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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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We are now in the second half of chapter 7 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], pages 130-138.
This section starts out by speaking out against the concept of "the 72-hour rule." Apparently, a lot of Christian leaders are teaching women that they need to make sure to have sex with their husbands once every 72 hours, because men need it. And this is presented like it's just a biological fact, like if a man doesn't have an orgasm every 72 hours, his sperm will build up and he'll explode or something (???). Here's a quote from the book "The Act of Marriage":
A normal and healthy man has a semen build-up every 48 to 72 hours that produces a pressure that needs to be released.
(I never heard about "the 72-hour rule" when I was in purity culture/ reading Christian marriage books, but it sounds EXACTLY like the kind of thing that you would hear from that ideology. Yep, totally checks out.)
The authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" point out that this is ridiculous. Every person is different, and you should TALK TO EACH OTHER about how often you want to have sex, rather than initiate sex every 72 hours just because your husband is a man.
Then there are some anecdotes about women who followed this teaching:
When Janet married Chris, she went into her honeymoon confident that she knew how to keep him happy. Every three days, on the dot, she'd get naked and get busy because that's how she was supposed to satisfy her unquenchable man. But after a few months, she realized she was the only one initiating and started to feel miffed. "What, am I not attractive enough or something?" So she confronted Chris and asked, "Why don't you ever initiate?" Perplexed, he said, "Well, I've just been trying to keep up with you."
As they discussed it, they each realized they had incorrectly assumed the other had the higher libido. In fact, both were quite happy with sex once or twice a week (and for them, less-frequent sex actually led to better quality because it allowed desire to build). Chris originally thought this was funny until he realized that part of his wife's motivation to initiate was out of a fear that if she didn't, he would be vulnerable to sexual sin. He assured his wife that he was fine, and they could just go with what felt right.
Charlotte recounted an almost identical story. After initiating every seventy-two hours for almost twenty years, her husband was horrified to learn that the reason for this frequency was so that Charlotte could help keep him from sin.
This is so real. The wife working so hard to follow the marriage rules that the church taught her, and the husband having no idea- because this "72-hour rule" is something the church is teaching women, not men. The man often has NO IDEA that his wife has been taught that he'll cheat on her if she's not having sex with him enough- and when men find this out, they are horrified. Horrified at how the wife has had to live with that fear for so long, and insulted by how low of a view of men is being promoted by the church.
Men are better than that. Men are fully capable of keeping their marriage vows, not cheating on their wives, communicating like an adult if they feel dissatisfied with something about the relationship, etc. But most Christian marriage resources will tell you the exact opposite. Yes, Christian marriage resources explicitly teach that a husband will likely cheat if his wife isn't having sex with him enough- and usually they throw in a caveat like "we're not blaming the wife, it's his own fault for choosing to cheat, but also, you have to know all men are like this, it's not realistic to expect men to be better than that, so actually it kinda is the wife's fault."
Men are better than that. Yes, some men are trash- if you meet a man who is trash, you need to NOT MARRY HIM. Don't marry a man who's trash just because the church told you that it's not possible to find a non-trash man. They exist!
Oh, and another gross thing I want to say about this 72-hour rule: The same Christian marriage resources that say wives need to have sex with their husbands or else the husbands will cheat, also say that men aren't really capable of understanding their own emotions and communicating about them. Supposedly, women do that emotional stuff, and men don't. And therefore, if a husband reassures his wife that he's not going to cheat, and he doesn't want her to have sex she doesn't want, etc, it's quite possible that she won't believe him. Because, even though he says that's how he feels, she's heard lots of good Christian role models telling her that a man can't possibly feel that way, and also that men can't be relied on to accurately say how they actually feel. (It's far more likely that she'll conclude she's not attractive enough, to explain why her husband isn't constantly trying to have sex with her every time she gets out of the shower or whatever, like men are "supposed to.") So. Yeah. I believe communication is the most important factor for having a healthy relationship- and Christian marriage books are literally undermining that. "If your husband says he's not a sex-crazed monster, don't believe him. We know what men are like, he doesn't." [my paraphrase]
So I'm glad to see "The Great Sex Rescue" pointing out how wrong and harmful this teaching is. (And on their website, Bare Marriage, I've even seen women sharing stories about how immediately after giving birth, they had sex with their husbands, because "men need it every 72 hours" omg, that's horrible. For those of you who aren't familiar with childbirth, let me tell you: the vagina needs time to recover, usually you have stitches because it tears down there when you push the baby out [or if it's a C-section, you're recovering from major surgery], everything hurts, you can barely even stand up or walk, right after you give birth you have basically the biggest menstrual period of your life- doctors recommend waiting 6 weeks to have sex.)
