Marvin Lindsay sends me a link to the 30-Day Sex Challenge, famously initiated last month at the Relevant Church in Tampa, Florida. The challenge was simple: all married couples in the congregation were asked to have sex with each other each day for thirty days. These days were specific, mind you, running from February 17 to March 16. Presumably, the couples of this congregation are resting up this week for Easter? (Marvin’s take on the whole thing is here.)
First off, the name “Relevant Church”. I can’t think of a name for a Christian gathering I’ve liked less; it’s pandering and patronizing and offensive. It’s one of those terms (”Enlightenment” is another) that immediately creates unnecessary barriers by implying that if you aren’t with us, you’re the opposite of whatever virtuous thing it is that we proclaim to be. It’s one thing to call yourself a Christian Church, as that term doesn’t automatically imply that all others aren’t; to call yourself “Relevant” reveals the disdain you hold for the poor folk down the street at “First Baptist” or “St. Timothy’s”. I think I’m going to start a congregation called “Good Looking Hipster-People Church”, and see how that goes over.
Anyhow, on to the sex.
The premise of the 30-day challenge was simple: modern married couples, in the eyes of the pastor, are disconnected from each other by the burdens of contemporary life. Sexual intimacy is the glue, or so the pastor argues, that can hold a marriage together and act as a prophylaxis against mutual contempt, infidelity, alienation, and divorce. But by asking couples to have sex every day — whether they are in the mood or not — the church is making a highly problematic statement about marriage: that the Pauline doctrine of “mutual submission” entails a holy obligation to be sexually available to one’s spouse. In other words, duty trumps desire. (Those two are, as most folks who have been in long-term sexual relationships know, almost always mutually exclusive.)
There’s much that’s right in the church’s call. If the goal of the Relevanters is to challenge husbands and wives to reconnect with each other, to listen to each other, to be attentive to each other, then that’s all to the good. In this Lenten season of penitence and reflection, it’s worth being reminded that one of the best barometers of our faith is how we treat those closest to us. Challenging spouses to “go the extra mile” for each other is a biblically and psychologically sound notion.
But of course, “sexlessness” is more of a symptom than a cause of trouble in a marriage. Sometimes, it’s not even a symptom of anything amiss; not every happy union is marked by regular and enthusiastic intercourse. Every happy union is marked by regular and enthusiastic love-making, however — it’s just for some couples, that love-making comes not in sex but in the form of a picnic, or in a warm and tender conversation over supper. What builds and strengthens a marriage (and what, conversely, weakens it) has absolutely nothing to do with how frequently a penis finds its way inside a vagina. It has everything to do with the frequency with which a couple connects emotionally, and it has everything to do with the degree to which each partner feels appreciated, noticed, — and, in the most loving of ways, challenged.
Frequent sex is not the cause of healthy marriages. It is, sometimes, an outcome of a relationship in which each spouse feels validated and excited by the other. The euphemism “making love” is deeply misleading: sex does not create love, it merely manifests what has already been created. So if you want more sex with your partner, focus more on the real work of lovemaking outside of the bedroom. Trust me on this one: sometimes, doing the dishes with enthusiasm and showing up for life with verve and excitement is better foreplay than the most expert of sexual caresses.
I understand — or hope — that the pastors at “Relevant” expect that in the course of fulfilling this challenge, spouses will make an effort to excite each other, appreciate each other, and connect with each other. I assume that the goal is not obligatory, “lie there and think of England” (or someone else) sex. It’s quite possible that for some couples, this challenge will be revelatory. I’m sure we’ll hear some happy anecdotes. But it’s also just as possible that one partner will use this challenge as a weapon with which to bludgeon their partner into agreeing to be sexual. “It’s not just me, honey; Pastor Bob says we have to!” And the lower-desire partner may give in, not out of longing but out of a fear of feeling guilty if they don’t.
In addition to nice things like orgasms, sex can be deeply emotionally fulfilling. In a long-term relationship like marriage, good sex can leave each party feeling restored, centered, grounded. Good sex in a good relationship can serve as a tangible reminder of what it means to be “one flesh” and “one soul”; it can even, at its most transcendent, draw us closer to the divine — which is perhaps why so many of us cry out “Oh, God” at peak moments.
But bad sex — and sex that you are emotionally or religiously coerced into having is always bad sex — can leave you feeling awful. Whether or not you enjoy obligatory sex physically (it’s possible sometimes for both men and women to orgasm even when they’re feeling hostile and disconnected), few of us come away from “duty” sex or “mercy” sex feeling connected and close. Sex is not a substitute for other forms of intimacy, it is not a substitute for conversation, and it sure as hell is not a substitute for all other forms of making and sustaining real love. In suggesting that this 30-day challenge has the power to fix troubled marriages, the pastors at Relevant dangerously overestimate the power of sex to heal and underestimate its power to alienate.
