Sex Within Marriage Podcast : Exploring Married Sexuality from a Christian Perspective

A short one this week. I did not have much time to record, so this episode covers our marriage challenge for breaking out of a sexual rut, and a new printable we made called the Spice Jar. Check out the show notes here for more details and links.

The Spice Jar is a printable game of sexual activities you cut out and draw from, built to help you change something up in the bedroom tonight rather than someday. It pairs with the challenge, which is aimed at couples whose sex life has settled into the same thing, at the same time, in the same way.

A full length episode follows next week.

A sexual awakening is the point where a low-drive, gatekeeping or refusing spouse realises that sex genuinely matters to the marriage, and that their behaviour needs to change. The question in this episode is how long the change actually takes after that moment. Check out the show notes here for more details and links.

The realisation itself is usually sudden, and usually triggered by something outside the marriage: a blog post, a podcast episode, a book, a course, or a conversation with someone they trust. The behaviour is a different matter. Patterns built over years, saying no, avoiding, quietly limiting what is on the table, can take years or even decades to unwind.

That gap is where couples give up, because the higher-drive spouse hears the realisation and expects the behaviour to follow inside a week. Progress, not perfection, is the standard worth holding. It does not need to be instant, it needs to be pointed in the right direction, and a marriage carrying a lot of momentum the other way takes a long while to shed it.

Christianity is not the perfect religion we like to make it out to be, at least not in the way we imperfect humans have played it out. One area we have made a real mess of over the centuries is sexuality, and in this one Judaism seems to have got it right. Check out the show notes here for more details and links.

The Bible is clear enough: our bodies are good, our spirits are of God, and together they make a soul. Separated, we do not exist. What crept in instead was Greek and Roman thinking, that the body is sinful and the spirit is good, and therefore sex, being a bodily function, is unspiritual. The church ran with it. Sex was outlawed on all but 44 days of the year, forbidden on Sundays, permitted only for procreation, and treated as a necessary evil. Some taught that the original sin in Eden was sex itself.

Judaism went the other way, making laws that promoted healthy sexuality, teaching that sex within marriage is a blessing and a good deed on the Sabbath, and that it should be pleasurable for the wife as much as the husband. They occasionally overshot, but the intent was right. What we can do now: stop teaching that sex is inherently sinful and start teaching that context defines it, stop calling it dirty, be willing to pray about it, and be willing to discuss it with other Christians.