Masturbation in Marriage // Hump Day Q&A

Foreign. You know what time it is, sweetie?

It's hump day. Q and A time. Hump day, Q and A. Hump day, Q and A. Welcome to the Naked Marriage Podcast. Hump day Q and A. We love answering your questions. So every Wednesday we're dropping a special podcast episode focused on one of your questions. You can submit your own marriage related question online@nakedmarriagepodcast.com or by sending us a message on Instagram aveandashleywillis. We've got a great question today, so let's dive in.

Here's today's question, which we're not seeing until right now. My husband has been on a work trip for three months. It's so hard to have an intimate relationship when your spouse is away. I don't masturbate on a regular basis, but I've noticed myself wanting that pleasure when he's away. What is your opinion on doing that when your spouse is away for long periods of time? Great question.

Yeah.

And I mean, we totally sympathize. You know, we've got a lot of friends in the military community, folks that get on these deployments for, you know, nine months or even longer, and they're thinking, how do we maintain a sexual connection? How do we maintain some sexual pleasure when physically we're completely apart from one another? And, you know, we've had questions of like, can we, can we make homemade porn for each other? Can we? I mean, there are all kinds of nuanced questions to it, but we're not going to chase all those rabbit holes right now. And we're going to focus specifically on the question about, is masturbation okay, when you and your spouse are away and there's no other, there's no other option. My quick answer would be, I don't see anything in scripture that says that it's a sin to masturbate while fantasizing about your spouse. Like, if fantasy, whether you're masturbating or not, if you're feeding fantasies that aren't related to your spouse, then that lust in itself is destructive. And, and so you got to make sure that your thoughts are on your spouse, your sexual thoughts, whether they're physically there with you or not. And in that way, I mean, I could say, not that you need me to referee, you know, your home life, but just in my opinion, I don't see a sin issue with it. To me, the thing to be, I guess, cautious about is getting into any kind of masturbation habit. What you can do without meaning to is subtly make Sense sex, a solo sport, you're subtly making sex just all about your own pleasure. That when you do reconnect and you are back in each other's arms again, if you've conditioned your mind and your body to just quickly get to orgasm and make it just all because masturbation is very self focused. Right. I mean, no other person's pleasure is involved in, can actually make you less effective lover and spouse because you've got to get out of the habit of making it all about yourself. And I would just be cautious about that because if we get in too much of a masturbation habit, then all of a sudden our spouse can almost just become a tool for our own masturbation instead of the partner that we're making love with. And so just being mindful of those things. So to me it's not an issue of like right or wrong, sin or not sin as much as it's like what's going to help us not only in this period when we're away, but what's going to help long term to be most healthy for our sex life.

Right. No, I think that's, that's so important because it is understandable that you have these feelings and you want to connect and hopefully you're talking to your husband about that. I mean, I think it's important to talk about these things like I miss you, I feel I really need you and you know, and really talk through that. A lot of the couples that we have that live, you know, in a long distance a relationship for maybe a short time, whether they're military or otherwise, they usually do find points of connection where they can kind of. I mean, I think masturbation usually is involved where they're connecting together, maybe over the phone.

Right? Yeah.

And trying to kind of have that experience with their spouse. And that tends to keep your mind more on, on your spouse rather than other things because that is the danger. I think it's easy to fall into maybe watching stuff that we really didn't think we'd find ourselves watching. But it's because we're trying to kind of meet our own needs. And so we definitely want to steer clear of pornography, graphic, you know, erotica slash romance novels that are super, you know, for just, just for sexual, meeting sexual needs and through masturbation. So we just need to be really careful with that. And I can tell this, this wife writing us, I mean she knows like she's very wise and it's a wise guess. It, it's a wise question. And she's a human being, you know, and she loves her husband and she has those needs and is accustomed probably to having sex regularly with him. And so I would just talk through this with him. Try to find ways where maybe you can sexually connect virtually with your husband in a very safe way. Be very careful when using technology just because, you know, if it's recorded too, it's always out there. If you have children, you gotta be super careful. So just, I just always say be. Be very mindful of that. Thank you all so much for listening to today's episode of Hump Day Q and A. We love getting your questions and we want to answer your question. So. So if you go to nakedmarriagepodcast.com, you can submit your question right there or you can follow us on Instagram aveandashleywillis and you can give us your questions right there by giving us a dm. So we'll catch you next time on Hump Day Q and A.