I’ll be candid: I’d rather have great sex with my wife twice a month than average sex every night. And yes, if we push ourselves (out of guilt or duty) to be sexual every bloody night regardless of our physical or emotional state, one or both of us is going to end up sad or resentful or frustrated. Sex, at its best — and in my experience that “best” comes in an atmosphere of deep trust, love, commitment and desire — is soul-affirming as well as spine-tingling. No couple in a long-term relationship has exquisite sex every time. Sometimes it’s ecstatic, and other times, it’s just, well, a nice diversion. But while there’s room in any marriage for great sex and good sex and even “just okay” sex, there is never room for obligatory sex.
My wife and I said yes to each other when we married. That yes binds us together, but it does not give us either the right to demand access to the other’s body or the obligation to cede entry whenever it is requested. The intent of the 30-day challenge may be to strengthen and rejuvenate marriages, but the pastors who designed this underestimate the potential for husbands and wives to do real and lasting damage to each other in trying to comply with the guidelines. As a Christian, as a feminist, and as a husband, I find the whole idea gimmicky, superficial, and, in the end, not at all “Relevant” to the real work of building relationship.
Hugo,
Helen Fisher would probably disagree.
I also wonder if it might have the exact opposite effect.
However, if you start the Good-Looking Hipster People Church, I will be your first donor.
You sent this response to the church verbatim, right? ‘Cause you hit the nail right on the friggin’ head. Seems like metaphorically putting a simple band-aid on an injury that needs extra salve and attention. Maybe in a rare instance it’ll work, but I fear that in many cases the possible (and likely) coercion will lead to more harm than good.
I have this mental image of the Pastor of this church as the boss on The Office. This is exactly the kind of bizarre, misguided, awkward, wildly inappropriate, scheme he’d come up with.
Hugo - I’ve read this twice now and I’m troubled by much of what you’ve described. I’m a sexuality educator in the UCC and I believe it’s a mistake to see sexual intercourse (which I think is what was meant in the challenge to have sex) and intimacy as the same.
Sexual intercourse is only one of the many valid ways couples have of expressing affection within a relationship. The goals you described are certainly laudable but I think the means will mislead many people. A challenge instead to share intimate time each day as a couple would be more meaningful - a time as a couple to share together, to restore one another, to care for one another, to experience a true sharing and mutuality. Human sexuality occurs on a continuum of intimacy - in which emotional and physical intimacy can and often do coincide but on which they are often different. The 30 day challenge sounds as if it is trying to use one to force the other.
FWIW, I agree with you about the term “making love” and “lovemaking” though probably for dissimilar reasons Agewise, we’re close enough to have seen shows like the Love Boat where characters were meeting on the lido deck in the first five minutes of the show, “making” love and somehow we’re supposed to believe that it was meaningful. The term “making love” is also a cheap euphemism for what is very often just f**king and other times it is actually sharing and showing one’s affection for one’s partner.
Warning, this post will probably veer into TMI territory. I’ll understand if you need to delete it, Hugo.
My husband and I haven’t had sex in almost two years, for various reasons, mostly physical, generally on his part, and lately on my part. But we talk to each other every day about our days, we eat meals together, we raise and play with our baby boy together, and we snuggle and talk in bed every night.
We had a bad patch right after the baby was born (I commented on a previous post months ago and had a longish comment conversation with folks about my situation). I’m happy to say that while it looked like our marriage was going down in sleep-deprived and resentful flames in months 1-7, since then (months 8-12, things have gotten not just better or back to as good as things were before the baby, but to a place where we are better than we were before because of our relationship with each other and our child.
There is a lot of cultural baggage about sex in marriage - we are told that it gets boring and routine over time, that men want sex more than women, and that you should have sex even if you don’t want to because sexless marriages are frauds, and lead to infidelity and divorce. I worried for a while about our lack of sex, seeing it as a potential marriage wrecker. Then I realized that marriage is what you make of it between yourselves, and ‘they say’ can go jump in a lake. We did not go into this saying we didn’t want to have sex with each other, we unfortunately developed a series of health issues that pretty much preclude sex at the moment. But as Hugo pointed out, lack of sex does not mean lack of love-making.
In a strange way it is very comforting to know that in sickness and in health is a value that my husband and I share in common, and that we have proven it to each other in a very tangible way. Now the next step is for both of us to get healthier!
Kate, your post is beautiful. Thank you.
Re the 30-day challenge: Isn’t this basically just a kink? Consensual B&D operating under the umbrella of religious counseling? Maybe exhibitionism, to the extent that couples admit participating in the program? (How many other socially acceptable contexts are there for a religious couple to say “We had sex 30 times last month”?) It looks harmless enough to me–one more private sexual predilection that I would rather not know about, but that doesn’t really speak to much besides the preferences of the couples involved.
“But of course, ’sexlessness’ is more of a symptom than a cause of trouble in a marriage. Sometimes, it’s not even a symptom of anything amiss; not every happy union is marked by regular and enthusiastic intercourse. Every happy union is marked by regular and enthusiastic love-making, however — it’s just for some couples, that love-making comes not in sex but in the form of a picnic, or in a warm and tender conversation over supper.”
