A better way to think about lust, desire, and sex in marriage.
Wanting to feel desired by your spouse is normal. But sexual intimacy in Christian marriage can become painful when desire is shaped by unspoken expectations, pornography, past wounds, or pressure. For husbands, healthier intimacy begins with honest communication, emotional responsibility, mutual care, and a willingness to let God reshape how we understand sex and desire.
Lord, Have Your Way With Me
My wife works nights quite a bit, which means I often get the opportunity to watch shows she would have absolutely no interest in watching with me. I’m a sucker for sci-fi, so on these evenings you might find me rewatching old favorites like Aliens or Predator.
Recently, Apple TV convinced me to give Silo a try. In the very first episode, we learn that the sheriff and his wife have been granted the opportunity to have a baby. In one scene, the two are talking in his office when she suddenly throws herself into his arms and climbs on top of him after pushing him back into his desk chair.
I’m guessing I’m not the only man who watches a scene like that and thinks, Hmm...when was the last time my wife pursued me like that?
My wife and I have enough clarity—not to mention humility—to admit that we are no David Oyelowo and Rashida Jones. But like most couples, we both enjoy attention from one another, and we both want to feel pursued in our marriage.
My wife is a pharmacist. She spends her days managing multiple tasks, solving problems, and working at a fast pace for hours at a time. I, on the other hand, am a therapist and tend to have...let’s say...a little more mental space during the day to see clients and apparently think about things like sex in marriage.
She is naturally more task-oriented, while I’m more people-oriented. So, while quality time, affection, and sex may be fairly close to the front of my mind, for her they are sometimes riding along the ticker tape of life with a thousand other things demanding her attention.
Does that mean she doesn’t love me? Of course not. Does it mean she doesn’t want me? Nope.
It may simply mean our marriage doesn’t always look like the scene I watched on television the other night. It may also mean that if I want sex, sometimes I need to do something incredibly sophisticated: use my words and ask for it.
One thing my wife has always made sure I know is that she loves being the only person who gets to share that part of my life with me. I don’t expect her to run into my arms every night and demand that I carry her to bed. What we are learning instead is that wanting to be wanted is normal, desire doesn’t always look the way movies, pornography, or social media tell us it should, and what we repeatedly give our attention to can shape what we eventually expect from one another.
Those ideas have become increasingly important to me, not only in my own marriage but also in the conversations I have with men and couples in my counseling office.
Before we go too far, one quick note: I’m not a big fan of broad gender generalizations. I’ve worked with couples where the woman has the higher sex drive, couples where the man does, and couples where desire shifts over time. Because this is a resource for men—and because the pattern I most often see in my office is men wanting sex more frequently than their wives—I’m going to write from that angle. That doesn’t mean it describes every marriage. It simply reflects the situations I encounter most often.
Okay, let’s carry on.
Why Husbands Want to Feel Desired
Most of us want to feel desired by our spouse, and there is nothing wrong with that. Scripture certainly doesn’t present marital sexuality as something cold or merely functional. Song of Solomon is full of attraction, anticipation, pursuit, and delight. In Song of Songs 7:10, the bride says, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10, ESV) There is something powerful about knowing the person you love also desires you.
Learn more about men, relationships, vulnerability, and seeking support in Men on the Mend.
The trouble begins when wanting to be wanted quietly becomes needing to be wanted in a particular way.
David Schnarch writes about this kind of tension throughout Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. One of the central ideas in his work is differentiation—the ability to remain connected to someone we love without requiring that person to constantly manage how we feel about ourselves. In his later book Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship, he applies many of those same ideas specifically to sexual desire.
That leaves me with a question I think is worth asking: Do I enjoy my wife’s desire, or do I depend on it?
Sometimes what a husband is really saying isn’t, “I wish we had more sex.” It’s, “I wish she would initiate more,” or “I want her to look at me like she can’t keep her hands off me.” I hear this one a lot...“If I have to ask, I don’t really want it.”
I understand that feeling. Asking requires vulnerability because if I tell my wife what I want, she might say no. It feels much safer to sit quietly, hope she reads my mind, and then feel rejected when she doesn’t. But maybe part of growing up in marriage is learning to tolerate that discomfort.
“I miss you.” “I’d really like some time together tonight.” “I’d love to make love to you.”
These statements involve risk, but they also involve honesty. Sometimes healthy sexuality looks less like a scene from television and more like two people who have become safe enough to tell each other what they want.
One of my favorite ideas from David Schnarch is that people are often much better at communication than they think. We usually know exactly what we can and cannot say to keep the peace. The problem is that keeping the peace also keeps us stuck.
