And in Hebrews: ”Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”(Heb. 13:4)
We married quite quickly; we met in January and were married in April. We conceived our first child on our honeymoon. And then it stopped, frankly. We abstained for years. Hard to believe, I know. Living with an incredibly attractive woman, the mother of my young child, I lived without sex. How did I survive? You can probably guess. A man needs relief, every so often. How often? That depends on the man and how sick he is with the need, and how much temptation comes his way, or he seeks out, whether in magazines, or the Internet, or on the street.
Self-abuse, or self-pleasure, or self-love, (whatever you want to call masturbation), diverts the course of desire. I knew it, but that was all I had for relief. Then it became a habit. I’d plan my day around it. But this was a diversion of desire, like running a river over a waterwheel to grind some grain into a paltry bit of flour. Meanwhile, my wife’s body was the bread of love that I was refused, for reasons known only to her (she had her own issues around sex with men before me, as I’ve since learned). I thought she stopped wanting me. Or that she hadn’t really wanted me, anyway, except as the father of her child. Maybe her sexuality was immature and naive? Maybe sex was only for making babies.
Whatever is going on with his wife, a man’s desire must run its course. Dam a river and it will back up and flood other areas, or break through and make a huge mess downstream. Diverting desire through self-abuse was not the answer, though many men now practice their addiction that way. It’s not even a temporary solution; it’s a waste and a disgrace.
But why that river of desire? Why is it so powerful in us, coursing through our veins, from heart to brain and carnal mind, to manhood and irrepressible need? Sex is not just about the climax of pleasure — that’s fleeting. Could be, it’s more about the power of knowing good and evil, which drives us and which is hardly ours to control. Is this why Paul says the husband and wife have authority over each other’s body? Each needs the other to sustain this powerful force within their marriage, within the holy wholeness of their ”one flesh,” in a marriage that equals One to the power of Two — one squared.
(Genesis 2:24; Matt. 19:5; Eph. 5:31; 1 Cor. 6:16)
Remember, Paul said the husband and wife should not deprive each other, ”lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of control.”
(1 Cor. 7:5)
What lack of control is Paul talking about? It’s our habit and addiction, our carnal weakness, our inability to resist temptation. And being denied sex with his own wife can be maddening for a married man, causing him to act in unpredictable ways, some that can seem to be quite out of character.
His wife’s denial can be outrageous and offensive to him. Disaffection can seem like mistreatment. Because man is hardwired for sex, being denied sexual satisfaction with his wife can be seen as a deliberate disconnection, a heartless expression of disregard and disapproval. Denial can imply unacceptable disrespect to a man. It is a form of disconnect that can wound him deeply and provoke him to overreact in any number of ways.
A married man is the type of beast that can be driven to self-destruction by his wife’s dissing of his manhood. He can be sent down to sin by his woman’s dismissive attitude. He can overreact to her disrespect and lack of response. Given the chance, he can fall into temptation and sin simply because he is offered an opportunity for sexual appeasement that his marriage does not provide.
Don’t get me wrong; this is not to justify sin in the least. I am trying to explain how it happens. Even if his heart is for God, it’s possible that a man, denied by his wife, can find temptation too hard to decline, in spite of any way of escape that is given.
So there we were, my wife and I, with no real connection. This left me at the mercy of my hardwired need. Looking back, I can hardly believe it. How did we reach that state of opposition, that degree of separation? Nights became weeks that dragged into months that rounded into years. My wife did not invite or initiate sex. We had a real lack of emotional connection. Our body language as a couple probably told anyone with eyes to see that we were not one flesh.
What was I to do? Think about it. A husband expects to have sex with his wife. What’s a man to do, without it? The deprivation begins to drive him crazy. He can’t help it; he starts to look around. He sees what he wants almost everywhere he looks. And then he needs sex more than anything else. It becomes his focus and pressure builds within him, for which there is no release within his marriage. He is twisted by his need. He would set aside his self-respect for release from the need that’s driving him crazy, no matter how he will regret it later, or how disgraced he will be if the details go public, or how it will destroy the carefully constructed life that gives him so much, except for the relief he desires. He is willing to destroy his life, in effect, for the sake of his desire, which tells you just how weak he is in spirit, and how addicted to sex.
What’s a man to do when his wife is giving him nothing? And hardly cares that she’s giving him nothing, or that he’s getting nothing from her. What’s a man supposed to do? Talk sense with her? Talk her into caring? Seduce his own wife? Who’s that good at talking? I’m certainly not. Good luck with getting lucky in a marriage like that!
By giving us nothing, our unwilling wives turn us away. They send us to temptation. By not showing us affection, they make us feel unlovable. By not respecting us, they destroy our self-respect, and make us vulnerable to other options. And so we begin our descent into the madness of our lust for what is not ours. God help us.
Self-abuse might seem to relieve the frustration that is the agony of desire without union, but it’s simply a deceitful habit that feeds the addiction. Everybody knows how easy it is to find sexy images on the Internet today. Those images of naked women might offer some relief, but over time this misleading practice develops our need for even more explicit images — stronger pornography. What they say about drug users needing more and more powerful drugs to maintain the intensity of the kick is true of sexual addiction, too. The more we give in to it, the worse we want it, and the sicker it gets. We are sick with the disease of sex addiction and the sin it generates.
What Was He Thinking?
A friend of mine, call him Robert, went looking for sex outside his marriage, approaching women in his hot red car. He could be tempted by a wild head of hair, a gorgeous set of breasts, or a shapely behind with swell hips. He’d cruise by to see if they would look back at him. He didn’t think it through or rationalize what he was doing, or worry about the consequences of anything that he might be able to do. He just knew he needed to check out other women, because his wife wasn’t doing it for him. There had to be more to life than the chill his marriage was giving him. Seeing sexy women, his reaction was instinctive. Their erotic beauty drew his desire like a moth to a flame.
Cruising closer in his car, sometimes he saw something inviting in the way they looked at him, as though trying to identify what kind of man he was through the windshield. He’d speak to them through an open window. If they responded, they roused his confidence and made him feel attractive and strong and manly.
The first time Robert got a phone number, he was almost delirious with the nervousness and exhilaration of getting it. After he drove away, he was busted with guilt. He tossed the numbered paper out the window and drove home all mixed-up inside, proud of pulling it off, but also stumped, knowing it was forbidden to him, a married man.
He was hooked. He’d go on these hunting trips, looking for women in certain neighborhoods. You know, some women enjoy that kind of attention from a smiling, friendly, nice-looking guy, who obviously digs the way they look. Isn’t that why they put so much into how they look? They want to feel validated. And here was Robert in his car, attracted to them, confirming their vanity and proving to them that it was