The writers of "The Great Sex Rescue" tried to find a source for this idea that "men will explode if they don't have an orgasm every 72 hours." They couldn't find any academic research that says this. They eventually concluded that James Dobson just made it up and wrote it in a book in 1977, and since then, all the other Christian marriage teachers have just been repeating it. Yeah, not cool.
Moving along, the next section of the book says that normally, in a healthy marriage, libido differences aren't that big a deal. They kind of just work themselves out naturally. Both spouses prioritize caring for each other- wanting to give each other pleasure during sex, and also not wanting to push their spouse into sex they don't want. There's kind of a give-and-take. And so even if their sex drives aren't exactly the same, it's not really a problem.
The book says that when mismatched sex drives are a problem, it's often because of some deeper issues going on- for example, one spouse doesn't care at all about if the other spouse is enjoying sex. Or, one spouse is stressed out about life in general, and so they don't want to have sex that much. If you're not getting your basic physical/emotional needs met, it will decrease your sex drive because sex is no longer that high of a priority if other needs aren't being met.
As an asexual, I can't really tell you if this part if accurate or not. I've heard people saying things like this, about how sex drive can increase or decrease because of your feelings about your partner/ your life, but as an asexual, I don't understand it. People seem to talk about sex drive like each person has some natural level of it, which is the correct level for them, and if it decreases, then that's bad. But, why is that bad?
I'm in some social media groups for women partnered with men, and I've even seen women in these groups saying things like, "When I was with my ex, my sex drive was really low and I didn't enjoy sex- I actually started to think I was asexual. But now I am with my current partner, and he's great, he cares about if sex feels good for me, so it turns out I have a high sex drive and I really do like sex." I don't know what to make of this. When they thought they were asexual, what did that mean to them? It seems like they're portraying it as a mistake, or a bad thing... Personally, I hope that people benefit from being in the ace community, for any amount of time, even if it turns out they were "wrong" and they weren't really ace. It's totally fine with me if you think you're ace and then later decide you're not- it's good that you're getting closer to understanding yourself, and I believe many people can benefit from the ideas that are discussed in ace spaces, regardless of whether they're ace. But... I don't know, it seems like instead, the women who post these things are saying that it wasn't good when they thought they were asexual, because it meant they weren't able to recognize that they really did want sex but their partner was just really bad at it and they deserved better.
So I don't really get it. And I worry that this sounds too close to the concept of "you're not really asexual, you just haven't ever had good sex, you just haven't met the right person" which is one of the common things that people say when they don't believe asexuality is a real thing. But, I can't judge other people's experiences- I can't swoop in and say "well you're understanding asexuality wrong if you think it means you should *stop* exploring yourself and learning what you want."
Yeah, I don't know what to make of it. And, in general, I don't really understand anything people say about sex drive.
So, to sum up the second half of chapter 7 of "The Great Sex Rescue": The "72-hour rule" is absurd; instead, you should just TALK TO EACH OTHER to figure out how often each of you want to have sex. And, the book says, in a healthy marriage, libido differences aren't really a big deal- "when you work on marital satisfaction, reducing stress, and making sex feel pleasurable and passionate, libido differences usually take care of themselves." Personally I can't say if that's true or not, I'm asexual and the entire concept of libido doesn't make sense to me, but okay.
They end with, "But usually doesn't mean always. And we turn there next." So stay tuned for the next chapter, about why it's not okay to have a sexless marriage, because wow it's a doozy.
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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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