For Men:
Practical Help in Increasing
Your Enjoyment of Your Wife
Is it as unavoidable as aging that even the most devoted husband will gradually become bored with his wifes body, relative to the thrill attractive strangers give him? This webpage will empower you to counter this tendency. It will give you practical techniques for enhancing your sexuality and harnessing the power of sexual attraction to lift your marital satisfaction to a new level.
I must give three warnings, however.
1. This webpage is for men. It could harm ones marriage if a wife reads it without her husband first reading it and deciding to try it. Until then, it would be better for wives to read How Holy Wives Express Marital Love.
2. This webpage will be of no help if a man has lost virtually all interest in sex.
3. Nor is this webpage a cure-all for those with a shaky marriage. It is primarily for every husband who wants to intensify his enjoyment of his wife, rather than suffer the dissipation of his sexual powers, which happens whenever he visually admires strangers who think nothing of him.
To see how a man can derive more pleasure from his partner, we must first understand the visual side of sex. Much of this examination will initially seem hopelessly idealistic, but bear with me: there are answers.
Suppose a woman says, My husband is only average at kissing and cuddling. There are thousands of men better at it than him, so Ill enjoy passionately kissing any man who will let me. Its quite okay: Ill only go all the way with my husband. Does that sound right to you? Or consider the woman who says, Ill regularly daydream about how much more exciting it would be to make love with other men, but in real life Ill remain faithful to my husband. This is the mentality of people who say, Its okay just to look. It is saying, There are thousands of people whose sexy bodies can thrill me just as much or more than my partner, so why limit myself? Ill seize the visual side of sex from whoever I can steal it. Ill only reserve the touch side of sex for my marriage.
No matter what you call it, enjoying the sexual allure of someones body is sexual. For a titillating moment you revel in feelings for someone that ideally should belong exclusively between a husband and wife. Each incident might last only seconds, but how many times a year do you indulge yourself in such feelings outside of marriage? The feelings might be weak but in the area of visual sexual attraction those feelings could be stronger than what you feel for your partner that day. You will find it deceptively enticing to blame the inadequacy of your partners body for your self-indulgence, but the deficiency is with you, not your partner. The fault lies not in your partners appearance, but in your lack of commitment to your marriage. You have violated the sanctity of marriage by allowing your eyes and mind to stray outside of marriage. The problem, most likely, is that years of misuse have perverted your sexuality. Instead of training and developing your sexuality, you have let it run wild until it is currently uncontrollable and an embarrassment to you and to those closest to you. If you cannot control how and where you look, you could marry the sexiest person alive and, before you know it, your eyes would stray outside marriage, for just a look. Over the years you have let your eyes seize sexual thrills from wherever they can, until the compulsion has enslaved you. For the visual part of sex you have become so addicted to having multiple sexual partners that no matter who you chose, one person could never satisfy the lust of your eyes. In fact, not even a harem of wives could for long keep your eyes from straying to still more women.
For thousands of years it has been recognized that hungrily looking at a sexually attractive person other than your spouse is marital unfaithfulness. Consider the Ten Commandments:
You shall not covet your neighbors wife (Exodus 20:17)
Then there are the powerful words of Jesus:
Matthew 5: 27 You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. (28) But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (29) If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. . . .
Among the innumerable insights Jesus has given humanity is that sexually enjoying the sight of someone you are not married to, is as much a part of adultery, as hate is a part of murder.
Marital faithfulness begins with making your marriage partner the exclusive focus of your visual sexual enjoyment and your daydreams.
Women typically whine if their partners dont give them adequate foreplay. What some women fail to realize is that the female equivalent is women who insist on making love in the dark, or with their bodies covered, or who dont dress sexily for their husbands. Especially for men, visually enjoying the opposite sex is divinely designed to be a part of foreplay part of the package intended to bind a man and woman together for life. If you think this is overstated, consider the vast numbers of men who are as enslaved as heroin addicts to visual sex outside of marriage. If admiring someones body is nothing but an innocent appreciation of Gods creation, why do we have more porn addicts than addicts to landscape scenes? And it would be hypocritical to point the finger at porn junkies and forget those men who can rarely resist stealing sexual pleasure from the sight of every attractive woman that saunters down the street. These powerful addictions come about because the visual side of sex is divinely intended to cause a man to be addicted to his wife, binding a husband and wife together. To take this outside of marriage is to pervert a God-given gift. The sad consequence is the frittering away of ones marital potential, squandering it on strangers. By focusing all the rays on one spot, a magnifying glass intensifies the heat of sunlight to astonishing levels. Astounding things can likewise happen if you use the lens of your eye to intensify your sexual powers by devoting your life to focusing your eyes on one special person.
