual, any part of that, you know, even somebody you would never possibly be romantically interested in, you can have an intimate relationship with. And when we get rid of that idea, and we just couch intimacy means we’re having great, awesome sex. We’re missing so much more, of what marriage is and can be; I think that a couple of years back, I remember, we had a big, big focus on friendship and marriage. 

We did our five foundations of intimacy, Marriage Course, which maybe is still on the website, I don’t even know. And one of the five foundations was friendship because, for you and I, that was a big part of it. And so when you boil it down to its, just sex, you’re missing out on so much richness that your marriage can have.

So I think the focus is a lot of times, not always, right, because it’s like so much 100% on building more adventure in the bedroom, more or less boredom, more excitement. And so then I asked people, okay, so what are you doing when you’re not engaging in sexual intimacy, to build intimacy, because if you are only being intentional about sex, you are missing out on so much greater, deeper, richer intimacy with your spouse. 

And I think that the closer your spouse feels to you, the more connected they feel to you, the better the sex life is going to be anyway, and the easier it’s going to be for your husband or wife to open up to you sexually in the bedroom if you have shared a lot with each other relationally. So I think there is a couple of different levels that you can look at here. And we just talked a little bit about the friendship part of marriage, and you’re like, you can be really, really intimate with a friend and not sexual at all. 

So in that situation, I would say, think of your husband or wife as your closest friend. And then ask yourself, like, how close are you and what are you doing? If there was no sex, and you guys weren’t cohabitating or raising kids together or paying bills together, whatever. What would you be doing with them to build the relationship?

Did you say if you weren’t cohabitating? Like, just kind of take all those things out of the picture for just a minute because you could say, well, we raise our kids together. No, that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about deepening a relationship between white or white disagree because I wouldn’t include those things.

Do you think raising the kids builds intimacy? I mean, it probably does. We are kind of, You know, waterline if you’re shoulder to shoulder, you know, on the same team as we always talk about Yeah, no, that’s the thing. 

Okay, so our five foundations for intimacy from that course. Can we even remember their communication, friendship, romance, sex, and finances? We did a whole unit in a course called the five foundations for intimacy in marriage, like budgeting, like finances and what it wasn’t a budget and what we weren’t doing Dave Ramsey or anything. We weren’t not doing Dave Ramsey, but it’s, I think, all of those things. I think that’s part of the richness, kind of like being on the same page about it.

Yeah, because there’s nobody else that I sit down with and talk about our budget with. There’s nobody else that I’m day to day slogging it out raising the kids. Like, I might ask a buddy of mine, like, hey, how do you handle this when your teenager does that, or whatever. But, you know, he’s not there. When we’re, when we’re doing it when we’re enacting, when we’re taking away the privileges, you know, when we’re grounding the kid or when we’re having the talks and figuring things out, it’s you that’s there. 

It’s, I mean, this might sound silly, but like, we go to the grocery store, every now and then. And, you know, together, we used to do it as a whole family. And there, you know, different periods in our, in our marriage, we went together, we went as a family, there have been times where it just basically you were doing it on your own. 

And we were here to help unload everything. But like when we go together, that’s a bonding experience. You and I, most nights of the week, for the last, I don’t know, six months or so, go out for a walk at night when this just awful Texas sun finally scorches, it’s way below the horizon, and we can go back out into the land of the living again, we go for that walk, and I look forward to that so much. It’s something as mundane as a walk. 

I know we’re gonna have great conversation, we’re gonna have a great time catching up for the day, downloading with each other, and all those kinds of things. And I think, to me, it’s all of those things. It’s, it’s the going out on an on a date, and flirting with each other. It’s having sex; it’s laughing with each other. It’s watching a movie and enjoying it and talking about it later, it’s going over the budget and seeing Are we still on the same page and slogging that out every now and then it’s, you know, it’s buying a house, it’s, you know, taking the kid to get their license. It’s, it’s so many of those things. It’s all of those shared experiences that we have, to me, that define that’s what makes our relationship. So very, very different from every other relationship I have.

Right? Yeah. And I think that when you’re coming in building intimacy in the relationship, sex is one single part, although I feel like it became become the biggest division point. Yeah. And I feel like sometimes there are couples who think if they can just get the sex figured out, the rest of it will follow suit.

And so that, that’s what you started saying earlier was you said, Take Take sex out of the equation, right? And then you also took everything else out? And that’s where I disagree with you. I just boil it down to the relationship part. 

Yeah, I know, I get what you’re saying. But I would say the same thing, except just stop at the sex part, pull the sex life out of the conversation in the equation for a second. And what are you doing to build intimacy? What are you doing with your finances? What are you doing raising your kids? What are you doing in the day-to-day, your career, you know, your spouse’s career, do the day-to-day chores and life and all these kinds of things? What are you doing in those areas to build intimacy?

And then my question to a person who’s concerned about their spouse not really initiating or whatever in the way of sex life, my question is, are they doing other things throughout the day to build a connection with you? So I think it’s the Gottman Institute that talks about bidding. So bidding is when you know your spouse comes in, and they want your attention in some way or another. 

And if you don’t give it to them, then that’s like a sign a couple won’t make it like they did this, however, long study. And I think that most of the time, your spouse may come in, and they’re bidding for your attention, and maybe you’re not giving it to them. So you’re like if you’re continually killing the intimacy throughout the day, and maybe they were trying, maybe they’ve been trying to build intimacy and other ways, and they’re getting shut down, then that’s gonna make the bidding for sex even more difficult, like, Well, you didn’t enter time for me earlier. 

But you certainly got time for me. Okay, right. And then they don’t see it as a form of intimacy; they see it as a form of somebody wanting to have a need met. This is one of the things I’ve talked about with sexual need is that when you boil it down to something that’s just physical, it’s a release, it’s something that I have to have, or I need. It’s like, okay, well, I need to eat, but I didn’t feed myself today. So you can do without that thing too. But when you look at it as a relationship builder, and you look at all the other things that you do in the day as relationship builders, or as something that destroys the relationship, you know, it’s either going to be adding or subtracting. When you look at all of that, then I think it’s going to help you make different decisions, right? And other focuses. So I have a question for you. Because I think a lot of times we just think that men don’t want emotional intimacy like they just gravitate towards sexual. Yes, definitely the stereotype.

So what do you think about yourself? Like, do you think that you didn’t crave emotional intimacy?

Um, no, I definitely did. What do you think? Do you think I,

I always thought that you wanted to be very relational. Yeah. Like, you’re very relational. Okay, so I would never think of that of you. But I do know, a lot of well, I mean, I have some family members then would fall into the category of not being super relational. Just in general. Sure.

No, I was curious because I would, I would say that no, absolutely. I crave emotional intimacy as well. But then I’m like, Well, what do you think? And you agree with me, so Okay. Yeah. I’m not I’m not self-deluded. Yeah, and I don’t know, am I, you know, am I defying the statistics? Or am I showing that the popular notion is wrong? I genuinely don’t know. I know that stereotypically, that’s the model, right? Are that women want to connect emotionally, men want to connect physically and sexually, and that kind of thing. And I don’t know how well that actually holds up. I genuinely don’t know.

I don’t either, because most of the men that I know are pretty relational; I can tell that they do invest in the relationship with their spouse; I think it is definitely top of mind and more work for them to create dates for their wife. But they do it because they know it’s important for her. I’m unclear if they would make that a priority if they didn’t think she cared. So that I don’t know about right, but I guess the question to you would be if I didn’t want to go out on dates because, you know, quality time is like one of my biggest love languages, like would you make it a priority? As much if you were married to somebody who didn’t have quality time as a core thing?

I don’t know. Like, I know, my gut wants to say, Oh, totally, I would be pursuing that. But I’ve also been like, you know, molded in this relationship for 20 years to have more than 20. But so I don’t know, I like I don’t know if that’s a result of our life together. Yes.

You just have to think about how it plays out in relationships. Like, when we were first dating, like, I initiated dates and things like, so that was something that was important to me. Even then, even early days before, you had a chance to have an influence over my life.

I guess things probably change when you get married. Because when you’re not living together, dating is literally the only way you can spend time together. Yeah, that’s true. So when you get married, you know, I think that that’s why a lot of times dates can end up going the other the thing that’s causing me to be fuzzy on this is I think I know that right now. Yes. I, you know, like I come to you, and I’m like, Hey, you want to go to lunch? Or hey, was it always? Well, yeah, no, it certainly wasn’t always like that. But is that because I just didn’t have that mentality? 

Or was it because we were broke? Because for a long time, I’m going to tell you, for a long time, dates were a bone of contention between you and me. And part of the reason for that was that I was like, we don’t have any money. And so we can’t just pick up and go out on a date because we’re broke and And then and then we were broke and had kids and didn’t have, you know, family around for built-in childcare and you know, and all those kinds of things. So I don’t know. 

Like, I want I wanted to take you out, I just didn’t have the ability; we didn’t have the ability at the time. And so, you know, I had to kind of get creative. I mean, I remember many times when I, you know, cooked dinner and lit some candles. And, you know, we had a little in-home date night and things like that. So I don’t know, again, it’s, you know, it’s hard to say we’re looking back now and saying, how would I have done it like we had the budget now that we had there, the other way around? If we had then, you know, the budget we have now, what I’ve taken you on, on more dates, probably, I think so.

Well, and I also think, what we were just talking about is because I am a quality time person, that’s how I, you know, receive love, and Austin’s is physical intimacy. So I have to be a lot more, you know, hands-on training and things like that. For you in your marriage, we’re not saying you have to go on 10 dates or whatever; you have to figure out what builds intimacy with your spouse. 

So when I have someone come to me and say, my spouse, isn’t making sex a priority? Yeah. I tell them, I say okay, what I think you should do is go to your, your husband or wife and ask them, What are the things that I do that make you feel most connected to me, and really discuss it and talk about it, and let them get in their feelings about it. 

And then you tell them when we’re having sex, this is how I feel like I feel that level of connection to you. I don’t know about men as much as women, but I can tell you women can have sex and not feel at all connected to their spouses. Instead, they can feel quite the opposite. They can feel very disconnected, used, hurt, and emotionally abused. I don’t know if men feel that can feel that way. Or ever do feel that way. I really don’t.

I mean, I don’t know anything outside of my own head. And as far as that’s concerned, I can’t imagine that scenario for myself personally, like, I can’t imagine us having a sexual experience and me coming out and going well, I just feel bad about that, you know? Nothing, it doesn’t happen. Yeah. And that’s what I’m saying. 

As you know, that’s me, in my context, I’m sure that it’s, you know, there’s a scenario like that for

money for women. And one of the reasons for that is that a man is going to be physically stimulated to have sex, like, he’s going to have to be already excited to be able to have sex and it’s going to feel good, it’s going to result in orgasm. But if you have a woman who was not where it didn’t feel like anything, or maybe even her, or maybe it kind of only sort of felt good, who knows? 

Yeah, like, there’s no physical benefit for this thing I can, I can imagine, I can imagine what it would have to be like for me to feel abused or used or something like that. I just can’t envision that. And in our context, is what I’m saying. 

Like, I definitely can imagine that, that those same types of things could be happening with a guy that there could be you come out the other side feeling like, well, you know, I was just for her. And that was just using me and that kind of thing. Probably not as common, like you’re saying, just because of the way you guys are built physically, it’s probably not as common, but I’m also speaking out of ignorance. So yeah, we’re just speaking out of ignorance on this.

But, but, but getting back to just building intimacy in other areas, you’ve got to learn to be bilingual. Right? You have to one of the core ideas of the five love languages is that you tend to have two or three of the five love languages that are like one of them tends to stand out as your primary and then maybe one or two others that are also very strong. 

And for whatever reason, people seem to find themselves on the other, you know, complement a complement to each other. Right? So like I said, mine is physical touch and words of affirmation. And yours is gifts and quality time and acts of service for that matter, you know, so we have mismatched love languages. 

Yeah. Which means, oh, man, what was that play? There was a play that I remember watching in high school. And there was this. There was this guy that kind of had this catchphrase; it was something say he was a horse enthusiast or something like this. And he said something about she had a good seat. 

You know, this one woman, as she was riding, she had a good seat, which meant their posture and blah, blah, whatever. And towards the end of the play, it came about that it was, you know, this was his way of expressing respect and affection and all these kinds of things. And what is the Princess Bride, you know, every time he said as you wish he was really saying, I love you, you know is that idea where, you know, if I come up to you, and I wrap my arms around you, I’m telling you, I love you. And you’re going and off me because you’re in touch. 

And when, yeah, and so it’s so hot, it’s 100. And on the flip side, so I’m saying I love you, and you’re not hearing it, it might as well be clinging on. And when, when you do some amazing thing, you know, you don’t know, I’m trying to think of just like a mundane, you know, like, you take care of the laundry, because you, you know, your acts of service is one of your love languages. And I’m just like that coupled with the laundry, and whatever. 

And I don’t, I don’t say anything to it and respond to it or whatever. And so we’re both, like, standing on opposite ends of the room shouting, I love you at each other, and the other person is not happy. Yeah, the other person is not hearing it. So you have to learn to both speak and hear your partner’s love language. 

So if you’re, if you’re a physical touch person, if you’re sexual intimacy is your primary means of building intimacy, and receiving love and speaking love. You’ve got to recognize that men might not be the case for your spouse. And so if your spouse is not hearing you say, I love you, and then you don’t hear them saying it back because they’re not doing it in the language of sex. How do you? That’s the conversation that needs to happen. 

Like you said, what are the things that I do that make you hear I love you the loudest? And there could be a list of those things. But what is the thing that makes you hear the loudest? And then that’s probably their love language, can on that, and do that. And then recognize that when they’re doing it back, that’s what they’re doing. They’re saying I love you.

Well, the other issue is if say, you have a person who feels deeply connected through sexual intimacy, right, and the husband or wife gives it to them. And they’re like, right; we have intimacy, I feel connected by them. And then they do nothing else to that connection to the spouse, the spouse is like, wow, you know, that’s where the resume is starts coming in? Yeah, it’s like, well, you have done nothing whatsoever to build intimacy with Me, connect with me. But you just expect me to come in here and do whatever the thing is, right? 

That could be any number of things that could be like, we can sit down and spend quality time together. So I need the quality time, and maybe you didn’t, or whatever the case may be, if I don’t reciprocate in a way that you hear love after that, well, then you feel like, well, you know, she got what she wanted. And now she’s done. So it’s important that I think that couples really focus on building a relationship that is both mutually satisfying, emotionally, and physically, whatever that means to both people. 

But if you’re in a position where you’re married to someone who you feel like isn’t as interested in sex as you are, they’re not as interested in talking, or what, whatever it is, you know, physical affection, like hugging and kissing, and flirting or whatever, not necessarily sexual. If your spouse is not as interested in that thing as you are, it doesn’t mean they don’t love you and doesn’t mean that they aren’t trying to connect with you.

It just means they’re not they’re missing that connection with you. And so you have to work together with them to help them understand and explain to them where you feel connected, figure out where they feel connected, and then you guys work together on that. So that’s kind of what our thoughts are. Well, guys, thanks so much for joining us today. 

If you would like to, you know, keep in touch with us. I would like for you to love avenger.com/newsletter Sign up for the newsletter, I’ll send you a copy of my free sexy Truth or Dare. And then, every week, I’ll send you our latest blog and latest podcasts. 

I answer a lot of anonymous questions in that newsletter. That’s pretty much our most exclusive content, although sometimes I answer these questions on the blog or videos or here on the podcast, but if you’ll subscribe to that, you’ll kind of always stay in touch with us. If you want to ask a question, go to love adventure.com. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, and there is an anonymous questions forum, or you can just email me directly [email protected]. 

If you want to have an actual conversation with me, the people that are filling out the form of the anonymous question they’re just subscribing to the newsletter. That’s how they get to answer people who are emailing me then I just, you know, I respond to them, and occasionally I’ll bring it up on a podcast or other things, but I don’t always put that in the newsletter, so just letting you know, alright guys thanks so much for joining us and we can’t wait to talk to you next time

The post Building Deep Intimacy in Marriage appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

In this episode we are going to answer two reader questions. Here are the questions we tackle in today’s show. 

My spouse doesn’t initiate sex, and isn’t interested in sex. The current excuse is because she says I am not emotionally present enough in the relationship and she doesn’t feel connected. When I try to ask what I need to do to be connected, I am told I should have never started a business that requires me to travel. She says that because I travel, (maybe 10 days per month average), she feels abandoned. She wants me to quit my company I started in favor of getting a job that lets me be home each night. Even when i am home, she isn’t interested in sex. She doesn’t let me see her naked (body image issues? Maybe?). And she gets mad when I try to initiate. Help!! My marriage is on the ropes and it totally sucks. We have 3 kids, btw. It makes sense why she’s upset when I travel 😉 but the lack of sex is very unfortunate. My wife is an ultra hot babe. Should I act less interested?

My wife and i have been married for over 10 years.  We have three kids and an amazing marriage.  My wife is an amazing mother and the best wife a guy could ask for.  On top of all that, she is smoking HOT!  We do, like all marriages, have some tension from time to time but nothing that a commited relationship cannot work through.  One of the areas that can often be a hot topic is around sex and specifically her pleasure.  She has never had an orgasm and that really bothers me (it does not seem to bother her though). I would love to be able to work through your recent post about womens orgasms with her but i dont think that would be accepted very well.  I think it would leave her feeling like she is not good enough, and that i am always trying to “fix” her.  We regularly have sex twice a week but it is scheduled and i feel like it is out of duty on her part.  Most often sex is based around my orgasm.  Once I am done, we can move on to other things.  She does not seem to mind that she is not experiencing pleasure from sex all the time, but it does bother me. 

Should i just leave well enough alone, and continue on the way things are, or should i find some ways to encourage her to learn about her sexuality in a way that does not male her feel like she is a failure and that she is not good enough?

Here is the link to the Orgasm Guide https://lovehopeadventure.com/womens-orgasm-guide/ the reader mentioned.

The post Anonymous Questions – When She’s Not Interested in Sex appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

Ryan Cote owner of the Morning Upgrade joins us to talk about how personal development can help you show up for your spouse the way you want to. Do you want to be a patient husband or wife? How about someone that listens and actively engages with your spouse? What are the virtues you want to embody? Now, ask yourself, “Am I showing up that way for my spouse?”

In this episode, Ryan gives practical tips on how you can implement changes in your daily life that will help you become a better husband or wife and show up as the person you want to be. Instead of trying to change your spouse, you should focus on making changes in yourself.

In addition to running the Morning Upgrade, Ryan is also a partner at Ballantine Digital Marketing Agency and Ballantine Home Improvement. As a busy entrepreneur, husband, and father of three girls, he’s committed to putting habits in place that will help him be the man he wants to be. Listen in to this episode to find out more about how personal development can help your marriage.

Transcription:

Hey, welcome to the love hope adventure podcast where we talked about the marriage relationship intimacy in marriage and how you can go deeper with your spouse. Oh my goodness, what a great start. So we’re really excited. We have Ryan cote on the podcast with us today. Ryan is the owner of the morning upgrade. He also has the morning a free podcast is a book card, Ryan, tell us a little bit about yourself and all the different things you have going on?

Sure, I’ll start off on a personal note, married for 16 years to my wife, Jill 16, wonderful years. And three kids, three daughters, soon to be 12, soon to be 10. And then seven, all girls, and obviously keeps us busy. They’re involved in a tremendous amount of activities tremendous. There’s Yeah, between softball and soccer and dance and cheer and it goes on. But it makes things exciting. So on the business front, I run morning upgrade, it’s a podcast, book, a blog, my mission is to raise the awareness of personal development and morning routines. And I only talk I’ll be talking about entrepreneurship as well. I also have a marketing agency with my family. And we have a roofing company as well. That’s a recent addition. As we got licensed in February, I think it was. And now we’re actively doing roofing and siding and gutters and soon to be Windows. And so that’s a new little adventure for the Ballantine company, Valentine corporation. So that’s it. That’s me in 30 seconds.

That’s it. There’s nothing else going on in your busy life.

