Recently I read a book that talked about women who allowed themselves to enjoy “everything but ___ ” before marriage. They spent hours with their boyfriends, kissing and exploring each other’s bodies, and they could hardly hold the line because they loved it so much.
Then they got married….and all that kissing and touching went by the wayside. They and their husband could now partake in the main event, intercourse. Even if there was still some kissing and touching, it was just a prelude to intercourse. It wasn’t very long before the wife felt like it wasn’t that great anymore, and she could take it or leave it.
So what changed? It wasn’t just the fact that they were married, it was what they focused on and spent their time on. Every time she would get going and start to enjoy things, they transitioned to intercourse, because now they could have “sex”.
For hundreds of years, sex has been defined by men,and for men and it is not necessarily what works for women. By and large, when people talk about sex, what they really mean is intercourse. It might start with some foreplay,it might include some oral of manual stimulation but at some point it culminates in intercourse.
I’m not convinced that this is God’s intention. If you read God’s manual on sexual intimacy, Song of Songs, it includes a whole lot of stuff besides put tab A into slot B. It includes ravishing each other with words, eyes, noses, mouths and hands. It is a whole smorgasbord of experiencing and getting to “know” each other. These are the main dishes – they can be complete on their own.
What if we expanded the definition of sex to include things that physically connect us so that we might become one,things that help us to “know” each other, and things that give us pleasure. What if laying naked next to each other, eye to eye, nose to nose allowed us to really “know” each other. What if speaking words over the phone allowed us to stay connected when we could not physically touch. What if exploring each others bodies to discover the most sensitive zones and how they liked to be touched, provided pleasure beyond our wildest imaginations.
People ask me, “how often should I have sex with my husband?” And I always answer that there is no magic number. But really, if you expand your definition of sex, you ought to be connecting every day. Don’t miss an opportunity to connect with your husband today.
Next week we talk about “what are you willing to try?”
It is kind of funny…. well no…..now it is kind of sad, but I was not the one who wanted to stop all the kissing and touching for the main event, my wife was. She even went so far as to say, about a year and a half ago, ” I don’t want to make-out like a couple of teenagers”. 🙁
Anyway, great post, Ruth.