Do Women Need Sex???

It always helps to see things through a fresh set of eyes. That’s what happened to me after four years of my daughter’s reading through the Bible each year. She started noticing and querying me about some patterns she noticed in the Scriptures. One that she always mentions every year is the seemingly eternal and perpetual ‘fallen’ state of woman which seems to manifest in many ways.

Towards the end of last year she asked a question that nested itself in my psyche, probably because I was now involved in writing The Christian Sex Chronicles.

She asked why the Proverbs ‘fallen’ woman was almost, always portrayed as a morally sexually deficient person. I really didn’t have an answer, although I’d wondered that myself for years. Then one day, as I read through Proverbs again, the penny dropped.

This wasn’t about a morally sexual depraved woman. Rather, it was about a sexually deprived woman! Consider this passage from Proverbs 7:14-20,

Today I fulfilled my vows, and I have food from my fellowship offering at home.So I came out to meet you; I looked for you and have found you! I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.

Come, let’s drink deeply of love till morning; let’s enjoy ourselves with love!

My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey. He took his purse filled with money and will not be home till full moon.

Despite all the negatives appellations that precede verse 14-20, these verses clearly show what’s driving the woman’s need for a sexual encounter…”I have fulfilled my vows…” points to the fact she’s completed her menstrual cycle and is entering her ‘heat’ period – when sexual drive is at its highest for most women.

Her reference to the creature comforts of her home also point to the need for someone to appreciate her ‘homely’ efforts and contributions and someone to ‘spend time’ with her instead of away from her!

Men who are away from home for long periods tend to ‘miss’ and take for granted the efforts of their wives at home-keeping. They miss the fact that she still cares enough to make her home inviting and welcoming to those who live in it. The fact that this woman took the pains to mention this fact to the man she was seducing speaks volumes to the way men dismiss the home-making efforts of their wives (cf. with how most talk is about getting women to appreciate their husband’s earning power).

What about the Proverb woman’s reference to the bed of love she’d set up and yet had no one to share it with? Why would this woman set up a bed of love when she knew her husband wasn’t home to fulfill her sexual desires??? I would answer with “Because a woman’s body has sexual needs that are tied to her cycle and she’s going to feel what she’s going to feel when she’s going to feel it, whether her husband is there or not!”

It is one thing to have sexual needs and desires when you are a single abstinent woman. It is quite another thing to have sexual needs as a married woman. In the former, you almost always have no way of assuaging sexual needs outside of masturbation or complete abstinence. In the latter, there’s the understanding that there’s no need for abstinence at all (except, as Ap. Paul said, for purposes of mutually-agreed upon short periods fasting).

I remember having no problem saying ‘no’ to demands for sex from my ex-husband during our engagement, but really struggling during our separation and divorce. I found myself being really angry with and resentful of my ex-husband because I could no longer have ‘acceptable sex’ even though my body now craved it. I had to re-discipline and retrain my body to a state of abstinence and celibacy and it wasn’t easy!

Many separated and divorced women will testify to this struggle, which is nothing but a normal, physiological process of the human body. But whereas it is easy to detect in separated and divorced women, it is not obviously stated for married women. Yet, the desire and need for sex, and resentment, anger and frustrations in its absence are the same!

Unfortunately, the skewed portrayal of human sexuality to make it a male-dominated and male-driven field and need, blinds society to the true and organically built-in valid need for  sex that women have and thus many women are sexually neglected by their husbands because…many assume women have no sexual needs!

Thus, men like the Proverbs husband, feel comfortable traveling and leaving their wives alone for long periods of time without companionship or sex (never mind that the same men don’t go without while they are away from their wives (hello, porn channels purchases and solicitations by unaccompanied traveling men, anyone?), but they expect their wives to go without because of the misconception that women don’t need sex like men do!).

Here’s a common theme I’ve run across in marriage counseling…the woman complains about the man ‘not being home or not being there when he’s home’ and that she’s lonely…the man replies that he’s working hard and all he wants to do when he comes home is plunge in front of the television…woman sleeps alone most of the time…man fills his time outside work with hobbies and sports and hanging out or catching with work friends or other buddies and tries to explain to wife why this is important to him…Bottom line is most men do not take seriously, their wives’ or women’s complaint of neglect and this is dangerous!

Can two people truly be lovers without being friends? From a Christian point of view, that seems sadly deficient.

Sadly, men seem to neglect this important component of ‘presence and sex’ as it concerns women they are in committed relationships with. On the other hand, they conveniently dish it out to those they end up having affairs with. Sex is an act of bodies, but it’s also an outpouring of partnership. A woman is likely to end up having sex with a man she spends a lot of time with, than one she doesn’t (even if the latter is her husband). Again, this gives us insight into the background of some extra-marital affairs including the one about to happen in Proverbs 7!

Another scenario is one where the man decides, without explanation, to cut off sex from his wife. This goes on sometimes for months and sometimes for years.

For most men, this likely signals infidelity. Not always… but very often. A second cause is an extreme form of passive-aggression, and I believe a wife enduring this from her husband should demand he / they see a counselor. It is a direct violation of Paul’s admonition not to withhold sex from one another “except for a time” as a spiritual fast of sorts.

