Women receive conflicting messages about sex. Journalists, bloggers, talk show hosts, and even religious leaders all have their own idea of what married sex is supposed to be. One common ideology encourages us to focus primarily on pursuing our own sexual satisfaction; this mindset is spelled out in several recent marriage
books, including Daniel Bergner’s popular
What Do Women Want?, which describes the female sex drive as “omnivorous” and offers up the possibility of women pursuing sexual fulfillment via threesomes, same-sex encounters, and hooking up with strangers. In direct contrast, another equally pervasive message about women and sex can lead us to believe that what we want is less important (if not irrelevant) because a wife’s responsibility is to satisfy her husband’s sexual desires. The former message emphasizes
selfishness; the latter a potentially dangerous
selflessness. Both miss the mark in terms of helping us to create healthy, satisfying marital intimacy.
If it’s true that neither option accurately represents God’s intention when he created us as sexual beings, how can we reclaim his purpose for our marriage bed?
To read the remainder of this article, please click this link to Christianity Today.
