You only have to pick up a women’s magazine to know that vast numbers of women thoroughly enjoy sex. This is not true for everyone, however. Just as some people have such a fear of flying that they cannot enjoy the wonders and pleasures of travel, so some women have suffered traumas that have given them such a fear of sex that they cannot even imagine how women could describe sex as the most beautiful feeling in the universe.

“Sex is a power struggle where the man wins and the woman is defeated.”

A woman losing? That is so far from the way sex is meant to be that I confess that upon reading those words in an e-mail, my initial reaction was to laugh out loud at the notion. It was like someone honestly believing that chocolate is a conspiracy to poison humanity.

I quickly sobered, however, because as I read on it became apparent that the woman writing those words was not trying to be humorous. Tragically, her only experience of sex had been exactly as her statement indicated.

Within marriage, sexual attention should be an exhilarating and liberating experience that makes both partners feel highly desirable and fulfilled.

Marital relations should be as exquisitely pleasurable for one partner as the other, or something is seriously wrong. Sex is the divinely intended way for two people to become one flesh. Oneness involves longing to comfort each other because you feel your partner’s pain. It means you long to maximize each other’s pleasure because your partner’s pleasure thrills you. For a man to turn it into a power play or an expression of selfishness is such a repulsive perversion of what sex should be that would rightly turn any sane person’s stomach.

Chocolate is delicious, right? Suppose, however, a young child had that delightful substance forced down her throat until she vomited, and then had still more forced down her. This act of cruelty need only happen to her once, or perhaps twice, for her to be totally turned off chocolate. From then on, she would have lost her ability to enjoy chocolate – the mere sight of it might make her feel sick – unless she found healing from the act of cruelty she had suffered. In the same way, people who have suffered a bad experience with sex end up turned off sex. And that’s a tragedy, because sex is more beautiful, more exciting, and much more meaningful and fulfilling than chocolate could ever be.

You have the potential to enjoy sex as much as any man ever has. I regularly have perfectly normal, Christian women e-mailing me in a desperate bid for counsel as to how to increase their husband’s interest in sex because these women long for more sex than their husbands are giving them. Having to limit themselves to just once a week makes them feel less loved and less cherished and more distant from the man they long to be intimate with. And their yearning is far more than just emotional. Because they have tasted of the heights of sexual pleasure, being married to a man who wants sex only once a week makes them feel robbed of the physical ecstasies they crave.

Don’t just take my word for it. One woman who mailed me has kindly granted me permission to share her story. Many readers will identify with her because she has suffered sexual traumas leaving her with inhibitions about lovemaking. Moreover, her health is such that marital relations ends up causing her physical pain, and yet still she finds sex such a uniquely beautiful experience that she laments that her husband isn’t giving her as much sex as she yearns for. She writes:

I feel forever broken by my past. My parents were abusive. My mom abandoned us during a game of hide and seek when I was six. I was molested by a family member when young, raped by a boyfriend when a teen and then gang raped in my thirties by my own nephew and his friends. It was highly traumatic and it has caused me problems with intimacy. I also suffer depression.

I am having constant injections in my spine just to keep me on my feet. I have fibromyalgia syndrome, RA arthritis, herniated discs throughout my spine and bone spurs and cysts.

Touch is a great thing – especially a loving touch – for easing pain. Sex is physically painful for me. I am not usually in pain during lovemaking. It is highly enjoyable, and for the thirty or so minutes immediately afterward I can be totally pain free because of the endorphins, but it does make me hurt more later. Nevertheless, not only is sex good for our marriage, but it is good for me, too.

I have been married for six years now. For both of us this is our second marriage. My first marriage lasted 25 years and my ex was abusive. He terrorized me. I finally had the police remove him shortly after he held a loaded gun to my head. My present husband’s marriage was shorter – three years but they dated for ten years and she would not have sex with him (except three times during the marriage).

Despite all that I have suffered through sex being turned into something hurtful and unloving, I have always viewed it as not something causal but reserved for the person you love. Lovemaking is more than just orgasm, as nice as that is; it is showing the person I love how I feel, a little like a special hug or kiss but with deeper meaning. So to give that up is a ridiculous concept for me. I wanted to be able to express this love to my husband, even though it was not an easy thing for me to do.

Thankfully, I found a good counselor who worked specifically with rape victims. I also have my faith and with lots of tears and prayers I found a wonderful man, whom I married. He is patient and understanding, and did not complain if we had to stop. If I cried, he held me and comforted me. With time, my trust grew and so did my love for him. I did not realize when we got married that I would love him so much more six years later. But I do.

We had a healthy sex life. He was very sexually active with me and affectionate. He actually wanted sex more than I did, but I never said no to him, because his ex wouldn't let him touch her and I know it hurt him and was a huge problem for him. I am more sexually inhibited than him and he is somewhat on the kinky side to me. He used to want sex at least five times a week. This lasted for three years and then it stopped. Oh, how I ache for a return to those days.

The problem started when a Mac truck hit me. I was not able to have sex for a few months due to injuries. That seemed to start one big cycle. For eight months he did not touch me. He never wants sex now and I feel like he does it just because I want him to – even though it is not often. We have marital relations maybe once a month, if that.

I finally got fed up and tried to find out why he lost interest in sex. I tried going to counseling with him but the counselor got nowhere and after a year of hitting the wall and no answers I told my husband I would not make him go through this and when he was ready to tackle the problem to let me know.

I can tell he is depressed and hurting but he won't say why. I know he is not cheating.

Sex is painful for me, but not having sex is more painful. I have tried to find positions that are less painful. Pillows help.

Marital relations is a choice that I do not want to give up. It is important to me and I believe to our marriage. I plan to keep praying for him, for me and for us. I know that I love my husband, I am not going to give up and, whatever is going on inside him, I will be patient. I will keep praying and an answer will come.

The above is heart-wrenching, but this dear woman shares this with you in the hope that you will see just how much women can get out of sex. If, despite there being so much stacked against it, she still finds marital relations highly desirable, then you, too, have the potential to find it exquisitely beautiful. If you want yet another example, this time from a Christian woman who is physically healthy and blessed with a trauma-free background, see “I Want More Sex”

Think of a woman languishing in poverty, having no idea that she was born an heiress to a fortune and has been cruelly robbed of her inheritance. That’s the tragedy you have suffered a tragedy if you are the wife of a loving husband and yet have no comprehension of how uniquely pleasurable sex can be. I say this not to add to your grief but to fill you with the joy of hope and motivate you to do what it takes to get back those riches that are rightfully yours – to regain your God-given, inborn ability to experience immense sexual pleasure. The fact that you have never enjoyed it does not mean that you cannot discover how to enjoy marital relations with your current husband. To achieve this will not only increase your enjoyment of life, it will be the culmination of the healing you deserve.

Sex, as abuse survivors have suffered it, is a horrific perversion of what it should be. It is like a fire that should make one feel warm and cozy but has instead been used to torture someone by burning their flesh. Sex, as God intended it to be, is so utterly different from what abuse survivors have suffered that it deserves a completely different name. Perhaps ‘mutual physical pleasure’ is a possible name. As God intended, marital relations is the building of each other’s self-esteem and sense of being treasured, by the mutual enjoyment of each other’s bodies. It is the ultimate expression of tenderness. There is nothing equal to it in making one feel cherished. It is both soothing and invigorating. It should bond a married couple together because they each find it so unspeakably beautiful and fulfilling that they become virtually addicted to the pleasure they give each other.

Related Pages

When Marital Relations are a Shortcut to Hell

When a Woman Doesn’t Want Sex Serious Help for Hurting Couples

Healing from Sexual Abuse

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