You might as well invite a seductress to live under your roof as give yourself permission to steal a look; grabbing illicit sexual thrills from whoever catches your eye. Each glimpse is a slimy leech sucking the life out of your marriage.
It is alright just to look, is as nonsensical as the anti-Christian saying, Anything is acceptable as long as it doesnt hurt anyone (where hurt is crudely defined merely as obvious physical injury, excluding the eternal pain of Hell, and anyone means anyone but the God whose heart breaks for you and his Son tortured to death on a cross for your sin). It is alright just to look, is symptomatic of the worldly thinking that sends Christian marriages hurtling to divorce rates exceeding that of even the non-Christian marriages of past, more sexually prudent, eras.
The visual part of sex usually arouses men more than women. Like men being taller than women, however, there are always exceptions to gender generalizations. Women who find themselves visually drawn to men should apply this webpage to themselves, and those who do not find themselves looking at men still need to do all they can to assist their husbands in the manner outlined below. Women should also be careful not to play the harlot by dressing in a way that sexually allures men they are not married to. (Few of us stop to consider how much normal fashion is skillfully designed to sexually tantalize men.)
Nevertheless, avoiding visual sex outside of marriage merely brings us to the level of the servant in Jesus parable who buried his talent. He didnt blow what was entrusted to him on an orgy of self-indulgence, and yet he was still condemned as wicked and lazy because he failed to develop it and use it positively. The focus of this webpage is therefore to give you techniques that go beyond avoiding the misuse of your God-given sexuality. The goal is to help you find more ways of enhancing your sexuality and employing the power of sexual attraction to strengthen your marriage.
The world, the flesh and the devil conspire to pervert Gods gift of sexual attraction from being a blessing that builds long marriages into a curse that threatens marriages. We need to counter-attack by turning Gods gift into the power for good that it is divinely intended to be. Like material wealth, the ability to feel sexual attraction can bless or ruin its owner, depending on the degree of godly wisdom with which it is used. Just as the wise investment of money takes considerable effort and careful planning, so you cannot reach the divinely intended heights of marital longevity and fulfillment without investing considerable effort and care into how you use your God-given potential to enjoy visual sexual attraction. Without a concerted effort to direct or control it, our ability to feel sexual attraction will either dissipate or run riot, thus weakening or even endangering the marriage bond.
Most of us wrongly imagine that provided we limit our physical lovemaking to marriage we can let our sexuality take care of itself. In Song of Solomon 4:16 the woman likened her sexuality to a garden. Within a few years, a garden left to take its natural course will become a source of shame to its owner. Some parts will run wild. Some will die. Weeds will flourish. For a garden to do its owner proud takes skill, planning and hard work. The more thought and effort we put into our garden, the more thrilling and satisfying the result. You cannot get a good garden in just a few weeks. Trees, for instance, take years to develop. If you have allowed the garden of your sexuality to run wild or become run down, you might initially see little reward for your effort. You will be tempted to give up in despair. If, however, you have the determination to persevere week after week, you will begin to enjoy rich rewards.
Having almost completed an explanation of the principles involved, we are about to plunge into a description of techniques that can make your marriage more exciting and fulfilling and stronger by the positive use of the power of sexual attraction. However, we have already touched on things that seem humanly impossible. You need supernatural help.
Since both sex and marriage are Gods unique invention, there is a way to soar to a realm that is otherwise unattainable. If you tap into the supernatural power of God by involving him in your sex life, you can draw upon the infinite intelligence and creativity of the Creator of sex by doing things his way.
So to gain maximum benefit from the techniques, I urge you to pray something like this:
Loving Lord,
As I look at your magnificent creation, which you declare to be very good, I see sexual attraction built into its very fabric, with the survival of species after species depending on it. I, too, have sexuality built into my very being. I thank you for this and I believe there must be a way of using your gift that is very good. Help me find that way in all its fullness. Fill me with a determination to develop your precious gift of sexual attraction in a way that delights you, thrills my partner, and strengthens my marriage.
