Wives: Spend the rest of your marriage trying to understand the importance of sex in the lives of men, especially your husbands.

You don’t get it.

You will never fully get it.

Even your husband can’t completely explain it.

Yet, God created him to view sex in a different way than you.

And he is not wrong for doing so.

He is not a pervert.

He might seek unbiblical ways to express his sexuality. He might have bought into counterfeit forms of proper sexual expression. He might do perverted things.

Yet his desire for sex and his need for sex is not perverted.

While perverts do exist, and while many men are expressing their sexuality in extremely unhealthy ways, primarily through and because of pornography, when healthy sexuality is called perversion, that in and of itself is perversion.

Men do not view sex the same way as women. There is nothing wrong with the differences. And one is not more holy than the other.

Far too many women enter into marriage understanding there are differences, but never make any effort to explore the differences, never seek to understand their spouse, and often stand in judgment of their spouse assuming the husband needs to become more like the wife.

This is wrong.

If I could only tell wives one thing in regards to marriage, it would be to continually grow in understanding the power of sex to the male mind, especially their husbands. (There are times in which men have a low sex drive. If you are in this type of relationship, read this–Gentlemen, Start Your Engines)

Here are a few thoughts:

1. Sex is so powerful, do not bring it into a relationship until marriage. As I often tell single women, do not sleep with a man until he is willing to die for you. When men engage in sex before marriage, they cannot think clearly enough to make the best decision regarding marriage. Sex is so powerful, it clouds the man’s ability to make a rational decision.

2. Men often feel intimacy through sex. While many women have sex as a result of intimacy, many men feel intimacy because of sex. Every time you hear your husband talk about sex, realize he is actually talking about intimacy. It may not be intimacy the way you think of it, but it is intimacy the way he thinks of it (and remember, neither viewpoint is better than the other).

3. When you reject sex, men feel like you are rejecting them. I’m not saying you are. I’m not saying this is right. But I am saying how it most often is. To reject sex feels impersonal to you, but feels very personal to a man. Yet you should still have a right to reject sex. This is one reason I created the 24-hour rule. It gives the wife the ability to reject sex, but gives the husband a set time frame within which sex will occur. “Not now” is given a time-frame. I’m yet to meet a man who dislikes the 24 hour rule.

4. When sex is not a priority for you, men feel like they are not a priority for you. It’s the same as number 3, but just as important. To the extent you make sex a priority, husbands will feel like you have made them a priority. On a regular basis, I meet women who claim their family is a top priority, but they have not sought to understand their husband’s view on sex. While they might think family is their top priority, their husbands will not feel like a top priority.

5. Because it’s important to me, it should be important to you. We do not have the right to tell our spouses what they can and cannot care about. Even if you don’t understand the sexual needs of your spouse, you still have to care about them. If they care about it, you should care about it.

6. You are your husband’s only proper sexual outlet. This should be his boundary and your encouragement. God created most men to greatly need sex. If God created men this way and allowed you to marry your husband, then he created you to be your husband’s only proper sexual outlet. This is a great pleasure and a great responsibility. While a man is fully responsible for his decision making, it helps to have a partner in the battle against temptation. Women, find out more in the post: This Is Only for Women.

Sex is not everything. It’s not even the most important thing. Yet it is a vital component to a healthy marriage. When a wife makes an intentional effort to understand her husband’s viewpoint of sex, he feels heard, understood, and desired. When she ignores it; he feels ignored.

There are a lot of things I want to tell wives regarding marriage, but if I hard to narrow it down to one thing, it would be this: spend the rest of your marriage trying to understand the importance of sex in the minds of men, especially your husbands.

Ok husbands and wives, what would you add to my list?

For further reading, check-out Kevin Leman’s book Sheet Music.

See: If I Could Tell Husbands One Thing