• Referenced scripture:
  • Proverbs 7

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

[00:00:00]

Ryan: All right, Selena, it’s time we talk about the elephant in the bedroom, if you will.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: Okay. Now, what am I talking about? Well, the elephant.

Selena: We started chatting about this in front of our kids, and one of our 5-year-olds was like, “You have an elephant in the bedroom?”

Ryan: Yeah. And we didn’t explain anything to her. We were just like, “No, stop eavesdropping.” So the idea of frequency around sex and intimacy. And I think we call it the elephant in the bedroom, because it’s something that a lot of couples are really uncomfortable talking about. And because it’s not talked about, because it’s not thought through, because… what happens is you have urges. I’m not just talking like sexual urges, okay? I’m talking like the impulses to, you know, want to be close to want sex, but then there’s also the reverse impulses that’s to be kind of defensive. You don’t usually get past the first or second tier of whatever those initial thoughts and thought processes are.

And so today we’re going to address a question from listeners and talk about it, the elephant in the bedroom. Namely, what if you’re in a sexless marriage? Or what if you just don’t have any idea or any agreement around frequency?

So we’ll see you on the other side.

[00:01:18]

Selena: So what’s the point of talking about this? Like we’re married, we have sex, we don’t have sex. What’s the big deal? It’s a terrible.

Ryan: No, it’s good.

Selena: Terrible intro.

Ryan: No, it’s fine. Well, it’s a big deal because sex is good and it’s not just something that’s arbitrary. We talked about this about a month ago.

Selena: Yeah. A couple of months ago.

Ryan: Yeah. Kind of in 20-plus years of marriage, what have we learned in this area? Well, the governing principle, which you had one of those for each one of those episodes, the governing principle here is that sex is good. It’s created by God.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And it’s created-

Selena: God created it, so it’s good. So the absence of it means what? The absence of?

Ryan: Something good. Right.

Selena: Which is what we’ll talk about, I think.

Ryan: Yeah. What happens when it’s absent, that ends up creating all sorts of dysfunction that you don’t even realize is there until it becomes the water you’re swimming in and pretty soon you’re drowning and you forget that, oh, I’m in water.

Selena: Right. And the one thing that will alleviate some of that tension and not just physical tension, but that will bring you back into agreement and that will kind of unify you guys again is to actually have sex. And so, which can be the most difficult thing, I think, because you don’t really desire it. So anyways.

Ryan: Hopefully, we’ll bring you some clarity and some hope today. If you don’t know who we are, I’m Ryan. This is my beautiful life… wife and life, in a way, Selena. We’re the Fredericks. We do the Fierce Marriage podcast. Someone asked about the Fierce Parenting podcast. We put that on pause. Life’s been really busy. However, we have an episode coming out, I believe this week. That’s the goal. You did an interview with who?

Selena: Ruth Cho Simons.

Ryan: Yes. She’s an author, illustrator. She’s written a book that is in the parenting space. We interviewed her. That should be fun. This question, I’ll say it’s kind of a theme of questions. Comes through our Ask Us Anything form.

Selena: Oh, yeah. All the time.

Ryan: We get tons of these questions. There’s lots of themes. I think we’ll start maybe doing Q&As once every month or two. Just full episodes of that. If you have a question, you can go to this website. It’s FierceMarriage.com/ask, that’s A-S-K, if you have a question about this episode or any other things in your marriage, there’s a chance we’ll put that up and answer that in a podcast context or address it, I should say.

Selena: Address it.

Ryan: Yeah. Okay. So this one comes from a… My heart went out to this guy. I couldn’t find his actual question, so I’m going to kind of paraphrase it. I did get one from another gentleman who says he and his wife had not had sex in nine years, and he’s wondering if divorce is his only option. But that’s not the question that I’m thinking of directly.

Somebody said he tries to kind of initiate, he tries to romance his wife, he tries to show her love, he tries to communicate to her that he really is hungry, he desires intimacy with her. And he even went so far as to describe an occasion where he… I don’t know if it was Valentine’s Day or if it was just in an anniversary or something, where he went to great length to make dinner, I think he took her out to dinner, they came home, they had this big romantic candlelit thing set up at home. It was set up for romance, for intimacy. And she basically kind of scoffed and said, “Well, might as well get it over with.” And then actually they never ended up even having sex. They must have gotten in an argument or something. I forget what the question was or what he said.