There’s more we can talk about but I think that sums it up. Well,

that’s the highlight. That’s enough to overwhelm pretty much everyone listening to this podcast right now.

That’s why I’m reading a book right now called Peace is every step is this a video this video be shown so your nieces every step book about mindfulness and just trying to enjoy the simple things in life. It’s actually a very, very good book, I’m surprisingly good.

That’s awesome. We can link up to it in the show notes for anybody that is interested in that. So we wanted to bring you on and talk with you about, you know, personal development, how that plays a role in relationships, you know because I get a lot of questions that come in through the blog. And really the core question people are trying to get answered is how do I get my spouse to fill in the blank, whatever the blank is, I want them to do you know more things around the house, I want them to be more sexually engaged, I want them to lose weight, I don’t know. And it’s a lot. And I’m sure a lot of it comes from a good place of intentions like maybe they’re like genuinely concerned about their spouse with whatever is happening. Maybe they just want a better closer, deeper relationship. But they want me to tell them how they can go to their spouse and get this thing fixed. And the truth is, is that I don’t think that they can do anything to fix or change their spouse, I think you have to focus on yourself. And there’s been something I’ve read a lot, and it is really coming up. And a lot of the marriage blog circles I run in is this whole concept of the way you show up in your marriage and the way you, you know, show up for your spouse. And like, this is a concept I’ve actually had a little trouble with. But I think you could probably explain that and describe that to us, like what does it mean to show up a certain way or whatever?

Yeah, well, I think you’re right about what you said that you can control your spouse because my wife is not into personal development at all. I mean, I guess into fitness, but she doesn’t read the books that I read definitely does not consume, the podcasts that I consume, don’t have a morning routine, all of that. And so, but that’s fine. I mean, I can’t control her. She has her life. She does how she wants, but I can control myself, and what I do, and how I show up to the marriage to my kids to my friends and all that no two things are ever perfect, but at least I’m making an effort to improve myself and show up the best I can. And it’s going to be a lifelong journey for sure. But that’s you know, that’s the whole purpose of morning upgrade for myself and for people that read and listen to the to the podcasts and read the blogs and read the book. So to me showing up, it’s just how you the energy you bring your Well, I think it’s the energy that you bring to situations it’s also your intentions, you know, so if I’m going to like for work for your team, like how you lead them, how you show up your energy, your mood. And so I think it’s just how you carry yourself and the energy and the intentions that you have.

Is there anything that has to do with behavior With this, see, I am struggling with the definition of showing up. Because when I tell somebody I’m going to show up for them, I mean, I’m going to get on a plane and fly to their front door, like I’m going to show up. This is so different because I keep seeing a lot of people say, I want to do things so that I can show up in my marriage, the way I want to

show be the best version, I think, is being the best version of yourself. So I think people, react to that they react to your energy, for example, like, if you smile at someone, you know, assuming it’s not like a creepy smile, they’re gonna smile back at you. If you’re angry at someone, they’re probably gonna be angry back at you. And so it’s sort of like this, people feed off the energy. And so when I think of showing up, I think, Alright, can I be the best version of myself right now? For the people that are around me? And, yeah, it sounds like it’s not easy, though. Sometimes you’re in a bad mood, and you have to go to a meeting or what have you. And, you know, it just, you know, you know, the term killer, like flip the switch, and then you have to flip the switch to become to forget about it, forget about all that and just be present at the moment and show up as the best version of yourself.

So if we are going to do that, you know, figure out what is that best version of ourselves? I think this is actually very hard to do, by the way, because I’ve been trying to figure that out for myself, I have no idea. I’m still struggling like we’re multiple months into a personal development course. And I don’t exactly think I got this nailed down yet. But if I did, you know, have some indication, how does personal development help you commit to that and actually show up as that best person?

Before I answer that, I want to ask Austin, if he believes that you have nailed it. Yet no showing what showing up best, the best version of herself from the course she’s taking in marriage, and like, what do we help me out here? What are we talking about? I haven’t been in the course. So I’m not sure what exactly we’re talking about. So because it’s a well, you did it? Congratulations. I would say that what I’ve noticed from the course is that Keelie is doing a lot more introspection and self-reflection, which is admittedly terrible at and doesn’t do terrible. And so we have had a lot of very interesting conversations as a couple lately, where she’s talking to me about the things that are being covered. And to me, I’m like, I think it’s hilarious that somebody had to tell her, go sit down and think about this aspect of yourself. Because I’m so I internalize things so much and overanalyze things so much that I’m constantly thinking about, how did I handle this situation? And how did I do with this? And do the kids? Oh, all the time. This way, and, you know, you know, well, it’s part of the whole, like, you not having a filter thing, you know, so, so I don’t know that the course has, I think Keelie has always been present in our, in our marriage and with our kids. So I don’t know that that has been a great improvement from the course. I think it’s been more you show up for yourself. And looking in seeing, you know, like figuring out who I am. Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So it’s funny,

I resonate with what you said about like, second-guessing what you say sometimes I have a situation recently, like yesterday, or two days ago, I was at my daughter’s softball game, not game practice. And there were a bunch of dads there. And I knew most of them. There was one day that I kind of knew, but not really knew who he was. And the practice was wrapping up. And we’re all saying goodbye. And I said to him, Dan, I’m Ryan, by the way. And they say, by the way, I’m Ryan or something like that. And then I was like, Why did they add-in by the way because it makes me sound like I’m saying, Hey, jerk, by the way, I’m Ryan, you know to sound like it he actually just said, so I feel like even though I’m on this journey,

it’s never even thought that one bit like I wouldn’t even like I don’t even remember what I say to people half the time.

So one time in the sixth grade. I tried to do something funny. Oh, you remember the sixth grade and ended up falling over instead? And I think about it once a month

you’re not doing it at 43 Because a month ago I played in our town softball league and softball charity events and my first at-bat in front of hundreds of people mind you. In my first at-bat I hit it. It was a pathetic hit. It was like a pop-up to first base. So that was like strike number one. Strike number two was I fell running to first base. So just terrific start, you know. It’s good. I’ll be reliving that one too.

I feel like I’ve derailed Let us we were talking about, show me the question.

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, yeah. How does personal development help us show up? Yes, that was a question. Does it help us show up? I mean, you know, like, if you’re somebody who has the ability to figure out what the best version of yourself is, or I hope you get to like doing some introspection because I think maybe it’s a personality thing. I literally don’t think about my actions, everything. How does personal development help with that?

I think you’re right, in that, knowing what the best version of yourself is, is, it’s very difficult because it’s sort of like this wishy-washy sort of metrics, like how do you really know what the best version of yourself is? Because really, when you get to that, what you think is the best version, there’s really probably another best version level. And so to me, it’s more about the journey. Well, it’s, it’s how I feel about myself, and I look at my life, and am I happy with how things are going across like finances, and friends, and family and fitness, and just how I feel about myself. So I think there are some things you could look at, you know, if things are like falling apart in certain areas, and you know, like, you’re probably not at your best version. But it’s still not like a hard concrete number or whatever. But That, for me, is personal development. So it’s about the journey. And the personal development part is the journey. So it’s my morning routine, it’s the books that I consume, it’s the running morning upgrade, and try and do better and better with that. It’s my, like, my fitness, and what I do for that. And so it’s really just the way I, the way I approach like, the 1% better, or becoming like, the best version of yourself, is, I just tried to every day have made an intentional effort with those areas, like do my morning routine. Do my fitness stuff, like move every day, you know, and just I can go on and on. But, and I, it for me, it’s a belief, like I believe that I do those things. And it’s going to aid me to get to my best version. And so that’s, you know, it’s a belief for me. That makes sense. I feel like that doesn’t make sense, based on the looks on your faces, what is he talking about right now?

No, I think it makes sense. It’s like, trying to like you said, feel good about your situation. And that is something I want to address because obviously, we have a lot of couples that are in strained relationships with their spouse. And I think that it is a combination of things that ends up getting them in that place. And some of it is that they are not showing up as the best version of themselves, they are expecting that their spouse is responding to a lot of the things they’re doing. And they maybe are completely oblivious to it like I would be in that category. I’m not gonna lie. I am way better at reading people’s emotions. And like I can tell when somebody’s reacting to something I said, so it makes me go, oh, I shouldn’t say that. Again. While I don’t understand why it does do that. But some people are very clueless. And they are responding like their spouse is just responding to them. And they don’t understand how their actions are causing problems in the relationship. And then there’s probably a lot of other things happening. So I think one thing I’ve been learning with personal development is becoming resilient to the issues because you literally cannot keep problems from happening. Yes, it’s true. You know, and I would like if you to talk a little bit about how personal development builds resilience in you so that when your marriage is falling apart, or the world is crashing down around you like how do you handle that, but still somehow show up as the best version of yourself or at least try?

Yeah, you keep on bringing up my head, the fact that you right, like when they’re not that I’m like expert in marriage. I’ve been married for 16 years. And we had a couple of years where it was looking a little dicey, you know, looking a little dicey. But we made it and so he does. Yeah, yeah. It’s marriage counseling and just worked through it. I think it’s really I think if I keep on coming back to what you’re saying about showing up as the best version of yourself, because you can’t control your spouse, swimming, you’re still in love with them. You got to put in the effort and, and show up as the best version of yourself for them. And try to have fun with them and just make an intentional effort to because I have people in my life where the match, right? I know the marriage is marriage isn’t going well. And they’re not really doing anything about it. They’re kind of just ignoring it. And then how is that going to get better? It’s not, but I fully believe if one of them was like what all in, I just poured love into the other person. I think it might get better, you know, and they learn to have fun with each other. I mean, that’s one thing my wife and I do. do best. I’m realizing I’m actually not answering your question at all, but I’m gonna loop back A second thing is good.

Like we, we have fun with each other, you know, we know how to have fun. We’d like to stay up and drink wine and watch Stranger Things. And we like to go on vacation and we make each other laugh. And we also like to drive each other crazy sometimes. By we know, what’s your marriage.

We drive each other crazy day and night while we’re sleeping.

Hey, don’t confuse having a marriage blog for being a marriage expert, and be even marriage experts are, you know, at each other’s throats every now and then.

I think it’s like marriage. For me morning upgrade keeps me accountable. Like because I’m not perfect by any means. And so I have that second slice of pizza or third slice like I really run you run that morning upgrade blog. And so it’s trying to keep yourself accountable. So your question was, I don’t remember now. Can you repeat the question?

So like, how do you build that resilience through your personal development? Because I mean, listen, Austin and I are, generally speaking, when the world was crashing down around us, we could get through it. We were pretty resilient in that, but then when we were at odds with each other in our marriage, that was when things were like, you know, not going well. But I think that there are a lot of couples, who don’t know how to have any resilience. So when the money gets tight, or they lose jobs, or the kids are being a nightmare, or what have you, it like starts wrecking the relationship.

Yeah, I think you have to first want to work out and not have hope for a better future, I think hope is a very, very important thing. But in terms of like, resilience, I think I’ll just answer from my experiences. It comes from experiences, like when I think about the marriage issues, things we got through financial stuff, just things in the business just, it gets through like it comes down to like the reps like going through things and you build a callus to it. Unfortunately, that’s often how it works, you have to deal you have to go through problems to build up a callus to them. And a mindset that says, Oh, I got through this, I can get through that like to give you an example, not marriage-related, but like one of the condos that we invested in a while back, we’ve sold it but you know, there was a water leak and the whole like ceiling collapsed into like, so like things like that, like you just like you get through it. Or we had a big, giant mold issue with one of the tenants that were like very dicey. So you get through things, and you build up like a mental, like mental armor, or to steal a phrase from one of the guests I’ve had on my podcast, people to mental armor. But you can also do that through personal development. And that’s through gratitude, practice, celebrating your wins, meditation, journaling, all those things that the content you consume, like this book I already mentioned, it’s, it just feeds your mind that it gives you like the strategies to deal with things. Makes you think differently. That combined with going through and getting through going through and getting through challenges, the two of those combined is, at least through my experiences what does it.

I mean, I think probably one of the biggest relationship killers that I see is that when one or both of the people are super stressed about the situations, then all of a sudden now they’re not showing up at least even at the as the person they were when they first got married, right because like the stress of life, like how they’re just upset all the time or acting however it is that you respond to stress. And being scared or whatever those emotions are, it’s very easy, especially in a close relationship with someone to start acting out towards them or put a lot of it on them like okay, I’m scared. Well, what’s the source of being scared of you. So now I’m going to make you stop making me feel scared or have pain or whatever the case may be. So I think that in marriage, one of the best things you can do is make sure that you are not adding to already a terrible situation with the way you’re responding to it.

Yeah, I agree with that. No, one thing I made me think of is that, like how you act and how you show up, and the actions that you take, sometimes it can be a positive influence on your spouse. It can also be a negative influence, too. So it goes both ways. I think it all comes back to like energy as I mentioned before, like the actions you’re taking the energy you’re putting out it’s yours because you think about how often you’re around your spouse. You know, your major influence on the good or bad.

Yeah, I mean in the way that you receive The way you’re responding to the kids and to other people that are important to them is also going to affect the marriage and the relationship. So it’s not even just the way you’re showing up for them. It’s like, okay, well, if your spouse is not doing a good job at work, and now all of a sudden, you’re scared that children can have a job any more income or whatever, I mean, that’s going to cause big problems in that relationship. So it’s not just the way that you’re responding to your spouse, but like, all the other things as well. Can cause them to feel unsafe or insecure, or whatever the things are, which leads to, you know, keeping from being closer and building intimacy.

Yeah, yeah. What about the word commitment, like having to have the commitment to work with each other, or to get you to recognize the challenges that are going to happen in your marriage, and acknowledge that they’re going to it’s going to happen no matter what because we’re all just imperfect human beings, but that you’re committed to each other to make it work. I think that’s a big thing too. For us, like we’re a My wife has made it very clear a few times, that we’re not going to get divorced, you know. And so even we have problems. And so, you know, and she’s very fit. She’s a very feisty Italian woman. So I think it’s for my own safety. It’s in my best interest to say, yes, we are not going to get divorced.

We say the same things.

Yeah. I mean, you know,

Austin says, If I leave, he’s going with me.

I stole that from a comedian years ago. I wish I remember who it was. But yeah, that’s the thing is, we just sort of approach things. As like, I don’t know who first said this. But I know Kim and pin Holderness all the time, say you’re my person. And that’s kind of how I see it. It’s just like, you’re, you’re my person, like, you’re like whatever else happens, whatever else comes our way. It’s me, and you are going to be the ones to get through it. And I don’t know. I mean, I guess it’s sometimes I step back and say, you and I, have you ever been in a spot where that was called into question and doubted and everything was, you know, just absolutely horrible. We’ve had some bad times, but never where it was. Never has the thought crossed my mind of like, well, I don’t want to be around you. Like I don’t want to do this life together anymore. So I kind of I think you’ve definitely not wanted to be

around you. Or I didn’t want to be around you for that moment. But not permanently. And so. I don’t know, I really don’t know if that’s a product of us being committed to each other and being just, I don’t know, stubborn about it, or stuck in our ways about it, or what? Or if it’s just because we haven’t had anything bad enough happen. I really don’t know. I never.

What’s that? This wonder how that how some couples lose that I’m trying to think of what happens are they, you know, I used to earlier in our marriage, I used to wonder like, what would it take? And the longer we’re married, I like I don’t know. And I try and have sympathy for other people who apparently went through something that I’ve never gone through. And so I don’t ever want to be like, well, if people will just be committed to each other. Because I don’t think that it’s just because you and I, you know, decided

part of it is we are healthy enough individuals. And we’re not like in the middle of abusing one another. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of that that ends up happening in couples Exactly. Worse.

Yeah. And I always I don’t know, for me, I was put divorced because of abuse and a whole other category of like, No, we’re not even debating that one. Like, no, that’s not even what we’re talking about. But it’s just people that like, like, you used to phrase earlier where you said, assuming you’re still in love. And I was like I don’t know like are they do sometimes fall out of love and it goes away forever? And is there a commitment that lasts beyond that? Or I don’t know. I don’t know. I think fortunate that I haven’t had to No, no, go ahead.

I thought you were done. And then I realize you weren’t done talking but I’m done.

I if I think about it from my point of view, like there are several things I think we’re still you know, happily married it’s I’m still very attracted to her I don’t know if that’s a wrong thing to say like, the attraction has to be there, but I just think it does. That’s just my opinion, you know, so I’m still very sexually attracted to her. And, as I mentioned before, we like to have fun, I respect her as a person. Right? You know, I respect her as a mom. You know, think those three things, you know, you know, very important, you know, the attraction, the fun,

and the respect. And to sort of going back to, we were talking about resilience, and you were talking about sometimes building up calluses, you’ve got to go through something. I feel like the more difficulties that we’ve had to walk through as a couple, as a family, as individuals, just, you know, like, maybe I’m going through something, but you know, she’s married to me. So it’s not like our marriage is going through a hard time, but I am, or she’s going through a hard time and I’m here with her. That to me, you know, like, that deepens the commitment. It deepens the love, it deepens that, as you said, the respect, I mean, like, I, I have always respected Keelie. But I respect her, like so much more now, because I’ve seen her go through so many things as I’ve seen her, you know, give birth three times, and I’ve seen her build a business and I’ve seen her, you know, try a hobby and try. I’ve seen her start to try businesses that didn’t work, you know, like and she still Yeah, and that’s the thing is going through those difficulties and the successes have just made me respect or even more love or even more appreciated. We’re gonna put teaching our kids how to drive on that list, because that is scary. That is what is on the list for me.

We, There was never a single conversation about it. But the entire family agreed altogether that dad was not going to be the one to do that. I think we all like the kids are on board. Yeah. Nobody wants dad to do that. So worked out great, but I don’t, it just wouldn’t work. Well, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be good. My relationship with my kids. My blood pressure was jumpy. little jumpy? She says Yeah, well, I mean, listen, when we first got married, especially I would walk in the room and scare the crap out of him all the time. I’m like, Are you not aware that you live with someone?

I thought you were gonna bring up the fact that for like the first 10 years of our marriage, including when you had children, I would comment on your driving in the passenger.

Oh, yeah, he was completely freaked out by me driving like, you know, you shouldn’t accuse

me one time, a decade in and she goes, You know, I drive around this city, like five days a week with your children in the back. Do you not trust me? And I was like, that’s a good point. Yeah, just so so going through all those things, the resiliency, I think builds over time. And if it’s building within the marriage itself. That’s, that’s going to help. And I feel like the fact that I know I can depend on Keeley means that I, I’m going to show up for her. Getting back to our key phrase there. Like when she’s having a difficulty, like, I’m going to show up for her because I know she’s going to show up for me. And so whether that whether that’s in a time of difficulty, or a time of celebration, or whatever, you know, being there and being on not I’m not perfect at it not 100% of the time, neither machine, neither is anybody but the more you do that, the more you show up for your spouse, or your spouse shows up for you, you know, you want to reciprocate, and it just builds over time.

Yeah, yeah. I think going through challenges together, does build that bond for sure. And just life experiences and raising kids or, or not. Yeah, yeah, those different experiences and challenges do bring you together as a person because you usually get you’re usually getting through them together as well. Right, hopefully, and so it just builds that bond. And I think back to like, to go back to personal development, I think it’s forced me to try to become a better husband too, because like, one of the masterminds I’m part of it’s a men’s mastermind. And marriage is a big topic of that in our conversations. And they encourage everyone to, you know, be the best version of the husband, you can be and father, and so just being around other men that are in the same boat, trying to be the best version of themselves. I’ve seen big gains there because I’m not like, I tend to be a little bit introverted and keep to myself, I tend to be a little bit selfish, you know, I tend not to, like, always think about her needs necessarily. And now I do better in those areas just because of the personal development journey. And the mastermind and other guys encouraged me and give me advice. And so, you know, just trying to put in the effort and hopefully I’m doing a better job.

