I recently reran a survey on non-sexual touch we did a couple of years ago. The goal of the survey was to see if women thought they would be more interested in sex if they received more non-sexual touch. The answer is a huge yes!
First, let me define non-sexual touch. For men most touch with our wives is sexual to some degree. For women, non-sexual means not touching the more sexual areas of the body, and not seeming to be doing it just to get sex.
I do understand the catch-22 men face in this. The touch their wife sees as non-sexual causes the men sexual arousal. Non-sexual touch may open her up to sex, but only if he can keep his growing arousal at bay. If the non-sexual touch doesn’t lead to sex, the man is more aroused than when he started, and thus worse off.
My solution to this catch-22 is to give her the touch she desires because it’s the loving and right thing to do. If knowing it should help your sex life makes it easier to do that, great.
Survey results
First, the touch women want:
Every woman is different, but this gives you some idea what she might like. There was no “none” category, but three women used the other box to say none. However, one of those women said she wants more sex, and non-sexual touch just makes the situation worse.
When asked how more non-sexual touch would affect them, only 9% of the women said there would be no change. Two-thirds said they would feel more wanted and loved. Age was a factor – 82% of women under 25 said they would feel more wanted and loved. For those over 55 “only” 57% gave this answer.
Non-sexual touch makes women feel loved and wanted – much as sexual touch makes men feel loved and wanted. Feeling loved and wanted has powerful effects on our marriages, including being more interested in sex.
- Over a quarter of women say more touch would result in them thinking about sex more often.
- Forty-two percent say they would be open to sex more often or a lot more often.
- Forty-five percent say they would want sex more often or a lot more often.
- Thirty-six percent think they would enjoy sex more or a lot more.
- In the “other” section, several women said it would make no change because they already enjoy sex a great deal.
Some of the comments are instructive, and painful:
- I wouldn’t feel like his love and approval depended on sex.
- It’s discouraging when he starts to touch me (obviously as a come on) and I tell him my period started, or I don’t feel good, etc….and he just stops touching me. That makes me feel like it’s only about sex. How about responding with something relating to, “that’s okay honey, I just want to be close to you”?
- That “feeling less used” is a big one. We all know men need sex (because God made them that way, no fault of their own) but women need to feel connected and touch connects us. If my husband only touches me because he’s aroused it doesn’t mean anything.
- I feel like he touches me more when we haven’t made love for a number of days. If I could get that same touch the day after it would make me want him more.
- The past four years things have changed. He is giving me all the nonsexual touch I need, and my interest increased even more than I would have thought. I feel so much more loved and cared for, and I am certain we both are much happier with the quantity and quality of our sex life!
- Nonsexual touch is extremely important to me. It’s a need, not a want.
- We have a great sex life. But sometimes I feel like its just all physical. The only time he touches me is during sex. More non-sexual touch would make me feel more emotionally connected in the bedroom.. thus making sex so much better.
- When we got married my husband’s touch went straight from non-sexual to completely sexual ALL THE TIME. Any time he touches me throughout the day it is sexual. I don’t mind it because I know he wants me, but I also crave non sexual touching to reaffirm that he still wants me NOT JUST for the sex. I have to beg him to give me a back rub or to play with my hair. I’m just tired of being grabbed all the time. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves and adores me, but I’m tired of feeling like a pair of boobs and a vagina for him.
- I would feel less like my only purpose is to feed and please him.
- Sex for women, starts outside of the bedroom. So if your husband shows no interest until he wants sex, how can I feel anything other than used?
Bottom Line: This is a huge issue for many, probably most women. Learning to touch her when sex isn’t possible right then will make her feel much better about herself, you, and your sex life. Alternately, a lack of touch, or touch with sexual strings attached, is an effective way to kill a woman’s interest in sex.
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Sex is not to be bought with affection. It is part of the marriage covenant and not negotiable. “Non-sexual” touch is the natural result of each person freely giving themselves to the other without fear or bargaining. More giving of oneself sexually leads to more non – sexual touch and gratitude. Transparent intimacy in bed is beautiful to the Lord and more often than not results in all areas of the marriage improving. A miserly approach in bed will dampen gratitude and natural affection. The best thing a husband can do is to help his wife understand this truth. When she embraces it she will feel more secure, loved and at peace living according to God’s design. Men will do most anything , build civilizations, invent, discover and work until death, for the love and admiration of thier wives; if only they felt like they did not have to constantly prove themselves worthy of that which is already due or submit to her feelings as the Canon of the marriage.
Deposed You seem to be saying sexual touch will result in more non-sexual touch (I agree) but complaining when I said more non-sexual touch will result in more sexual touch.
Not merely complaining, but trying to reinstate Biblical marriage. When intimacy is purchased through appeasing the capricious feelings of a wife and when sex can be withheld or weaponized, the marriage covenant is no longer according to Biblical instruction. In fact the marriage is becoming or has become little more than a power struggle and sex commodity to be used to get something non-sexual, ie an act of prostitution. If a husband is derelict in instructing his wife in what wifely character traits God calls precious, he is enabling her in the further destruction of society, not just their marriage. He is destrying dominion by supporting her rebellion against design of families as created by God.