Talking honestly about what you desire in bed may create some discomfort. Saying nothing almost guarantees that nothing will change. The challenge is learning to express your needs and longings in a way that invites your spouse closer rather than leaving them feeling criticized, inadequate, or responsible for your happiness.
Healthy sexual intimacy often begins with learning to communicate more clearly with your spouse.
If this is difficult for you, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Reach out to our Care Team. One of our counselors would be glad to walk with you—or with you and your spouse—as you learn to express needs more clearly, listen more carefully, and create conversations that lead to greater connection rather than more distance.
Communicating Sexual Needs Without Pressure
Desire, Willingness, or Obligation?
Another expectation worth examining is the idea that “real” desire must appear spontaneously.
Emily Nagoski, in Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, offers a helpful way of understanding this. She describes spontaneous and responsive desire, along with the idea of a sexual “accelerator and brakes.” Sexual interest is influenced not only by what turns us on, but also by stress, fatigue, emotional connection, relationship dynamics, and the larger context of our lives.
In other words, your wife may not spend Tuesday afternoon fantasizing about what will happen when you walk through the door. That doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t want you—or that sex is off the table that evening. She may genuinely be able to say, “Sex wasn’t on my mind, but I love being close to you. Come here,” and desire may follow.
Men sometimes discount that kind of willingness because it doesn’t match the picture we have in our heads. We want our wives already excited, already pursuing, already climbing onto the desk chair. But what is wrong with being loved by a spouse who says, “This matters to you, you matter to me, and I enjoy sharing this part of our marriage with you”?
There is an important distinction here: willingness is not the same thing as obligation.
In The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended, the authors challenge Christian messages that reduce sex to something a wife is simply expected to provide. Their work argues for marital sexuality that is mutual, intimate, pleasurable, and free from coercion or pressure. And it’s all backed by extensive research.
That distinction matters when we read Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7:3–5. Paul does tell husbands and wives not to deprive one another, but the entire passage is strikingly reciprocal. The husband is called to care for his wife sexually just as the wife is called to care for her husband, and even temporary abstinence is described as something decided together.
I don’t think Paul is describing a marriage where one spouse gets to say, “You owe me.” The posture seems much closer to, “I owe you,” or perhaps more gently, “We belong to one another, so your experience matters to me too.”
In his study guide on 1 Corinthians 7, David Guzik describes this as a mutual sexual responsibility. His emphasis is helpful: the focus is not on demanding what our spouse owes us, but on considering what we owe our spouse. He also makes clear that Paul’s words cannot be used to justify coercion or abuse. The call is toward serving one another with affection, not using Scripture as leverage to get what we want (Guzik, 2018).
Guzik makes another observation I appreciate: out of billions of people in the world, marriage gives us one person with whom we uniquely share our sexuality. There is something beautiful about that exclusivity. My wife is not merely the person responsible for meeting a need; she is the one person with whom I have chosen to share this vulnerable and intimate part of myself (Guzik, 2018).
But what happens when that relationship has also been a source of hurt?
I sit with couples where a husband has genuinely changed. Maybe there was pornography, an affair, anger, emotional abuse, substance use, years of disconnection, or some other significant breach of trust. He has done meaningful work and may truly be a different man today, but then comes the frustration: “I’ve changed. Why doesn’t she want me?”
Because change and repair are not the same thing.
In their work with couples recovering from betrayal, John and Julie Gottman describe a process of Atone, Attune, and Attach. Atone means taking responsibility for what I did and for the impact it had without rushing my spouse to get over it. Attune means becoming curious about what is happening inside my spouse instead of focusing entirely on what I want from her. Attach is what begins to grow as safety, consistency, honesty, and connection are rebuilt over time.
A wife can believe that her husband has changed and still have a body that remembers what happened. She can love him, forgive him, appreciate his progress, and still not immediately feel sexually safe.
When that is the story of a marriage, the right question probably isn’t, “Why aren’t you ready yet?” A better question may be, “What would help you feel safe, known, and connected to me today?” Or perhaps, “What can I change that might help sex move from something you feel obligated to do toward something you can freely be willing—or even desire—to do?”
Certainly, I have worked with couples where one partner has caused significant emotional, physical, or sexual trauma. More often, though, the damage I see has accumulated slowly through years of criticism, defensiveness, contempt, emotional absence, broken promises, or repeatedly turning away from one another.
A relationship can be deeply wounded without one dramatic moment of betrayal. Over time, those smaller injuries can create powerful protective responses. A spouse may become guarded, distant, or hesitant to be vulnerable, not because she is trying to punish her husband, but because experience has taught her that closeness may not feel safe.