I liked that you were bringing up the community there because that was actually something I was going to say about, you know, one thing about personal development that you talk a lot about is by surrounding yourself with other people who are like-minded, they are people that, you know, you guys kind of all have the same goal. And I think that’s really, really beneficial in marriage. And I think sometimes we isolate ourselves too much in marriage. And we don’t want to share about problems because you know, you don’t want to disrespect your spouse, but you do have to have people that you can be honest with them, and, like, they’re still going to love your spouse, regardless of what you’re saying about them. I’m not saying just go share this with anybody in the world. But I think that it helps you stay accountable, which is something that I’ve been learning is a lot with personal development. I’m not amazing at this, by the way, like, I wouldn’t say I love to be accountable to people. But I am definitely getting, I’m doing that more like because it does require you to actually just share, I’m not very great at sharing deeply about the way I feel or think or whatever about things. So I think that community in having strong friendships with other couples is a really big part of your personal development goals.

The post The Way You Show Up for Your Spouse with Ryan Cote appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

Every marriage will face crisis at some point. Whether it’s a marriage crisis, or just a life crisis, you’ll need to be prepared to walk through it as a team.

The post Preparing Your Marriage For Crisis appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

This week, we’re excited to be joined by Belah Rose of the Delight Your Marriage podcast! She brings years of experience to the show and we discuss how men can properly respond when their wife doesn’t want sex. She works one on one with men and women to coach them on their marriage. If you would like to know if she can help you in your situation, fill out her form here for a clarity call and let her know I sent you!

Transcription

Welcome to the love hove adventure podcast where we talk about the marriage relationship, intimacy and marriage, and how you can go deeper with your spouse. And today, we’re really fortunate that we have Bella rose on she is with the delight your marriage podcast. I’ve been on our show several times. And we’re just really excited to have her on the love of imager podcast. Welcome, Bella.

Oh, thanks so much, Keelie and Austin, I am honored and excited. This is gonna be a fantastic conversation.

I know. So tell us a little bit about your podcast, because it’s been around forever.

I think in internet terms, it does feel like forever. Everywhere else. It’s like that.

Classic on the internet.

Yeah, in 2015 I wrote my book in 2014 to let your husband and then I started the podcast 2015 to let your marriage, and yes Keelie and I go way back and loved having her on. And yeah, so now delight in your marriage. I started coaching us shortly after I started the podcast around marriage and intimacy. And now we are actually running programs for husbands and programs for wives separately, to really train and teach husbands how to love their wife well, and the way that she receives love and teach wives how to love their husband well, and the way that he receives love and a heck of a lot of that is around intimacy. But a lot of that is also, especially for husbands is teaching them why is your wife not interested in sexual intimacy, what is blocking her? Because it’s hard to know, no one comes out of the womb understanding the other sex. And and especially if they didn’t have good role models, such as their parents, and obviously in the world. We don’t have great role models for that. So I’m thrilled. The podcast is so fun. We’re now in the top 1% Or I think point 5% most popular in the world. So it really doesn’t. It’s just Yeah, and we’ve got heard in 180 countries and yeah, it’s just amazing. So I am I am just I pinch myself every day. It’s just so fun.

I know. And we’ve listened to your podcast for a long time. But I don’t even know how we initially connected but I do remember you brought me on to talk specifically about orgasms. And this podcast and post and stuff like I mean, it is what got me kind of like known in the sex world. Do you know like, Hey, she’s the one who talks about workouts? Who can say that their claim to fame?

is amazing. Yes, definitely an episode to listen to.

Was that? Was it a two-parter? Or was it I think it was like I had so much to say she’s like, alright, let’s make this.

I think I remember there being part one, and part two.

Yeah, it was pretty good. And we were living in North Carolina at the time. And we’ve probably lived in five different places since then. So we’ve recorded in a lot of closets. Yes.

Oh, my goodness. So yeah, I love what you are doing with your programs. Now, I know that a lot of my audience really loves to go to your webinars, and they get a lot of value from that. So I’d really love to, you know, kind of like pick your brain about some of the things that would keep a wife from engaging with her husband sexually. Because one, obviously he doesn’t know. And honestly, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this yourself. But I think sometimes the wife doesn’t know either. Like she really doesn’t know like, why don’t I want to have sex with him? I don’t know. So give us some, you know, some things that you’re seeing and, and educating your people with?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, first of all, if you’re listening to this, I just want to commend you. You’re so on the right track. There are so many men who don’t seek out answers. They don’t do this kind of work. They’re not like what can I do to change it? They just kind of point the finger and so for a husband to be here listening to this to seek How can I change? How can I invite this? How can I make this a space where she would want to make love because you don’t just want her to show up? You don’t just want the duty sex. You don’t just want her to feel compelled because you’ve had so many direct conversations that she feels like, you know, you’re gonna go cheat on her if not, you know, that’s not what you want. As a husband, you really want her to desire it, not only desire it with you but also desire with herself for herself, to engage and have sexual intimacy be something that’s on her mind and a joy for her and something she’s looking forward to. So, again, I just want to commend you, dear husband, you’re in the right spot. I’m just so thrilled that we get to spend some time with you here. So here’s let me just start out with a framework I always teach is what we call the intimacy framework. And it’s this idea of just trying to dumb it down super simple of what do women crave and desire to feel filled up in their marriage? And what do men desire to feel filled up in their marriage, and so 511 Five Love Languages are great, I think they’re important. But I would actually say that the intimacy framework goes beneath that because I think God designed men and women very differently to be complete complements of a whole, you know, I really love the original. I guess it’s Hebrew. Is it Adam and Eve, it’s the when it says, I’ll make you help meet the actual word is, as our Connect duo and the help pieces actually, God is. So helper in that phrase is actually in the Old Testament 16 times. And I think it’s three of them, describe women. And the rest of them are describing God’s coming as a savior for the people of Israel. Like we’re not talking about an assistant, the wife is the assistant to the husband, we’re talking about, she has a vital role in his life to be who God wants him to be. And connect dough is an absolute complement. That’s the point of it. It’s, it’s an equal part of a hole. And so the just the point of it is that husbands and wives are supposed to be and they were designed to be complementing each other and fully equal in that so equal, but unique. That is not what I meant to go into. But I did. There we are honest and good groundwork.

Total tangent, but if your wife listening, and you’re like, I’m almost about to get checked out. I just want you to hear your wife, I’m on your side, too. You deserve to be treated well, right. Okay, here’s the intimacy framework, to feel filled up, a husband needs to feel respected, admired, and wholehearted in sexual intimacy in his marriage. We’ll talk just a bit about that in just a moment. But let me talk about what wives need, in terms of this intimacy framework to feel filled up, is to feel safe to feel known and wholeheartedly cherished. And so let me if I can, I’ll just go straight into kind of what that does that work with that, and that would be awesome. Okay, so for the husband’s respect, that’s, um, you know, when a husband and wife were dating, that was, she never told them what to do. She didn’t like, go clean your room, like go to the dishes, like, don’t do this, do that. I mean, she wouldn’t order him around or mother him or say, you know, eat, you’re not eating enough greens, like eat your greens. And yet, women, once they become wives, they’re like, oh, I’m responsible to make him do what I want him to do. And we don’t realize that’s complete disrespect, right. Because I have done that for a very long time. I was like, of course, I’m respecting him. Now go do this, what I want you to do. So that’s the respect. The admired piece is, is a different element, I would say is like, he also wants a cheerleader, he kind of wants to be that quarterback, and he wants you to be on the sidelines, like, yeah, you can do it you’re doing and like him that she sees his strengths that she sees how God has created him to be in the world and help him to see what even he doesn’t see in himself. And it’s so easy for us as wives to look at our husbands and be like, well, he needs to work on this, and this and this. And he has this failing and that and she’s critical and all these things. But that harms him in ways that she can’t tell. And so often husbands have this like steel, steel face, and they’re like, you know, she’s reaming him out. And he’s just like, complete nothing on his face. And she thinks he doesn’t hear her. So she continues and because I’ve been in that place, I understand that it really does hurt. And, you know, men in my programs, they talk to me through tears of how hurtful those sorts of things are. So then, the last thing that of course, we’re going to talk about is wholehearted sexual intimacy. So again, he doesn’t just want her to show up. He does want frequency, but he doesn’t want it half-hearted. He doesn’t want just her body that feels that’s not making love. That’s a compulsion. And so he wants her to be excited about it. He wants the variety. He wants the fierceness and so that’s the whole-hearted piece that I think a lot of people leave out of like, go have sex with your husband. It’s like no, like, be there because you want to be there and enjoy yourself and how I’d like, for me, if I wasn’t married, I wouldn’t have that strong of a desire. But because I chose to be married, my desire is higher because I choose it. Choose a lifestyle that makes me want to make love. And so yeah, that’s the husband part. Should I move to the wives part or?

Okay, no, I mean, well, I was just going to say that I think sometimes for men, our wives towards men, I think it makes it more difficult for her to be like really sexually active with him if she thinks that he’s not like, responsible. If she feels like she does have to continually ride his bike over something. And that’s, I’m not saying that. Guys or wives don’t need some kick in the pants. But I can definitely see how feeling like she doesn’t hear him would be like a real problem. But him shutting down because he’s not a child. Do you know? Definitely, a big dynamic going on there.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I completely agree with you. And I think even moving over to kind of the wife section of what she needs to feel fulfilled in her marriage is that safety piece, the first piece of this, which to your point, Keelie is like, that is going to take care of her. Right. You know, we’re not gonna do the dishes for me, Kenny does other things. Can you remember to do this? Yeah, I totally understand that. If not really feeling sooner than you know, the big things don’t matter, either. You’re not going to catch her in this. You’re not going to catch her in that. So yeah, so the safety, I really focus on a lot of emotional safety. So yeah, physical safety is kind of a, hopefully, a given hopefully. Yeah, so. But emotional safety is what a lot of times men miss. And a lot of times it’s described as security, which guests if you know that that’s helpful to have, you know, financial security, that is helpful. But I actually mean safety in that you care about her heart, you care about her emotions, you ask her how she’s feeling, and you care when she responds. And when she’s emotional, because God gave her wonderful emotions. God gave men wonderful emotions, too, just to be clear, but I happen to cry more than he does just happen to. And when he gives me that space, and he asks me, what’s going on how I’m feeling? how I’m doing? what’s at the core of what’s my heart going through? Like, that’s the sexiest thing ever. Right? What do you want? And ideally, I would say that this, though, can be difficult for guys to listen, to because they want to fix it. Not that I don’t want to fix things, too, I am definitely a fixer. But if you start pouring out your heart to you, your wife starts pouring out her heart to you and you start trying to fix it. That’s not exactly building emotional intimacy, it’s just you take on a role of like a counselor or something like that. It’s not really that was something that was a real struggle for me, for a lot of years was to just hear what she’s saying, instead of diagnosing what she’s saying, and trying to troubleshoot it and, and whatever, because I hear her hurting, right? I want her to not hurt anymore. So I’m like, let’s make sure you’ve never hurt ever again. And it’s like, that’s not really what this conversation was. And I’m a pretty independent woman. So I’m not super great at taking the advice. So that call obviously causes a lot of friction.

There’s that dynamic Welcome to the love of adventure podcast, where Austin and Keelie just be like, here it is.

Yeah, learning to do that. And not only do I have a tendency to focus on, you know, my failures, my negatives. So if something’s going wrong, I have a tendency to say, internally, what did I do wrong? How did I, you know, how do I make sure that I don’t do that again, or find myself in that situation again? And so being a very helpful husband, you know, you want to help your wife grow as a person and be like, your wife comes to you. And she’s like, this terrible thing happened to me today. And I’m like, and what did you do wrong? And that’s like, not helpful, is definitely not, you know, making me feel excited about sex later on.

Especially when you don’t just come right out and say, did you have any part in the bad thing that happened to you? You just say, Well, I mean, did you do this and that sounds accusatory. So yeah, it’s, you know, sometimes just be quiet and listen, and maybe you don’t need a fix right now. Maybe, just maybe just listen, that’s very difficult.

I think Is that what you’re saying? The safety is like building an emotional connection where I feel like I can safely share my emotions and feelings without my husband, an overreacting to the situation like about what the other people did and how you think he hates them? Or, you know, accusing you of not doing something? That’s what you’re talking about with safety here, right?

Yeah, I, I think yes, absolutely. And it’s, um, it’s really this not being judged, you know, because there’s a being accepted for who you are feeling free to be who you are in your marriage. I mean, that’s just like, it’s a dream, you walk into your home, and it’s like vacation like, like, isn’t that what we want?

It’s a dream. And it’s incredibly difficult to achieve. It’s incredibly difficult on both parts, both the person that is hearing and the person that is saying something, it can be really challenging to be like, I am going to be completely honest at this point, and hope that you don’t hate me as a result. Right? That’s and that I don’t, is there a shortcut to that? Can we solve this real quick?

I mean, it took us, at least a decade to get to the point.

We didn’t discover a way to fix it other than just live together and slug it out for years. Like we’re starting to figure that out. Now slug it out that made it sound that put it in different context maritally fighting the fight together. Right. That’s when but yeah, that building that over time, just, it just works. You just got to do it. I don’t know, a shortcut to it.

Yeah, I think and I think it’s also a discipline of the heart of like, you know, how does Jesus see my spouse? You know, does he see them, you know, with the eyes of forgiveness of, he’s clean before Jesus like, and my role in his life is to attract him towards Jesus through loving him well, like, if that’s my heart towards my husband, it’s a very different picture, then I’m going to push him and force him and make him into, I think he should be. And it’s like, no, he’s, he’s got the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is going to do his job and convict my job is just to love this man Well, and help him to be all that God wants him to be. And what is loving him well look like, respect, admire wholehearted sexual intimacy? It’s just what fills him up. And love makes him loved well, and so for the wife to feel safe. You know, that’s the same thing the being pushed and forced and the direct. You didn’t do this. You should do this. Like, honestly, even sending this podcast episode. Sorry, Keelie. Is it okay? If I say this, like her this podcast episode may or may not be helpful. Pray about it first.

Sometimes people do that. They’ll be like, Um, can you answer this question? And then they’ll be like, I show my spouse this. And you know, and sometimes it’s good. And sometimes it’s bad. It’s only ever good if the spouse said, Could you please ask her how I can fill in the blank and she’s too nervous to ask or ask me herself. It almost never goes well, the other way.

Yeah, it’s really tough. But when you love your spouse, well, what I see over and over again, and by God’s grace, you know, a lot of men and Keelie Thank you always for promoting my stuff. And guys come through your stuff. is, you know, men will have gone literally, I’m just thinking of one off the top of my head 38 years sexless. So that’s, you know, one time a year generally. And he would, or I think it’s under 10. But for him, it was zero to four for 38 years. And he did the program. After six months, she started initiating, which she had never done in their whole marriage. And then after, did I say, so three months, I think it was three months, she started initiating six months, she decided out of her own initiation that they should make love weekly. Wow, good for her think another three months, then she joined the women’s program. Now get this. She did not know he did the program for six months. Well, good for him that he didn’t use that program at like, obviously, he was listening to what you said. Right? Obviously.

Right. And he didn’t the thing that I love like there are so many men that come to the program without their wives knowing the reason I love that is because she never feels pressured. She just never like, Oh, he’s just doing this for sex. It’s not real. It’s not just something

I’ve wondered about is, you know, how do you combat that tendency of like, well, I’m going to go take this class and it’s going to fix my life.

Right? Right. Well, the nice thing is, I don’t mind if men come into the program like that better after three months, right? You drill it into them that this is not about fixing their wife, this is about fixing them. Because the nice thing is men a lot of times are motivated by sex. They’re motivated enough that if I get to talk to them, I’m like fruits of the Spirit, fruits of the Spirit. When you look and smell like Jesus, she’s gonna be interested. Right? You’ve got to change your heart. Do you know? Yes, you might start that way. Because, yes, sex fills him up. It’s a love that he feels loved through sex. It’s not just an oh, I have a higher drive. No, this is intrinsic to who he is. Jesus was very clear. In Matthew 19. He talked about, well, you can be a unit by the way you were made, or a unit because you give up sex for the kingdom of God. Or, or it’s a gift, you were given the gift of essential celibacy. But Jesus’ assumption there is if you’re married, you’re having sex like, right? It’s either a gift or it’s not Paul basically makes that clear as well. Like it’s either your gift that you’re able to be celibate, or you chose marriage, because you were interested in sex and so, right. It just fills him up. So I don’t want to ever shame men for having desire because they should not be they weren’t designed to have desire porn did not makeup sex. That style of sex, I call that masculine or fear sex. Because often that’s what men are interested in. They were again, designed that way I kind of call feminine or passionate sex more of like Song of Solomon’s like romantic, slow meditative may or may not end an orgasm. Like that’s kind of that style. But it’s if we can honor and love each other, we can love each other styles and learn to do that. Right. All right, I go into the next one. No, that tells us the other things that women need, so that our men can start understanding that a little bit?

Yes. So known, known, I mean, I think every wife wants to feel like she is the only one he has. Right? Absolutely.

She wants to be the one he dreams about. She wants to be the one he thinks of him, she wants to be the one that he knows her likes, dislikes, passions, desires, hates dis, you know, all of that. She wants him to know. And she wants him to care about those things. And she wants him to act in a way that it matters to him, not because she’s told him plenty of times and all this but like it actually matters. And it informs what gifts he gives her and it informs what choices he makes. And it informs what gifts he sends her just to be silly because he knows her personality and her humor. Right? That’s what we want. We want the No, here’s the question. What if he’s like, Well, I don’t, I’m not interested in what she has to say, I don’t really care about those things. It doesn’t matter. You married her. That’s your choice, right? I’m amazed, utterly amazed at the number of like, even dating couples, where you’ll ask the guy like, well tell us something about her or what she likes or whatever. And they can’t tell you anything. And I’m like, alright, well, this isn’t a relationship. Sorry. But I mean, I even saw people that I knew couple-wise, and the guys just it seemed like, they just didn’t understand their wives like you get to know the wife, you’re like, do you even know her at all? You know, like, how do you not know the way you just said is going to trigger her? I’m sorry. Like, I know that. And I’m not married to her and hasn’t? Like, how do you not know? And I think the main thing is that you know, a lot of men, especially in our generation have been raised on porn, they have not witnessed good role models, there are so many men who they just don’t understand these things. And just like so many women that don’t understand these things, we’re dealing with two individuals who have never been trained on how to be married. And we expect them to do well in a marriage. It’s just like, right? Of course not. You are completely different humans. So, and designed that way, designed to be very, very, very different. So anyway, I just want to encourage a husband to listen like, you can figure this out. Just start studying your wife get a little note on your phone, and just start writing out when she says Oh, did I lose you?

Do we pause it?

Okay, we had a little bit of a hiccup there. I’m not sure how much of that got cut off. Bella, do you remember where you were?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I’m ready. All right. Oh yeah, I mean, I just want to encourage the gentleman listening, if you feel like you’re too far gone, you know, you feel like you were, like I said, raised on porn. How in the world does a woman really work? No, it doesn’t work that way. But all you need to do, let me give you a very, very practical thing. Use a note on your phone, and open it up. And when she says something along the lines of like, Oh, that looks really cool. I like that. Write it down, write it down, and slowly get those things where she’s like I was I hate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you just get this curious, like a detective mindset on like, okay, what are her likes? What are her dislikes? What does she hate? What, what? What is her favorite type whether it’s jewelry or clothing, shoes or whatever? Not that you would necessarily pick out her shoes.

