Where Did All the Passion Go?

"I woke up one morning and discovered a stranger in my bed—my husband." "My dog is more affectionate and loving toward me than my wife is."

In speaking with thousands of couples across the country, we've heard many comments like the two you just read. Intimacy in America is in trouble. More specifically, intimacy in Christian marriages needs revival. Read on:

Eric slipped under the covers, filling the bedroom with the musky scent of Pleasure. The message was not lost on his wife. Inwardly, Katie groaned, Oh, no, not again—not tonight!

Eric slowly stroked Katie's arm, hoping she'd respond to his unspoken plea: I wish you'd roll over and attack me as if I'm the most desirable man in the world.

Katie lay there, silent and unmoving, but her heart rebelled: How can you be so insensitive? Can't you see how exhausted I am, what kind of day I've had, that my brain and body are dead?

* * *

Jennifer and Jeff sat on the couch, munching popcorn and watching The Family Man. During a playful scene in which Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) chases his wife around the bedroom in an attempt to seduce her, Jennifer sighed. Why doesn't Jeff desire me sexually? Is it because I don't look like the sexy blonde in this movie? What's wrong with me?

Jeff crunched down hard on his popcorn, angry. Why do movies always portray men as sex-crazed maniacs? I don't get it.

* * *

Candace pulled the covers over herself and turned onto her right side, a signal to Jared that she was going to sleep. She lay only six inches from him, but emotionally they were miles apart. For the thousandth time, he cursed his stupidity. The affair—if you could call it that—was over. One night of foolish indiscretion with a coworker had cost Jared fifteen years of trust with his wife.

They had been to counseling. He'd begged her to forgive him, and she said she had, but they hadn't made love in a month. Jared lay awake, staring into the night, trying to figure out how they had come to this. In the early years of marriage, their love had been a blazing bonfire, but even before the affair, it had cooled to a few dying embers. Now all that remained was a flickering spark. God help us! Will we ever feel close again, or are we destined to live forever like strangers?

Wait a minute! God never intended sex to be the cause of such heartache between a husband and wife. The Creator of the universe gave the gift of sex so that the two could become "one flesh" (Ephesians 5:31). How is it that the very thing God intended to unite married couples often tears them apart? How is it that something God created to bring pleasure causes so much pain? Why does sex in marriage often move from passion to boredom? Why are the sexual relationships of so many Christian couples in such a mess? How did we get here?

We'll answer the last question first, as we address the other questions throughout the book. It's a fair question, one that deserves an answer. How did we get in the mess we're in?

FROM PURITANISM TO PERVERSION

We doubt that the church fathers ever called a meeting and declared, "Let us make it our goal to distort biblical teaching on sex and thereby weaken the mortar of this cornerstone in marriage." Yet certain events formed a collective mindset on the part of the church, a mindset that viewed sex as an indulgence of fleshly pleasure that must be restrained.

Let's go back in time, way back to the year AD 200, and see how the church viewed sex:

Church authorities issued edicts forbidding sex on Thursdays, the day of Christ's arrest; on Fridays, the day of his death; on Saturdays, in honor of the Blessed Virgin; and on Sundays in honor of the departed saints. Wednesdays sometimes made the list too, as did the 40-day fast periods before Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost, and also feast days and days of the Apostles, as well as the days of female impurity. The list escalated until only 44 days a year remained available for marital sex!

Now leap forward a thousand years and look at the prevailing mindset. We see a gentle shift from piety to propriety as England's influence resulted in Victorian attitudes characterized by extreme modesty and utter silence on issues related to sexuality. A woman wasn't even supposed to expose a naked ankle. Such behavior was considered brazen and shameful. This attitude so permeated Victorian society that people began covering the legs of furniture lest they arouse impure thoughts!

We laugh at such absurdity—being "turned on" by table legs!—but truly it is not a laughing matter. The seeds of Victorianism were planted deeply into the minds of our church fathers and took root in the subsequent generations, as seen in this letter from the late 1800s, written by a pastor's wife to a young woman about her upcoming wedding night:

To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself; on the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must "pay the piper," so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.

At this point, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: Give little, give seldom, and above all, give grudgingly. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

This soon-to-be-bride was not the only one to be given such unbiblical advice. In 1907, a popular book expressed these words of instruction to a groom about how to love his bride sexually:

Thousands of married men and women are suffering from the effects of excessive sexual indulgence. They drain their physical powers, weaken the intellect, and fail to attain the happiness and grand results which would otherwise be possible to them. It might be said that no man of average health, physical power and intellectual acumen can exceed the bounds of once...