Point is my heart really went out to this guy because, man, I got the sense that he was really earnestly trying, earnestly desiring. You know, we only ever hear one side of these stories.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: And it’s hard to know what her side is.

Selena: As a wife, you’re like, well, you know, was he just trying to get some or was he, you know?

Ryan: After nine years, I’d say yeah.

Selena: Well, I didn’t know if that was the same guy. But yes, there’s something to be said for a woman’s reaction to scoff at her husband when he is putting himself out there, earnestly trying. And clearly there’s something inside of her that she’s not dealt with. And she has to own that within herself and unto the Lord, right there. I think we have to diminish what… we have all these assumptions about sex, right, as married couples.

Ryan: Sure.

Selena: We have all these expectations of how it should be and how frequent it should be and how it should be when we do it and all of these things. And it’s like, if it doesn’t match up to this, then it’s not worth doing. Or if we do it, you know, at a level two and it’s not a level 10, is it still like worth it?

You and I, we’ve talked about-

Ryan: Spontaneity.

Selena: Yeah. There doesn’t always have to be a spontaneous event, but it can be. It doesn’t always have to be like-

Ryan: 10 out of 10 intensity.

Selena: Because there’s different purposes for it. Right? We talked about this actually probably about almost 30 episodes exactly to this about the purposes of sex. And one of them was comfort. And one of them was I think to… let me look. For protection and against temptation.

And so if you are in a sexless marriage and if there is no intimacy between you and your husband as a wife speaking, those should raise some flags. If no one’s desiring it or one of you is… definitely some red flags. It’s your job to identify what those are. Because if he’s saying, I don’t know what it is, my pushback would say, well, you need to find out. Like we need to ask this questions. If you’re a part of a church, how do you get your pastors involved? It feels, you know, maybe there’s some shame and guilt around it. But there shouldn’t be. Our churches are supposed to help us with our marriages.

Ryan: That’s what we talked about last week. In that instance, I, I do think sex was probably not the only issue that marriage was facing.

Selena: Oh yeah, 100%.

Ryan: There’s for sure other things playing into it.

Selena: But a lack of sex contributes to all of the other issues.

Ryan: It’s both the symptom and the problem.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: It’s both, you know, and the cure all at the same time. I think it’s far… how did I put this once? I think our culture puts far too great an emphasis on sex in an unhealthy way. But we as married couples, probably in the Christian circles, we put far too little of an emphasis on it and how important it is to the health of the marriage, to the health of the connection of the other couple.

People ask us, well, what’s the right amount? How many times should we be having sex? And my answer to that is how many times is needed. And you can even go so far as to say, whoever needs it the most, that’s how many times is appropriate. Because we give to one another.

Someone might say, well, then he or she just going to hold them hostage and make it a, you know… well, of course, you don’t want to hold it over anybody’s head or use it as a manipulation tool.

Selena: That’s not loving. That was never what it was intended for.

Ryan: No.

Selena: Right?

Ryan: So I’m, we’re talking about in healthy circumstances, if you have a spouse who has a sexual drive, a sexual desire, would you not want to help your spouse satisfy that? And I’m not talking about the far ends of the bell curve, like the what-ifs, like the exceptions. I’m talking about in general, this is what’s good.

Here’s my goal for this episode. As we were talking, we went and got a delicious smash burgers before. No pun intended. And we were talking over lunch. Don’t look at me like that, Freddie. You know, that was hilarious. Smash is a term that has sexual connotations for some folks. Anyway. It was hilarious. You missed it.

Selena: I missed it. I’m sorry.

Ryan: You’re too pure. So my goal for this, as we were talking over lunch is I just… sex in healthy marriage… obviously you want healthy marriages. And I think one marker, if you will, of a healthy marriage is that sex flows almost like water. It’s not this big… there’s healthy communication around it. It happens a lot. There’s not a lot of rigmarole around like arguing about it. It’s just kind of like we give, we take, we receive, we give, we take, we receive, we enjoy, we relax around it. There’s this free-flow aspect of it within your marriage.