Empower me to receive from you your very best and to give to you my best. Give me all the wisdom, revelation, and perseverance necessary to maximize the blessing you intend sexual attraction to be, and to counter every worldly influence I have been willingly or unwillingly subjected to.
You know so much more than I do and because you are love personified, you want my welfare even more than I do. Your ways are perfect. More than I can trust anything or anyone, I can trust your love, wisdom, power and gentleness. So I invite you to be God of my life and of my marriage. To maximize my joy and fulfillment, I relinquish control of my life and of my marriage and I hand that control over to you.
I ask that you give me deep understanding of my partners needs and that you give me great skill in communicating my desires to him/her. Cause me to know the joy of selfless giving. If my partner fails to grasp the significance of the issues expounded in this webpage, help me be as patient with my partner as you have been with me. Strengthen my resolve to draw from you all the gentleness, kindness and persistence I need for you to take both my marriage and my love for you to new heights.
The suggestions I am about to share are based on sound psychological principles, and the desire for them to work is, of course, based on sound spiritual principles. One problem with accepting the suggestions is that they might seem ridiculously simple. What empowers these techniques, however, is the great power and mystery of sexual attraction and what will propel them beyond your expectations is the supernatural enabling flowing from your prayers to Almighty God. Nevertheless, these suggestions might seem so peculiar to some readers that by sharing them with you I am risking ridicule and misunderstanding. No matter how I look at it, however, your marriage is worth more to me than my self-esteem or reputation. I would rather be humiliated in eyes of those who dont understand, than keep from you something that can make a good marriage even stronger.
The biblical basis for what I am about to expound is spelled out in two Scriptures:
Job 31:1 I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl.
Proverbs 5: 15 Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. (18) . . . may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. (19) . . . may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.
To a large extent, the sexual feelings aroused by a particular sight will, on any given occasion, be beyond conscious control. This is because your reaction is the product not of that instant alone but of your past exposures to similar sights and what thoughts and sensations those former sights were associated with. Over time, a persons sexual response can be modified according to which sights are regularly associated with sexual feelings and which sights are not. A person need not necessarily experience physical stimulation for this reshaping to occur; the mere thought or anticipation of pleasure is usually enough.
Suppose a woman habitually wears shorts in her husbands presence. Because no man can maintain sexual interest throughout every waking moment, there will inevitably be times when the sight of her legs excites him no more than the wall. The wearing of shorts is not the issue numerous other examples could have been used the point is that every time some part of a womans body looks bland to her husband is another step toward to her body becoming permanently less exciting in his eyes. Without realizing it, by exposing her body on inappropriate occasions or for too long a duration, she is cheapening herself in her husbands eyes and weakening the marriage bond. To avoid the danger of over-familiarity, it is good for a wife to cover up when her man is not in the mood for love-making.
One might imagine that a man could counter this deadening of his sexual response by exercising self-control as to how often he sees his wifes body exposed, but that presents a problem. If, for example, a man voluntarily turns his back on his wife when she is dressing, no matter how noble his motives, he is hardly sending the signal to his brain that his wifes body is irresistible. Every time he turns away he is reaffirming to himself that the sight is quite resistible. This type of self-control is unintentionally undermining his sexual attraction to her. So it is better if the wife prevents him from seeing her by, for instance, dressing privately. Of course, a wife should not take this to the extreme of withdrawing from her man when he craves her, I am referring only to times when he is likely to have little interest in her.
The ideal is for not only full nudity to be exciting to a husband, but for the sight of merely his wifes partly exposed body to always have sexual overtones, even though the sight will not always lead to full sex. What follows is a way to achieve this.
Begin by working out a detailed point system. For example, a husband might win . . .
* two to three points, depending on how much of her thighs he sees
* three points if he is aroused by daydreaming about seeing her
* four points if he sees her navel
* five points for deep kissing
* six points if he sees down her dress
* one point if he sees the bare soles of his wifes feet
The list would contain many more items, each weighted according to which parts of a womans body the man is particularly attracted to. Keep most of the points not for touch but for seeing various parts of the wifes body. This is because women are unlikely to suddenly start fondling a married stranger, but women in our society are continually exposing strangers to the danger of sexual corruption by the way they flaunt their bodies. Wives need to remember that men can be as aroused by what they see as by petting.