If these patterns feel familiar, consider these signs your relationship may benefit from marriage counseling.
That is why atonement matters. If I have significantly contributed to my spouse’s hurt, I cannot rush past my responsibility simply because I am behaving differently today. Before I ask her to understand my loneliness, frustration, or sexual needs, I may first need to understand the ways I have wounded her.
This can be some of the hardest work I do with couples, but it can also be some of the most hopeful. The goal is not endless punishment or keeping one partner permanently in debt. The goal is repair—taking responsibility seriously enough that safety has a chance to return, attunement can grow, and eventually intimacy can become something both people are free to move toward again.
Responsive Desire in Marriage
Input Determines Output
One of the greatest predictors of future outcomes is past and current behavior. I learned some version of that corporate jargon during my 23 years in the insurance industry, but I find it surprisingly applicable to relationships.
Schnarch often challenged people with what he called a two-choice dilemma: at some point, we have to face reality and decide what we are willing to do with it. We can keep doing—or not doing—what we are doing and continue getting the same results, or we can lean into the discomfort of making a different choice. Both choices might seem scary, thus the dilemma.
Social media, advertising, movies, television, and particularly pornography can give us an incredibly distorted picture of sexuality. Porn doesn’t require us to deal with another person’s stress, exhaustion, insecurity, history, hormones, fear, boundaries, preferences, or bad day at work. The people on the screen exist to look interested. Desire appears immediate, enthusiastic, and nearly limitless.
If that becomes our standard, even quietly, it should not surprise us when a real human being struggles to compete with it.
Sometimes I want to tell men: Stop expecting your wife to behave like a porn star and start learning how to love the actual woman God gave you.
If you’re ready to make a different choice, learn about Freedom KC for Men, a Christ-centered support group for men seeking freedom from pornography and sexual addiction.
Like you, your wife has a nervous system. She gets tired, has insecurities, and may have trauma that influences how she responds to you. You may even be the source of some of that trauma. She has preferences, responsibilities, distractions, and possibly a thousand things running through her mind. She may need to feel emotionally safe and connected with you before sexual desire has much room to emerge.
She may also simply experience desire differently than you do. The good news is that none of this means your sexual needs don’t matter. It means you may need to ask for what you need instead of expecting her to perform desire so convincingly that you never have to feel vulnerable.
Pornography makes that vulnerability especially difficult because pornography never says no. It never requires communication, patience, repair, or consideration of someone else’s feelings. Porn isn’t real. Your wife is.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:28 call us to pay attention not only to what we do sexually, but also to how we look at another person and what we choose to do with desire once it shows up.
That is one reason I appreciate the simple practice of respectfully bouncing our eyes. This isn’t about pretending we don’t notice attractive people, dramatically turning our entire bodies when an attractive woman joins us on the elevator, or blaming women for being attractive. We all notice things. The question is what we choose to do next.
I can notice that a woman is beautiful and remind myself, She is a person, not something for me to consume. I don’t have to take the second look, begin the fantasy, or feed every sexual appetite that presents itself. Every time we make one of those small choices, we strengthen either our habit of giving in or our ability to stand on our own two feet.
We each have choices about what we watch, listen to, and give our attention to. I can watch movies like Predator and Aliens. Action movies may not do much to strengthen my walk with the Lord, but they aren’t particularly dangerous for me either. Sexual images are different.
I’ve been free from pornography for 10 years, but I know myself well enough to know that a movie rated R for sexual content is probably one I need to pass on. What is tempting for me may not be tempting for you. The point is not that we all need identical rules. The point is that we need enough honesty to know what makes us weak and enough wisdom to put guardrails—and community—around those areas.
If pornography is keeping you disconnected from your wife, continuing to watch it is unlikely to produce a different marriage. If you’re ready to make a different choice, reach out to our Care Team. We have come alongside many men who, with help from Jesus and support from other people, have found freedom from pornography.
Practices for Men and Couples
For Men
In the years following my baptism, I was mentored closely by a pastor I greatly admired. He took time to run through Shawnee Mission Park with me every Tuesday. I hadn’t met my wife yet, and I was trying to navigate dating apps, a chaotic co-parenting and work schedule, and learning what it actually meant to follow Jesus. Lust was definitely a struggle for me as a new believer.
At the time, I worked out at OrangeTheory. If you’ve ever been in one, you know the layout can make it difficult not to see the backside of other people working out, particularly when you are sitting on a rower behind a line of treadmills.
During one of those runs, I shared with my pastor how much I was struggling with sexual thoughts. He gave me two very simple strategies. First, he taught me to quietly and non-dramatically bounce my eyes. Instead of continuing to watch the young woman running in front of me, I could move my attention to the display on my rower.
