I'm going to come right out and say it... Married people often have the best sex.
This is not the kind of thing I would usually talk about on The Useful Box (or in pretty much any forum really) but... married people, and even married Christians, enjoy sex.
People have made insinuations about this aspect of our marriage because Matt and I had 3 children in 3 years. Awkward. Many people out there enjoy sex and haven't had 3 children in 3 years. Thanks contraception.
But, I wanted to tell you about how much married people (and even married people who have only ever had sex with each other) can enjoy sex. I think the world presents us with a lot of misinformation about sex. I have been confronted by some of these misrepresentations over the Christmas/ New Year break, both through what I see in the media, and what I hear from some of my non-Christian friends.
This is what the world tells me:
- Married sex is boring, infrequent, a duty
- Married women are, for the most part, not sexually fulfilled
- Extra-marital sex is exciting, frequent, a pleasure
- Sex before marriage is normal and wise ("try before you buy")
- Saving sex for marriage is quaint and old-fashioned at best, stupid at worst
- Married women do not want to have sex (or not very often)
- Married women use sex as a weapon against their husbands to get what they want
- Married men are frustrated by a lack of sex or by having to earn the right to have sex
- Young, unmarried women are sexy
- Married women (especially with kids or over the age of 30) are not sexy (unless you happen to be in that rare category referred to as the "yummy mummy")
- People who have only had sex with one person (e.g. their husband or wife) are naive, inexperienced, sexually repressed
- Sex in a Christian marriage = procreation only
- Sex in a Christian marriage = missionary position
- People who oppose pornography, prostitution, orgies, or any other form of sexual expression between consenting adults are prudish and anti-sex
What the Bible (and my experience) tells me:
- Married sex can (and should) be exciting, frequent and pleasurable
- Saving sex for marriage is the wisest choice (even though pre-marriage it may not feel that way)
- Having many sexual partners is not the same as being sexually experienced
- Married women do want to have sex. And sometimes when they don't, they can choose to have it anyway, to please their husbands. Sort of like the way my husband might change a nappy when he doesn't feel like it, in order to please me... only more enjoyable!
- Married women can experience the greatest sexual fulfillment
- Though to the objective eye I am no "yummy mummy", I am the standard of beauty to my husband (and so are you, to your husband...)
- When it comes to knowing my husband, I am the most sexually experienced woman around.
- Sex is a gift from God for procreation, but also for creating unity in marriage and enjoyment. I have been pregnant 4 times (with one pregnancy resulting in miscarriage). In case you wondered, in 8.5 years of marriage, we have had sex more than 4 times.
- In line with God's view of sex being for unity and enjoyment, sex in a Christian marriage is not limited to the missionary position
- God has set clear Biblical guidelines against sex outside of marriage. From God's perspective pornography, prostitution, orgies etc are not helpful in building the unity and enjoyment of sex in marriage. Some (though I know not all) people who have experienced sex in these forms would agree that they lead to loneliness, lack of contentment, jealousy... or at worst, to abuse, hurt, and violation of human rights (e.g. human trafficking).
As I mentioned above, although sex is not a taboo topic among my friends, it is also not something I discuss regularly! But, based on the discussions I have had, it is often the friends who have had the most sexual experiences prior to their current relationship, who have the least enjoyable and fulfilling sex lives in their marriages. It is the friends who have the most sexual experience who also notice that their husbands are more likely to use pornography or be unfaithful. It is sometimes my most physically attractive friends who have struggled with feeling attractive to their husbands.
Sadly, it is not only the world that misinterprets what sex within marriage is like. Christians and churches have and continue to misrepresent God's ideals on sex in marriage. But this is the subject of another post...
Do you think the world misrepresents married sex?
Do you think the world misrepresents married sex?