(Women wanting to increase their own visual appreciation of their husbands bodies should work out their own point system in which they win points for seeing various parts of their husbands body.)
The husband will keep score. He wins the agreed number of points on every occasion that he experiences with his wife anything itemized on the list they have compiled. If, however, he has the misfortunate to see an attractive woman (or an image of one) exposing a part of her body mentioned in their list, he loses as many points as he would have gained had it been that part of his wife. And if he doesnt look away from that sight immediately, he loses four times the points. If it is a sight that is rare, such as a topless woman, he loses four times the points and eight times if he doesnt immediately look away. This applies all the time, not merely if the wife catches her man doing it. It is ultimately very much in the husbands best interests to be ruthlessly honest with himself.
Next, the husband and wife need to carefully discuss the rewards. These will be sexual treats he will win by accumulating a certain number of points. Choosing rewards that he enjoys more than his wife enjoys has the advantage of his wife not being penalized if he loses points, and since the focus is on her body, she has a fair degree of control over how many points he wins. The receiving of the reward will occur at a time mutually suitable to the couple, but the husband can never experience that treat until he has gained the required number of points. Keep the points fairly high. It might be that to receive a very special treat he has to score fifty points. For these special rewards, points can be accumulated from half the points already used to obtain smaller rewards. For instance, twenty points might win one reward, but in addition they could count as ten points toward another, bigger reward. This has the effect of adding even greater excitement to the winning of points.
If you dont like adding up, you might find placing tokens in a jar an easy way of keeping score. Of course, when away from home youll have to jot down lost points.
The husband should try to choose rewards that are not just luxuries but things he strongly craves and would sorely miss. The rewards must be such that the very anticipation of them is exciting. This, in turn, makes it exciting for him to see things that win him points. His longing to gain points (and hence enjoy the sensual pleasure of the reward) has the effect of priming his mind and body to automatically react positively to seeing his wifes body, and to feel negatively toward any other womens body. Seeing, for example, his wifes navel will gradually become more exciting to him, because it is becoming linked in his mind to anticipating an exciting sexual experience, whereas being exposed to another womans navel will be a disappointment and annoying to him because it will hinder him from obtaining the pleasure he craves. Over time, his wifes body should become increasingly exciting, relative to that of other women.
In some parts of the world, almost everyone has the same hair color and hair type, the same color eyes, the same complexion and much the same height. In contrast, immigration has created an immense variety in the western world and this has been exploded almost beyond belief by vast numbers of different hair treatments, beauty aids and clothes. A mans eyes are constantly being caught by women who look markedly different. This swamping of the senses with such variety makes it harder than ever for a man to find just one woman the source of continual attraction year after year.
A way to counter this is for a woman to occasionally use clothing, makeup, and maybe even wigs, to significantly change her appearance. Im referring to changes that will last only for a night, done for her husbands eyes alone. On these occasions the wife will often choose an appearance she feels uncomfortable with. After all, if she thought it enhanced her appearance, she would probably always choose that look. It is done just for fun and variety for her husband, not necessarily to make herself look more beautiful or sexier. Her husband will probably be thrilled with some looks that she thinks are hideous. Occasionally, some of her attempts might unintentionally look so awful in her husbands eyes that it helps deepen his appreciation of her normal appearance! Even that has obvious benefits. Regardless of his reaction, the experience will affirm to the husband that if ever he wanted variety, he need not go elsewhere to find it. There is no point buying quality items for these occasions because they will only be used a few times. Try such sources as formal and costume hire, second hand clothing shops and borrowing from a friend.
Husband, if your wife has only one exciting thing about her body, you are in danger of falling into boredom and being tempted to find excitement in other women. But the truth is that your wife is a woman of a thousand delights. Your challenge is to find them all.
In the short biblical book of Solomons Song, the lover finds himself captivated by every aspect of his beloveds body. He praises her hair, eyes, cheeks, nose, lips, teeth, mouth, tongue, voice, neck, breasts, tummy, body, figure, legs, feet, jewelry, perfume and, no doubt, he was just beginning to warm to his task.
