Sex Within Marriage Podcast : Exploring Married Sexuality from a Christian Perspective

A reader wrote in with a blunt question: when a husband says he is the one who wants sex less, can you legitimately suspect he is covering for a porn habit? Check out the blog post here for the charts, the sources and the full argument. I have been answering a version of this for years, and I have generally said that a quarter to a third of marriages have the wife as the higher-drive spouse. This...

A couple describes their latest fight. Maybe it's how the dishwasher gets loaded, or what time the kids should be in bed, or whether you deal with a problem the moment it comes up or sleep on it first. The details change, but two things are always true: both of them are frustrated, and both of them are certain they are right. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. This episode ca...

I saw a video of a wife listing the things that would immediately end her marriage, and the top item on her list was her husband finding God and joining a patriarchal religion. Not a discussion. An instant divorce. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. And I wish I could say I was surprised, but headship has earned its bad reputation, usually from Christians who read a verse or...

A husband writes in: seventeen years married, two kids, sex about twice a week, and a marriage he describes as "pretty darn good." But his wife will not try anything beyond the basics, and after years of asking he still does not know why she says no. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. Here is the thing: she did tell him why. Four times. He wrote all four answers down in his o...

"I struggle with rejection, even when I haven't actually been rejected." At our last Couple's Night, one of the guys put his finger on something that has a name: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. RSD is a wave of emotional pain that lands way out of proportion to whatever actually happened, and the rejection doesn't even have to be real. It is...

A deep dive into one of the most consistent findings from our survey of over 1,000 married Christians: couples who can talk openly about sex report dramatically higher satisfaction than those who can't. Check out the show notes here for more details and links. In this episode, we cover: Why so many couples stay silent about what they actually want in bed The communication gap: satisfaction scores...

SWM — Sex as Worship: Pornography, Erotica and AI Companions. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. Pornography and erotica have become ubiquitous and socially normalized, and AI “companions” are increasingly marketed as hyper-sexual substitutes. These offer the appeal of intimacy without risk—no rejection, responsibility or vulnerability—yet they train desire away from real peo...

SWM 155 - Hookup Culture - When You Take Relationship Out of Sex. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. We live in a world that has learned to separate what God never divided. Hookup culture is the next stage of sex stripped of meaning - where bodies meet, but no one truly connects. I’m continuing this series exploring how, when we remove aspects of God’s intent for sex, we end...

SWM 154 - Sex before marriage - when you remove covenant from intimacy. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. In my last episode, I talked about how sex is an act of worship because having sex, the way God intended, gives worth to Him. It honours what He created by using it as He intended. However, our society is doing its best to invert that by taking away elements of God’s pla...

SWM 153 - Sex as an act of worship. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. The other night, after my wife and I had sex, we were lying there in that sweaty, happy pile you end up in when the oxytocin kicks in. As I often do, I asked her what she was thinking about. She’ll tell you I probably ask that too often, because I’m endlessly curious about what’s going on in her head. Her...

June - August 2025 Questions from our anonymous Have A Question page. Check out the show notes here for more details and links. In this episode, we are tackling the subjects: My wife’s nightclothes are killing my attraction Is using a vibrator wrong? How do I get my husband to initiate sex? Need something to spice up our sex life How does scent factor into spouse selection Recovery after pregnancy...

SWM 150 - Control, sex and marriage. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. Last month, I watched a great video by Gary Thomas and his wife Lisa on how a controlling spirit can harm a marriage. It got me thinking: In Christian circles, we often struggle to define the difference between healthy leadership and damaging control—both in marriage and in our relationship with God. Why...

SWM 148 - 14 red flags your marriage is drifting towards divorce, affairs or lifelong unhappiness. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. Have you noticed how quickly disagreements turn into demonization these days? Whether it’s politics, religion, or even marriage, we’ve gotten stuck in a cycle of contempt—where the ‘other side’ isn’t just wrong, they’re evil. And it’s destroyin...

SWM 147 - How do you know if you're sexually compatible? Check out the blog post here for more details and links. The most common argument I hear for premarital sex is, "You need to know if you're sexually compatible before getting married. Otherwise, you might end up stuck in a sexless, unfulfilling relationship." And it sounds like sound reasoning.  We test-drive cars before buying them.  We hav...

SWM 146 - Legalistic vs Loving Approach to Marriage - Shifting from Rules to Relationship. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. In my work as a marriage coach, I often see couples transition from one type of marriage to another. There’s no clear line between these states, no set of rules that definitively places someone in one category or the other. Yet, by observing how they h...

SWM 144 - Why wives have a complicated relationship with sex and what to do about it. Check out the blog post here for more details and links. One of our supporters posted a question in our forum which led to a bit of a discussion on what men perceive as sexy, and it shook the questioner a bit, because it was radically different from what she had been led to believe her whole life. This led into a...