Selena: Well, and how do you get there? How do you get to that point? Because I think a lot of viewers who are struggling with it just don’t know how to understand how to get there. And I think for, for me personally, one thing that kind of helped me see it and be in agreement and line up and be like, yes, this is okay, this makes a lot more sense. I think it was Debra Fileta, she… her and Gary Thomas wrote a book called Married Sex.

And she had said something to the effect of like after a long day at work or with the kids and you’re just tired, coming to bed with your spouse should be one of, the most natural, biggest blessings to the end of such a busy day. Like it should be the place where you land. And it should be the experience, you know, that comforts you, that helps you unwind, but also connects you. I mean, there’s so many purposes layered into this physical act. That’s just like our God to do that, right? To create something that is physical and tangible, but has so much more depth and meaning within the actual act and around it, before and after, right? There’s just-

Ryan: And we can tell you that we’ve been in that sort of situation where that’s been the sentiment in our marriage. And we’ve also been in the other end of the spectrum where it’s like, there’s not this freedom around it or this natural desire around it. It’s more guarded because of… You know, I don’t want to put you too far out there, but because of your kind of… sorry.

Selena: Family of origin stuff can play a big role into how you deal with each other and how you deal with intimacy, whether it’s physical, spiritual, emotional, you know?

Ryan: Your default posture is more of like arm’s length. Very friendly, but arm’s length. And so for a husband that’s a challenge. Because I don’t want to be at arm’s length. I want to be within the arms grip if you will. So we’ve had to work through that.

Selena: Yeah. I was understanding the reality of our relationship. You are my husband, this is what God’s word says. And not in an over the smack over the headway. It’s a look at what God has invited us into. Look at what God has given us in our marriage. We get to partake of this joy. And so my prayer was just, God, help me see it that way sometimes. Because it wasn’t always. But there’s joy in giving of yourself. There’s joy in the sacrifice. There’s comfort. There’s goodness. There’s all the things.

Ryan: So what does God’s word actually say? We’re just going to throw out some passages here really quickly off the top of the head, literally. Proverbs 5. Take pleasure in the wife of your youth. I think the language in that is always be drunk in-

Selena: The one time you can be drunk.

Ryan: He’s using it obviously as an analogy-

Selena: I know. I know.

Ryan: …to describe like feel it, embrace the love for one another. He definitely has the wedding, the marriage bed in view. Song of Solomon is rife with intimacy language. It’s about a husband and a wife pursuing one another. She says, come after me, let us run. Like there’s this idea of come with me to this place that only we can go together. We see in scripture, sex is good. Even Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 talks to wives and says… and the spouses, not just to wives. To both. Okay. That should be noted. “Do not withhold from one another unless by two things: mutual consent so that you can pray. It’s not just mutual consent. So we can just figure our stuff out. It’s mutual consent so that you can enhance your prayer life.

The second qualification Paul makes is for a limited time. So it’s very clear. Those are just three examples. It’s very clear in scripture that sex is good. Not to mention back in the garden when the two became one flesh and the first thing he tells them to do is to be fruitful. How do you be fruitful as a married couple? And you’ve just been joined together as one flesh. Oh, right. You bear physical loin fruits, as I’ve heard someone say. Children. Okay? It is good?

Selena: It is good.

Ryan: So that’s what scripture says about it. So when it comes to frequency, when it comes to talking about these things, when it comes to trying to find healthy attitudes toward it, we really need to ground ourselves in the reality of what God says about sex.

Now, we have to work through the issues that would clog up the pipeline, so to speak. Meaning communication, confidence issues with one another. Maybe there’s trust that’s been broken. We’re not saying ignore all that stuff. We’re saying that sex is the warning light on the dash that says something’s not right with this engine if this is not happening. We need to talk about that not happening so that we can peel back the layers, we can get into the guts of the engine, so to speak, and deal with this stuff.

