Studying Your Spouse

Studying Your Spouse

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs.

1 Corinthians 7:3

WE MUST UNDERSTAND male-female differences if we are going to discover God’s ideal for sexual intimacy. The husband’s emphasis is most often on the physical aspects: the seeing, the touching, the feeling. The wife, on the other hand, typically emphasizes the emotional aspect. Feeling loved, cared for, and treated tenderly will pave the road to sexual intimacy for her.

The apostle Paul’s words make clear that as a couple, our goal must be to meet each other’s sexual needs. That takes some deliberate work. The husband must learn to focus on his wife’s emotional need for love. The wife must understand the physical and visual aspect of her husband’s sexual desires. As in all other areas of marriage, this requires learning. If the couple focuses on making the sexual experience an act of love, each seeking to pleasure the other, they will find fulfilling sexual intimacy. But if they simply “do what comes naturally,” they will find sexual frustration.

It should be obvious that we cannot separate sexual intimacy from emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual intimacy. We can study them separately, but in the context of human relationships, they can never be compartmentalized.

The sense of closeness, of being one, of finding mutual satisfaction is reserved for the couple who is willing to do the hard work of learning about each other. Love can be learned, and sexual intimacy is one of the results.

Lord Jesus, it’s easy to fall into selfishness when it comes to sex. As a couple, please help us to focus on each other. May our desire to please each other increase, and may that strengthen our relationship.

Sex