Heres a suggestion. Get many slips of paper and on each one write the name of a part of the wifes body ear, shoulder, ankle, cleavage, armpit and so on until every part of her body has been named. Put the slips in a bag. Each day, pull out a slip, read it and place it in a second bag. It might be a good idea to do this a few days ahead of time because for some parts of the body it would be appropriate for the wife to plan to dress in such a way as to accentuate that part.
Suppose the first slip reads nose. For that day the couple should use their creativity to do all they can to foster in the husband a deeper enjoyment and appreciation of the wifes nose than he has ever before felt. The husband should spend time mentally and visually admiring her nose and verbalizing to his wife how beautiful it is and explaining why he loves its appearance. He should thank God for her nose and explore and caress and kiss it. To help him receive even more pleasure from her nose, the wife could, as much as she feels comfortable, use her nose to caress various parts of her husband. The husband should do all he can to thoroughly enjoy her nose, to be thrilled about her nose and build up in his mind a deep appreciation of it. Next day, pull out another slip and the husband will have a completely different part of her body to delight in. When, after weeks, youve gone through all the slips, the original bag will be empty and the second bag will be filled. You could mix them up and start over again.
Imagine a farmer who has underdeveloped land. He can clear it, irrigate it, fertilize it, plant it and harvest it to become a millionaire. Instead, he makes only a half-hearted effort to tend the land, expecting valuable plants to miraculously pop up of their own accord, and bitterly disappointed that all his land seems to produce is weeds. Instead of enjoying the riches his land has to offer, he wastes his life admiring other peoples land and wishing it were his. That fool would be you, if you dont take your eyes off other people and pour all your effort into enjoying your partner. To steal a look is to rob yourself. Your partners body is the most exciting body in the world because it is the one body that you can thoroughly enjoy.
You have now read about three practical ways of focusing the power of sexual attraction upon one special person, to help avoid the tragedy of a man suffering the dissipation of his sexual powers by frittering them away on strangers. The methods have been presented in order of effectiveness, with the last mentioned being the least effective.
Reading about the ingredients of a cake is about as exciting as eating cardboard. It wont thrill your taste buds, nor satisfy your hunger, nor (except to an experienced cook) will it seem to have the potential to do so. Like reading a recipe, the techniques you have just read about will seem unexciting and ineffective until you try them.
Since ones current sexual response has been shaped by experiences accumulated over ones entire life, one cannot expect reshaping it to be achieved in a few days.
Especially to the wife, the above means of achieving the goal might seem mechanical and unromantic but the goal is to make her mans heart skip a beat whenever he sees her, and for her to be the worlds most beautiful woman in his eyes. If that is not a romantic goal, I dont know what is.
I must give a strong warning to husbands, however. We men have a frightening, self-destructive tendency to depersonalize sex. Because this webpage focuses on just a tiny aspect of sex it can seem to reinforce that dangerously wrong view. This obligates me to quote briefly from another of my webpages:
For humans, sex was divinely intended to be the height of personal intimacy. If we reduce it to a mechanical act or to selfishly gorging ourselves, we degrade and dehumanize not just another person but ourselves.
Treat a computer as a football and you wont have a computer for long. You might have the pieces but it will be incapable of meeting your computing needs. A few seconds fun has turned you into a loser. Treat a wife as a harlot and you wont have a wife for long, even if you keep the pieces.
Frigidity and Sexual Coldness in Normal Women
How to Boost Your Wifes Libido
An Eye for beauty
How harmless is porn?
Putting Holy Fire In Your Marriage
Stirring Up Marital Passion
When Marital Relations are a Shortcut to Hell
A second look at marital rights
When a Wife Doesnt Want Sex
Serious help for hurting couples
Being Head of Your Wife
For husbands
Is it Perverted?
When one partner wants what the other fears is perverted
How to Fall More in Love with God
Contains practical suggestions for re-igniting marital love
These webpages must not be used as weapons
to try to get a partner to change.
Each reader must focus on applying them to his/her own life.
Comments? Prayer? E-mail: marriage@net-burst.com
Not to be sold. © Copyright, Grantley Morris, 2002.
For much more by the same author, see www.net-burst.com
No part of these writings may be copied without citing this entire paragraph. No part may be sold.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New International Version
© Copyright, 1978 by New York International Bible Society