The Essential Elements of Sex

Jacqueline is a beautiful, confident and articulate woman. As she tells me her story, she does so striving to be as compassionate and balanced as possible, despite the fact she is relaying a horrific ordeal.

She and her husband moved in esteemed Christian circles. He was a professor at a Bible college, and she was a youth pastor. They waited to have sexual intercourse until they got married. They faithfully attended premarital counseling. Statistically speaking, they were the ideal age to marry. They had phenomenal relationships within their church community. They did everything right.

And within three and a half years, they were divorced.

Why?

They had never consummated their relationship.

In the infancy of their marriage, Jacqueline’s doctor failed to recognize she had a physiological impediment that made penetration impossible. For years, she blamed herself for not being able to “suck it up” when it came to the excruciating pain she felt every time she and her husband attempted to have intercourse.

When Jacqueline finally found a doctor who diagnosed her properly, and told her surgery was the only way to correct the problem, Jacqueline’s husband already had one foot out the door. Years of misunderstanding, lack of communication, and frustration had worn away at the foundation of their relationship to the point he no longer believed they had a real marriage.

If Jacqueline’s story doesn’t scare you, it should. We are facing an epidemic of Christian divorce. And the dirty little secret is these marriages are falling apart because we are woefully unprepared for the most taboo aspect of our relationship – sex.

While the inability to consummate a marriage might seem like an extreme example to you – although from my professional experience I can assure you it is not – it highlights our secret assumptions that we can just figure out this thorny and complex issue on our own. The problem with this assumption is we are culturally inundated with myths about sexual intimacy that have no basis in fact, research or even Scripture. We then drag those myths into our marriages and rely upon them as we form our expectations of each other.

If we are going to have a truly thriving sexual intimacy with our spouses, we have to begin by cutting loose the myths we have been dragging around.

Myth 1: I can have a great marriage without sex.

Most of us start out believing that in order to have a great marriage, we need to have sex. We believe this until life gets in the way. Then, all of a sudden, we move from being advocates of sex to experts on the realities of life, armed with a fistful of excuses. “We sleep in different beds because he snores.” “I fall asleep on the couch because I can’t go to sleep without watching the Late Show.” “I am too tired.” “I am too busy.” “We’ll have better sex when the kids get older.” “I don’t feel emotionally close right now.”

We quickly forget (or ignore) the importance of sex when it stops being easy. But just because it takes more work now does not mean it ceases to be essential. If we are going to have a good marriage, we need to have the Three Cs.

The Three Cs

I was first introduced to the concept of the Three Cs when I was 18 years old. I was studying law in Scotland, far away from family. My father, sensing I might be homesick, introduced me to a pastor and his wife who lived in London. When I got lonely for family, I would jump on a train for a visit. Eleanor would put on endless pots of tea, talk for hours, and mother me for the weekend.
Since I was seriously dating a man at the time, our conversations inevitably touched on the topic of marriage. It was during one of these talks she introduced me to the cornerstones upon which solid relationships are built, and that make a marriage work – commitment, communication and consummation. If you are missing one, or if any of the three are out of balance, the relationship will be in jeopardy.

When I was 18, I had no idea how deeply this bit of wisdom would sustain me in life. It was, for me, a complete paradigm shift that changed my understanding of marital interactions. It has guided me in my own marriage, and has been the cornerstone of my coaching philosophy with couples regarding theirs.

Here’s a shot of reality. In North America, we have about a 50:50 chance at making our marriages last. The Canadian divorce rate is lower than the U.S., but not by much. It doesn’t matter if we are Christians. In fact, some researchers believe Christians have worse divorce rates than atheists and agnostics.  How can this be so? How can it be that our God created marriage, and yet those who profess to follow Him are splitting up at alarming rates?

The reason lies in what we refuse to discuss. We talk about commitment. We excel at extolling the value of marriage. The communication industry is a multibillion dollar a year business. If we need booster shots on communication, we can turn on “Dr. Phil” or select from dozens of self-help books that discuss this subject matter. But consummation is still taboo. If we are lucky, our pastor talks about it once a year or so, but we rarely get into the nitty-gritties.

When everything is shrouded in secrecy, it is very easy to slide into a sexless marriage without anyone else knowing.

Sexless Marriages

Experts tell us couples that have sex 10 times or less a year qualify as sexless marriages. It is estimated one in five couples in North America falls into this category. However, a couple rarely goes from having lots of sex to having none overnight. It is a gradual progression. Usually, when couples fail to make sex a priority, there is a slow erosion of physical contact. Couples stop touching, sitting close on the couch, holding hands, brushing up against each other as they pass in the home, hugging or kissing. All physical contact – even non-sexual contact – dissipates.

However, sex is one of the most important parts of your relationship. It is what sets your relationship with your spouse apart from any other relationship in your life. You can have companionship with your friends, be deeply committed to your children, fight with your relatives and even co-parent with your ex.

But you save sex for your spouse. It is the one thing that sets you apart from simply being roommates. It creates bonds on physical, emotional and spiritual levels. It gives you intense pleasure, it draws you closer together, it smoothes out the bumps in your relationship, and it gives you something to look forward to. It makes you laugh. It may be short and quick, or long and luxurious.

At least, it can be all those things.

It can also be the most painful, awful thing about your relationship. In fact, issues surrounding sex consistently rank in the top two reasons couples divorce.

Studies tell us that when marriage is good, sex only accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the focus. However, when marriage is bad, it balloons to 50 to 70 percent of the focus.  Scott Haltzman, co-author of The Secrets of Happily Married Men, makes the point, “This tells us that although sex is one of many factors in a relationship, if you have problems in your marriage, you will have problems with sex.”