By the way. Take this same idea. I like this of just sort of like taking notes. Like it’s, you know, like, you’re back in algebra. You know, take notes on your wife. I used to jokingly say, Keelie is my favorite subject, and I get to study or for the rest of my life. Take that. And guys protip is just a quick practical thing. If she ever, ever says I sure would like one of those. Put it in that note app, because Mother’s Day is coming birthday is a kind of Christmas has come in. And if she ever mentions it, The tricky thing is she can’t buy it in the meantime. Yeah, that’s Kelly’s problem. Because I sure would like this. And I’m like Mother’s Day, isn’t it? I get it. Right. I just have to assume that she won’t buy it in the next four weeks. And then I can pull this off. But yeah, I love the idea of you’re talking about, you know, wives want to be known. And yeah, a man like guys, take notes, that’s fine. Write things down. You know, make mental notes, snapshots, whatever you got to do, and refer back to those things. Because was it? I think it was Tim Hawkins who used to have a bit about how he memorized his wife’s Starbucks drink. And it blew her mind. Because he ordered it in the drive-thru one day. Little things like that are helpful. It is the little things often that are exactly right. And so often men want to woosh in with the big, whatever big purchase of a car or something and like that much points as the little thing. Like you got just as many points that are going to fade in a week. So so just like you can just do consistent little things. That’s what makes her feel safe. Like, that’s when these like two categories meld together, like and wholeheartedly cherished, actually, to be quite honest. But like they start melding together, like when she knows you’re consistent, you’re consistently thinking about her, you consistently want to surprise her, that’s when she like relaxes in. I really loved it. I’m really, really held in this relationship. And so yeah, that goes into the wholeheartedly cherish. So. That’s the romance. That’s why we women are guilty pleasure is chick flicks, you know. Sorry, but it is. Um,

see everybody talks about how porn destroyed men’s understanding of sex. Nobody ever talks about romcoms destroying women’s understanding of romance. Nobody ever brings that one.

Well, I mean, I don’t know, watch some chick flicks, but I watched my parents, you know, and that was like, kind of like my standard of romance. And, you know, it was? Yeah, definitely never once had to chase her through an airport.

Oh, yeah. He’s never chased me anywhere.

There’s still time, Austin, they’re still picking me up either. just not gonna happen. He does it sometimes it’s not fun or romantic. And I’m like, how are they doing this to the movies? How’s anybody like this? How does that’s where no one comes in? That’s where the known Kaylee’s different than the rest of them.

I’m different from Touch me not.

Yes, but romcoms really do give some good ideas. So I’m not a huge fan. We’ve we’re definitely superhero movies in this family but very normal, I guess. But my Yeah, the point is that will give you a lot of ideas but she wants to be wholeheartedly chair she wants to be again the one on your mind. She wants surprises. She wants dates, but the reason it’s wholehearted is that you need to want to be there. Right? He needs to be wholehearted. Right. It’s different than you taking her to a fancy restaurant and you’re just like on your phone distracted by your data. Okay, physically, she may be filled. She may have eaten her food, but emotionally it’s not fulfilling. And now let me a metaphor that for wholehearted sexual intimacy. Physically. He may have shown up for you. But if she wasn’t there and engaged and enjoying and pursuing and maybe even fierce, um, it’s not going to be fulfilling for him. So if we can just translate that into, you want to cherish her because you want to, you want to be that man for her that that challenge is all of us. So, again, with how what, how do you get motivated to do all this stuff for your wife? First of all, you got to forgive her. You can’t do this out of an empty tank of you’re carrying on all these rocks of hurts and wounds in the past, you’re coming to your her wife, fully exhausted, and like, I’ve done all these things for you, why aren’t you giving me what I need? That’s never going to work, are never going to be motivated by this. And that’s why you know, we who follow Jesus, like, he models it, you have to forgive first. And then you do first you die to yourself, and you love it first, without expectation. And then you just let God do what he only he can do.

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Do you or your partner want to be more sexually adventurous? This week we’re discussing ways of looking at being adventurous that you can implement in your marriage.

Transcript:

Hey, welcome to the love hope adventure podcast where we talk about the marriage relationship, intimacy in marriage and how you can go deeper with your spouse. And today we’re talking about building sexual adventure in your marriage. So I was actually asked about this recently, and I started talking about, you know, some things with the person who reached out to me because they were saying, oh, you know, things are very boring in our sex life right now. And it’s very routine. Yeah, I get this a lot, actually. And so I started really sort of like evaluating in my own life, have I ever really genuinely felt super bored in our sex life? I mean, yes, sometimes I think things can get routine. And so I started asking myself, okay, what are the ways that you build sexual adventure where you’re not feeling bored or tired. And then I started kind of thinking to myself that I don’t know that it’s really tied to the things you’re doing necessarily, from day to day with sex. But I feel like maybe it’s more along the lines of the lifestyle that you have with your spouse or the relationship and when others gonna be one of those difference of personality type setting.

It could be this is why I want to talk to you about it, because you and I are probably going to come at this very differently. So I’m not saying that there’s never been times where I’ve thought this has been fairly routine or whatever. But I can tell you that those points, everything in life seemed fairly routine. So Well, I was gonna say, does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, I can, I can definitely see how, like getting into a rut in your whole life, could then impact your sex life? And now you’re in a rut in your sex life? Right? I can, I can see that. But I don’t think that that’s the only thing that can cause a rut or what I’m saying,

I’m saying that, you know, how do you build sexual adventure, and I think that you and I probably come at this very differently. As far as building adventure and creating that environment, I think we probably do things differently. And so in this, you know, in this episode, we kind of want to just come at it from a few different perspectives. Because when you are with somebody who doesn’t seem super sexually adventurous, but you’re craving that, like, what are the things that you can start analyzing in your relationship, in your marriage, in your sex life, or whatever, to get them on board to do it? Okay. And I mean, honestly, a lot of times I have the person who has more arousal, they’re more likely the person that is craving sex, they’re craving, variety, and everything, because they just have a different type of sexual appetite than their spouse. And so it’s tough to crave variety, if you are the spouse that isn’t really like wanting sex as much. Does that make sense? Okay, so yeah, so what I think is that so I think we’ve talked about this several times, because I tend to be more along the lines of the sexual responder in our marriage. We’re like something sexual has to be going on something sensual has to be happening. And that thing, I never just have, like desire, I do. But I would say classify myself more as the responder, something sexual has to be happening. So if you were to come to me and be like, oh, I want to try something different and new and whatever. And I’m just like, I’m so tired, and I want to go to bed. You know, I think it’s similar to like, recipes and stuff. Like when I’m starving and hungry. Like this is when I make really amazing recipes. But when I’m not so hungry, and it’s kind of like, just have to cook something. So I just do what I know. And I think that is actually the difference here with sexual adventure, is that if you’re not, like, actively aroused, it’s harder to think about wasn’t just one day, being sexually adventurous is hard, harder than doing what you know, like you said, right. I wrote an article years ago on the on the blog, called the flavors of sex. Oh, yeah. I think I think actually, it was years ago on our other blog that has since gone away, and that post got over on love with potential. Yeah, we’ll have to link it up in the show notes. But the one of the things that I wrote about in there was vanilla. And like, there’s nothing wrong with the vanilla flavor guys, I know, is a flavor. It was a highly sought after flavor for centuries. Now. It’s like, what it doesn’t even have peanut butter in it or something. And that’s the thing like some people like me Like missionary position has become like, a cliche for awful sex life and, uh, like, find what’s wrong with that, you know, and that’s the thing is doing the thing, you know, right, doing vanilla is easy, and it’s comfortable and that kind of thing. And doing something different. I think one of the flavors I wrote about was like, rocky road, you know, like, doing something different and adventurous and challenging is that it is different and challenging. And so you have to, you have to do something, you can’t just fall into the comfortable pattern, right and have adventurous sex, like, that’s not what’s gonna happen. So so first of all, you have to be willing to put in some kind of an effort. And getting back to what you were talking about with sexual responders, versus what was the other side of that coin, oh, mania, spontaneous, desired spouses. If you’re the spontaneous desire to bounce, and you’re the one seeking the adventure, you’re going to have to do the work to help your spouse. Enjoy that and get on board with that, right, because we don’t want to do is be the adventurous one, dragging your spouse along on an adventure. You know, we were talking the other day about all these crazy, big trips that we go on. And we did a big giant trip last year. And unbeknownst to me, one of our kids was telling, you know, there was a variable, and I didn’t know any of that. And now I kind of feel bad about that. But if you’ve ever taken your kids, somewhere that you knew was gonna be a great memory for them, but they weren’t on board. It’s not great, right. And you don’t want to do that to your spouse, you don’t want to drag them along on adventure, you want them to join you on an adventure, you want them to want to go on the adventure with you. So you’ve got to put in some work to do that, and realize that, especially if it’s not, your idea is going to be that adds a whole other layer of challenge to it. Again, if you’re the adventurous one, looking to go charge out into the unknown, you already have challenges ahead of you, your spouse, who maybe is not thinking that maybe isn’t maybe not opposed, but just not thinking about an actively, they have all other layer of challenge to overcome. So like, get ready for that, be be mentally prepared for that. But then, you know, Step on out into it. So it’s tough. And I think that so I know, the way I come at sexual adventure is by just facilitating that, like just facilitating a life that leads to that. And some of that’s my mindset. And some of that is just the relationship that we’ve built. So I always grew up traveling adventure was definitely nothing new to me, I would say you weren’t really a person who was able to travel a whole lot. And so I’m sure that coming at all the trips that I was always planning and stuff, I’m sure there was probably like some part of you that was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, what are we getting into? And that’s kind of what’s happening if you have a person who, who has the frame of mind where they’re willing to be more adventurous and try new things, just in life in general. It makes it easier. And I think that my parents started like putting that in me when I was younger, I wouldn’t necessarily say I was I’m like, not sure how much of this is nature versus nurture. Yeah, like, but my parents worked very hard. Yeah, they instilled in us to face challenges, try new things, whatever, let’s go to new restaurants, let’s try new stuff, you know. So they were always kind of working to get me out of my comfort zone. So I have a fairly big comfort zone for that reason. So you pair that with my nature. And it’s just really big. And so I don’t necessarily think of these things as adventures. But then when it came to sexual things like in the sex adventures, what do I mean by that? And and it was scary, because I didn’t know what to expect or what the expectations are. And it’s just like, go into a new city for the first time you have no idea where you’re going, you don’t know what to expect. And what’s even more difficult is if you’re going to a city with a person who did a lot of research ahead of time and understands where you’re going and now they are basically just guiding you in that. And so I think that for me, I had to change my mindset that this is just another part of trying new things. You know what I mean? Like getting, like going on a trip. It’s the same thing as trying to thinking they’re in the bedroom. There’s going to be a fair amount of UNO’s.

So I was gonna say one thing that we have to address also is What does adventurous mean? What is an adventure? Because you love her adventure, right? Some words that sounded good on some driftwood on our wall, Once Upon a Time turned into a brand. And but I remember sitting down one day and hammering out what does love hope adventure? Mean? Right? I think love was the foundation that we got our marriage on. Hope is that dogged determination, things are gonna get better. And adventure is that wild-eyed look into the unknown that says, what’s over there. And an adventure. Sometimes I think that we, we have expectations. And we think that there is a certain Indical endpoint in goal that we’re headed towards. And if you look at what an adventure truly is, it, it might have an end goal, right, you might have something that you’re moving towards, but you might not ever get there. Or there might be a lot of detours, a lot of side quests along the way. And so if you can approach, being sexually adventurous as saying, we’re gonna, we’re gonna try something new. And we don’t know how it’s gonna go. Yeah, we might not like it, or we might like it, or we might not like it for a long time, you and I cried out, whether it’s in the bedroom or on a vacation or in our live, you know, like, whatever, where we tried something, a new recipe, mixing the metaphors that we tried out and said, Well, now we can say we’ve done that. Right? And so be willing to try something and be okay, if it’s not great. One thing that we’ve recommended when it comes to trying out a new position, trying out a new toy, or trying out a new thing in the bedroom, is what would you say? Try three times? Right, Kylie’s three.

Yeah, because I mean, unless it was really horrible, oh, disaster, like, Okay, this her, we didn’t like it happen ever again. But be willing to try something a couple of times, and be willing to go into it saying, this might not be great the first time. Like, you might try something adventurous. And it blows both your minds immediately the first time and it’s Oh, my gosh, but it might be we, we could do that better next time, we could try that differently next time, it’ll be willing to strike out into the unknown. And that’s going to require some trust, that’s going to require I think, if our conversation today is how to be more sexually adventurous, I think one of the things that you said is maybe introduced adventure into your life, your regular your whole life. One thing I would say is to start building trust. And, you know, start you cannot, you cannot build trust quickly, it does not happen. Trust is built slowly over time. So you got to start now. And that means in just every aspect of your life, but that includes like trust in the bedroom. So that means not doing something that violates your partner’s trust that makes them not feel secure in the bedroom. And whatever that means, right? Whatever that whatever security looks like in that context for your spouse, make sure that you’re never violating that. Because you cannot grab someone’s hand and say, Follow me. There’s no time to explain if they don’t trust you, right. But if they do, and you have a smile on your face when you say, I mean, definitely. If you if you walked in tomorrow night, if he’d walked in the door, you’ve been gone for hours, you walk in the door, you say there’s no time there’s blank, get in the car, and you’re smiling. Ah, I would be so excited. I’d be so I’d be like, yes. What is it? Am I dressed? Okay, let’s do it. But that’s after years of trusting you.

Right? There was definitely a time I think that that would have resulted in you freaking out chatting.

We all grow, you know, but But yeah, that’s the thing is we’ve learned to trust each other. And that right? That’s who you want to go on an adventure with somebody that you trust, somebody that you trust, financially, somebody that you trust to, you know, with your kids, somebody that you trust, with day-to-day responsibilities of just doing life and living in a house together, somebody that you trust in the bedroom, somebody that you trust physically, right, somebody that you trust is not going to harm you and would not let harm come to you if they can at all help it right. If you have that kind of trust in somebody’s going to go on an adventure with you that’s where you want to take so that’s like another part of building that environment. So as a couple you’re you’re working towards experiencing new things together but isn’t necessarily sexual but definitely gets both people out of their comfort zones. Yeah, and well and it could be sexual When it comes, to some of it can be your first step to doing the, the really adventurous thing that you’ve got in your mind is doing a much smaller event is just doing a much smaller new thing, right? Because if you’re feeling like we, this is all new territory, we’ve only ever had vanilla, we don’t even know what’s in Rocky Road. Right, then maybe don’t jump straight to Rocky Road, try chocolate chip. It’s a little different. The metaphor is getting strained here, but you get the point. There, sometimes your travel and ice cream in a recipe.

Absolutely, absolutely try something small. And let that be part of building the trust over time.

I think the other thing that is really helpful at building sexual adventure is the person who is more apprehensive about it should be part of the planning. I think one of the most difficult parts about going on an adventure is when you haven’t, then the person who’s more apprehensive about the adventure should be part of the planning, like so, you know, I used to plan the trips and make all the stuff and I think you know, you just had to get in the car and hope that I did a good job. And making you be a part of that and saying what do you think? Or what do you think? Or am I booking the right place or whatever it makes you part of that decision making classes. And now you’ve got some idea of where to go. I think that sexual adventure in the bedroom if you have a spouse who has a lot of ideas, and usually is the spouse that’s aroused, that has the ideas, because why they’re hungry, and they know what’s going to satisfy the appetite. But if you have the person who needs like the smell of amazing food to come out for their stomachs to grow, they are not I mean, the thought of even having food is kinda like, I don’t think I could eat right now if I had to. But if you are in a place where you’re like helping to plan that sexual adventure, now you have some ideas, write some expectations, you’re pursuing that expectation together, you’re the one wanting to do this, get the other person involved in it. And you know, give them maybe even give them the minimum for your, like an area of responsibility. For this thing we’re going to need, you’re gonna need some lingerie and Alright, I need some sexy clothes. Hi, can you choose those, you know, or something like that this sort of gives them investment in buying it?

Right? Yeah, I think that takes the pressure off, because that’s one of the most difficult parts about adventure is just the unknown. And that can be really exciting. If you’ve got any clue what the adventure is. But like you were saying, you know, you want to know, how am I dressed? Right? Am I at all prepared for this, like some kind of expectation or font, and then there gets this point in the adventure where you both have to go. Alright, well, we have planned as much as we can plan. But beyond this, this is where the adventure part starts. Right? And we’re going into it together. It doesn’t feel like an adventure. If you’ve had, you know, like a fantasy all day long, and you come home and you’re like, I’ve had a fantasy and I’m like, Oh no, what is the face this will be like an adventure, it feels like I have never gonna be able to do whatever that was I was doing in that.

On behalf of that not adventurous. I will I will chime in as an adventurer and say, give him give him some heads up. Give him some Yeah, some clarity. And specifically as far as expectations because I know, there have been times where you’ve looked at me and said, Okay, I feel like you have a plan. I feel like you have an expectation here. Why don’t you let me in on it? To make that happened, rather than, you know, just like whatever’s happened in here. And that can be helpful is to use your words, set, set some expectations, you know, put some things out there so that there’s no disappointment or confusion. Again, it can be very challenging, especially depending on the level of trust the person who has been grabbed by the hand and told there’s no time to explain. Like Alright, hang on pause for just a minute and and explain because guess what, I’m gonna make time for explanation.

It’s really important. Did you do that? Because it’s because you don’t want to scare the other person right like you don’t want you want to foster where adventure can happen. You want to invite your spouse into, you know, like, a time with you where you guys conceptually bond. But if your spouse isn’t hungry, and they have no real desire at this moment, they very well may think they’re entering into a sexual situation where this is really just to meet your needs. Yeah, I’m not saying that’s wrong and should never ever occur. But what I am saying is that it’s going to be a lot, it’s going to be more enticing if you’re inviting them to come to be a part of something that you’re both going to really enjoy. Versus Okay, I need you to show up and work now, like we’re going on an adventure, but you’ve got to put on all this work. If you didn’t agree to that work, then even in the midst of it is going to feel like really like adventures, trying to make sure that your fantasy involves everybody.

Yeah, everyone should be happy. And during render, and so I would say that those are some of the things that we recommend to kind of foster that adventure. And maybe you’re not in a place in your marriage or relationship right now we’re adventure in the bedroom is even like on the table, you guys are just struggling to just connect sexually at any point. Sometimes, having a sexual adventure can be that thing that takes you out of that, you know, whatever you’re dealing with sexually. And other times, it can be the thing that causes an issue, I think you really have to like, come at it from, from the right mindset and perspective. So I think that the way that you’ll be most successful, if you’re going to plan a sexual adventure, especially if you’re in a sexual relationship that isn’t happening real often, or there’s a lot of strain, you have to get that other person completely on board, they’ve got to be willing to take initiative in advance. And I know for the spontaneous desire spouse, the thought of planning out something like this, kinda like dampers, that adventure part to them. Because it’s like, oh, my gosh, we’re planning all this out, you know. But if you have ever planned to go on a big trip, you know that, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve planned, there’s going to be a lot of unexpected things happen both good and bad. And so it’s okay, especially at the start, like really fully planning and mapping it out. One of the things that I always like to share with couples that are trying to build sexual adventure is start with a bedroom game. I think for me, and I would tell you that I’m not a huge like game person in general, like, I never thought bedroom games would be something I would ever even consider. But we played one once and I thought, Man, this just took so much pressure off of me. It was it was like it told me what to do. And I didn’t have to think about it. Yeah, I remember that was your big, big takeaway. Yes. You didn’t know what was coming next. So it was very much an adventure, right. But something was in this case, you know, spaces on a on a board told you what to do next, what’s next now, like what to do now? And that takes a lot of the creative burden. On to say, because I remember that was that was your thing was you were like I am like do sexy. Mean, and when you just had these prompts saying do this, do this, do this.

Yeah, it was freeing because I didn’t have to put creative energy into it. I think it would be like if you were to say, booking a tour guide, like that person already mapped that out for you. Now you just go along for the ride. And that’s kind of what I think a bedroom game does is it just provides a guide I think that’s so important for a person who isn’t really sure what’s going to feel good next, right? Like if you ask me what’s gonna feel good next, what should you do next? I don’t know. Like I don’t know. Right? Like it’s at like It’s like asking a person who’s not hungry what they want to eat for dinner. You don’t know anything whatever you want to make, you know, like, I think that the one good thing about bedroom games is like any game that you would like use for a learning situation. You are giving the person the ability to like learn through the games through to play and then now it makes spontaneous thoughts easier because they’ve already like practiced it and been given some ideas and some thoughts and some things like that. But the other cool thing about a game like this, for the person who is a little bit more apprehensive to adventure, is that they could look at the game in advance, and just like anything that they were like, I know they go to dry that they can just mark that off, be like, I’m gonna skip that one. And we’re gonna take these words out of the deck.