Your call to men seems to be pretty much”happy wife- happy life”. You then ask “what can a husband do to have a happy wife and therefore a happy life. This is not according to the wisdom from above, but earthly sensual and demonic. God calls men to lead, love, sanctify her by the washing and watering of the Word and to be intoxicated with her love (sex) at all times. If this does not make her happy, at least the Lord is being followed. Hosea did not make Gomer happy, Christ did not elect us to make us happy, but that He might bring glory to the Father by revealing His grace. Love does not equal happy, as discipline is not pleasant, but is loving because it bring forth a harvest of righetousness. likewise loving your wife with a corrective rebuke when she feels like not having sex is an act of love while simply making her happy is empowering her to defraud is not an act of love but expediency. Bribing, barganing, bartering for sex with Non-sexual touch is tantamount to accepting the proposition that sex can be withheld until the price is right and the coralary that if one not made happy by thier husband than divorce is justified. Thus better keep her happy or the family will be destroyed children taken as hostages etc. Christians had better repent of the happy wife = love and that love is the setting for sex or we will lose what is left of the foundations of civilization. No not hyperbole.
Deposed But you seem to be fine with “weaponising” non-sexual affection. Marriage is about far more than just sex, and a husband has some significant responsibilities to his wife. We are told we love God because He first loved us. We are told our women are the same way with their husbands.
I am not telling you to barter for sex with non-sexual touch, I am telling you God expects you to give your wife non-sexual touch because she needs it from you. I am also pointing out that doing this right thing usually results in more sex. I said all of this in the original post:
My solution to this catch-22 is to give her the touch she desires because it is the loving and right thing to do. If knowing it should help your sex life makes it easier to do that, great.
Deposed But you seem to be fine with “weaponising” non-sexual affection. Marriage is about far more than just sex, and a husband has some significant responsibilities to his wife. We are told we love God because He first loved us. We are told our women are the same way with their husbands.
I am not telling you to barter for sex with non-sexual touch, I am telling you God expects you to give your wife non-sexual touch because she needs it from you. I am also pointing out that doing this right thing usually results in more sex. I said all of this in the original post:
My solution to this catch-22 is to give her the touch she desires because it is the loving and right thing to do. If knowing it should help your sex life makes it easier to do that, great.
TheGenerousHusband Deposed
First, I am sceptical that what is referred to as non-sexual touch is in fact non-sexual. Here is a good test: if i can touch your wife in that manner and it doesn’t bother you her or my wife then maybe it is non-sexual. If there is a sense of impropriety then it is probably sexual. Another test is: would you be comfortable with you being touched by me in the sane manner?
So by my understanding the longed for touch is either foreplay or post play inimacy, and as such the Apostle forbids a wife or husband to withhold it. It is an act of covenant defrauding.
But, here is my main objection to what seems to be your framing. A husband is commanded to love his wife, not for the central purpose of pleasing her, ie making her happy, but chiefly to please his Lord and secondly to model the love of Christ toward His own bride, the church. Part of the covenant obligation for both parties is to surrender sexually to each other; this is not up for negotiation. The church has utterly failed at teaching Biblical sexuality, at disciplining defrauding, and has adopted a position that results in men submitting to their wives and sex as a reward for making her happy with his acts of submission.
Consider that women file for divorce 4x’s as often as men, that even the most conservative church leaders encourage a wife to regulate her husband’s sex drive, calls unwed mothers heros and spends hundreds of more resources calling men to man up than calling women to live like daughters of Sarah, then you might awaken to the fact that there has been a tremendous upheaval in society by feminist infiltration in the warp and woof of the church. If you are truly interested in Biblical marriage and not just an expedient veneer of happiness, then call men to lead by opposing the rebellion in their own wives. Sexual rebellion is the point of the spear and where the battle rages the most intensely, it therefor is the issue of the most urgency in clearly opposing the vain philosophy of this world with the truth of God’s word.
Deposed TheGenerousHusband You seem to be defining things so they fit your ideas. If others define differently, what then?
As to happiness, God does in fact commend hubands to work to make their wive’s happy – see Deuteronomy 24:5.
I agree being sexual is not up for negotiation, but I see a lot of other things which are also commanded and not up for negotiation. Loving our wives is a very big and wide command. We are all failing that in some area, and many of us in many areas. I think men not loving their wives as they are commanded is the point of the spear.
TheGenerousHusband Deposed
Re: Point 1
The happiness refered to in Deut 24:5 is a Hebrew idiom for sex and children. A man was not to go to war for a year after his wedding so he could have sex and lots of it with his wife and if the Lord would bless them a baby. To the modern such things seem archaic, but the Hebrew a wife who was un-sexed was disgraced and a woman without child pitiable. Consider Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth. Of course those women were not trying to wrestle power and control over thier husband lords like is the usual course of the modern christian woman in the west.
Re: Point 2
Husbands not loving thier wives is what you think is the really big challange facing Christendom. But how should that love look? I continue to contend that love is not about comfort as much as bringing conformity to Christ. The most unloving thing a parent can do is to give comfort to a child who is sinning, while the more loving thing is to discipline them that that might live a life pleasing to the Lord and blessed by His presence. Likewise a loving husband will correct his wife by use of the Word and even rebuke her if repentance is resisted.
This the truly generous husband will sanctify his wife by not allowing her to be anything less than generous with her sexuality and submission to the Lord’s choice of her earthly lord. You would have husbands submit to their wives as the test of love, but it is not love, it is the continued apostasy of our age. Women destroy thier own families through divorce at 4 times the rate of men, and mostly because they are not happy anymore. Meekness be damned, her husband didn’t meet her needs, and she deserved so much better. Let’s give her the children and force him into servitude to pay for her comforts. The modern saying “happy wife happy life” is a threat. Is has many counter statements like: pay her now or pay her later. Submit to the wife or say good by to you life. Love is grand and divorce a hundred Grand.
1 Peter 3:5 ESV
For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands,
Deposed TheGenerousHusband
1) I’d be interested to see some sources for that. I have read it includes sex, but the raw Hebrew does not even give that.
2) I’ds also like to see support for women divorce 4 times as much as men. Highest I can find is 2X.
“Not allowing her to be anything less…” Really? So he forces her?
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