Adulthood 3: Marital Relations
This part refers to the point at which a single man and a single woman become married and how they take the lessons learned during their singleness and sexual development phase and use them to enhance and strengthen their marriage. We did already cover a part of this in the last part so we are just building onto that with some further thoughts and insights that have come to our notice within the last week or two.
One of the key issues that can develop in marriage is sexual tension between the husband and wife and it can occur for a number of reasons. If either partner has some kind of sexual hangup and resists or avoids sex with their spouse then that is an obvious source of tension. Another is lack of understanding by one partner of the sexual differences between a man and a woman, and still another is a difference in the level of sex drive. We did talk last time about either partner using masturbation to satisfy their sex drive whilst being able to give their spouse some space. However when there is ongoing tensions that are not being resolved it takes a special gift of tolerance or understanding from the spurned spouse to be able to accommodate their husband or wife’s frigidity or resistance without too much negativity developing in the marriage. It is a part of our ministry to pray for Holy Spirit healing from many types of sexual brokenness that can occur in people’s lives so if you happen to be reading this blog, you will receive any of that which you may need in your life.
Generally for sexual therapy, solo masturbation is a recommended practice if it isn’t already being used by the frigid/resistant spouse as this is an important key to discovering your body and becoming comfortable with sexual touching and the best person to deliver that to your body is you. If you have a significant healing need, it may take weeks or months to accomplish that, and if you aren’t confident that you are seeing progress in this area, you may want to seek out a specialised pastoral ministry in your city or country. We don’t as yet offer personal counsel in our ministry as it is based entirely on intercessory healing prayer that makes up about 95% of what we do, the other 5% being this blog. Actual sexual therapy is a specialised branch of psychology and accredited sex therapists may have a postgraduate qualification in addition to a psychology degree, depending on the requirements for accreditation in each country.
This blog is written from the perspective that the husband and wife ideally have each practised masturbation from adolescence for the purpose of sexual development and therefore should be fully prepared for marital sex by each being comfortable with their own body and receiving physical pleasure from genital stimulation. Ideally this would also have addressed any sexual hangups that may be due to any particular life circumstances whether short or long term in effect. But of course in reality this is often not going to be the case and the act of sexual intimacy in marriage can bring new challenges with it. The husband and wife may find that they are able to pray for each other and through prayer and caring, help each other to become more intimate together as time goes on, but it may take some time, or else they may need to seek out specific counsel for particular issues or challenges that are making sexual intimacy a struggle.
As we have written before, we see as a key consideration the ongoing use of masturbation for the married partners in order to keep a strong and healthy marriage through continuous sexual development. This can be masturbation together or separately. One of the key uses of masturbation during marital sexual intercourse is to initiate and maintain arousal during the session. Many books on marital sex for Christians are probably based on complementarian theology and in effect instruct that the husband and wife should only touch the other, not themselves. Whilst serving each other is a key aspect of marital sex, we believe that this can include the overall outcome or objective of the sex session and does not prevent either partner from touching themselves (masturbating) during the session.
We therefore encourage the husband and wife to engage in a mixture of touching themselves and touching each other during the session. We believe that the wife in particular should place a strong emphasis on masturbating during the session in order to maintain her own arousal level on roughly a par with her husband as generally it will take longer for her to reach orgasm than her husband and during the time when the husband has inserted his penis and is thrusting, it is considerably easier for her to maintain a comparable level of sexual arousal by touching herself than it is for him to provide this, depending on which position they share, since in general it is preferable for her to orgasm at about the same time as him. Masturbating to bring on her orgasm with specific timing can also be focused on achieving multiple orgasms if she also wishes to experience this. Being comfortable with touching her body due to using masturbation as a tool of her own sexual development prior to and within the marriage also helps if she is able to become more horny during marital intercourse than would be the case if she had never masturbated. Obviously if she experiences sexual hangups and is able to overcome them then resulting increased horniness will enhance the marital sexual intercourse sessions with her husband.
This is the last part of the Sexuality For Singles series. We haven’t considered what topic we will write about next and it may be some weeks before we have any ideas for any future topic series that we might write, or whether we will even write any series in future. As has been clear during this series, having to rewrite several of the parts in some cases more than once is one of the issues that can arise with a series and tends to point to the idea one should just tag articles with common categories rather than a series with common titles.