Taking that card out of the deck, I think that’s fine. I think what I think that the person who desires more and has those cravings for more adventure in the bedroom, I think for them, it doesn’t necessarily compute the idea of coming across something they wouldn’t necessarily want to try. But if it’s going to put their spouse at ease, to be able to like know what’s coming next, and they should definitely give it a try. And this, this is a good way for both sides to kind of meet in the middle. Yeah, because you have the person who needs to have the plan, they can look at it in advance, and the one who doesn’t want that plan doesn’t have to have any part of it. And so then now both actually have their own version of the adventure. And it makes them both comfortable. So I think, you know, if you’re in that place where you’re trying to build sexual adventure, whether you’re the person who has greater arousal, and just knows what you want, or whatever, and you have a spouse who’s not on board with that, or maybe you’re the spouse who’s like, my husband or wife really wants more out of the bedroom, and I honestly don’t even know where to start or how to give it to them. I think that some of these ideas will definitely help you, we recommend planning in advance, you know, actually getting together about this thing in advance, I mean, you wouldn’t just get in your car and go wherever it Look, we’ve tried that, and it doesn’t usually work out very well, we end up just going to the place, we know, I’m gonna be honest with you. So get them involved, try bedroom games, talk about it, think about it in advance, look at resources together. And all of that planning will actually help you get really excited about it, especially if you’re the responder, now, like something’s actually happening, you’re starting to think about this and dream-like, oh, you know, this could actually be fun or good. And then the other thing that we recommend is that you use any adventure that you have as a learning time. So, you know, we went on this big trip last year. And there’s some things that we definitely learned on that big trip that we were like some parts of are really great and other parts were not. So if we were to do it again, we would make these changes. So when you enter into a sexual adventure with your spouse, this is why we say you should try it a couple times. Because you could go the next time I try this, let’s do this, whatever that is, and then it gives you the ability to, you know, modify it so that it’s more enjoyable. I mean, I can’t think of very many things that we tried right out the gate, they were like this amazing, you know, like most of the time, it’s like, I knew we could probably get it there. It might work. And I think you know, we just want to be candid about that. Because some people, if you don’t ever hear our couples say this, you just only have the movies to rely on. And it seems like everybody’s having a great time the whole time. And it’s like, so just not a case in real sex. At some point during real sex. Somebody’s really not having like that passionate about moments. And you’re like, okay, something’s wrong with me because this is not as exciting to me right now. But in the movies, they’re always painting and excited. So what’s happening?

All right, guys, thanks so much for joining us today. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Keelie I love adventure.com We’ll be glad to answer your questions, check out our website love with adventure.com/shop/shop and check out our bedroom games. The game we were talking about was it’s getting hot in here as still my favorite bedroom game to date. And the other thing we want you to do is to sign up for a newsletter but a love of adventure.com/newsletter this is the best way for you to stay up to date with things that we’re talking about on you know, YouTube, you’re the podcast, our friends that we invite on that kind of thing. So Simon Baron, and thanks so much for joining sitting next to you later.

The post How to be Sexually Adventurous appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

We had the privilege of interviewing Daniel Purcell from Get Your Marriage On. He is also the creator of the Intimately Us App and coaches men who are struggling with sex in their marriage. In this episode, he gives solid tips on how to help men and women who want sex more than their spouses.

Transcription

Welcome to the love of adventure podcast where we talk about the marriage relationship, intimacy and marriage, and how you can go deeper with your spouse. Today we have a great guest on with us. We have Dan from get your marriage on. Hi, Dan. Hello, how are you? I’m good, man. We’ve known each other for such a long time now, haven’t we?

Yes, yes, we go way back.

I feel like I have like moved three or four times. Probably moved three times since we lived in Dallas. Before that. So I know you forever. So tell us a little bit about get your marriage on because this is now an umbrella for all your other apps. And I feel like you got like a coaching course you just started and everything and I haven’t been able to keep up with everything.

I just have fun. Yeah, if it sounds fun that we do it. So that’s kind of our motto.

We are you about to do like another marriage retreat or something like that. I feel like I was yeah,

we have one coming up in October. And we’re doing it up in the mountains. Each couple gets their own private cabin around the lake, like a picturesque super romantic. We’re having really good food brought in catering. And then it’s me and Amanda Lauder, who is a marriage, intimacy, sex coach, we’re both going to be teaching for three days and three nights. It’s gonna be a fantastic thing you love the in-person events, don’t you?

This would be the fourth one that I’ve done. Yeah, that’s a habit. That’s, that’s good. Yeah, there’s, I think I like them. Because people come with with a certain expectation like, I hope my spouse hears the speaker, say, X, Y, or Z. But then they walk away going, Oh, my goodness, I didn’t realize I need to do X, Y or Z. I have got a role to play in this. And so they kind of walk away with a better picture of how their marriage is operating. And they’re walking away holding hands. And with a lot of hope and faith, like last time, there was a guy that called the week before the conference saying we got to cancel and my wife and I are probably getting a divorce. We don’t think we can even survive the drive down there. So can I get my money back, but it was past the time you get a refund. And you anyway, by some miracle, they survived the drive because they showed up. Anyway, a few days later, he emailed me and said this weekend was so transformative for us, we’re now at a better place we’ve been in three years. So like things that happen in retreats are great because you and your spouse are both like they’re you’re focused on the presentation. A lot of growth happens in spurts Right? Like Keeley will grow. And then Austin will grow and it’s kind of asynchronous. But when you’re at a retreat, you’re both, you know, put in the situation. You’re both growing together. And so it’s very healthy. Emily and I have done, you know, attended other marriage retreats before we find a lot of growth for that, too.

Yeah, that’s awesome. So you got started as doing app development for sex games and things like that, which you know, which I think that’s where I got my big break with marriage blogging as people started finding my sexy Truth or Dare game. And from that, what I have found is that you have a lot of people who come to get bedroom games, and they’re trying to like put a bandaid on an issue in the marriage, which is they have a higher appetite for sex and intimacy and enthusiasm and all this stuff. So they come trying to look for tools to get their spouse engaged. And sometimes it like totally falls flat, they’ll download your app, they’ll get my game or whatever. And then they get on our list and they start emailing us and they’re going, Okay, well, this isn’t working. What do I do next? Because my spouse is not as engaged in sex. I tried to talk to them, but they won’t talk to me. It’s this huge blow-up. You know, what have you. So how’s your experience been with that with your readership?

Oh, definitely. And it’s usually, you know, it can spark this question because they always say something like, how do I get my husband? Or how do I get my wife to be more sexual with me? Right? And they’re looking for a solution to like, what do I say? What’s the what do I buy? What can you know, to get them to all of a sudden become more interested in sex? Yeah, that’s, that’s usually how it goes.

It’s what’s the magic formula, the silver bullet?

I would probably be richer than Elon Musk.

If we could just bottle it in a pill.

So I could tell you what, what doesn’t work. Let’s start there. Start with what doesn’t work. So when you have children, so you probably see this dynamic in your kids too. It’s, I call them losing strategies, these are things you do to you get a short term win, but at the cost of the relationship long term. So one example is pouting. If you don’t get what you want you to pout, or right. And what you’re trying to do is guilt or shame the other person into giving in, right, and for what you want. That’s a very common losing strategy. And sometimes it works, right. Like, if your pet long enough, your spouse might finally give in and say, okay, here, we’ll have sex just to make you happy, right. But the quality of the sex is horrible. And it comes with a great cost. Sometimes it’s an invisible cost relationship. Another very effective strategy that people learned in their childhood is withdrawing. That’s when you like, you withdraw some warmth. In the relationship, you might not physically withdraw, but you definitely withdraw your heart. And it’s also visible, because people are really good at that, putting on a smiling face. Still going through the motions like kissing before you go that but you can tell our brains are really good at mapping other humans like, even though outward motions are the same. It’s lacking that soul, that spirit behind it, so withdrawing. And if I withdraw long enough, then my spouse will finally come around. Another losing strategy I see is fine, I’ll stop initiating. You do all the initiating instead. And that will really help. That will help because I no longer feel the burden of initiating. And it’s the devil’s pact. It’s not a great strategy, because there’s already pressure in the relationship for sex. And all you’re doing is shifting that burden that pressure from one person to the other. It’s not really going away. But short term, it feels great, because the lower desire spouse like thank God, I don’t have to Yeah, I don’t, I don’t have to. I don’t have to initiate, if I don’t want to this sounds great. Until you know, two or three days go by, and you realize or a month goes by, and you realize your spouse is expecting you to do all the initiating now. So all that burden is pressure on you. And guess what, that actually makes things worse, you don’t feel like initiating, you don’t feel like having sex, because there’s all this pressure now on top of what you were dealing with before. So all it did is it doesn’t solve anything, because it just shifts the burden. And the higher desire spouse is now upset about those things, too. So a lot of things we try to do are like control and manipulation tactics. And as adults, and I see this a lot in men, another strategy that’s losing is called Becoming a nice guy. And I put that in air quotes. Because nice guys really aren’t nice. But what I mean by a nice guy is, for instance, though, here on your blog, or on your podcast here about how women love, like, I use the word chore play as foreplay, like this great idea. If I do the dishes and draw a bath for my wife, or the kids their homework, she’ll be so turned on that she just can’t resist me, because you hear about wives complaining, hoping their husbands do more around the house. And they don’t. So they think I’m a great guy. I can be really nice. And I can do all these things. I actually

never give that advice, by the way, because good. Because I think it’s it’s just coming from the wrong place. And your spouse knows that because I have heard women say my husband is only taking care of our kids right now because he wants sex later. And so it devalues his relationship with the children, his commitment to them and it makes it be more about he wants this thing and he’s trying to bargain with you and he doesn’t see taking care of his kids is his responsibility

or whatever. Something you should be doing anyway. Yeah, I

mean, like, there’s so much like, I’ve never even told men well, you should do more dishes to get sex. I think that’s incorrect.

It’s kind of an I’ll frame it and another way to get people’s attention. But prostitution is when you try to buy sex, right? You’re turning you’re trying to do the same thing in your own marriage, you’re trying to buy some sort of sexual validation. Thinking of sex as a transaction. If I do X, Y, or Z like a vending machine, putting their head at Mount sounds what I want, then immediately I should get what I want. Yeah, the problem. Now, I just want to be really clear. There is nothing wrong with lovingly doing things for your spouse doing the dishes, like you should share the burden and the load and your family, right? Yeah, you’re, you’re a couple you’re working together as a team. The problem comes when a lot of this is done without telling your spouse while you’re doing it too like, so in your heart, you have this contract, that if I do X, Y, or Z, she gives me the result want, right? And I’m using stereotypes here, but it can go the other way. Right? And it’s, it’s not kind because it’s controlling, and it’s manipulative, right, and trying to put them in a position where they can’t say no.

And then I think, develop those habits within the marriage where the wife or the husband or whoever, is not the HYDrive spouse, but they maybe want something else. And they’re like, Okay, well, this is how we get what we want. We bargain for things in our marriage, I want him to fill in the blank. So I bargain with him, or I want her to do this. So it just sets up a lot of bad relating habits. Right? Yep. Yeah, like in general, not just about sex.

I have a personal story about this, there was a time in our marriage when we were arguing about sex, and I am the higher desired spouse in my marriage, right. And I really wanted my wife to like, step up in a few ways. So this is my old, immature self, right. And her complaint was, I don’t have enough time. Because I, with my kids, and I, I cook the meals and I like I don’t have time for myself to sit and read a book. Because that was like, that was like our solution, right? Like, well, let’s read a book and then learn more about these things. And then we can incorporate them into the bedroom and see magically, things will just get better. And so it’s like, well, I don’t have time to read a book. So alright, so it kind of bargained with her and said, Okay, how about for two weeks, I will handle all evening CHORES, I’ll make the grocery list. I’ll make the menu, I’ll cook all the meals and clean up. And all you and instead, you can, you know, take your time in the bedroom, you can lock the door if you want. And you can read you know, said book, right? And another thing about our dynamic to understand is, there’s in the past, we’ve had arguments over dinner time, sometimes dinners like 7 pm it gets really late. Yeah. And then when dinner is late, cleanup is late. Bedtime is late. And it’s just like this train wreck everything else cascades from there, right. So not only did I take over dinner, but I had dinner done on time, every night. And I did it kind of with a lot of pride. And I’m not saying the good kind or the bad kind. I was condescending. Yeah, I was condescending. It’s like see how this works? Any see? Yes. Look at me. I work a full-time job. I juggle so many responsibilities. And I’m good at, you know, making meals that you like, that our kids like, and I can handle all this and I can do it on time. Wow. What’s your excuse? Like, that’s the spirit. So when I project that energy, and then she’s in the bedroom, supposedly reading? How do you think she’s gonna feel? Is she gonna feel like swooning and like? Oh, my goodness, I have such a great husband, when all she feels is a little bit of condescension from me, right? No, that’s not gonna help. No, it kind of backfires. It makes things worse. Right? Right. So So that’s, that’s the thing people need to remember, a lot of times our ego gets in the way my ego totally was in the way of us building a greater sexual relationship.

I you know, one of the things that we we’ve talked about this on the podcast with a few other guests and with each other is that we really think that one of the hardest things to communicate to your spouse about sex is that it’s not physical. It’s not just like, so we keep saying, Oh, well, I have this physical desire, and you’re the only one who can meet it and you need to come to meet it because that’s why we got married. And I have said before that, like, especially as a mom, I don’t know how husbands feel about this. But like, I’m starving all the time. And I my physical needs often don’t get met, I’m sleepy, I’m tired. I’m whatever. So why would I break my back to get your physical needs met, but when you couch it in that this is a relational intimacy, a motional connection type of situation. I think it changes that like, you know, an I’ve said this before, if Austin’s hungry, I’m sorry, you’re hungry, I’m hungry, we’re all hungry, we’re gonna have to wait, whatever. But if he says, I feel unloved, and I feel emotionally detached from you, that is like a completely different, you know, situation that I feel like, I don’t want that in my marriage. I don’t want my relationship hurting. And I think that we have to reframe it a little bit. So, I mean, I’ve seen that with Yeah,

I like what you said, it’s dangerous to say, well, you’re my only legitimate sex outlet, right? Because that’s also a control manipulation tactic. And you’re, you’re changing the meaning of sex from something you like what you just said, it’s about intimacy, it’s about connection and oneness, right, changing it to something more about it’s a transaction, or it’s, or I’m entitled to this, it’s that entitlement. And that is so unsexy. Right? So it changes the meaning of sex from something other than what I think can be.

I think it also makes it become a chore, because like, I cook dinner as the primary, the one that cooks dinner, or whatever. And so if it’s like, it’s my job to meet the physical needs as cooking dinner, or whatever, that’s how sex gets on the chore list, because it feels like I’m just doing something else for another person, not really, our relationship growing, I don’t see it as like, us talking or having a conversation or building connection some other way. I just see it as like, this is one more chore I have to do today before I can go to bed. Hmm. You know, I feel like, I feel like that is definitely something that I see happen. But I often have a person who has a lot of sexual desire, email me and say the things like what you’ve said, they’re doing the emotionally unhealthy things like, I take care of our house, I’m very responsible. I’m, you know, like, do all this stuff for myself over function. Right? Like all these things that other people don’t do, I do it. And they don’t even ask me, but I get no reward for this whatsoever, which is also just a terrible way to go about it. Like you took care of your own house. Whoo-hoo. You know, like, I take your mind to it. But they don’t know what to say to their spouse to have the conversation. So a lot of times, what they’ll tell me is every time I try to talk to my spouse about sex, it, it’s like, they don’t want to talk about it. It’s a fight. So what do you say to somebody in that position? Because I like our big thing is communicate, talk to them? And they’re like, what, they don’t want to talk to me? Well, of course,

they don’t want to all they’re going to hear is you like Right. And or that’s the energy that’s projected, like, how come you are not as sexual How come you don’t develop your sexuality? How come you’re not as interested in this as I am? Like it? No wonder why they don’t want to engage in that kind of conversation. Maybe I’ll tell you what does work. I love that scripture in Matthew six, I think about the speck in your eye. And the Yeah, in the other person’s sorry, a speck in the other person’s eye and the end the beam in your own eye or the log in your own eye. We often approach our sexual problems totally in that approach. It’s my spouse who isn’t doing their part. They’re not. They need to step up when we don’t realize that we are co-constructing a marriage dynamic where we’re a part of it. So let me give you another analogy that I think illustrates what I mean there are two ways to solve problems in a relationship. One is, I’d say a direct approach, which won’t work. And then an indirect approach that does work. Let’s pretend you want your spouse to be overweight, and you think they need to lose weight. So a direct approach might be Hey, honey, I just signed you up for a gym membership. Hey, honey, were you on the unilaterally changing our diet and our family? I’m no longer buying soda no longer buying snack food. We’re only buying broccoli now. I don’t know that new broccoli, right, whatever. Hey, animals eat broccoli and they’re big so you can eat perfectly too and you’ll be fine. Or, or I just signed you up for Weight Watchers. I just got you a weight loss coach. Like, very rarely will those approaches, convince your spouse that they need to lose weight. Sure, right. Let’s say you yourself are fit and fine, your spouse is the one that you think needs to lose weight. But what if you changed your approach completely changed yourself, and who you are, and who you are in relation to them. That it’s kind of focusing on yourself first. And that what that does is it shifts the dynamic shifts the system, because marriages are a system, right. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, the other spouse will realize, Wait, my spouse is really growing. If I don’t grow, I need to keep up with us to keep an equilibrium between us. So if you can disrupt equilibrium, to go to a higher level and higher plane, the natural forces of the marriage of that relationship will often pressure the other spouse to step up, I just saw this with a friend of mine in their marriage. Just to be clear, it’s not a problem. But it’s just a fact of the universe, that the lower desire spouse controls sex in the marriage, they will control frequency, they’ll control what goes on in the bedroom, and the lower desire spouse is the one in control. So my friend has a wife who’s only interested in sex on her schedule in her way, on her time, and she wants to limit the kind of sex and the experience of her husband. And in their particular situation, there are some certain things he really wanted to do. Because their desire levels were different enough that, he felt like he needed some more frequency. And when he wasn’t getting the frequency and the connection he wanted, he needed a legitimate way to kind of release his pent-up sexual tension, which was a big source of contention. And so the way he would approach these in the past is always well, you’re, you’re, you’re really stuck up, you’re not open, you’re not open-minded, you’re not. It’s because of your past, it’s because of your grandmother. It’s because of like your upbringing, like, you are so limited and narrow in your view of sex. That’s, that’s the approach that has been taken. And, and it just always turns into a blow up and nothing happens.

Until recently, he got some coaching. And now he realized I have as much to play in the problems in our marriage. And instead, his approach was like, Look, I know, I’m really hard to live with sometimes. And I pressure you all the time. And I don’t like this part of me. And he also realized he’s, he just does not like to disappoint his wife. So the how she gets to him is withdrawing, right. That’s like her tactic. And he’s so afraid of her withdrawing her love and affection and warmth, that he is not living true to himself in with his integrity, and kind of what he believes is right and best for himself. So she’s getting half a man as a result, which she’s not happy with either. And he’s not happy with it. So he’s like, realize that he’s been dishonest with his wife, not like cheating or lying outright, but not living true to his values within himself, and apologize to her for all those things. And then said, I know this is going to disappoint you. But I’m going to do A, B, and C, because I believe they’re right. Because this is going to be good for me. And it’s going to be good for a marriage. And I know you’re going to disagree with me. And I know you’re not going to like this, but I’m not doing it because I’m mad at you. I’m doing this because I think this is the right thing for me to do. Right. And things were awful at conversation. They were as you would expect, but only for a few days. And then guess what? Because he leveled up the level of intimacy in the marriage, right by being vulnerable. He’s not accusing her, he’s really saying this is where I’ve been weak, and I’m gonna get better at these areas. In my relationship with you, he stepped up his level of intimacy. And all of a sudden, his wife started way upping her level of intimacy. And he was telling me some of the great things that are going on now, that just would not have happened before. So the solution to all of this is an indirect approach. It’s when you fix yourself better you start living more honestly yourself and with more integrity. It’s okay to go to your spouse and say, I am disappointed. I feel disappointed because you’re being honest. Right? But you’re not blaming them. Say, I am disappointed that we didn’t have sex last night. When you said we would And I just let you know, I kind of feel hurt and I’m processing that hurt today, I’m committed to our relationship, I really want something great. And I’m not going to pressure you, I’m not going to guilt you, I’m not going to shame you, or all those other things. Because I can deal with a little bit of negative emotion and be okay. But I can be an I’m human, and I’m just letting you know that I’m flawed too. And I’m hurt right now, like, opening up the that goes a long way.

