Seeing Clearly - The Generous Husband

Navigating Sexual Boundaries with Love and Patience

by The Generous Husband | Feb 22, 2025 | Rethinking Sex, Seeing Clearly

Subscribe RSS

At the start of this year, I suggested that you Honour Your Wife by Letting Go of Sexual Preferences. I said if there were a couple of things you wanted that she keeps rejecting, you should stop asking for those. I proposed your wife is more important than those sex acts.

Then someone asked, “What if she has a lot of things she doesn’t like?”

I’m assuming this is about a wife who’s willing to have sex, but only does a very few things. So the issue is boredom, not refusal.

It’s tempting to say there are men who would give anything to have regular boring sex, but I realise that doesn’t make anyone feel better.

The problem is pushing such a woman for more will turn her off. She’s doing what works for her. Other things are a problem either because they don’t arouse her, turn her off, or in her mind they’re unacceptable.

My suggestion is to become very skilled at what she’s okay with. And thank her regularly for being there for you sexually. Give her time to feel secure in what you now do. Then suggest something just across the current line. Don’t ask, just say it might be interesting to _____ sometime.

This is the best path to doing more. There’s no guarantee, but if you can be loving and patient, odds are it will eventually move the needle.

NEW FEED: As I gear up to move to Doing Marriage Well, I’ve set up a Bluesky account that will run the blog posts and a few marriage positive “tweets” a day. @doingmarriagewell.bsky.social

If you want to follow by email, you can sign up upper right on Doing Marriage Well. You will receive the last week of posts from Lori.

Image Credit: © vera7388 | stock.adobe.com
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.

FF: Applying the S-Curve Model to Strengthen Your Marriage

by The Generous Husband | Feb 21, 2025 | Change, Friday Flashback, Seeing Clearly, YOU4HER

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

Whitney Johnson, a Harvard Business Review blogger, has some interesting ideas I think apply to marriage nicely. In Throw Your Life a Curve Johnson talks about the S curve model for understanding how we learn new things.

You start to do something new to improve some aspect of your marriage, or just to make your wife happier. This could be a change of habit, trying to listen better, a new approach to sex, whatever. You start at the lower left of the curve, in the yellow area of the chart above. You are unsure how it’s going to work or exactly what to do. After you struggle for a while, you get the hang of it, and you start to improve rapidly. You get positive feedback from your bride because she is seeing the rapid change; this is the green area. Finally, you have almost mastered what you’re doing, which means there’s not much room to grow or improve. Your wife may stop bragging on you; you may start doing whatever out of habit without much thought, or you may get bored with it. This is the red area.

Each phase has dangers:

YELLOW: The danger here is giving up. This is the most frustrating part of doing something new. There is little growth, plenty of failure, and little or no recognition of what you’re trying to do. The important thing here is to just keep going.
GREEN: The greatest danger here is getting a big head. Don’t let your success or her praise cause you to slack off here or in other areas. You need to add this to the other ways you meet her wants and needs. Another danger is thinking that you’re owed something (see Say no to Quid Pro Quo).
RED: One danger here is backing off just before you master whatever it is you’re doing. Another danger is slipping into autopilot, which means you won’t do as good a job. You might also get so bored you stop doing it, do it less often, or don’t keep doing it as well.

Do you see any of this in your past when you tried to improve your marriage? Do you tend to drop out in the yellow zone? Do you think too much of yourself in the green zone, or think she owes you? Do you get to the red zone and drop what you are doing to start a new curve?

[This post first appeared Nov 29, 2012.]

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.

The Root of All Marital Strife and the Path to Healing

by The Generous Husband | Feb 18, 2025 | Marriage Killer, Seeing Clearly

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is one single cause for all divorces and unhappy marriages:

We fail to do what we should because of selfishness. We do things we should not because of selfishness. We withhold grace and forgiveness because of selfishness.

We may blame what we do wrong on our wife’s selfishness. And while that will often be valid, we could instead deal with our selfish response to her selfishness.

The good news in this is the way to a better marriage is simple: work on being less selfish. Do please note that generosity is the opposite of selfishness.

