Here’s what Eggerichs’ “Love & Respect” Does Not Include in its Sexuality Chapter
“Love & Respect” never once includes anything about sex being pleasurable for a woman.
Eggerichs frames sex as about the husband’s “physical release” — his orgasm — but he never mentions that women can (and should!) have orgasms, too. When one of the number one Christian marriage books completely ignores the fact that women are supposed to experience sexual pleasure, I find that concerning.
I had a man leave a comment recently about how his wife was in rebellion because she would never give him sex — and it’s not like it took very long! It was just five minutes of her day, and she was rejecting Christ by rejecting him.
This reasoning is consistent with what Eggerichs teaches (he even uses an anecdote about sex not taking very long, so what’s the big deal? Just do it! p. 252). But sex should take longer than five minutes! If sex has never taken longer than five minutes, then it’s quite clear that the husband is only concerned about his own physical release (exactly what Eggerichs says the purpose of sex is) and he’s never realized that he’s supposed to make sure she enjoys herself, too.
I spoke to a woman at a FamilyLife marriage conference once who wanted to understand why she never desired sex. She’d been married for 23 years, and this was the biggest thing they disagreed about. But she just couldn’t get excited about sex. The more I asked questions, the more I understood the issue: Her husband never lasted longer than three minutes, either. But they had no idea this was not ideal. They had heard teaching for years about how women needed to give sex, but never any teaching on a woman’s sexual response.
Her sexual pleasure matters, too! So I told her about “31 Days to Great Sex”, and asked her to work through it slowly with her husband so that they could discover what made her feel good as well. “Love & Respect” explicitly says that women do not have needs for sex. It also never mentions that women’s sexual pleasure should be part of a healthy sexual relationship. It erases women’s sexual being, turning them simply into vehicles for a man’s physical release. If women’s sexuality is erased, is it any wonder that women’s libido is as well?
“Love & Respect” never includes anything about sex being about a deep spiritual and emotional intimacy and a deep knowing of each other.
The starting point for many Christian teachers is that sex is about the husband. You see it here in “Love & Respect” blatantly, where we’re told that sex is about his physical release. It is something a husband alone needs, and something that a wife must provide. Mark Driscoll, in the same vein, called women “penis homes”. I commented on this type of thinking in these posts:
God does not present sex like this at all. God sees sex not as transactional where the husband gets what he needs, but as a mutual experience of a deep “knowing”, a Hebrew word that encompasses a deep emotional and spiritual intimacy as well. And here’s how I described intimacy in my book “The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex”:
Sex is ultimately a longing, a passion, a deep desire for connection. God created in each of us this longing for intimate connection with him, and he put that same longing in us for each other to mirror how he feels about us. (p. 33)
When we’re vulnerable with our mates, we feel a deep sense of connection…And that connection is very powerful. It’s that urgency to devour your husband, to consume him, to be consumed by him, just so that you can feel even more connected. (p. 163)
That’s what sex is supposed to be — not just sex, but truly making love.
But Eggerichs does not even talk about “making love” (that phrase is never used in this chapter). Yes, he does say “sexual intimacy” a few times, but that’s only ever paired with the idea that the man needs physical release or he’ll be tempted. You can’t call it intimacy if it only involves one person’s pleasure and is motivated by the other person’s fear of rejection.
When Christian teachers frame sex as being about a husband’s physical release so that he’s not tempted to watch porn or to stray, we treat wives like the methadone treatment for their husband’s sex addictions.
I sometimes wonder if those who teach such things have any idea what this teaching does to a woman’s heart — a woman who wants so desperately to be truly intimate with her husband, to be truly respected, and to be truly cherished. If sex is reduced to his physical release, then he is using her body while ignoring her soul. That’s erasing her very personhood.
“Love & Respect” never addresses the 25 [percent] of marriages where the wife has the higher sex drive.
So many women on my blog are desperate because their husbands never want sex. In my surveys for “The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex”, I found that 24 [percent] of women had higher sex drives than their husbands. If they read this book (and others) and listen to Christian teachers who talk only about a man’s need for sex, and a woman’s obligation to give it — well, how are they going to feel?
“Love & Respect” never talks about how pornography is ravaging men’s sex drives (and women’s!) and how this must be dealt with before just “having sex.”
Sex cannot be intimate if a man is using a woman after being aroused by images of other women. That is the antithesis of intimacy.
Yet if sex is only about men’s “physical release”, then none of this matters. That’s a recipe for an extremely unhealthy, and even sexually abusive, marriage.