Summer Quickies: How Often Should We Make Love?

Welcome to the Naked Marriage podcast. We're Dave and Ashley Willis. And on this podcast, we address the truth about sex, intimacy and lifelong love. And I'm so excited that it is summertime. If you were with us last summer, you know, we had a segment called Summer Quickies where we do shorter condensed podcast episodes where we address some of your biggest questions. And this summer is a sexy summer.

That's right.

Because we're doing sexy summer Quickies with, over the next 12 weeks, we're gonna do short episodes completely focused on answering your 12 most common questions about sex. And I am so excited. I'm like, just because I think these are so important and we're gonna have fun talking about it.

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Well, we've got a great question today and one of the most common questions we get about sex, which is, how often should a married couple make love? Is there some kind of magic number? And this is a loaded question because usually when this gets asked, it's because one spouse tends to have a much higher libido than the other. And the spouse with a higher libido wants us to say, you should be making love four times a day. Take whatever supplements you need to take to make that possible. And for the other spouse that maybe doesn't have as high libido, then they want us to say, well, you don't have to do it that often at all. And so what is really the right quote, quote, right answer for this very important question?

Well, this is a great opportunity for couples to serve each other to talk about this, to get gut level, honest about it. And that, and the truth to the question that the true answer is that it's gonna look different for every couple. Like, I wish that there was some magic number I could tell you that is like the sweet spot for every couple. And it's just, it's gonna be different for every couple because, you know, first of all, both partners are going to have different kind of libidos. You know, one partner usually is going to have a higher libido, and the other may be a lower libido. And so, really, it's just a great opportunity to try and serve one another. For the one that has the higher libido to realize that, you know, your spouse may not always be in the mood, and for the one that has a lower libido to realize that your spouse is probably always in the mood. And so, you know, trying to make sex more of a priority. And the bottom line is, we could all be having more of it. You know, it's such a great way to connect with each other. It's something God created that's beautiful. That is exclusively for marriage. And so we should all probably be having more of it. But I do know that couples can really fall into fighting over this because the one who has the higher libido often feels like they're not having enough of it. And the one with the lower one feels like, gosh, you always want to have sex. Like, what's up?

Yeah. And so I feel like, make it your mission to try to. If you've got to try to go with one extreme or the other, try to serve the needs of the spouse who has the higher drive as much as you can. Because the marriage is the only place on earth where the sexual need can be met, the only legitimate place. Now, if you have other needs, like food, you can go eat wherever you want to eat without your spouse eating with you. If you've got a need for solitude, you can go have solitude without your spouse having to have that same need. But when it comes to the sexual intimacy need, your spouse is the only legitimate source on earth where that can be met. And so see it as a privilege to help meet that need with your spouse and as a way to serve your spouse and as a way to enjoy the gift of sex together. And the more you tend to do it, the more your own drive will tend to increase as a result. And so what creates resentment in marriage is when the spouse who doesn't want to do it as much, they're the ones who always set the tone like, no, we're not doing it unless the stars line up. And I'm in the exact same mood that you're in. And what happens is you start having sex less and less. There's a huge disconnect. The spouse with the higher drive starts to create a lot of resentment, a lot of frustration, and it drives the couple further and further apart. And so the bottom line is, sex needs to be a priority. And maybe it's something you Just need to put on the calendar. And that might not sound sexy or spontaneous or romantic, but anything in our life that's important, just about anything in our life that's important, we schedule doing it to make sure that it gets done often enough, any part of your life. And so maybe twice a week, you put on the calendar. We're gonna make love these two days pending some kind of emergency. That doesn't mean it can't ever happen any other time, but we're definitely doing it on Monday and Friday or whatever that happens to be. And that's gonna help the spouse with the higher drive know, okay, well, if I can make it to Friday, I know what's gonna happen on Friday. It will help. But when there's just this desert you're in and you feel like, I don't know when it's going to happen, that can be really, really frustrating. And so this needs to be something where again, both of you approach it with a lot of compassion and tenderness. And like Ashley said at the beginning, looking to really serve each other's needs. And also to remember, no marriage ever that I know of, ever, ever was harmed for having too much sex. But I know so many marriages were. One of the biggest issues is having too little. And so if you look at it that way, we can't hurt our marriage by doing this more, but we can definitely hurt our marriage by not doing it enough. Then maybe err on the side of doing it more often as opposed to less often.

