Some young wives cry themselves to sleep every night and they have no one to tell their problem to, or if they do have people, they don’t know how to share their problem to others or are scared to talk about their problem.
What is their problem?
Their husbands told them that they don’t want sex anymore.
Wow, this is tough!
Sometimes these husbands will blame their wives and say,
“I said I don’t want sex because she doesn’t respect me.”
Well, from the surface, this reason may look and sound reasonable to the point you’ll want to say to the wife, “Well, yes, he is right. If you don’t respect him, he cannot perform sexually.”
Sure, this kind of thing can happen among married couples. But the thing is, men cannot last long without having sex, and not simply because they want to but because God created them not to last long without sex.
If his wife does not respect him, a man still desires sex, but he may not be able to love his “disrespectful” wife sexually in the way she wants to be loved by him.
But completely canceling out even the topic of sex from a marriage can’t be explained away by a reason such as “my wife is disrespecting me.”
Some men avoid sex for various reasons. For example, if they take antidepressant medications, they may have decreased libido (sexual desire) and their sexual performance will be affected. Sometimes, uncontrolled blood sugar or blood pressure can also affect their sexual performance. Lack of healthy eating and moderate exercise can also affect their sexual performance.
The other biggie these days that affects man’s sexual desire/performance is porn addiction. A man who is addicted to porn cannot get sexually stimulated or attracted to one woman (his wife). His wife’s naked body means nothing to him. It does not excite him because he is constantly exposed to countless images of nude women and his sexual brain gets desensitized and becomes unable to respond sexually to the site of his wife’s body.
This is a very sad reality of our times! This is becoming one of the common marital problems.
Another reason men avoid or totally reject sex in their marriage is, as Christians, they are struggling against unwanted same sex attraction and nobody knows about their struggle. When these men are pastors or Gospel singers or maybe so called prophets, they hide their struggles from everybody while their wives suffer quietly.
You may ask, “Why do these men get married in the first place if they know that they are struggling with same-sex attraction? Why don’t they wait until they get solutions to their problems?”
Primarily because, since they are Christians, they want to do what Christian men are excepted to do: get married and have a family. And they try everything to silence their hidden struggles by covering their lives with “marriage and family.”
But the truth of the matter is, since they hide their struggles from others, they don’t find solutions, answers, and freedom from their unwanted same-sex attraction.
So, as a beard covers a man’s face, they try to hide and cover their true life by marriage. That is why some people call those women that these men marry and use to hide their true life struggles from the outside world as “Beard.”
The problem is, the woman they marry is a sexual being. She marries a man because she is a sexual being. So, she asks for and demands sex, and rightly so!
In our community, the Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian community, women with this problem have nobody to listen to their problems because what is common is the opposite of the above issue; that is, a man complaining about his wife saying, “My wife is refusing to have sex with me for every little reason and I am suffering.”
So, when some church leaders hear this problem, they quickly blame and label the woman as a “bad girl,” a girl who came from the world, a girl who didn’t let go of the lifestyle of this sinful world.
Others may even simply start to rebuke the demon out the woman. Very sad!
And only because the wife asked for what lawfully, legally, and spiritually belongs to her: Sex from her own husband.
The word of God sees us both, men and women, equally but differently. We both are created sexually but our sexual natures are different. That is why the word of God gives two individual instructions to both:
“each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” 1 Corinthians 7:2b-4
“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife” – this duty of the husband is different from his wife’s duty to her husband. But the word of God recognizes them both, equally yet individually, as sexual beings.
There is no, “Sex is for men and women are there to fulfill men’s sexual desires.”
Both are sexual beings and both have to fulfill their respective sexual duties, or calls. When they “refuse” to do their duties, there will be marital problems.
There are many instances where a wife or a husband is unable to perform. As long as they are facing their marital sexual problems together, as a team, as a “one-flesh,” communicating openly and seeking help for their problems together, they can even pass through years of marital journey without sex.
But they can’t do this by giving bogus reasons, reasons which cannot hold water medically and spiritually.
So, this post is to encourage wives who are in this situation to speak up and never stop seeking help until they find solutions to their problems.
And it is also to encourage men who are caught up in this similar struggle and chose to struggle by themselves, without sharing their struggles with their wives, to come out of their hiding place and communicate openly and candidly with their wives and seek help for their problems.
Remember, unless there are clear medical reasons that prevent the couple from having sexual intimacy, there is no marriage without sex. ///