You know, I kind of love this idea. And I feel like we are starting to teach the younger generations, this more is just like being able to put like names to your emotions and why you are responding the way you do to things. And like, this is something we are working with, with our kids, obviously, I’m sure you do the same where you when they’re blowing up, and they’re angry, and they’re upset, and they’re whatever, and you’re like, Okay, so let’s like evaluate what’s actually, you’re feeling right now. Why are you upset? You know, like, let’s identify what’s going on. So like one of the kids was really upset the other day. And it’s because he had invited a lot of friends over and no one was available, and basically taking it out on us. And I’m like, Okay, let’s, let’s evaluate what’s happening. And I don’t know that we were really taught to do that when we were growing up. And so you’ve been told to suck it up? Yeah, like, just deal with it, you know, and suicide. And, and I have great parents and well, meaning everything. But still Yeah, it was like, Don’t be a baby, let’s like move on, you know. But when you first get married, you have no, I don’t think any ability to really share what’s going on. So then you do those things if you get married young, for sure. And now you’re punishing your spouse, you’re like developing these relating habits early on. And I think it’s very hard to break away from that or to even like to have this memory of better times like you develop this foundation of relating, and it just you carry it for 20 years of marriage, and you’re still like, why are we still dealing with this stuff? It’s because of how you started that foundation of marriage. And so now you really have to, like break free from it. And change it. Like, okay, we’ve had this fight about 1000 times. What? We can’t keep having it, what do you have to change to make it different to actually resolve it? And I tell us, I tell people, and I say listen, I hate to tell you this, but your spouse may not even feel or think or believe the things you do. And they may not ever be as sexually engaged as you want them to be. But can you celebrate where they are? At least at this moment? And function in the relationship that way? Because the truth is, you’re probably not meeting their expectations in other areas of the marriage either. So but you take a so personally offended when it comes to sex? Well, what about the way that, you know, maybe your dating life is maybe they really want you to date more with you. Or maybe they want you to be a better planner, or maybe they want you to I don’t know, whatever it is. And I feel like we just keep making sex be this thing like It’s like separate. It’s this separate hurt and separate pain like it’s much greater hurt and pain than any other thing that happens in the marriage. And I just don’t agree with that anymore. And I don’t think it’s necessarily healthy. Because it’s like if the lower drag spouse has okay, but you’re making me feel bad. And like, I’m not good enough when I don’t have sex with you. But I did all these other things over here. It’s like, well, it doesn’t matter because you didn’t have sex. And that hurt that I’ve put on you isn’t as big of hurt as me feeling rejected about sex or whatever. Right? Right. So

I don’t know, again, if that changes the meaning of sex out of intimacy and connection to a transaction or something else. Right.

Right. And it makes it more I think sometimes maybe we in error teach that sex is some kind of right that you get. And if it’s denied to you,

or it’s a reward for good behavior, yeah,

right, rewards, whatever. And if you don’t get it, then maybe it does feel like a form of punishment, when that’s not even at all what’s actually happening. Right. So in your experience, have you ever had anybody on the low drive side? share with you why they maybe are saying no, or not as enthusiastic or as excited or whatever

like that? Oh, tons of reasons. Yeah.

So what are Some of those reasons because I know it’s different for everyone? But I think that the higher drag spouse cannot fathom what it is that’s keeping their spouse from that.

The post What To Do When They Want Sex More with Daniel Purcell from Get Your Marriage On appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

Are you in a sexless marriage? In this episode, we talk about ways you can deal with this reality and how you can work towards increasing sex in your marriage. It’s not an easy situation to be in, but we want to give encouragement to those in this position.

Here is the transcript from this episode:

Unknown Speaker
Hey

Unknown Speaker
welcome to the love hoop adventure podcast where we talk about the marriage relationship intimacy in marriage and how you can go deeper with your spouse. And today, we’re talking about a fairly serious subject. I get comments and questions about this all the time for couples that are essentially in a sexless marriage. And I don’t remember the term for what’s defined as a sexless marriage maybe like sex no more than once or twice a month or something. I probably should have looked at it before I got here. Same, right? sexless marriages. It’s not like never having sex.

Unknown Speaker
I thought it was like every six months or something. I mean, I don’t know why I think that

Unknown Speaker
I don’t know. I think that either. I think that. Personally, I think a sexless marriage is one where the sex is so so so infrequent, that maybe one spouse is absolutely not doing well with it. What does it say? Well, me, are you googling it?

Unknown Speaker
I am googling it. The top result from all in therapy. clinic.com says sexless marriage is one in which sex has not happened for one year or more? I

Unknown Speaker
think everyone has a different idea behind it.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, but I feel like once a month is not sexless. I mean, that’s a very, that’s a low frequency. But I mean, there might be some that are that’s that’s their normal level. And that’s fine. And, but But yeah,

Unknown Speaker
I think typically what, you know, if you’re thinking about a sexless marriage, this is a situation where one spouse really wants sex, and the other one is being a gatekeeper. And this is causing the problem for them. And I’m not saying her, you know, the person who doesn’t want to have sex is just giving in.

Unknown Speaker
So beyond the definition, what’s the question that you said you get a lot about, so

Unknown Speaker
I get a lot of questions from spouses that really want their husband or wife to be have sex with them. And the husband or wife doesn’t want to for whatever reason, right? Maybe they are having sex some maybe they’re barely having sex. But either way, though, the one spouse is saying no, a lot. Now, there’s a lot of reasons for this. Sometimes the spouse, maybe is a husband, and he’s dealing with Edie actually get this question pretty often erectile dysfunction, erectile dysfunction.

So he struggles with, he struggles with that. And some, you know, some couples will tell me that they, maybe the husband’s been to the doctor, he’s still really struggling with it. So sex isn’t really happening. And that’s a tough one, you know, especially if he’s really unable to have sex. Sometimes people will write in and tell me that their spouse doesn’t want to have sex because they put on a lot of weight. And they don’t like the way their body looks. You know, that’s so tough.

Unknown Speaker
So they’re saying I’ve put on a lot of Wait. Wait, I thought you were saying like the other way around virtually?

Unknown Speaker
Well, I mean, I think there are people who ran into me that say they’ve put in a lot of weight and their spouse doesn’t want to have sex with them. And then there are people who write in and say, my spouse put on a lot of weight, and they don’t want me to see them.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, it can go both ways. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
Honestly, there’s like every level of reason out there. I have some people who will say, my spouse would be fine if we never had sex again. Like, they say they can take it or leave it with sex. They don’t ever have the desire. Right. And, you know, I get asked this question. So so often, and it’s tough, because one every situation is completely different.

Absolutely. I mean, nobody has the same exact situation or the same exact reason. But I think that, in general, the advice can, there is like some overarching advice that you can kind of give everybody. And the first thing that I want to say to the person who is feeling frustrated, their spouse won’t have sex with them. I’m sorry, but marriage is really hard, and you can’t force them. I think a lot of people want me to give him like that answer. You know, like if he’s

Unknown Speaker
the silver bullet to say the thing. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
If you’ll just do this. And we unfortunately, have kind of told, I don’t know, if women have ever been instructed anything but we tell men if they’ll just clean their houses up, their wives will jump them which is just not the case better every Not every Gumball there

Unknown Speaker
might be more to it than that. Yeah, there might be a little bit more to it than just do the dishes and vacuum.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I was talking with Bella rose. She is on the delight your marriage podcast. Yeah. So she has this program that she that men go through masculinity reclaimed, I think is what it’s called. And she and I are talking about this where, you know, these men come into the course. And they’re like, Well, I’m doing the dishes, and I’m helping out and I’m doing the thing, and they’re not giving me sex. And first of all, that’s all the wrong motivation for investing in your house. Alright,

Unknown Speaker
I was gonna say you’re already, you’re coming at it from the wrong already come to the wrong

Unknown Speaker
place? Well, I mean, I think that’s part of it, though. Yeah, if you are doing things around your house, or whatever that is, like, maybe it’s something else you think your spouse may want? In order to exchange for sex, you’re missing, like, you’re already like, suspect to your spouse, right? They’re not stupid. They’re gonna kind of see through, like, oh, they do the dishes for that?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. If it’s, if it’s purely transactional, then, you know, everybody’s different. But for a lot of people, if it’s like, you know, why doesn’t ever do the dishes? Or why doesn’t she ever do this, or whatever part of it is wanting them to do it. Not in order to get something, but just to do it, and I use it, you kind of hit the nail on the head, when you were saying, building your home, you know, and that kind of thing. Like, you know, you and I have our things that we handle around the house.

And if, if, if I’m doing those things to make you happy, or make you do some other thing, or for sex, or whatever, then I’m like, I’m, I’m doing it all for the wrong reasons, I should be investing in the house, like the physical structure, you know, because it’s, it’s where our family lives, and I want to care for everybody and do those kinds of things. But if it’s just transactional, if it’s just, I’ll go cut the grass, so that, you know, man, something might happen a little bit like No, no, that’s, that’s the wrong way to do it. Now.

Sometimes, that happens, sometimes it’s you know, we do have the trope of like, you know, what was the thing out for a while. There’s like a sexy calendar, but it was for women. So instead of being like pinup models in bikinis, it was guys like doing the dishes, vacuuming and stuff like that, you know, so, you know, like, there’s some truth to that. But that shouldn’t be what the purely just

Unknown Speaker
the biggest attraction to a woman is seeing a man take care of the home or whatever. It’s just that they have married a responsible human being. That’s a big part of it. Like, hey, he’s being responsible. And it’s very unattractive when he’s not being responsible. Maybe that not responsibility looks like something different. Everyone’s home, maybe your spouse is overspending. Right? Yeah. Either direction, while Okay, now she feels scared. So does she want to have sex with you, she’s definitely stressed, you know. But if it if it is a situation where you’re trying to do something, and push a button to make them have sex with you, you’re already lost your battle. It’s not

Unknown Speaker
a not a vending machine, that shouldn’t be the way that you’re coming at it.

Unknown Speaker
And I mean, a lot of people ask me, What can I do to get them to have sex or be more interested or whatever? And the truth is nothing. I mean, that you can encourage, and you can you discuss, and you can ask them, Is there anything that you’re doing?

Unknown Speaker
Right? There’s it Yeah, in the end, we tell our kids this all the time. There’s nothing you can do to make someone do something. And if there is, it’s usually evil, it’s usually a bad thing. If you can do something to force someone to do a certain action, you should never be in that position. So not only is it not transactional, it shouldn’t be manipulative, either. You shouldn’t be, you know, how do I how do I make them do X, Y, and Z, you shouldn’t be trying to,

Unknown Speaker
you can’t write, I had somebody write in and ask me, you know, their spouse has put on a lot of weight, and they have terrible self-esteem. And they’re like, I’m trying really hard to encourage my spouse about this situation. They’ve had a lot of medical issues. So they’ve put on weight and everything. So what do I do? How do I help them feel better about themselves or see themselves better? Or whatever? I mean, you can tell your spouse that you think they’re beautiful all day. And I think you should, you know, especially if that’s on your heart, and you really believe it, yeah.

But at the end of the day, they have to make the decision for themselves. You can’t make somebody feel good about themselves. You can set somebody up to feel better about themselves. You can create an environment where they can, where they can do that, right. You can create an environment by being supportive and encouraging.

Unknown Speaker
And you can help someone flourish, but you can’t make them. No, you

Unknown Speaker
cannot make your spouse think they are attractive when they just don’t think that you can’t also can’t make them feel okay with putting up 40 pounds, regardless of the reason they have to make that decision for themselves, they have to decide, you know, I’m gonna give myself Grace here.

Again, it’s all about making people to do these things. And I know the horror of that person, I do like that spouse loves their husband or wife, this is why they’re writing in. And they are trying, they’re trying to get sex just for their own needs, although that that is a big reason. But they’re also doing it because they feel like their relationship is broken. And it is, yeah, that’s the unfortunate thing. But I think there’s a misconception that if sex resumes, the relationship will be fixed.

Unknown Speaker
Right? Right. And I mean, the health of a relationship and the health of the sex life are often linked, but neither one is necessarily going to fix the other. Like, if you’ve got a if you’ve got an ongoing problem in your relationship, it’s, it’s likely to be negatively impacting your sex life. Not always, I mean, we’ve heard from couples that like sex life is great, and everything else is garbage.

So it’s not necessarily always the case. But but, you know, fixing the emotional problem, or the or the financial problem, or the whatever thing is, doesn’t necessarily mean that the sex life just kicked right back into gear. And vice versa. You can’t just like go have a night of amazing sex, and it fixes all of the emotional problems that you’re dealing with. They certainly push and pull each other. But it’s not a it’s not an on off switch, where it just fixes it.

Unknown Speaker
And I don’t know, I feel like so many people don’t say this. But I think you have to expect in your marriage, that you’re going to have a very hard time with your spouse, at some point or another, you just are you are going to have those years periods where you’re not sure why you’re still doing this thing together. And that’s normal. And that’s okay. And it sucks. It sucks. But there’s really no magic pill.

Unknown Speaker
Unfortunately, yeah,

Unknown Speaker
and I think that a lot of people want that though. When I think about relationships that are long lasting and ongoing, and they just so living and breathing. The relationship that you and I had when we were teenagers is nothing like what it is now. It was different. 10 years ago, it was different last year, I’m sure it’s gonna be different next year, whatever there are. Just because you are in a relationship with someone right now where you’re sexless or not having sex as often as you want or whatever else doesn’t mean, you’re always going to be that way.

Right? That means that right now, this is the issue, and maybe you’ll resolve it, or maybe there’s some other issues that are causing it. And that’s where you have to start working towards that resolution, the relationships broken? And yes, it is. It’s destroying you. But I think people associate the feeling of not having sex. I think they’re associating it with not having a need met versus what’s actually happening. They have sorrow for the brokenness in their relationship.

These are not the same things. They have sorrow, not. So because what happens is they come to the spouse and they say, Well, you’re not meeting my needs, you’re not meeting my needs. Well, that just sounds really awful to a spouse. That probably feels the same way. You know, there’s a reason why your husband or wife isn’t having sex with you. Actually, yeah. And it could be that they’re going through their own struggle. I mean, for the husband, who is struggling to have an erection, keep an erection or whatever, is a huge crisis for him. And so having his wife come to him and be like, I’m afraid I just can’t stay married to you, because this isn’t what I signed up for, or, you know, a wife that’s really pressuring him to have sex.

Well, I mean, I don’t know what he can do, maybe just for her, it is definitely causing him to feel more defeated, only leading to greater problems. And on the flip side of that, when you have a spouse who has a lot of insecurities about their body, the way they look, and they don’t feel sexy, the chances are they’re gonna get in a sexual situation and they’re kind of feel worse. So they’re trying to avoid that. And then they feel even worse because their physical issues, whether they’ve put on a lot of weight is now hurting their spouse, which is not what they expected.

So if your husband or wife doesn’t want to have sex with you, it’s really important to put yourself in their position, what’s actually happening here? Like, why, why don’t they want to have sex with me, it might not have anything to do with me at all. It has something to do with me, then I need to fix that. But it could just be something they’re personally going through crisis wise. And it seems very unsupportive to them. If you’re like coming to them and be like, I need my needs, then

Unknown Speaker
what’s the deal,

Unknown Speaker
you’re not meeting my needs, not to laugh at anybody who’s in that position, as now I’m trying to be I want to say, you know, is as heartfelt as I can, I don’t like to see people in pain. No one does, like I mean, I don’t want to see a couple who’s really struggling, who’s going through a lot of brokenness. But at the same time, if you and your spouse will really hunker down, and lean into the struggles you’re dealing with, on the other side of that can be greater intimacy.

And you think about any group that goes through a really trying time together, that’s how it works, right? This is why we go on mission trips, or youth group camp or whatever, we tend people. This is why like, in certain jobs, when a really, really, really tough time happens. On the other side of that is very intimate, deep relationships. And maybe that’s what what this problem in your marriage can do. Right? If you let it you can let it break you.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. But if you get through to the other side of it, yeah. Yeah, we’re stronger. On the other end,

Unknown Speaker
you can be more, you can have a better, closer, deeper relationship. You know, and I’ve seen that, like, I mean, our closest friends are usually the ones we’ve been through some really rough stuff with. We have personally been through some very difficult few of you. So this kind of situation can, there is hope. But a lot of people lose hope in this situation. And I know, it’s one of the reasons why they reach out to me. So if you are in a in a relationship, where you feel like your marriage is mostly sexless, or just really, really suffering. A couple of things, we think you should do one, you need to go to counseling, yeah, if your spouse won’t go with you go alone. There is marriage counseling, I know it’s expensive, but it’s way more affordable than a divorce. Yep.

But either way, maybe you’re going to uncover some things internally that you need to deal with, that will help you be a more healthy person too. Because, you know, who’s to say it’s all your spouse, that’s the issue. And the other thing is, is that you realize that this very difficult situation you’re going through isn’t hopeless. On the other side, there is hope you can get through it. But you’re going to have to have a lot of patience. And you’re, you’re gonna probably have a lot of time maybe even years where this is still a problem.

But stick around for it, figure out the answers to that, you know, like, what do we need to do? And what do we need to change? Whatever crisis your spouse is going through, eventually, they’ll get through it, you know, and maybe that’ll resolve things, maybe it’s a matter of, you know, something in the relationship itself, and realize you can’t force them to change or to do the things you want them to. And for you personally, understanding your own emotions was actually happening here. I feel rejected, and that makes me feel sad, I have sorrow.

And then find someone that you can confide that in, not in a bash or spouse kind of way, right? But, like I really am hurting here, and I need healing. What can I do to help myself during this time when my spouse is going through their own issues or whatever, and we’re broken? Do you have anything else you want to add? Nope. Awesome. Well, guys, thanks for joining us this week, it checks out I love it. But measure.com Sign up for the newsletter love for the venturebeat.com/newsletter We’ll send you a copy of our free sexy Truth or Dare game. It’s also where we answer all of our weekly questions that people send in, and I usually email those out once a week. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to chatting with you later.

The post Help for Couples in a Sexless Marriage appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

We are honored to have J. Parker from Hot Holy Humorous on the Love Hope Adventure podcast to share tips for wives who have a higher drive than their husbands. This is a topic that we think hasn’t been covered enough, which leaves wives in this position feeling like they are alone.

J. gives us great insights into what a wife in this situation is dealing with and things she can do to communicate to her husband what she needs.

You can connect with J. on her website here, on Facebook, or Twitter.

Transcription:

Hey welcome to the love of adventure podcast where we talk about marriage relationship, intimacy and marriage and how you can go deeper with your spouse. And today we’re talking with Jay Parker, she is at potholing. humorous. Also, she’s one of the sex chat. Ladies, if you haven’t checked out that podcast, you should. And Jay, tell us where else you’re blogging. I feel like I’ve seen you blogging other places, and I can’t remember the name of those different places.

Oh, I don’t know where else I’ve been blogging. Exactly. But I have on hot Holy humorous.com. And you can find most of my stuff there. And I also have a, I also have a ministry with Chris Taylor, where we have knowing her sexually and that is for something one. Okay, that’s k HS. ministry.com.

I wanted to say KDP. And I was like, that can’t be it. But publishing. Kindle Direct. That’s it. That’s the other one. I’m like, what is it?

