Sex Within Marriage Podcast : Exploring Married Sexuality From A Christian Perspective

The Bible uses marriage as a metaphor for God's relationship with us many times.  I think there's a good reason for it.  In this podcast episode, I discuss my belief that all the do's and don'ts, both in marriage, and in the Bible, point to one thing: the relationship.  Not that the rules are unimportant, or are not valuable, but that the underlying relationship is far more so.  In fact, if we focus on the relationship, on our love for the other person, then all the rules, the guidelines, the do's and don'ts, will happen all on their own.

A couple of years ago I got a message from a reader who was beside herself with unfounded fears that her husband was no longer attracted to her.  She hadn't asked him.  She had no indication that he wasn't, but she had this deep seated fear that he wasn't. So, I ran a survey, asking spouses about their attraction to their husband or wife.  And today I thought I'd share some of results with you, to help anyone else who has the same fears.

I didn't have much time this week to record, so this is a very short podcast episode to let you know about our marriage challenge this week to help you break out of a sexual rut, as well as our new product: The Spice Jar - A printable game to help you change things up in the bedroom tonight.

I once heard it said that the definition of conflict is two people in the same ZIP code.  Well, in marriage the people are a lot closer than that, and this inevitably spawns conflict.  Now, conflict isn't bad, in fact, it can be good and healthy.  Conflict forces us to grow, to see another person's perspective, to seek unselfish solutions.  But, if conflict is dealt with in an unhealthy manner, then it can be damaging.  Today I'm going to share with you 7 damaging conflict behaviours that you might recognize in your marriage.  If any of these ring a bell, you need to start working to rid yourself of them in your relationship.

Sexual awakenings are a point where a low-drive, gatekeeper or refusing spouse suddenly realizes that sex is important to the marriage, and that their behaviour needs to change.  However, just because there is often a single instant where this realization becomes clear, it can take time, sometimes years or decades, to actually change their behaviour.

Let's face it, Christianity is not the perfect religion we like to make it out to be.  At least, not the way we imperfect humans play it out in our lives.  And one area of life that we've really made a mess of over the centuries is sexuality.  In this facet of life, Judaism seems to have gotten it right, and I think we should have paid more attention to them.

A few years ago, I wrote a post called 16 Confessions of a Marriage Sex Blogger.  In it I shared a bunch of things that I thought might be interesting to people, to sort of help my community get to know me a bit more.  Today I'm going to take a slightly different direction and share with you 8 things that I don't want to admit as a Christian Marriage Podcaster.  While these might help you get to know me more, I'm also wanting to show you how to be transparent, to show you that it's okay to share potentially embarrassing things.  If I can share these with you, then surely you can share even deeper things with your spouse.  So, here we go.

These days, standing up and saying that your the head of your household can be a bit dangerous for men.  With gender equality so strong in our society, the idea of gender roles is often scoffed at,  looked own upon.  I've heard many people say that patriarchy is just an excuse for men to do what they want, when they want.  I don't see it that way.  Here's what being the head of the household means to me.

Valentine's day is just around the corner.  Only a few days left in fact.  If that started to make you sweat, well, I feel for you.  Valentine's Day, I think, is potentially one of the most dangerous days of the year for married couples.  I'll explain what I mean, and then give a couple tips for how to survive it.

Men are often accused of compartmentalized lives, and for the most part it's true.  Most of us can have our work life and our home life and our church life and our sports/hobbies life, and keep them all fairly contained.  Women, on the other hand, tend to have one life, and it all mixes together.  However, there is one aspect of life that men often find very difficult to compartmentalize: their sex life.

This week, I'm talking about morning sex, that is sex when you first wake up.  Why discuss morning sex?  Because there's a lot going on that people don't realize I think.  I often get asked "why does my husband want sex in the morning?" and so if you ever had that question, or if you're a husband and are curious why you want sex in the morning, here's your change to find out why.

I wrote a post on this topic a few years ago and thought I'd do a podcast version for those who don't read the blog, or are new and aren't aware of my older posts.  I believe married men (or women) masturbate for three reasons: Ignorance, Selfishness and/or Addiction.

This week we're discussing how you train your spouse.  In all human relationships, we teach other's how to interact with us.  Sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's not.  But, often we don't think about it and then we are surprised by the results of our training. My wife and I trained each other horribly in the years of our marriage and spent years undoing those bad teachings.  But, you can't start unless you understand what's going on.

For the first half of our marriage, I heard from my wife many times "All you want is sex", because sex was probably the biggest are of conflict in our marriage.  Since then, I've seen it many times in emails and comments from lower drive spouses, or from the high drive spouses complaining about the complaints of their low drive spouse. Some of them are accused of being obsessed with sex, some believe that it's their sinful nature that's causing the desire, some think it's a character deficit to be overcome, and, sadly, I've heard too often from high-drive spouses "I wish God would take this desire away from me".

Every marriage blog and podcast has a post or an episode telling you how to spice up your sex life, if not dozens of such posts.  But, they're usually just short term tricks, something to get you excited for a night or two, but then die off quickly.  However, they all have one thing in common, and that, I think, is to the real way to spice up your sex life.  So, in this episode, we're going to talk about how to continuously spice up your sex life, to have a longer lasting effect on your marriage.

Well, Christmas is nearly upon us, and every Christmas I know there is a lot of stress and anxiety as well as sometimes difficult living arrangements during the holidays, with family over, or you over at family, so this week we're going to talk about dealing with Christmas in a marriage.

Today's episode it about praying with your spouse to increase intimacy in your marriage.  Often prayer is a level of intimacy many are scared to step into.  But, getting past the initial obstacle means opening up your marriage to a whole new level of intimacy, which can in turn spur other areas of intimacy forward.

This week I'm going to be discussing a problem common to many husbands with new babies: the fact that their wife's breasts have been re-purposed.

In this episode I answer the question "Why can't my husband just tell me what he needs?"  It's basically the other side of last week's episode.

In this episode I answer the question I get from so many husbands: Why can't my wife just tell me what she wants?  This used to drive me crazy earlier in my marriage, until I figured out the answer.  Now I see it as an opportunity, instead of a frustration.