Image Credit: © https://www.brandcrowd.com
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.

Evolving Intimacy: Embracing Change in Your Marriage Bed

by The Generous Husband | Feb 15, 2025 | Rethinking Sex, Seeing Clearly

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

The other day, I talked about the need to let go and move on, and what we can miss when we fail to do that. Today I want to apply that to sex.

No, I am not suggesting you need to let go of sex! Far from it.

We generally hold on to what works. And we often keep holding on to it even when it’s not working. And we tend to be especially bad about this when it comes to sex.

If you struggled to find a way of having sex that worked for both you and your wife, it’s understandable to feel you need to guard that. But our minds and our bodies change, and what was great then may not be great now. What was okay then may be not okay now.

I’ve been having sex with the same woman for forty years. It’s still great, and far better than when we started. But it’s not the same. It’s changed over the years many times in big and small ways. Some changes were finding something better, others were finding something that worked because what we’d been doing wasn’t working very well. And those changes are why we both still want and enjoy sex.

If you want to enjoy sex for the rest of your lives, you have to be willing to let go and move on.

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with stockdreams.ai
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.

Embracing the Whole Package, Quirks and All

by The Generous Husband | Feb 7, 2025 | Friday Flashback, Gratitude, Seeing Clearly, Understanding Her

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

My wife puts up with me.

It’s not that I am a horrible person, but I know I can be a challenge. I see life as an adventure looking for a place to happen, and I feel obligated to make room for as much adventure as possible. In addition, I figure if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess. Case in point, last weekend I spent a good deal of time turning sixty pounds of home-grown tomatoes into 7 gallons of tomato purée. This tied up the kitchen for a good while, and I required help from Lori a couple of times.

My point here is we’re all complex people, and the “other side” of something we like in our spouse can be something we have to put up with at times. You married her because she was so outgoing, but her always wanting to go out sometimes wearies you. She married you because you had the self-control and money sense she lacked, but she gets upset when you’re “stingy”. She married you because she loved how creative you are, but it comes with a messy side that drives her crazy.

Behaviours, personality types, and other preferences have both an upside and a downside. Expecting your wife to remove the “annoying part” while maintaining the part you like is asking something impossible. The best option is to accept the parts you could do without as part of the whole. Focus on the good, and downplay the annoyances. My wife has been greatly enjoying some of the best tomato basil soup ever made. She also says she loves the adventures I get her into, at least most of them. And she is never bored… even if she might like to be on occasion.

If the annoying side is destructive, to her, you, or others, or if it just bothers you so much you can’t ignore it, ask her to tone it down some. But understand it’s part of the whole, and not easily limited.

[This post first appeared Oct 27, 2012.]

FF: Why Can’t She Be The Way My Girlfriends Were?

by The Generous Husband | Jan 31, 2025 | Friday Flashback, Seeing Clearly, Sexuality, Understanding Her

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

A comment on a recent poll read, “If only my wife treated me as well as my sinful high school girlfriends so many years ago”.

I suspect many men who did more than hold hands with someone before their wife have had similar thoughts. If you got more, or better, when you were single, it’s understandable to think this way. What you need to realise is this is comparing apples to orange juice.

What a woman does sexually before marriage has little or nothing to do with drive, desire, preferences, or enjoyment.

Even in most Christian circles, some level of sex is required to get repeat dates. In marginally Christian or non-Christian circles, the expectation is greater. Going from dating to a serious relationship means more is expected, and if you want to get married, you better be ready to do just about anything he wants.

Try to put yourself into this reality, the reality of many young women in Western cultures:

You want companionship, love, and eventually marriage. You like guys, but you don’t have a huge sex drive, and you feel being sexual is questionable if not wrong. If you engage in sex, the guy is usually done before you really get started. At best, they get theirs, and you get nothing. Or even worse, he gets his and leaves you horny. If it were up to you, you would avoid sex at least until you were engaged. However, you find most guys expect sex, and expect more as the relationship continues. You feel your choices are offering sex you do not really want or being alone. Being alone seems a worse fate, so you engage in sex. You don’t want to be doing anything, and you don’t get much pleasure out of what you do, so it doesn’t matter much what you do or how often you do it. It all feels wrong on one level, so how can you say, “I don’t like that” or “I think that is wrong” to anything?