Fine books? Like? what’s ours? The conversation starters. And then you have one out there, right?

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. You’re going to have some books to actually you have a few I have several books. So I have one actually, by the name of my ministry. So hot, holy and humorous sex and marriage by God’s design. So yeah, I also have intimacy revealed, which is a devotional book for wives and helps them to embrace their sexual identity and intimacy in their marriage. And then I also have Pillow Talk, which is a conversation guide. And Kayla, you’re the person who told me that, you know, it sounded like it was conversation starters. And that you realized it was more and I needed to talk more about that. Right. So that was really very enlightening to that I’ve started really saying no, it’s not just conversation starters. It’s like, a wise guide on like, how, you know, it’s got it’s got much more, it’s got like scripture, it’s got like, questions, you actual specific questions, we asked each other, but also some guide lines on how you do that. It’s got some activity take aways. It just, it’s, it’s a much more robust, cool resource than just conversation J, real quick, like, When are you planning to like, really, you know, take this thing seriously, and do some work out there.

Just wondering, you know, as I’ve been doing this for 11 years in one wow, rather. So yeah, I started blogging back in late 2010. So that’s amazing. That’s fantastic. Well, yeah, a lot. Kelly was saying, she sees you all over the place, I see you in one place, because I follow your Facebook page. And so that’s where that’s where I encounter all of your stuff. But I feel like all of those other things. You you funnel through there. So I see whenever y’all have a new podcast out. I see it through there. And, and the and the KDP, the KH s ministry, I see I see you, you boosted those things over there. So yeah, your your stuff is in my feed on the regular. So good things.

Well, thanks for following me there, too. So well, I followed you for probably since the beginning of my blogging, I guess I maybe started 2013 or 2014. And you know, what’s really interesting that I’ve always valued about your blog is you talk to HYDrive wives, and I did this. I did this mops talk once. And I don’t know why they keep kept inviting me back. But the first time I spoke, they were like, oh, it’s Valentine’s or whatever. So why don’t you pick the topic? And I’m like, well, obviously, it’s Valentine’s I have talked about sex. Is that okay? And they’re like, Oh, sure. So I had that that first initial talk. And everybody, like started calling me the sex talk lady at my table, like, oh, wait, you’re that sex talk lady. And even the following year, they did. So for whatever reason, Mops invited me back. And I think at that point, I had gotten into marriage blogging. Initially, I wasn’t. And I remember, like being really become aware of HYDrive lives because of you. So in that talk, I was like, and listen, if you’re a HYDrive life, and you’re not the person in a marriage, where your husband is coming after you all the time, and you’re putting them off, there are resources for you. And I actually had somebody to come up after and tell me like I am that wife, like in a room of Who knows 60 of us. One person came up to me, doesn’t mean she’s the only one that was in that kind of relationship. She was just the only one bold enough to be like, No, that’s me. Can you talk to me? So I pointed her to your resources at that time, and the only thing and I’ll be honest, the only thing I really know what to say to wives in that position is you’re not alone. And, you know, I think that’s where you have such a valuable men ministry because you’re coming from that, you know, from that type of relationship where you’re a HYDrive SP out, and maybe you can speak to the wife whose husband isn’t? Now I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of HYDrive spat wives in a marriage with HYDrive. Husbands, I think there are. So don’t think that but I think the big problem with any marriage is when one spouse wants sex more often than the other, and they’re kind of like at this impasse. Right.

And that’s so interesting that you say that because I’m also in the middle of writing another book, which is on hire Dr. Wives. And so that’s what I’ve been working on for a while. And in the thick of, and someone asked me, if there was any one message that you wanted to get across with this book, what would it be? And I thought for a while, and I thought my biggest message is you’re not alone. So the fact that you say that it’s just so important that a lot of higher desire, wives have felt alone, because so many of the resources or experiences that people around them, address where the husband wants sex more than the wife, and so they’re speaking to wives in that situation. And then, and that’s great, because that’s actually, you know, that’s totally needed. So I’m not taking anything away from that that’s totally needed. But if you’re in that percentage, where that’s not true for you, not only is it hard for you not to find resources, you’re being reminded often, that there are husbands out there who are after their wives and you long for that so much. And and I think it’s true whether the spouse is a husky, whether it’s a husband or a wife, who’s the higher desire, a lot of it is about wanting to be desired by their spouse, and be Intimidators. Yes. And so just that feeling of Wait, am I am I not desirable? Why doesn’t my husband want me especially when the quote unquote normal is for a husband to want his wife. And so I’m a bit on a mission to say, you’re not abnormal, like, it’s fairly normal I, I’ve done a lot of looking into the numbers on this to statistics are some people will go as high as Oh, well, it’s 50% of women, or it’s 40% of women. What I find in the research that I can trust so far is about 15 to 20% of marriages have a wife who desires sex more than a husband. And it could be that that is the entirety of their marriage, or could be a season.

Yeah, I have definitely had some wives write into me and tell me that after gaining a lot of weight, post children, whatever their husbands have literally told them, they’re less attracted to them and have less sex with them. You know, obviously, you’re only getting the one perspective, who knows what’s actually occurring in that relationship. But I’ve had more I’ve written several posts regarding this because they’re like, attributing it to one very specific thing. So at the very least, that’s how they feel whether or not the husband is actually coming right out and saying that, and maybe some of them actually are. Shame on you. 

Yeah, that’s not what I usually hear what I usually hear is husband saying, I don’t deliver Dr. husband’s been like, I don’t know why I find you very attractive. I think you’re beautiful. I just, it’s just not as interested in having sex often.

Are you finding? You mentioned the idea that sometimes it is a lifelong thing. And sometimes it’s more of a season of life. Do you do you have any kind of feel? Or is there anything in the research that says, Which of those is more common? That, that it is that the the drives of both spouses kind of remained the same over over the long haul? Or does it more often than not? They change? Or do you know at all?

I think it’s, I think it’s more likely to have seasons, especially because, well, aging for one thing for men, I mean, you’re nowhere near this, nowhere near this. But, you know, eventually for men, even men who were very eager to have sex, some of that urgency goes down as you grow older, as your testosterone decreases. And also some men begin to have some erection difficulties. And so a lot of men don’t want to do something that they don’t feel they can do very well. So they, you know, out of worry, and they may not even be at a conscious level, but they may be kind of avoiding it. Another issue I think is I hear from a lot of couples where he got further into the responsibilities of life. So, you know, you get to a point, especially men middle aged and older, where, okay, I have a household, I have kids to support, I have a job that is taking a lot out to be I’m now at a maybe at a management level. And I’m running a lot of things. And so the stress of all of that can have a dampening effect on your sex drive.

Now, what about the flip side? What about the wives? Are you finding similar kinds of like hormonal changes throughout life that can contribute to that and or responsibilities in life are shifting and so that it can it can be a contributing factor as well?

Yeah, it’s kind of this weird thing, how the the waves happen, because a lot of times, wives find themselves more interested in having sex as they’re hitting middle age because the kids are drawn. Yeah, it made me.

I was thinking about as I was asking the question, that it’s kind of this inverse relationship. Yeah.

It’s funny how it forces us to do this stuff. And people ask me, you know, why, why is this got to be so hard? And I’m like, you know, life’s a challenge, so that God can help us to grow. I mean, that, ideally, when you have these sexual desire differences, it’s something that it’s a challenge, but it’s not an intimacy stopper.

Well, I think that people always said about sex. And I’m like, it’s like that with everything. Like, why do we have to keep fighting over the thermostat? And what we’re gonna have her suffer and whatever, like, nobody likes sits here and goes, Why is that gotta be so hard.

That is, and that’s actually really good analogy to this, because for the vast majority of my marriage, my husband and I have been on the same page about the thermostat, he gets cold, I get cold. That’s me. I know, we didn’t we find some odd years. No arguments over the thermostat. And then I hit menopause.

And now you’re utterly dying, and he is freaking Oh, my gosh, what is it in here? It must be 100. It’s not so I’ve, I’ve had to be a little uncomfortable. And he’s had to be a little uncomfortable and adjust to those kinds of things. And you know, negotiate that with each other. But that’s something is maybe it goes along swimmingly. And and maybe somebody’s listening to this podcast, now I’m thinking we don’t have that and, and that everything’s gonna go the same as it’s always been. I don’t know, like, there are some people that later in life, have a challenge that goes the other way, you don’t know.

Well, and I guess, you know, the other thing with aging is that medications can I guess, affect this as well. And I know people who are older who have taken medications, I think specifically maybe depression and anxiety medicines that have caused them to struggle with their sex drives, like early on, like, you know, 30s and 20s, whatever, you know.

Yeah. And, you know, if you have any of those kinds of situations, there’s almost always another option or another dosage or something that people can pursue. And so if you think that a medication is having an effect on your libido, that’s absolutely something to take to your doctor. And the other thing, too, is birth control. I read a really interesting book about thick is like, this is your brain on birth control. It’s not not by Christian author, but it was all about this. And she wasn’t anti hormonal contraception, but she was basically pointing out all the research and all the things that we know about how it can impact a woman and her mood, her viewpoint. And also her libido. Yeah, and so some wives, once they’re done with all of the having kids and birth control or whatever, the couple, maybe they reach menopause, or the couple take some steps to make the birth control permanent, the SEC to be tying tubes or whatever. So now that don’t have that, and she’s off the hormonal contraception. Right. And for some wives, that means that they kind of discover that their libido is higher than they thought.

And, you know, that’s that’s an interesting moment, and maybe just sort of pause and say, if you are dealing with some sort of issue in your marriage, let’s just say marriage, not even just sex, just some kind of ongoing issue in your marriage. Are you on any kind of medication that could be impacting that? And that’s not I mean, that’s not just anti anti anxiety, like you said, it could be birth control. I mean, there’s heart medications that can change your overall functioning of your body. You know, maybe take a moment to say, is it possible that any of this is being affected by something that one or both of us is taking? Especially if if it’s something that is new, like if there’s a new problem in your life, your relationship? Can you can you pin it to right about the time that you change that medication or started that medication or something And then have a conversation with your doctor about it. Because there have been times where, you know, I’ve been completely ignorant of something that was going on that was caused by a medication that I was on at the time. And, you know, I pointed that out to Keeley. And she was like, well, we’ll Yeah, that’s probably the meds. And I was like, Oh, no. Like, it never even crossed my mind. So good. Good note there that there are so many different things that you’re not equating with. I take this pill every morning, and therefore, I’m fighting with my spouse, or therefore I’m not having sex as often or I feel like I desired more than I used to, or whatever. You’re you may not be correlating those things. But there could be something going on there. So yeah, that’s true. I kind of wanted to come back to you, you started off talking about, you’re not alone. And I’ve noticed that one thing that Killeen I have worked very hard on, when we’re talking about a lot of different areas, whether it’s sex or communication, or, you know, just emotions or feelings within marriage. We’ve tried to get away from gendered language. Because what we found ourselves doing out of habit and out of cultural conditioning, and things, is we sort of default to the stereotypes.

Whatever, like in our own personal marriage, or what’s in our Yeah, the way the way we interact. Yeah. And so you would say things like, well, when he wants sex all the time, and she doesn’t, and we had to go? Are we subcon subconsciously, or not? Subconsciously? Are we unintentionally making someone feel like they are alone? Because all they ever hear is us talking about? Well, you know, the demand is higher drive, or the man feels this or the man says this, and the woman’s feels this and says this, a man thinks that their wives are hot and sexy. And then there’s that wife who’s like, Well, my husband does, or Yeah, and maybe he doesn’t verbalize it, you know, and all those kinds of things. So we’ve we’ve tried to get away from that and say things like, you’ll hear us say, the higher drive spouse, or the spouse who craves physical touch, or the spouse who craves communication, or whatever, we’ve tried to get away from that, to try and open it up to help emphasize that. It’s not it’s not always the woman, it’s not always the man in fill in the blank situation, whatever it is.

Yeah, so there’s several messages, I think that play into this, and I really appreciate what you’re doing. That sounds great. I think that where the problem often lies, well, for the longest time, the most of the resources didn’t even mentioned the situation where the wife wanted sex more than harassment. Exactly. And then I feel like it’s, it’s an achievement that now a lot of more resources will say, sometimes in you know, such and such percent, maybe 15 to 30% of marriages, it’s the wife who wants sex more than the husband, but then immediately, they go back to talking about everything the other way. And, and that’s what I found. That’s what I found myself doing is I would say, the stereotype. And then I would say, well, um, you know, or maybe it’s the wife. But anyways, back to what we were saying about men. It’s just like, whenever it really hard not to do that, yeah, I felt like even when I was correcting myself, like, like you just said, you know, someone will say, and by the way, you know, studies show that this also happens to women. And then you go right back into only talking about how it affects men or whatever. And again, vice versa. I mean, maybe it’s, it’s a conversation about how women crave more emotional connection. Well, right, you know, statistically this out of the other thing, but sometimes the guy wants it too. And so we’ve tried real hard to do that.

That’s another point that I would make is, I think a lot of times the way that we have talked about sexuality has kind of done a disservice to men as well, because it is made it seem like men are so quickly ready to have sex with their wives, and even men with higher drives, like their relationship factors, there can be other things. And there are plenty of guys who take a while to warm up, so to speak. And it’s interesting, I’m sure you’re familiar with rosemary bass on era bass, and I never know how to say her name. The one who came up with the idea of spontaneous versus responsive desire, right?

Oh, no, I didn’t know that. Either. I definitely know the Collins we talk about that all the time now, because honestly, we’d never heard of it even when we started blogging, but it totally describes our sexual response.

Right? Yeah. It’s it was interesting, because I’ve came across an article recently now, I’ll send this to you later if you want. But where she really talked about how spontaneous the word spontaneous help people to understand what she was talking about, but she said innocence for all responsive is what are we responding to? And she said also, how quickly does your response happen? All right. And so if you’re if your response happens very quickly can feel spontaneous. 

But I think I think we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but just in case we haven’t, you want to you want to give us like a two sentence, what is what are we talking about here? Spontaneous versus? Oh, gosh, responsive design?

Yes. So the idea was basically, originally there was this sexual cycle that said that you began with a desire to have sex, and then you started engaging in sex, and you would have arousal, and then you would reach climax, and then you would have, you know, the falling off or whatever. And that is not accurate. Someone can look it up. I don’t remember the exact words for all those things. There’s something about a plateau, I don’t know. But the important part we’re talking about is that you started with a drive, and then you went, then you engaged from that drive, and you had arousal. And what Bassam looked at is, she said, listen, that’s not how it happens, especially for a lot of women, is that for a lot of women, they make a decision to engage, you can make a decision to engage, they start to become aroused, and then their libido kicks in. So they are responding to the arousal. That’s happening. Right. And, but then she said, in a sense, we’re all a little bit responsive. It’s just that response is happening so quickly for the spontaneous. And oftentimes, as you talk about a spontaneous and a responsive, marry each other very often, very often. Yes, yes. And the spontaneous is like, why don’t you want it like, I want it because I love you. And that means that I love you. I have this libido for you. Why don’t you want me in the responsive is like, okay, like, why can’t you just accept that I need a little time and I need, you know, some warm up and I need some this and that.

I need to get my mind there. Come on people. Yeah, more the responsive thinks there’s something wrong with them when there’s not Yeah, right. And that’s what I was gonna say is, especially, you were mentioning how some of our language around sex has done a disservice to men that we talk about, again, the stereotypes of guys being the higher drive. And even in this even in this context with this, this bit of nuance added on, the conversation is going to drift towards well guys tend to be more spontaneous. So then when you have someone who are not, I don’t know, I don’t know. But when you have a guy, who is whatever category, you want to say, lower drive slash more of a responsive, sexual engager, then then they feel like, well, what’s wrong with me? Why am I not the way that I’m supposed to be? And it’s not one of the things we have to remember with these labels, categories, terms, whatever, is that none of them are right or wrong, none of them are better or worse. It’s just the way your brain is wired, the way your hormones are working, even. And it’s not necessarily the way that you will always be, there could be again, the seasons that we’re talking about, if you understand that, hey, right now, at this point in my life, I’m more of a sexual responder than a spontaneous engager, then, then I can work with that. And I can understand that there are benefits to that. Whereas instead of thinking, this is a problem that I need to fix. And that again, I think, goes back to wives, you’re not alone. If you’re, if you’re counter to the stereotype, that doesn’t mean you’re broken, that doesn’t mean that you’re, there’s something wrong or bad about you, or undesirable about you or whatever. It’s just that at this season of your life, this is the way your body is working.

Right. So the other thing I want to talk when you talked about that of just saying not identifying male, female on who’s the higher desire. And so I think that’s extremely helpful. Overall, I do think we still need to be able to talk about the different experiences for male and female, because the times where somebody tells hard drives, we’ll just flip the advice. 

Well, that is I was gonna ask you really work because I can’t imagine it does.

You know? On some things, yes. And another things no, like, one of the things that that has been an eye opener for me is how much that desire to be. To be competent for men is just a very strong thing for just for a lot of men. Again, not every man out there, right? I’m saying it’s more likely to be a thing for men to feel like well, I want to be competent, I want to be able to engage. And so the lower desire husband also can think, well, there’s something wrong with me And then if she if the higher desire wife pursues and says, Hey, I want to talk about this, a lot of those husbands will shut down because they don’t want to talk about an area in which they don’t feel competent, they don’t want to be reminded. Whereas reaching out, if it’s flipped, reaching out to your wife, and saying, I want to know what’s going on with you, that kind of bid for attention can actually be a good thing, when it’s the lower desire wife. So sometimes the advice is not exactly the same. And I think people also just ought to be able to share their own experiences. So when y’all share your experience, you should be able to share that I get to share mine where I mean, in my marriage, I have been equally matched to my husband, I have been the lower drive spouse, and for a while now I’ve been the higher desire spouse. So we’ve had it all, I was gonna say that that’s the other thing is we’ve we’ve tried to, to get away from the the male female categories, where it where that’s not the only thing happening, you know, like, like you’re saying, even even on the example that you gave, even in the example that you gave, of like, well, most men like to feel confident and don’t want to engage in something, are competent, and don’t want to engage in something that they don’t feel competent to do. And then you immediately corrected yourself and said, Yeah, I know, not every guy. And that’s the thing is, is so much so many times where we’re putting things in those male female instead of maybe, instead of maybe, you know, a be like, because because in our relationship, there are many areas where we fit the stereotype, right? I am I anywhere we go? Yeah, I am the technology guy in the home. She is a homemaker and a wonderful cook. And you know, and we kind of like, but I am definitely very hot natured when he is cold.

And office, right? No, I you know, when I’m on Discovery, I’m not, I have a zone. Because I don’t want to be hot either. I don’t want to be hot. And I also don’t want to be cold, I want to be in my happy zone. And you like to live on the fringes of either extreme of my happy zone. But but that’s the thing is there are these spots where we very much line up with the the stereotype and the cultural norm and or, you know, whatever it is. And then there are other areas where we don’t and it’s either reversed. Or it’s it’s complicated. It’s not like that. And I think again, helping each other to understand that. And we have learned to identify those things and each other, we’ve learned to identify not just me saying to, you know, to myself, well, Keeley is this way, but also having that conversation with her and saying, you know, I’ve noticed this tendency about you and have her go, yeah. More more often. It’s the other way around. More often it’s Keeley saying that to me, and I go, that’s why I’m the way I am. You know, it can be so eye opening. And again, getting, you know, not to keep coming back to your original point. But for people to hear that and realize, Oh, I’m not broken. I’m not deficient or malfunctioning. I’m not alone. I’m one of these people. That’s this way instead.

Well, let me ask you a question. Actually, Austin. So Kelly had said earlier that it you had about 60 women in the room and one came and boldly asked you and said it may just be the heart desire wife. So statistically speaking, there were probably maybe 10 women in the room who were or would be at some point anyway. But that doesn’t mean that particular room had 10 with it. It could have, we could have again. But here’s my question. So assuming you’ve and have talked to guys throughout your life. Have you ever had a man volunteer that he wants sex less than his wife?

