How to Take Pressure Off of Your Wife (Who Wants Sex Less Than You Do)

An open letter to my wife + hate mail 

This was originally posted over at Romance & Adventure

See her open letter to me, here

My Dear Bride,

In my best self, when I desire you, I desire the deepest parts of you. I desire your mind and your soul. I desire your secrets and your dreams. I desire your body, your voice and your gaze. I desire to be one with you. One flesh and one heart who light the darkness from our past and blaze into the journey that we run into together.

But I have often desired you from my worst self. Simply giving into a conditioned response. My whole adult life, when desire like this arrives, I’d give in. And when you didn’t give in, I would resent you. I’d wish that you would just serve me, make me feel like I was the center of your universe, that my pleasure was your responsibility and a responsibility that I thought you should have been glad to enjoy. Isn’t that what a good wife would do? I would think and pray?

Then my prayer changed. I  prayed for me to be in my right role and for you to do the same, allowing the definition of a spouse's role to be renewed and revealed to me.

I’m sorry that I mistook your role. You are not for the gratification of my lust, nor for my constant pleasure. I’m sorry that I treated you like men do when they do not see women as equals.

What I didn’t realize was that when I gave into the pressure in my head, I was putting on the mask of them men who had done the same to you before. I was those men.

Thankfully, in our pain there was a redeeming hope.

When you gave into the pressure to perform, the veneer started to crack, we were in fact connecting, but the connection was to our brokenness and like a hurt tooth, the pain would hit like electricity and I realized I was creating destruction and harm and something inside me said this is not right and this cannot be.

We can’t keep on like this.

My desire would feed your guilt and shame. I knew that my desire needed to change.I knew you couldn’t wear that guilt anymore, it’s a rotten and horrible hide that covered you like a foul disguise. And the good husband in me, the one that longs to protect you at all costs, rises up and says enough of this. You can’t run to the silence any longer and I can’t treat you like an object.

So I rub your back with my fingertips, like I have a thousand times to get your attention, only this time, I want your presence and I want to hear everything that’s running through your head. And you tell me about your past and the guilt lifts away like smoke. And I tell you everything about my desires and the shame fades like an echo and though we aren’t one flesh in that moment, we are one heart and mind and the healing in this place begins.

We don’t have to live that way anymore.

The deeper into the pain we go, the deeper into the past, the deeper into the running, the more it is erased. In the space where things were once written, we are able to author a new story. A new story of desire from our true selves. A story of passion and connection that is safe. 

We don't have to have sex tonight, I really do love just holding you and talking. 

BONUS: Hate mail from the original post:

This is feminist bullshit written by a socalled man!