By Heather Patenaude
Maybe over the course of your marriage you have had times and seasons when you are just not that interested in sex. The truth is, that happens to most of us married gals. Some of you may have experienced something more serious — a prolonged season of disinterest that has taken a toll on your marriage.
Your season of disinterest can stem from issues: physically, emotionally or spiritually. When one of those areas lacks in our marriage it can potentially effect what happens in our marriage bed.
I want to give a few suggestions and ask that you examine and see if you fit in one of these categories and perhaps this will help put to rest the season of disinterest.
• You are plain old too tired! As a mom you are touched all day and your energy is taken in the care of your children. When it comes to be intimate with your husband it’s about at the lowest possible place on your “to-do” list.
• Post baby body image: Things droop and jiggle like never before and the anxiety you feel when your husband touches your belly keeps you far from desiring intimacy with him.
• Past guilt of sexual sin. Shame because of sexual sins committed against you. A woman who has been taken advantage of sexually may struggle deeply with enjoying physical intimacy within her marriage.
• You are no longer physically attracted to your husband. Over the course of your marriage, you find that he has not taken care of himself physically and you just aren’t attracted.
• Sex, for you, is dirty and gross. You have a hard time seeing sexual and godly as characteristics of a woman of God.
• Intercourse is painful. You have never “fully” enjoyed sex and your husband has never taken the time to help you “fully” enjoy sex.
• You feel spiritually disconnected from your husband.
• Your husband has a porn addiction.
• You are never mentally prepared for sex, and so you just avoid it
altogether.
Now, that list above touches on some major issues. I mean major. And this list is really just a jumping off point, to help you think through the root causes of your dry spell. Might I suggest you take a moment to pray? Ask God to reveal why intimacy is lacking and then read that list again.
I realize a post this short limits advice and actually digging deeper into these issues. Can I encourage you to check out Authentic Intimacy? They deal with many of these topics in deeper, more helpful avenues.
Our goal in this series to get you thinking and working towards improving your sex life and my prayer is something in this list is helpful.
HEATHER PATENAUDE is passionate about living a Christ-centered life. This passion flows over to being a wife to John and a homeschool mom to: Miles 7, Luke 6, and Clark 3. Heather is “doing” motherhood right along the side of most of you and hopes that she can encourage you to look beyond your “bath time” challenges and embrace the beautiful calling of motherhood!