And of course, both spouses have to do that. If you have a spouse who’s not ready or willing to talk to a pastor, like you mentioned, you’ve got bigger issues. If you’ve got a spouse who’s not ready and willing to talk to you, you’ve got your work to do. So, go ahead.

Selena: I was just going to say something about the frequency. We mentioned this. We used to say this many times I think before on this podcast. But kind of a baseline, again, I think it’s two to three times a week. And then for good measure, you know, once a year is like a week straight. Just to stick something to the wall, right? At least for me, if I was listening, I’d be like, okay, just give me a number like to where to start. And that doesn’t have to be… again, it’s not a hard number. It’s not written in stone. But if you’re like, well, we do it once a month, hey, let’s move that up, right? I don’t know if that’s healthy. The connection time in our experience that we need is just… it’s more than that. We need more than that.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. So we’re going to play a video. You’re going to see it on YouTube. If you’re listening, you’ll hear the audio of it. You’ll get the gist of it. There’s a woman. She is in her car. I don’t know how they do this, but she’s apparently driving while she’s recording this. Maybe there’s like a stand for her phone or whatever. It came off of Instagram reels. I sent this to Selena to say, “This is… what do you think of this basically? And so I want to hear again, Selena’s kind of a reaction to it. But yeah. And then we’ll talk about it and then we will call it an episode.

What I like about this video is you get a sense of her attitude toward sex, her attitude toward her husband. We’ve talked about being jovial warriors, being jolly spouses in the sense that you kind of fight and laugh as you get through the muck and mire of life because we know how the book ends. We know that our covenant is sure. So I want to hear your response to this.

[00:16:52]

Selena: Well, the comments, I think, kind of say it all. It’s like, “This woman is being taken care of by her husband, obviously.” And that’s, I think, what speaks to it so much too. I mean, it’s humorous and it’s sweet.

Ryan: I will say this other comment. It says, “That woman has a man who absolutely does whatever she needs him to do.”

Selena: Mm-hmm.

Ryan: I can’t argue with that.

Selena: It takes two.

Ryan: Oh, yeah. Can’t read that one out loud.

Selena: It really does take two, though, to contribute to this.

Ryan: Someone said, “This woman is a genius. It’s not rocket science.”

Selena: I know. And sometimes, you know, it’s true. You just got to hop into bed sometimes and just-

Ryan: So, yeah. What was your reaction to this when I sent this to you?

Selena: At first, I was like, does he need some? Is this what you’re saying? [both laughs]

Ryan: Because I didn’t want you to hear it like, Look at her. She’s giving it to her man. I wasn’t trying to say that.

Selena: No. I didn’t hear that. I just heard… I just think it’s my humor, too. I love the joy of it, like the sass of it, but the reality of it, too. It’s true. It’s true. You want to give. Giving begets giving. Why shouldn’t I give of myself to you? Of all the people in all the world, you are the one person that we’ve made a covenant together, we have made vows. Our covenant can withstand whatever it is that we need to deal with. Like, it can withstand that. That’s what God created it for. And so that’s my… I don’t know. I feel like that’s what we can stand on. And we can’t forget that about our covenant.

Ryan: Yeah. I’m trying to think, what is the male, the husband equivalent of this? And I don’t know. Maybe I’ve said it to you recently or not but… and I mean this. Anything that I can give you that I have, it’s yours. It’s anything.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: I mean, we’ll talk about it. We’re not talking about frivolity here. But we’re talking about, like literally everything that I have worked for, you can have it.

Selena: Right. And it’s a shared… I think that’s the thing is that it’s… it is in a sense like there’s your things that you’ve worked for, but in all reality, it’s ours. But there’s something that like, when you give… there’s an assurance there. There’s a security there, there’s a… I know that to be true and so therefore, like, it’s so much easier for me to give it to you. Like to give myself to you. And that’s not always the case. And we have to work, I think, to get to that point.

Ryan: I read somewhere a comment of a woman who said, I figured out how to get my husband to make the bed every day. And she was like, “Don’t worry. I’m not guilting him or manipulating him or anything like that. But I figured it out. And I’m thinking to myself, Let’s hear it. You know, great. What is this? And who’s this guy? And she made an excellent point.

