Thank you for being so open, honest, and transparent with your experiences and being willing to share with other readers. Sorry to hear that the marriage counseling that you sought after a few years ago did not turn out well for you. One good thing out of it was the fact that you knew the information that was recommended was actually not good advice…God’s discerning Spirit was working within you letting you know that what you were reading was not a wise thing to follow. When we receive counsel from others, including well meaning Christians, we need to go to God in prayer and ask Him what His point of view is regarding such before taking hold of their point of view and advice. God’s Word and the leading of His Spirit within us are the best resources we should turn to regarding all areas of our lives.

I admire your faith in God and your commitment to your marriage. I believe wholeheartedly that God desires that we do our best in resolving conflict and disagreements in our marriages…remaining bonded together as husband and wife as God would have us. There is beauty in the making, as two people become one regardless of the shortcomings of each individual.

It has been several months since your last post. How have things been going between you and your wife? Have some of the issues been resolved? Have you been able to see where God has been working in both of your hearts regarding your marriage as a whole?

It sounds as though your wife does not get the basics of men.
Her disconnect from reality and refusals to honor her marriage is blatant and obvious.
My advice would be to sit her down and give her some tough love!
Be honest and forceful and lay it on the line!
Tell her that you want her to be happy and that she deserves to be with a man that she will desire and love in tje fashion you yourself wish to be treated. Tell her that you are NOT that man apparently and that you are heartbroken and have realized that she is NOT the “one” for you.

If she can respond with a dialogue of truth and love that will address your marital concerns than bravo!
If not, there is no need to suffer…it will be hard, it will be painful…but you WILL find a women that will love, honor, and respect you!

Recently I was reading on another blog about how the way we talk about virginity can lead to some very negative views on sex in general. When the only message we hear is “sex is bad, sex makes you a bad person, sex is dirty etc etc etc” it can be really hard to flip that over into “oh but you’re married now, sex is beautiful, go have sex”. One poster on that blog mentioned going to a youth event where the pastor spit in a cup and passed it around the whole hall asking each person to spit in it. When the cup came back up to the front of the room he claimed that having sex before marriage was like asking your spouse to drink the cup of spit. What an awful image. I wonder if your wife ever experienced a talk like that and that is what is behind her unwillingness/dislike of sex now?

Think back to your wedding night and honeymoon, did your wife have a good attitude toward sex then? Think about the way she talks about sex – does she use positive or negative words? Does she talk about sex at all? Do the two of you ever talk about sex as a discussion? (i.e. not an “I want more sex” but a genuine conversation about sex itself?) Do you know if your wife has trouble relaxing which is causing sex to be painful for her? What reasons does she give for not wanting to have sex?

I agree with you that Paul’s letter to the followers of Jesus in Corinth is clear about the importance of sexual intimacy in marriage. It would appear that there was a point of view floating around in that church that sex was a base lust and did not fit in with a “holy lifestyle”. I can see how that could crop up in a place that had the extremes of a guy sleeping with his father’s wife (described earlier in the same letter 1Corinthians 5). Often we see those kinds of extreme reactions. It would seem like Paul here wanted to deal with both extremes: in chapter 5 of the letter he addresses the immoral practices and now in this chapter he is addressing the legalistic misunderstanding that husbands and wives should remain sexless in order to please God. You nailed it (no pun intended) when you said that withholding sex is not walking in love. God has given us intimacy not only for procreation but for pleasure and for developing a deep spiritual unity that the Bible calls “two becoming one”.

What I don’t read in the passage that you quoted is the directive or permission that you see to leave that marriage. In fact if I read just a little further in that same chapter I read quite the opposite: “But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife. But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.” (1Corinthians 7:10-13) In all of Paul’s letters the only place that we see any instructions about a marriage ending is in verse 15 of this chpater where Paul writes that if a wife, who is a follower of Jesus, is married to a man who is not, and he no longer wants to be married to her, “let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.” Notice that it is the other spouse that wants to leave, not the one who feels they need to leave. And that is only in the case of a marriage between a follower of Jesus and a non-follower.

So it would seem to me that in the case of a sexless marriage Paul’s direction would be to work it out not end the marriage. I see no room given by him to end the marriage because one partner refuses to have sex. But his direction would be to that spouse that intimacy is important and it is a part of their role in the marriage to give themselves fully to their partner.

As for the partner in the marriage who has been denied, the law of love still applies. Forcefully demanding your rights is not the proper response. There is a reason that your spouse is not wanting to make love and in order to walk in love you must look for ways to help that partner discover why and heal whatever hurt is there. It can actually become a path to a far greater intimacy with each other than you could imagine. The work that both partners need to go through in order to find healing in this means that they will both be sacrificing themselves for the other, that they discover deeply intimate details about each other and make the clear statement of their commitment to the other and their family. As couples who have discovered a life-long love will tell you, it is most often that their love deepens when they go through difficulties together. That is where love matures beyond physical attraction to the “two become one”.

1 Corinthians 7:1-40 ESV / 62 helpful votes

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality,each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights,and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body,but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body,but the wife does. Do not deprive one another,except perhaps by agreement for a limited time,that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again,so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

To all the men that read this post. Leslie just claimed that is a creature comfort! This is also NOT a biblical truth but instead a pure liad if non biblical crap! The bible sats sex is a gift from god! Just yet another example of people on this forum trying to twist the scruptures to keep men in sexless and defunct marriages. There are godly women out there waiting for men to cime along! Don’t listen to these charlatans …they are not trying to solve the problem…they are only interested in keeping men in marriages for the sake of the marriage as if this is somehow biblicaly superior to tge alternatuve…. I pray that gods full wrath will come upon them and expose them for the fake imposters they are.