Very few men realize that this sexual deprivation is also a form of abuse that places great strain on their wives…a married woman who’s started having sex, is more likely to suffer from lack of sex, than an unmarried or abstinent woman.

Yet still, other men, totally see sex as a male-entitled field and so approach it with only the thought of satisfying their desires and women as just the objects that help satisfy that desire. Such men cannot conceive of the fact that women come to sex with expectations and ‘desires’ also! And more often than not, those expectations rest upon sexual partnership, rather than sexual dominance or prowess, as men often bring to the table (or better still, bed).

For some, reading this now, they’d probably respond with “So what?” because no one expects that women have sexual needs. But the truth is women have sexual needs and they are as powerful and as innate as men’s sexual needs.

No book in the Bible highlights this mutuality of sexual needs better than Songs of Solomon…when properly exegeted and taught, SOS enhances our mutual appreciation for each other’s sexual needs and expressions. It also unveils the mutual seal of responsibility of attending to one another’s sexual needs and desires.

Many women, either out of personal discipline or acculturation will stymie their sexual urges rather than try to find ways to assuage them without their partners. Others will not. Should they be castigated? Like the woman who chose to divorce her husband because he was neglecting her emotionally and physically???

Perhaps these women are the ones who haven’t drunk the Kool-aid that men have sexual needs and women don’t. Perhaps these are the ones who value their own bodies as much as men value theirs and who don’t see any justification in repressing their sexual desires or needs whilst their men don’t.

I know many women who repress their sexual desires and needs, just to stay faithful to their thoughtless and selfish spouses. Spouses who think it’s okay to say ‘no’ to their wives’ sexual needs and that their wives’ sexual needs are not a big deal. These are the spouses who don’t see the huge emotional damage produced by their actions – the sense of being ‘unwanted’ and ‘undesirable.’ The sense of frustration and anger because the well of sexual gratification that was opened to her through holy matrimony is being allowed either to dry up or is being filled up with the algae and débris of rejection…

No wonder then, if such women fall prey to a man who takes them seriously and pays them attention, is there???

The man robs his wife and himself by making sex merely an issue of his own quick pleasure. Sex is not smaller, it is bigger, than many men understand. We males often think of sex in genital pleasuring terms, and that’s okay to a point. But sex is about the soft word, the non-sexual touch on cheek or shoulder, the smile, the paragraph read to our darling from a book we’ve discovered. Share our worlds, then share our bodies. And such electricity will be generated!

For the guy who comes home and plunges before the television while his wife attends to the kids, fixes dinner, while supervising the children’s homework and then cleans the dishes and kitchen and sees the children off to bed…let me let you in on a secret…

…when a woman gets horny from her man ‘working up a sweat’ doing some job around the house, it’s because her psyche recognizes him as someone who shares her load and ‘that’ causes her love and appreciation of him to overflow and express itself in sexual desire…

Think about it…men, when have you most likely gotten ‘it’ from your wives? Was it not when you were part of something in the home, whether it was helping in the kitchen, putting kids to bed, doing housework alongside her, etc??

From a man’s point of view, it often seems my “love language” is touch while my wife’s is “acts of service.” But yes, when I serve her or our family with actions, this causes her libido to be much more easily aroused. While there are no “always” rules about either men or women having a high or low sex drive, my own suspicion is that *if* a woman has a large sex hunger, it may still require a man willing to serve her in other ways before she opens up to him emotionally and physically.

The gender-division of labor in complementarian marriages means that husbands and wives are polarized as far as their jobs and interests are concerned. Women are deemed to be responsible for the work in the home, so typically, men stop functioning as partners in the home (hint, hint…men, can you see why it’s so difficult for your wives to just fall in your arms, all ready for sex when you want it?).

Again, from a man’s point of view, I sometimes sense that sex for a woman who is not being blessed with acts of service from her husband will not only resent it in her heart, she will also tend to view sex itself as just one more chore to be carried out. Sex at the deepest level is not about the genitals meeting… it happens long before that. It is when two hearts cherish one another so deeply that only physical union will fully sate their joy in each other. This can happen most easily when two hearts outdo one another in acts of love, as the Scriptures direct us to do.

For those who are familiar with the stories of infidelity from their wives, perhaps a deep look into the men they had affairs with will confirm this…men who couldn’t hold a candle to you in any way, yet your wives had affairs with them. Why? Because they were ‘present’ and acting as ‘partners’ in the things that patriarchy has said that only women (should) do!

All that and more to say, don’t be fooled, women do need and want sex as much as men want it. So don’t take your woman’s sexual needs for granted or think that only male sexual needs matter.

P.S. If you travel a lot, take your wife with you sometimes or be sensitive enough to take her cycle into consideration when scheduling your trips. This not just to prevent you, the male, from having affairs (as the typical focus of sexuality from a male-only-needs has taught us), but to ensure your wife is not being sexually neglected and starved!

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This article was co-written with my friend, Jon Trott. Jon is part of my focus group on human sexuality from a Christian perspective, The Christian Sex Chronicles. His contributions are highlighted in purple. Thank you, dear friend! God bless you!