The second thing he told me was simply to pray, “Lord, have Your way with me.”
I still pray that today, and I have passed it along to many men I have counseled in my practice and here at Westside. I love the prayer because it isn’t merely, “Lord, make this temptation disappear.” It is an invitation for God to change me.
Lord, have Your way with my eyes, my thoughts, my expectations, my insecurity, my sexuality, and the way I love my wife.
For Couples
David Schnarch also offers some practical exercises that can help couples practice intimacy without immediately making sex the goal.
One is Hugging ’Til Relaxed, described in Passionate Marriage. The exercise is almost ridiculously simple: stand together, hold one another, and stay there long enough for each person to settle into themselves while remaining physically close.
Simple does not always mean easy.
Staying close without immediately trying to get reassurance, affection, sex, or some other response from your spouse can expose a surprising amount of anxiety. The point is not to make something happen. It is to practice being present with one another.
Pay attention to what you experience. How long does it take your body to relax? What thoughts run through your mind while you are holding your spouse? Do you feel an urge to pull away, make a joke, turn the hug sexual, or find some other way out of the discomfort?
Schnarch also uses the concept of Sexual Leftovers. His basic premise is that couples develop a sexual relationship out of what remains after both partners have ruled out activities they don’t want or are uncomfortable doing. Those “leftovers” eventually become the couple’s normal sexual repertoire.
That idea can become the beginning of a helpful—and vulnerable—conversation.
One exercise I use with couples is to create three columns: What We Don’t Do, What We Don’t Do That I’d Like to Try, and Leftovers, meaning the things that are currently part of your sexual relationship.
Then take turns talking through the lists. Ask your spouse about the things in the “What We Don’t Do” column without criticism, persuasion, or judgment. Be curious. Ask about past experiences, anxieties, preferences, or what might be needed for something to move into the “I’d Like to Try” column. Hard no’s are respected, without exception. Curiosity is welcome; pressure is not.
From there, couples can talk about what each person would like to try, what they currently enjoy, and even what they might like to change about their sexual relationship. If trauma is part of either person’s sexual history, this kind of conversation may be better facilitated with a trained therapist.
The goal of this exercise is not to guarantee sex later that night. It is to create enough safety for two people to talk honestly about something incredibly vulnerable. Ironically, conversations that remove pressure and increase understanding sometimes create exactly the kind of spark couples were trying so hard to manufacture in the first place.
For another practical way to strengthen friendship and connection, explore these tools for reconnecting with your spouse.
Lord, Have Your Way with Us
Wanting to be wanted is normal. Wanting a satisfying sexual relationship with your wife is normal. But intimacy asks more of us than desire alone. It asks us to tolerate vulnerability, to say what we need instead of expecting our spouse to read our mind, to listen when her experience is different from ours, and to take responsibility for the things we have done that make closeness harder. It also asks us to pay attention to what is shaping our own desires.
Maybe the goal is not to make our wives desire us the way a woman on a screen appears to desire a man. Maybe the goal is to become the kind of husband who can love a real woman—one with her own desires, fears, limits, wounds, preferences, and needs—and who is secure enough to invite rather than demand, pursue without pressuring, and receive her love without constantly grading how enthusiastically it is offered.
That is harder work than fantasy. It is also much more intimate.
So perhaps the prayer is still the simplest place to begin:
Lord, have Your way with me. Help me love my wife well, have the courage to ask for what I need, the humility to hear what she needs, and the strength to love my wife as you have loved me.
You don’t have to navigate sexual disconnection, pornography, or difficult marriage conversations alone.
Explore couples and marriage counseling, learn about Freedom KC for Men, or browse additional relationship and marriage resources.
Further Reading
Gregoire, S. W., Lindenbach, R. G., & Sawatsky, J. (2021). The great sex rescue: The lies you’ve been taught and how to recover what God intended. Baker Books.
Guzik, D. (2018). 1 Corinthians 7 commentary: Principles regarding marriage. Enduring Word.
Lisitsa, E. (2017, December 12). Practical, science-based steps to heal from an affair. The Gottman Institute.
Nagoski, E. (2021). Come as you are: The surprising new science that will transform your sex life (Rev. & updated ed.). Simon & Schuster.
Schnarch, D. M. (2009). Intimacy & desire: Awaken the passion in your relationship. Beaufort Books.
Schnarch, D. M. (2009). Passionate marriage: Keeping love and intimacy alive in committed relationships. W. W. Norton & Company.
Schnarch, D. M. (2011, May 9). Sexual relationships always consist of “leftovers.” Crucible 4 Points.
