If I heard it one more time, I swore I was going to flip out.
“As a wife, you are to meet your husband’s needs.”
“Don’t reject his sexual advances; he has physical needs only you are allowed to meet. Don’t deprive him and thereby open him up to temptation.”
“Sex is about meeting your husband’s needs.”
If you were raised in conservative Christian circles or had any connection to them whatsoever, this was likely the extent of what you were taught about sex within marriage.
Nothing about it being enjoyable for both husband and wife.
Nothing about it being designed for both husband and wife.
Nothing about it being OK for the wife to initiate just as much as the husband does.
Nothing about how a woman’s body was uniquely designed in such a way so that she can enjoy sex as much as a man can.
Nope, none of that was commonly taught in ultra-conservative Christian circles. But you know where I did find that narrative?
In the Bible.
When I read the Song of Solomon as a married woman, I was blown away by what I found within the pages of that book. I found that the book known as Song of Solomon portrays the Shulamite woman as being someone who initiated sex, enjoyed sex, desired sex, and was a visual person just as her husband was. This was not at all the narrative on female sexuality that I had been presented in the circles in which I ran.
Instead, what I had come into contact with was the Victorian-era idea that you should, “Just look up at the ceiling and think of England”. And, yes, that was a real thing that women of that era were told in regards to sex in marriage! In other words, sex is something a wife has to put up with, because clearly she wasn’t meant to enjoy it. It simply wasn’t designed for her.
Or was it?
To read the rest, head to Her View From Home