And she basically said that men are more concerned with outcomes than they are with tasks. And I agree with that. I’m horrible at tasks, but if I want the outcome, then I’ll do whatever task it is.

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: So for this, she explained to her husband, having a bed made is like for me at the end of the day, when I come lay on top or in that made bed, it’s like the most relaxing, fulfilling end to that day. It does something to her soul is what she was saying.

Selena: And he was like, Okay, I like this language. I gotta apply this.

Ryan: And he was like, Oh, really? That’s all it takes? I just make the bed and that does all that for you? I’ll make it. And he’s made the bed every day since.

Selena: And it’s so easy for you guys. Yes, that’s such a truth because I feel like I can tell you those things and you’re like, That’s all it is. And I’m like, yes. It’s like such a big thing. And then it happens and it’s like, wow, marriage sure is great.

Ryan: Because it doesn’t matter what it is. If it does something that meets some need, fulfills something for you and our kids-

Selena: At a soul level.

Ryan: At a soul level. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to provide that thing or to protect that thing or to make that thing happen. And I will say this is why this woman’s video I think is so simple but profound. Because as a man, in all the things that are swirling around in my head and things that I have to get done, there’s only really one thing I actually care about and that’s you. Truly. Like you live rent-free in my head 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And a big part of that is my desire for you on every level to connect with you, to know you in the biblical sense.

So this is why we say we need it to flow freely. Sex should flow freely inside the walls of your covenant. It should be something that you are drinking deep of, you’re enjoying. And if you don’t have that culture yet… my heart goes out to our listeners because it’s the minority of marriages that have that. So don’t be discouraged if that’s not you. But be encouraged that it’s possible.

In fact, in the last just few years of our own marriage, we’ve made – and we’ve been married 21 years. So long road behind us. Lord willing, there’s still a lot of road ahead of us. And I basically just came to you and said, Hey, we’ve been doing the two to three times a week thing. I think we need to increase that.” I was like, “I can’t explain it. I just think we need to increase it.” And you were like, okay. And basically, we went to every other day or more. Our fights don’t happen as much. The arguments aren’t nearly as intense. They resolve far more quickly. We’re far more gracious to one another. I’m far more charitable in my listening to you and more understanding to you.

Selena: Are you? I’m kidding. [laughs]

Ryan: I think I am.

Selena: No, you are.

Ryan: There’s a lot of benefits.

Selena: It’s because, at the foundation level, you feel connected too.

Ryan: And it gives you –

Selena: We’re not consistent all the time. It’s not like –

Ryan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not a militant thing.

Selena: We’re aiming at connection frequently.

Ryan: Right.

Selena: It’s only gotten better. So is there any encouragement to walk away with? Like have more sex and ideally, things will get better. But that’s not the only thing, right? You have to work to get to those points. You have to learn to be gracious to one another, to listen to one another, connect at a lower level before you can kind of dive deep into those.

Ryan: Because sex is a symptom of deeper things. But it’s also sometimes the cause of issues. It’s also sometimes the cure for issues.

If you hear this episode or you listen or you watch and you hear the Fredericks saying that more sex will fix everything in your marriage, then you are hearing it wrong. It can maybe fix some things. It depends on your marriage. We don’t know you personally. We don’t know where you’ve been, where you’re headed, what you’re going through, what season you’re in. So you, friends, need to apply wisdom. You need to apply discernment. Take hopefully something out of this and find hope, find encouragement, and find maybe a path forward. And that path forward, I would say, is just talk to one another.

You can use us, the Fredericks. We can be your scapegoat all the time. Hey, wife, you can talk to your wife, your husband this way. Husband, you can go to your wife and say, I listened to these Fredericks. I listened to this podcast. They were talking about this. Hey, do you want to listen to it with me after the kids go to bed tonight then we can talk about it afterward? You can let us say all this stuff. I might want to stop it before we get to this part, though. I’m kidding. Hi. Just hi, spouse, if you’re listening to this again, use us as your scapegoat to have the excuse to talk about it. Because I think that sometimes that’s the biggest issue. Couples don’t know how to break the ice. They don’t know how to approach the topic.

