Adulthood 2: Marital Development (v3)
This part refers to the process by which a single Christian man and a single Christian women build an intimate relationship that becomes a marriage. Sexuality is obviously greatly involved in that process, and a very important aspect of it is for the guy and gal to continue to remain sexually pure throughout that process whilst dealing appropriately with their feelings and desire for each other. Another aspect to this part of the series is to provide a female equivalent to the detailed description of masturbation as males use it in Part E of the series.
As with other stages of singleness, masturbation is an appropriate tool when practised solo by both prospective marriage partners (when they are alone, not when they are together). It is most certainly beneficial for each partner to use masturbation to deal with the sexual desire and emotions they experience before or after spending time together. Each masturbation session is also a good time to pray about the other partner and their adherence to healthy processes of relationship building.
It is highly likely the male and female marriage partners during their time of courtship will find they need to masturbate more frequently than in previous times and this increase is completely healthy as long as the focus of masturbation remains rooted in an act of worship to Almighty God. For example each partner may need to masturbate both before and after each time they spend together. In addition, due to their personal focus in life overall reorienting to include the other person, they are likely to also need to masturbate at other times during the day as well, when thinking of the other for example. Masturbation is the means by which the sexual attraction which is developing in the future marriage is able to be managed and resolved during the courtship time. enabling sexual purity to be maintained during this period. There should be open discussion between the partners about the use of masturbation during the pre-marital era of their relationship purely in the interests of being open and honest with each other.
In Part E we wrote about the importance of a male in particular using masturbation in order to control and focus his sexuality in a disciplined, God-honouring and woman-respecting way. We’re going to expand that a little here with more insight that we received lately about how this can be achieved in the context of male sexuality. As we in general are aware, male and female sexuality are distinctly different, due to the basic bodily design factors coming into play, and consequently males have differing sexual objectives from females. This may also reflect in the fact that we are perceiving, through our work, that there are relatively few Christian married men who masturbate, compared to a greater proportion of Christian married women who do. This may be an indication of the different reasons that Christian men and women masturbate and the focuses they have for masturbation. In singleness, we would guess there are about equal proportions of Christian men and women who masturbate. We use this point to advocate that it is entirely valid for married Christian men to masturbate regularly and that as more single men come to understand the benefits and blessings of masturbation, they may choose to carry over regular masturbation into their subsequent married life, thus creating additional blessing for their families. However, we also understand that married Christian men may choose to restrain from masturbating in order to maximise their physical performance during intercourse with their wives, whereas wives’ own experience is that their own use of masturbation prior to a session of intercourse may actually enhance it. This is possibly due to the suggestion that women tend to need sex less when they have a lower frequency of it; masturbation can have the impact of increasing a woman’s sex drive.
For a Christian woman, whether single or married, the physical factors that contribute to and impact upon her desire for sexual pleasure, whilst entirely valid, are somewhat different than for a male. Women tend to be more focused on the appearance of their physical bodies as a whole, rather than just their genitalia, and are constantly pressured in the appearance of key body parts that are highly sexualised by men in society. The woman’s breasts are important to this as are her buttocks and thighs. As large, more desirable breasts are naturally less common in many Western societies (female breasts tend to be larger in some countries like the US, UK and Eastern Europe for a variety of reasons, including increased incidence of obesity, and use of growth hormones and chemical pollution with hormone-inducing substances), the focus can often be shifted more onto buttocks and thighs, of which the male perception of desirability is generally related within a certain size range (allegedly similar to a 66 cm waist and 86 cm hips) and where larger sizes are supposedly unattractive. In addition to this, most women are inclined to feel that the pressures placed upon them by men to be physically attractive in these key areas of their bodies amount to a physical violation of their personal space. We submit, then, that masturbation is as important to women, especially single women, as it is to men, but for slightly different reasons. Women also experience physical pressures within their bodies to masturbate and have the pressures from society that are somewhat similar to those that men have. However a key aspect to be resolved for a woman during a time of masturbation is that she is able to feel beautiful about her body and the key source of physical affirmation during a masturbation session is less related to the size or physical engorgement of her genital members and more related to the amount of pleasure she can obtain from touching the most physically prominent and sexualised external parts of her body in addition to direct genital stimulation. Thus it is important for a godly woman to be able to masturbate in order to feel beautiful and sexually attractive, and to reclaim her body for herself after enduring the daily battle to maintain the ownership of her personal space that is constantly being impinged upon by horny males. This imperative is just about as important for married Christian women as it is for singles. The physiology of sexual arousal and orgasm for women is similar to that of men except for the physical appearance of genitals, and the ability of women to experience multiple orgasms with very short refractory periods.
Both Christian single men and women who masturbate are seeking the same sexual validation of their bodies as married men and women, except that for singles, they do not have the added range of sexual fulfilment options that are available in families due to the different purposes for which sexual organs can be utilised. Both men and women should use masturbation as a worshipful act in which they have a sense of God’s blessing and favour upon them during the act. The act of masturbation as a part of godly sexuality for a male or female is as innate as sexual intercourse for a marriage couple, and husbands and wives can choose to masturbate together as a type of intercourse they can share. Masturbation can also be practised by either partner within a marriage to relieve sexual pressures and tensions when one partner has a different level of sex drive, when partners are temporarily separate, when the wife is pregnant or in the post natal recovery period, or the partners are otherwise unavailable to each other. Our experiences suggest that Christian men and women having a sense of the favour and blessing of God during masturbation sessions experience increased sexual arousal and pleasure in the session. This can in turn be positively correlated with a higher daily frequency of masturbation. As we noted previously the frequency of masturbation is a personal conviction to be arrived at in a time of devotion and hearing from God, but we have observed that Christians who have a more positive view of masturbation and find it highly beneficial to their spiritual life and faith are more likely to seek out a higher frequency. Since masturbation is the sole sexual fulfilment opportunity that single Christian males or females have, achieving a high frequency is one of the most obvious ways in which such a man or woman is able to increase their sense of physical validation of their body