I think at least one I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m trying to couch it in the in the context that you asked the question. And I will say in the context that you asked the question, no, because that was someone she didn’t know or barely knew. Well, that’s true. And and there’s been, I can think of maybe three or four people, maybe three or four guys that I’ve had any conversation about sex with. Oh, okay. Because Absolutely.

Outside of blogging, you know, like, like, like, no actual conversation. And I’ve also not had the speaking opportunities that Keelie has in that realm, and I haven’t I haven’t gotten up and been, you know, because if I had done that if I if I had stood up in front of a group of 60 Guys, and talking about these paddles, somebody probably would have come up to me. 

The post Higher Drive Wives with J Parker of Hot, Holy, & Humorous appeared first on Love Hope Adventure.

In this episode of Love Hope Adventure, we interview Matt and Jenn Schmidt from the Intimate Covenant Podcast. You Can learn more about them on their website here. 

Welcome to the love hope adventure podcast where we talk about the marriage relationship, intimacy in marriage, and how you can go deeper with your spouse. And today, we’re really excited because we have guests on with us, we have Matt and Jen from the intimate covenant podcast. And today we’re going to talk about how you can build sexual connection in your marriage. So not just have sex, because sex is great. And maybe it’s not great for you, we don’t know, but have sex that actually builds connection, what does it take to build connection in a marriage to have great sex? And we’re so excited to have them on to Matt and Jen, thanks for coming on. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. 

Hi, welcome here. Thank you for having us. We’re excited to be here for sure. So we’re Matt and Jen, Matt and Jen Schmidt. We live outside of the Houston Texas area. And we have, we are the founders of Intimate Covenant. We’ve had Intimate Covenant now for about five, six years, something like that. We’ve been podcasting for 85 weeks as of this recording, so that’s kind of our newest adventure that we offer. kind of started out an intimate covenant with just like local group Bible studies.

Really nothing formal and just a group Bible studies about marriage and intimacy and building connections in all realms.

Yeah. And then it grew from there, we started a local marriage retreat, I thought, how hard can that be? But great, and worth it. So this, we’re coming up this year, this fall will be our fifth marriage retreat. So that’s a huge accomplishment for us. And then we also started doing seminars where we travel, and we’ve gotten to go to a lot of really cool places and meet a lot of great people doing weekend seminars. 

And that’s how it all has evolved. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing. But yeah, we just keep saying yes, I guess this is the theme of all of that.

That’s the cause of the problem, or whatever it might be. That’s how it’s happened.

Is that the symptom or the problem? We’re not sure exactly.

I love that you guys went into the thought of doing like a marriage retreat and thinking how hard can that be like as former people who used to do a lot of retreats that was like the most stressful things in the world to do?

Its work that’s why we only do one a year, but it’s, it’s and the seminars, when we get to go other places. It’s nice, because other people have done all the planning and the Hard Talk and that’s

the difference between being a speaker and being the event camper. Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

Right. It’s, it’s kind of all consuming, but ironically, this is not our, our full time jobs, if you will, although it definitely is becoming Yeah, could could definitely be mad as a veterinary specialist. And, and I’m, I’m a homeschool mom, I’m a stay at home mom, although our youngest is in ninth grade. So I’m about to lose that title. Only a few more years left with that. But yeah, intimate covenant kind of came about. Mostly because we’ve been married. It’ll be this year, 25 years.

Congratulations.

Thank you super excited for that milestone anniversary. Um, but I would say that, you know, intimate covenants really been around for for six years. So for around our 19 year mark is when that really got started. But really, for 19 years, we’ve always had a heart to mentor other couples, even when we really had no business, mentoring other couples, mentoring ourselves. And yet, that really comes from a place of we started our marriage in a very broken place. And we were very young. We had had a lot of brokenness that had happened to us that we had caused ourselves brought into our own merit brought into marriage, not just because we were married, but things that we brought in.

Yeah. And I think we just quickly at some point in the in when we were still in the midst of dragging through all of that said, how can we help other couples not have this same story? And so again, we still needed the mentoring ourselves, but I just always had a heart for, for proclaiming the truth of marriage of God’s plan for marriage and being real does and that there could be something better than what most people are just willing to settle for. So that’s kind of been our goal and our message over

Yeah, we’ve tried to be very, very real, very vulnerable.

But what and what we’ve really found is, the more we talk about marriage, the more that couples wanted to talk about the sexual relationship in marriage, because that’s what was not being talked about, as I know that, you know, as well, right, yeah, especially within the church, he certainly had very little to no training or guidance or mentorship in that regard. And so the more we talked about marriage, and the Bible studies that started out as a marriage class turned into a sex class, and not you know, how to get tab an into slot B, but how to build that relationship? And what kind of conversations need to be had? What kind of conversations Are we avoiding? What kind of conversations do we not even realize that we need to have? So that’s, that’s where we’re really diving into what is the purpose of sex, you know, and I write too often, especially within conservative Christian circles, we were all growing up with this understanding that you save sex for marriage. And, you know, that’s often presented to us in a very negative way. A very, you know, sex is a no, no. But the day you say I do, it’s, yes, go do that. But we’re not going to talk about it. Just figure that out, you know, yeah. And so many couples start off their marriage. You know, sex is hard. Access, not just two bodies going together, right? And, and you quickly realize this takes a lot of work. And yet, nobody’s talking about the work right? 

You know, no one’s talking about, you know, just hangups that you may experience or have, either, and no one’s telling you, how being bored that sexual connection in the marriage, because we just always want to say, well, oh, well, we’ll just figure it out. And you’ll just figure it out. Except for that, like, we have so many people write in to us telling us how they haven’t figured it out.

Hear more people talking about is that it’s not just, you know, no, no, no, no, no, flip a switch and refine it, you know, there has to be a little bit more going on there. And, and we’re seeing more and more of this kind of conversation is taking place, which is Yeah, I think

I know what your experience was. But when we got married the preacher up at the front of the, you know, chapel didn’t have a switch behind that Bible that he was holding. Like, okay, and right. So we so yeah, you’re right, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make that transition from trying to live a chaste and pure life before marriage. Right. And then switching that too because we had no understanding of what sex was, I think, and I appreciate the, you know, the topic that you kind of put before us and mentioning and talking about building sexual connection, not just talking about how to have sex, and how to, for lack of a better term, how to better stimulate our genitals. 

Right, sex is so much bigger than that. And really, I think even Scripture is very clear that sex is not just an act. But sex is a relationship. And it’s integral to the marriage relationship. It’s part of what builds that relationship. It is, it’s a requisite for marriage. It’s not just something that you can give or take. It is a requisite for marriage, as God describes, even from the very beginning, when he talks about Adam and Eve becoming one flesh, that’s, that’s how he defines the marriage relationship. It’s how we, it’s how he separates the marriage relationship from all other relationships. And even from the very first descriptions of sexual relationships in Scripture, God uses the term in Scripture that Adam knew his wife Eve, as a metaphor, or as a description of sex, not because he’s trying to be mysterious or cryptic with the language necessary, but I think he’s being very purposefully descriptive of sex, that it is a knowing it’s a knowing and being known. 

Right? It’s not that you can just have sex and if you put your bodies together, then you have sex and that’s checked off the box for a sexual relationship because that’s not connected in all of the other ways. But sex is an avenue to spiritual connections and an avenue to emotional connections as well as physical connections. All of those aspects have to be integrated and should be a part of that sexual relationship. In fact, the best sex that you will have is not about how you do it. But the best sex that you have is when you’re connected in all of those ways. Grade. I mean, the example that I always love to give is, I mean, why is hotel sex so much better?

 Why is vacation sex so much better? It’s not because the bed is so much more comfortable something they see that sounds like it’s because the carpet is cleaner or the decorations are better. And it’s not even necessarily because you’re doing something wildly different than what you do at home. Vacation sex is better because you’re connected in all of those other ways. All of the distractions are out of the way, all the stressors are out of the way. And so you’ve been able to take the time and have the time to connect in all those other ways. And that’s why that experience is so much better than it is on a Tuesday night at home. Generally speaking, right?

But Tuesday night at home can be great when you reframe your purpose of sex, right. And it is very clear that God created sex for pleasure. And that’s, that’s clear in the way our bodies work. That’s very clear within the Song of Songs, you know, this whole book in the Bible that is all about sexual pleasure. But the focus, though, is that pleasure is a byproduct of the connection, because it’s really about connection. And when you reframe your purpose with sex, when you recognize that the reason we’re doing this is for connection, well, then number one, it can make the pleasure even better. But it also just gives you something so much deeper than just what two bodies can and cannot do.

Yeah, and I think you know, for me, I love how you guys are talking about how building a sexual relationship is way more than just having sex because so many people write to me, and I will have a spouse say, Well, how can I get my spouse to be more engaged with sex like sex is like they could take it or leave it with sex. And I always try to tell them, Okay, there’s obviously things going on in your marriage. And if you guys have this idea that sex is just to bring pleasure physically to that other person. Whether you experience physical pleasure or not, it’s just a duty, then, of course, they don’t want to have sex with you. Of course, this isn’t like really important in their minds, because they just think, well, it’s like, you know, me needing any other physical need of theirs, instead of seeing it as a thing that brings you together with your spouse. So maybe they are having sex that’s driving them apart or spouses. Yeah, one spouse is not feeling connected and that spouse is typically the one who isn’t super enthusiastic about sex.

Oh, write it because it’s no more fun than changing dirty diapers because it’s just a duty. And just an item on the to-do list. Just meeting someone else’s needs is no fun. But when it’s viewed and used as a means of building deeper connection, and maybe even in a bigger picture is when a couple is connecting in all of those other ways, sex becomes so much more enjoyable and so much easier to transition to it becomes a sort of just a natural extension of the rest of the relationship. Because it’s being used and used to build connection and use to accentuate connection and all of those other ways. So yes, you’re exactly right. You can’t just put your sex life in a box and just pull it out from underneath the bed. You know, every couple of weeks when everything is working well right thank you. It’s no it can’t be icing on the cake. When the rest of your it only happens when everything else is perfect in the relationship.

We like to talk about how sex is icing on the cake sex is the eggs that hold the cake together. You know, it is an inter you don’t have the cake. Without that and when we learn to view our sex life together as a source for deep connection. Then it shifts from this obligation mindset. It shifts from that sense of sex is something that I give or sex is something that I get. 

You know, when really sex is the relationship it is about, you know, something that is so like something we build. It’s not something that I’m giving or taking. It’s something that we are building. Yeah. Esther Perel, who I can’t necessarily recommend everything that she says or writes but she says sex is something is not just something you do. It’s a place you go. And I just I love that. That visualization that it takes it to a place that’s Far beyond, again, more than just what you are doing with your physical bodies, it is something that you are building together, it’s a place you go to escape everything else, it’s a respite from the rest of the, the world and the rest of the obligations that you have. It’s such a beautiful way to state it. Yeah. And

I think that that’s such a mind shift. You know, so often I hear wives say to me, and it seems to be especially true for young mamas. And I get that we had four little people at one point in our lives, and they get that sense of, I just don’t want sex, you know, so many times I hear women say, I could just live forever without sex, I don’t want it. And that I think, is coming from a place of viewing sex as just another thing that needs to get done, you know, your text is something that I need to give him in order to, you know, keep him satisfied. 

Keep him from interesting data of recognizing the benefit of sex for both of us. It is that place of connection. And it’s a place of connection meant to bleed into, if you will, all other realms of intimacy. You know, I think we purposely named our ministry drill or whatever you whatever word is, covering it, the thing that we do, we purposely use the word intimate and that and it’s always interesting to see people’s reaction to that. 

Because we frequently especially again, within conservative Christian circles, use the word intimacy as a euphemism for sex. You know, we don’t really say the word sex in polite society, but we can say, and so people are often like, yeah, yeah. Intimate covenant. What are you guys talking about? You know, we are very purposeful with picking the word intimate. And we like to talk about, how there are realms of intimacy within your marriage. 

There’s spiritual intimacy, mental intimacy, emotional, intimate intimacy, and physical intimacy, and those are all connected together. And, and then learning to see the connection between all of those. And again, like what Matt was saying, you know, your physical intimacy is not just something that, you know, every once in a while you pull out, it is a part of your spiritual intimacy together, it is a part of your mental and emotional intimacy. And when you’re really struggling with physical intimacy, one of the best things you can do is step back as a couple and say, 

Where are we not connecting in all these other realms? Exactly? No. And so for a young mama, who’s saying, I don’t want sex, my answer to her is often, Okay, how’s your emotional connection? How’s your mental connection together? Because you do want sex in a different way, when you see the benefit of the connection, and all of that.

And when you are struggling in one area like that, the question often is, how can I use our emotional connection to accentuate the sexual relationship? And how can I also use our sexual connection to accentuate my emotional connection as well, that those two things feed into each other and if I can just get over the idea that sex is just a to-do item or it’s just for men or whatever it is, you know, then that that’s a pathway to strengthening the relationship and, like we’re talking about building a sexual connection? Yeah.

And, you know, you were talking about intimacy being in this different sort of personal realms of emotional, mental, physical, all the sounds of things. I’m feeling like there’s within the marriage relationship, or just, I don’t mean, maybe family, it can go into different areas of the home or different forms of the relationship. So you know, there’s, there’s a, an intimacy in the bedroom, there’s sexual intimacy, but then there’s just like, a conversation, and the conversation can be intimate. It doesn’t mean like you’re saying it doesn’t mean sex and times. 

It means a close, personal private connection, and I think that the private part is maybe low. It always trips over into who must be talking about sex, because to me, it means something private, that I share with one person. Yes. The type of relationship I have with cutie in regard to our finances is more intimate than my relationship with a friend or a co-worker. I’m walking my talk About my finances in the same depth and level of interest, etc, etc. 

And so all those different aspects you can have intimacy with your spouse in the realm of parenting, are the two of you parenting together and trusting each other and communicating in those kinds of ways. And like you said, about, you know, people wandering in and saying, well, um, you know, we’re not connecting, sexually, etc. You know, how was the intimacy in those other areas? How have the intimacy, you know, like, it, it sounds kind of stupid to say, you know, is your checkbook impacting your bedroom, but seriously, if there’s a product in regard to the way that you’re handling the bills or the way you’re talking to the kids, or how the chores, how the chores are being divvied up, or whatever, and can cause issues? 

And, and because if there’s a broke in that trust in, in personal nature, that is intimacy within whatever wrong it is, it’s going to impact that trust in other areas. Absolutely. If I don’t trust the way you’re, you know, doing X, Y, and Z, you know, in this realm, again, with what the phoniest is, or what the kids are with, you know, how you’re taking care of yourself, I might do wasn’t going to trust you in another area as well. 

And I feel like a lot of times the feedback that we get on but you guys, a lot of the concerns that get brought up about sexual intimacy do involve trust, do involve, yeah, because trust me trust is integral to any kind of vulnerable relationship.

That’s one of the kingdoms that are looking for intimacy and is vulnerable with somebody. Right?

And that’s what intimacy is, I mean, absolutely, intimacy means that I am putting myself in a place of weakness, intentionally opening myself up, so that I can be known. And so then I’m hoping that you will also open yourself up in some way emotionally, so that I can no you I mean, intimacy is about knowing and being known. And, and trust that and seek that from each other. And so you’re right, that that has so much more to do than just sharing our naked bodies together. That is vulnerable, and that is intimate, for sure. But a lot of times, I think many of us find it more challenging to be vulnerable emotionally than we do sexually. Because it’s so much more challenging sometimes to have a conversation about some of these things than it is to just do it. I can just, you know, close my eyes and think of England if I can mean Victoria, famously, yes,

I can, I can dissociate.

Queen Victoria’s advice to her daughter on how to survive sex, close her eyes and think of England. Just way too often, like that mindset that we have of this is something to just endure to just to get through, you know, yeah, but it’s so much more challenging to invite your mind your soul, in like that gets through the bedroom, and even invite that to the relationship because we, we put up barriers, because we don’t want our spouse to know who we really are. 

Or we’re afraid of what they’re going to think of what who we really are inside what we’ve done, what we thought what we desire, we, we are so anxious to suppress all of those things that we think our spouse would shy away from, or would our spouse would think 30 of us if we even brought those topics up. But the greatest gift that we have been given in this life is to be loved for who we really are. 

Yeah, if my spouse only loves me for who I want them to know me for, then they’re actually only in love with my PR department. Not me. Yep. But when I’m able to share who I really am, emotionally, spiritually, sexually, and all those other ways, that’s the greatest gift that we have. I mean, that’s the gift that God offers us through Christ to be loved in spite of who we actually are. Yeah, and when our spouses can also offer that, to me, that’s the greatest gift that we have in this life is to be loved for who I really am, in spite of who I really am. That’s the greatest gift and that’s what intimacy is. But you can only get that if you’re willing to share who you actually are. Right? Yeah. But that puts you at risk. I mean, that means you’re being vulnerable. That means you’re likely at some point to get hurt. And we don’t like to be hurt. And we like to try to control the outcomes of these kinds of conversations, but you can’t get deep intimacy unless you’re willing to be deeply vulnerable. So to me, that’s a risk worth taking.

Risk. I mean, it’s, it’s scary, to contemplate doing that, to take that first step. And to begin that process. I know Kayla and I have gotten, you know, I feel like in like, in fits and starts, I’m about you guys. But again these Mormons have sort of this reckoning in whatever area of our psyche, or, or in our sexual relationship or whatever, then it’s like, okay, we need to talk, you know, this is sort of like, one of us will want to link something out on the table. And it’s terrifying. But I can, I can look back over the course of our marriage, and even prior to our marriage, just our dating relationship. 

And see, there are those moments of vulnerability and how our relationship just like, jumped up onto him from a slow growth curve to just sort of for a second, and we’re just in a different place with your mortgage. And it’s amazing. And then the next one comes, you know, you don’t necessarily look back and go, oh yeah, it was tearing every time.

I say this, or falling, right? Open this part of the app, it’s gonna hurt one other word, hurt, and I don’t want it but right. But you really, I mean, you know, again, talking about how do we achieve sexual connection with one another? Well, the greatest way we do that is by talking is by sharing. And, you know, but and I think that the reaction to what Matt and I are doing is always this sense of relief, every time we go to a seminar, and we have a roomful of people, and they’re all kind of a little on their edge, because they’re like, these are the people that talk about sex. And I don’t really know if we should talk about and, and the minute we just start talking about sex, and God-honoring ways proclaiming the beauty of this covenant relationship, you just, it you can feel it in the room when people realize this is right and holy and great. Talk about, and this is exactly how we get to where we want to be, you know, the Cosmo magazines want to convince you that it’s all about the technique, you know, and that’s what people think about each other’s minds or whatever.

When they know that we talk about sex, they immediately think, Oh, they’re the people who probably talk about positions and technique and hanging from the chandelier. And that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about trade coming from hanging from chandeliers, I did that. I’ve never tried it. 

So I can’t you know, hey, we’ll get that soon. Fan. You know, class one more, but you know, yeah. An interesting point that you guys are talking about this in the context of, you know, of like, public speaking, basically, whether it’s a retreat or seminar or whatever, and you have to do it on your podcast, we do it on our podcast on our blog, and that kind of thing. 

And what I found is that when when you first start saying the words there’s this nervous energy in the room? Yeah, like, wait a minute, where’s this going? Because I don’t know if you guys but when we’re watching a movie, especially with the kids, and I am certain that humor starts drifting in a certain direction like yeah, okay the pause button or no going okay, now we’re gonna have to, we’re gonna have to cancel this. And we’ll lay it out in like you said in terms where we’re okay we’re not going to go off the deep end here guys. 

Right, I talked about something and we’re going to use the wrong groups that we’re not comfortable moving very often on our own want to translate that to that’s when a roomful of people it is it is palpable, like everybody can feel the nervous energy with your spouse, even sometimes, yeah, depending on your comfort level. And we’ve been doing this for so many years, we just don’t even realize sometimes how comfortable you are with sir.

Right. And, Irwin, it’s, you know, what, what do we say and how do we approach it and can and again, can I trust this person to not be worried about it or whatever. 

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