Gentlemen, can you grasp this? Can you understand the bad, no-good-choices situation many women experience when single? Can you understand why they say yes when they want to say no? Can you see why they say yes to things they don’t want to do? What they offer is not real; it is just them playing a part. This has two bad results: it creates men who want from their wives what their girlfriends did in sin, and it creates women who neither want nor enjoy sex. When such a man and such a woman marry, it is a given they are going to have sexual problems.

If you have expectations created by sinful sex, you really need to repent of the sex and see the expectations created as fruit of the poisoned tree. Expecting your wife to meet those expectations is asking her to pay for your sins. If you’ve been doing this, you need to deal with it, seek her forgiveness, and promise to change.

[This post first appeared Oct 27, 2012.]

Image Credit: © vchalup | stock.adobe.com
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.

Holistic Marriage: A Wider Focus is Better

by The Generous Husband | Jan 30, 2025 | Good Marriage, Seeing Clearly

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

As I’ve been thinking about the next iteration of marriage blogging, which will start March 1st, I realised my approach to marriage has become very holistic.

When Lori and I coach a couple, we ask about things well beyond the issue they bring to the table. This is especially true when the presented issue is sexual. Every part of your marriage is impacted by every other part. Your marriage is also effected by your job, other relationships, how much sleep you get, and on and on.

When we have a problem, we focus on the problem, and what we think is causing it. Even if we have the primary cause right, which is often not the case, there are other factors effecting the situation.

Sometimes the solution has nothing to do with the actual issue. Being tired or too busy are examples of this. Other times, the real solution can’t be implemented until something else changes.

I encourage you to adopt a more holistic view of your marriage. It can only make things better.

Image Credit: © gavran333 | stock.adobe.com
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.

Silent Crisis: Busyness is Creating Sexless Marriages

by The Generous Husband | Dec 28, 2024 | Margin, Seeing Clearly, Sexuality

Podcast: Download

Subscribe RSS

I’ve been aware of a growing trend of sexless marriages in Asian countries for several decades. In the early nineties, a Japanese psychiatrist introduced the term “sexless couple”. He defined that as a couple with no circumstances preventing sex who go without sex by mutual agreement. Today, it’s estimated 45% of Japanese couples are sexless. In South Korea, 35% of married couples are sexless. And in both countries, half again as many are in low sex marriages.

Of course, there’s plenty of masturbation going on, as well as a good deal of sex with prostitutes. One researcher said having sex with your partner requires a lot of energy. Paid sex is easier and less costly in terms of time and energy. Masturbation is easier still. It’s been suggested Japanese and South Korean couples are so sexless because they are too exhausted for married sex.

And we in the US are going the same way. The best study I could find puts sexless here at 15% of marriages. Many think that’s an undercount, and when you include low sex marriages, the number easily passes a third of couples.

And again, lack of time and energy is the biggest factor. There are a lot of couples out there where both husband and wife are masturbating. They want sex, but they don’t have what it takes to do that with their spouse. Solo sex comes down to being practical.

A lot of guys who say they want more sex don’t have the time and energy to engage in the kind of sex that would be good for their wife. Their complaint is hollow because they’re unwilling to do what it would take to make more sex mutually enjoyable.

Busyness is a national epidemic. It’s hurting our physical and mental health. It’s hurting our children. Furthermore, it’s killing our marriages and our sex lives. How this will progress has already been shown by Japan and South Korea.

I’ve made this about sex to get your attention. But there are a lot of good reasons beyond sex to rethink how busy we are. Please take some time to pray about this issue. Then do what you think is right with God in 2025.

Image Credit: © Andrey Popov | stock.adobe.com
Shop Amazon ♦ Shop to give links page
We’re donation supported Thanks for your help!
This post may contain affiliate links, see my disclosure for info.