Always start with this: Hey, I’ve been praying about us. I want to love you better. I want to have a better marriage. To that end, I listened to this podcast. And here’s what they said. And there you go. There’s your conversation prompt. All right. All right.

Hopefully, that was helpful to you. And that’s something that’s been on my heart for a few weeks after getting those questions in. If you have questions, you can go to fiercemarriage.com/ask. Selena, do you have any other last thoughts?

Selena: No. Well, real quick, yes. If you’re in a season of young children, we’ve done episodes on this as well. Don’t feel the pressure to make sex this big, grand experience. But I also do think that it needs to be somewhat dutiful, if I can say that. And you, again, apply godly wisdom. Apply care for one another and graciousness and discernment. But there is something to be said that, yes, Mom, you’re tired and exhausted. And the last thing you want to do is give to your husband. But I’m telling you, it feeds his soul… And I know that he will rise to feed your soul. He will do whatever it is you need. And this is not a manipulative thing. This is not like if I give it to you, then you go do these things. It’s not that. It’s we need to connect. The kids are asleep. Let’s do this.

And sometimes it might be more about him than it is about me. But that’s okay. I can give. For us, it doesn’t always have to be about each of us feeling it to the nines or whatever. So we can give to one another. We can be available to one another. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

Ryan: Generosity and generous love in marriage have a way of multiplying. It is not a fixed sum. It’s not you give, therefore… I give, therefore you take, therefore I now lack. No. We are generous and that multiplies. And it creates more and more generosity, more and more love, more affection.

So speaking of generous love, generous affection, Jesus Christ. We always like to end these episodes with a reminder of who He is. If you don’t know Jesus, he is the son of God. God Himself became flesh so that he could live a perfect life and die the sinner’s death, the death that we deserved. He died, paid the price for our sin on the cross. He didn’t stay dead. He rose again on the third day and now promises to raise us to new life when we place our faith in Him. He has paid the price for our sin. If it weren’t for Him, we would have no hope. With Him we have eternal hope.

I saw a quote by Paul Washer. It said this, “If God did 99.99% of the saving and we did 0.01% of the saving of ourselves,” he said, “we would all be damned to hell.” Christ saves those who believe in Him 100% of the way. So place your hope in Christ. Trust Him. Let Him take the rest from there. Let Him take you into His arms and he will guide you, friend. But you need to place your faith in Him. And I pray that His spirit is enlivening you right now to do just that.

If you need tangible steps, we encourage you to find a friend who’s a Christian, say, can we read the Bible together? Can we go to church together? Go to a good church that preaches out of the word, where the pastor preaches out of the word. If you don’t have a good church that you know of in your area, we have a website set up that has a church finder there. It’s thenewsisgood.com. We pray that that helps you.

Let’s pray. Lord God, thank you for your grace in our lives. Thank you that you have saved us all the way. Thank you for the gift of marriage and the gift of intimacy within the context of marriage. Lord, I thank you that you have spoken to it in your word. You’ve not just left us to figure it out on our own, but God, you’ve spoken about it. You’ve said it’s good. And you’ve said that we should not withhold from one another, that we should be generous to one another. We should pursue one another.

I pray that that would be the case for the couples watching and listening to this right now. Even if they’re hurting, they’re struggling, God, give them eyes of faith. Give them hope to work through the hurt, to work through the struggle, and to do so with you, talking to one another and getting help from their church family and their pastors as needed. We love you, Lord. I pray that these couples would flourish in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right. Thank you, friends. If you would like to support the Fierce Marriage, Fierce Parenting, Fierce Families ecosystem, the work of us, the Fredericks, one way you can do that is through our fellowship. It’s fiercemarriage.com/partner. Going there gives you options to join what we call the Fierce Fellowship. I’m excited. We have a date on the calendar. In about four weeks, we’re going to do a Zoom call with all of our fellows. We’re just going to hang out.

So if you want to talk, we would love to meet you. We’d love to hear a little bit of your story, Lord willing. But the place to go to find out those details is go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. Sound good?

Selena: Sounds good.

Ryan: All right. This episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: See you again in about seven days. So until next time—

Selena: Stay Fierce.