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may
    be ready to give up. You hope that you’ll someday be free from sexual
    sin, expecting to grow out of it as naturally as you grew into it. Kind of like
    outgrowing acne. With each birthday, you wait for your sexual impurity to clear
    up, but nothing changes. So you wait some more, hoping that your future wife
    will arrive in time to help you fight your way back to purity.
    But if
    you’ve got the idea that marriage will save you, you’re foolishly
    mistaken.
S TILL L OOKING
    FOR A S EXUAL N IRVANA ?
    If
    you’re looking for sexual nirvana…marriage isn’t it. When
    Mark signed up to attend the premarriage class that I (Fred) teach, he told me
    that his life was a mess. “I’ve been hooked on sex for years, and
    I’m counting on marriage to free me,” he said. “I’ll be
    able to have sex whenever I want it. Satan won’t be able to tempt me at
    all!”
    When we got together a few years later, I wasn’t
    surprised to hear that marriage hadn’t fixed the problem. “You
    know, Fred, my wife doesn’t desire sex as often as I do,” he
    said.
    “Oh, really?”
    “I don’t want to
    seem like a sex addict or anything, but I probably have as many unmet desires
    now as I did before marriage. On top of all that, some areas of sexual
    exploration seem embarrassing or immodest to her. Sometimes she even calls them
    ‘kinky.’ I think she’s rather prudish, but what do I
    say?”
    In our experience, you can’t say much!
    To
    hear that marriage doesn’t eliminate sexual impurity comes as a surprise
    to teens and young singles. Ron, a youth pastor in Minnesota, said that when he
    challenges young men to be sexually pure, their response is,
    “That’s easy for you to say, Pastor. You’re married! You can
    have sex any time you want!”
    If only it were so.
    First of
    all, sex has different meanings to men and women. Men primarily receive
    intimacy just before and during intercourse. Women gain intimacy through
    touching, sharing, hugging, and communicating deeply. Is it any wonder that the
    frequency of sex is less important to women than to men, as Mark woefully
    discovered? Because of the differences between men and women, forming a
    satisfying sex life in marriage is hardly a slam dunk. It’s more like
    making a half-court shot.
    Second, your wife may suddenly become much
    different from the woman you courted. Larry, a strapping, handsome young pastor
    in Washington, D.C., has a great Christian heritage. His father is a wonderful
    pastor, and Larry was thrilled when God also called him into the ministry. When
    Larry met Linda, a striking blonde bombshell, they appeared meant for each
    other, a regular Ken and Barbie set. After their wedding day, however, Larry
    found Linda to be far more interested in her career than in fulfilling him
    sexually. Not only was she disinterested in sex, she often used it as a
    manipulative weapon to get her own way. Consequently, Larry doesn’t have
    sex very often. Twice a month is a bonanza, and once every two months is the
    norm. No sexual nirvana there.
    Third, your wife may not care to help
    you in your battle. After a recent speaking engagement regarding
Every
    Man’s Battle,
I noticed a man remaining behind in his seat. When
    everyone else had milled out, he came up to me and said, “My wife
    approached me this week and said, ‘Jim, I have something to tell you, but
    I don’t really know how to bring it up. I’ll just say it straight
    out. I just don’t like sex, and I really wish I didn’t have to do
    it anymore.’
    “I was stunned. I didn’t quite know what
    to say, so I replied, ‘Honey, is it something I’m doing wrong, or
    is there something I can do better?’
    “She said, ‘No,
    it’s not what you’re doing. All my friends feel this way. Every one
    of them.’”
    You’re probably saying to yourself,
Yeah, right, but that’ll never happen to me.
Really? Marveling
    at Jim’s story, I passed it on to one of my pastors as we chatted in