They say if it is not broken, don’t fix it. And I agree; some marriages and the sex life therein may appear boring to an outsider, yet are very fulfilling to the two stakeholders. Just do you and stop trying to fit into every social keg.
On the other hand, there are unions where lovemaking has become insufferable because it is boring, unsatisfactory, and steeped in fears and inhibitions – mainly religious.
For some reason, couples have used God – the very creator of sex in marriage; the single act that makes humans co-creators with Him – as a scapegoat when it comes to what they can do and cannot do intimately, and why they feel trapped in unions that bring neither joy nor sexual fulfilment.
“Many sexual hang-ups we see in both Christian men and women originate in theological misunderstanding,” American author and president of Family Dynamics Institute, Joe Beam, writes in his book, Becoming One. “Taught that certain sexual practices are wrong, they either avoid them while longing for them, or do them while feeling guilty.”
And it is also true that some couples at that point introduce a third party (infidelity) where they indulge these secret fantasies, while ‘honouring God’ in their marital homes by staying away from that, which their partners deem sinful. But are you sure all your inhibitions are from God?
“When I was a young minister, serving at my first church back in the early seventies, a new convert approached me with a question I was unprepared to answer,” Beam writes.
“She pulled me into the church nursery… ‘Well, my husband isn’t a Christian, as you well know, and he wants me to do something I don’t know that I can do now that I am a Christian…what does God say about a husband and wife having oral sex?’”
Actually, many of the things we easily throw around as sinful about sex, such as sex positions, women having healthy or high libido – or any libido at all – public display of affection, among other things, are man-made inhibitions.
Like Beam rightly says, “When God is silent, we have no right to insert our own rules.”
When you comb the Bible about sex, what you will actually find is more in line with what God prohibits about sex. Beam lists ten prohibitions he found during his own Bible study as he searched for an answer to give the new convert. These were incest, homosexuality, rape, premarital consensual sex, adultery, lust, prostitution, bestiality, sex during the menstrual period and harming the temple of God (one’s body). There.
“God left it to the husband and wife to decide what best fulfils each of them.”
Interestingly, one will be so opposed to fully exploring sex without inhibitions with one’s own spouse, citing God and religion, but will engage in what the Bible actually terms clearly as sin without missing a beat. The irony!
Someone once told me, he could never divorce his wife due to his religion’s stipulations, and “I would rather we have separate bedrooms and we each respectfully do our things on the side”. And he was not finding his statement weird or contradictory in the least.
Beam suggests that for couples in that kind of sexual discontent and boredom, it is important that you have a discussion on what exactly is holding you back.
Talk about what you want to try and what should stay off the table by mutual agreement; teach each other about your bodies in detail, so your spouse does not waste time on conventional and stereotypical erogenous zones that do not apply to you; talk about why some sex positions and practices, while desired, invoke guilty feelings and inhibitions for you.
Your faith should make your marriage and pink elephants more vibrant now that the ‘sword has been purified’ but, unfortunately, for many, the opposite is true, which can open up doors for one or both of you to go seeking for naughtier experiences in deceptively greener pastures.
It is never too late to spice up things at the home base.
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