Absolutely. But I also wanna say this. This does not give the spouse with a higher libido license to be like, look, Dave and Ashley said we need to be doing it more. Let's do this. Because the thing about sex, and we talk about this all the time, is it doesn't start in the bedroom. Intimacy doesn't start in the bedroom. It starts with all the conversations you have all day, with the non sexual physical touch, with just being there for each other, with listening to each other and talking and connecting. And so, you know, you don't want to just go to the bedroom and be like, okay, let's get in the mood, let's do this and not really experience the full connection that God designs sex to be. And so if you feel like your spouse never seems to be in the mood, I would just venture to ask you, are you connecting in other ways? Are you connecting through conversation? Are you connecting through their love language? Like, are you really meeting their needs emotionally as much as you can? Like, you can't fulfill every emotional need that's not how God designed marriage, but there are certain, you know, emotional needs for connection and just feeling understood and feeling validated, feeling loved and respected. And if we're not really venturing to do that, then it doesn't make us desire sex as much. And so really try to meet those needs as well and have, have that connection. Because really sex is a physical connection that is really an outpouring of the intimacy that has already been expanded, experienced through conversation and other ways to connect.

Yeah, guys. And this is especially important for men to hear what Ashley just said. I think that we as men sometimes will be driven so much just by the act of sex itself that we forget that what Ashley said, that everything we're doing in our marriage is part of that intimacy that builds up to sexual connection. Especially for how most women are wired that they want and they crave that non sexual touch and affection throughout the day, that connection, intimate connection emotionally before it gets to the physical sexual aspect of it. And we as men need to be tender and respectful of that. So before we wrap up, it's kind of a second part of this question. What about a marriage that is just sexless? Like you're in a long drought where sex just isn't happening at all? Can that kind of marriage even survive? And we get desperate and sad messages fairly commonly from people who do.

Men and women.

Men and women, right. It can be the, this is not a gender specific issue. It can be a man who reaches out saying my wife won't ever have sex. Or it can be a wife reaching out saying my husband won't ever have sex. There can be myriad reasons why this is happening, medical or otherwise, but let's just kind of address it from the thousand foot view. Sweetie, what are your thoughts on that person who feels stuck in a sexless marriage?

You know, I would say that you need to do everything. Both of you, both partners need to do everything to get to a point where they can have sex once again and make it a regular part of their marriage. You know, there are very few circumstances where I would say, oh well, sex is off the table. And those are very, very few and far between most of the time. There is a way to remedy this. There's, you know, a way to get your hormones back in balance. There's a way to get help for anxiety and depression. There's a way to stay stop bad habits like pornography that tend to hinder sex lives. And so both partners need to do whatever they can to get to the bottom of what is causing this sexless marriage. And then to start being intimate once again. And so you both have to fight for it. You have to fight for your marriage. You have to fight for having a healthy sex life. And so do be willing to do things differently and to get the help that you need and to not give up. You know, I think that a lot of times when it comes to a sexless marriage, one or both partners have gotten to a place of apathy where they're like, well, it's just never gonna be better. And that's just. That's not really. That's not the thriving marriage. That. That's not the kind of thinking that leads to a thriving marriage. We need to always realize there's ways to improve and there's hope, and so definitely be willing to get the help that you need.

Man, that is so good. And, guys, talk about these issues. The whole point of these podcasts is to help create conversations that will lead to positive outcomes, whether it's in your sex life or any other part of your marriage, too. So talk about these things. We hope that this sexy summer quickie episode has been helpful in sparking some new conversations. Thank you for listening. Please stay tuned all summer while we continue to answer these important questions.

It's gonna be spicy.

It's gonna be real spicy. And also, we wanna keep the conversation going on social media so you can find us daveandashleywillis on Instagram or search for us on Facebook as well. We would love to connect with you there.

That's right. So thank you for listening and join us next week week for another sexy summer quickie. We'll see you next time.