Hugo, this was put beautifully, and I couldn’t agree more. I read an article about this “church project” a few weeks ago, and could only shake my head. People in couples need to be close and intimate with each other in whatever way works. Sex is just one possible way to do this; there are dozens of others.
“First off, the name ‘Relevant Church’. I can’t think of a name for a Christian gathering I’ve liked less; it’s pandering and patronizing and offensive.”
Again, you’re spot-on here. Not to mention the fact that if they were truly the “Relevant Church” then WE WOULD HAVE HEARD OF THEM BEFORE THIS STORY CAME OUT, right?
Kate, not that it’s my call, but I don’t see your post as a TMI at all; in fact, I agree that it’s a beautiful story, in that you and your partner understand what’s REALLY important, and your relationship sounds decidedly healthier than those of those couples who are entering the “number of times each month” into some Kinsey chart. I wish you the best.
Glen, I hope that what troubles you is the folks at Relevant, and not the stance I’ve taken here — which is indeed that sexual intercourse does not equal the apex of intimacy.
Kate, not TMI at all. I wish you and your husband the very best on your journey together; some far more sexually “active” couples could learn a great deal from you!
Oh, and Glen, I loved the Love Boat. And yes, I had the nearly obligatory mild crush on Lauren Tewes (”Julie” the cruise director.)
First season is out on DVD now!
I agree with every single word in this post, which I do believe is a first for me. You are right, right, right.
It looks harmless enough to me
The reason it’s not harmless is because it’s a team effort that relies on mutual (or, quite possibly, one-sided) pressure to keep it up. If it were a 30-day masturbation challenge, I would not have a word to say against it (maybe some giggling), because anybody who wanted to stop early, would, and that would be that. But if one half of a couple doesn’t happen to want to screw that day, he or she is in a situation where they’re letting down the team. And to the pastor who thought this up, this is a feature, not a bug; the idea is that if you can say no, you will, through inertia or sloth, so you have to construct a situation where you will feel ashamed and like you’re letting down your spouse, your marriage, and perhaps your church if you don’t consent to sex. That’s harmful.
Okay, that’s a good point. It’s harmless if a partner can opt out at any time without that kind of pressure, which for me falls under the heading of basic consent. I had assumed (probably incorrectly) that this was the case. If this is a locked-in “covenant marriage” approach to sex, then obviously that’s not healthy.
If the paster had challenged his flock to pay attention to their partners, to work on developing greater intimacy (which could include having mutually consensual sex more often) I would think that he was encouraging something very healthy. Had he included his single folk in the same challenge to increase their responsiveness and intimacy with someone in their lives, I would have cheered. Distinguishing who ‘deserves’ intimacy (married couples) and who doesn’t (non-married couples, or single people in general) bothered me when I first heard about the challenge, but I didn’t fully process why I was uncomfortable with the idea.
In many ways, we culturally build up (and strangely tear down) the marital relationship. It’s supposed to be our be-all end-all for friendship, sex, and support. People who don’t have that relationship have to settle for either lesser versions or do without entirely.
Hugo - yeah, I’m a member of the vague communicators of America this week. What bothers me is the relevant church, not what you’ve written - I agree with what you’ve written here.
And the Love Boat? Sure, Lauren Tewes was crushable but all the guys on it were . . .. how to put this? Not crush worthy.
Glen, I’ve heard from some quarters that then-future GOP congressman Fred Grandy was hot, but I suspect it’s a minority opinion.
Maybe a thirty day physical intimacy challenge would be better. Because I think there are things that might not be “technically” sex (that fall in the “everything but” category), or might just be as simple as mutual backrubs or even just a good, long cuddle. Or a steamy makeout session that doesn’t lead anywhere. I think finding ways to be physically intimate every day for a month would be a better exercise than saying, straight up, you have to have sex every day this month.
Hugo - I’m going to agree that the Fred Grandy stance was a minority stand.
Actually I know there were lots of guys that women were attracted to in that era, but I found most of them entirely too sleazy and boring. The whole 70s style sexy guy drill bored me then and bores me now - the guy who fancies himself this amazingly sexy ladies man but who just isn’t that, well, sexy (think Larry from Three’s Company). His whole attitude is off putting. I never understood how those guys ever hooked up with anyone besides their own hand.
I know you’ve blogged about it before but as I think about the whole 30 day challenge it strikes me as making vast assumptions about male sexuality - not the least of which is that a man wants sex every night. After my session at the gym with my trainer the other night, I was so sore and tired, sex was out of the question - I would have enjoyed some comfortable intimacy - but sex, not so much. The 30 day challenge assumes couples will want and be in the mood for intercourse every day.
Does this Relevant Church stipulate the specific sexual act that must be performed every day or does intimacy and outercourse “count?” I looked at the website, but I couldn’t any details about what qualified as “sex.”
If only penetration involving the penis counts as sex, then it doesn’t seem to take into account older couples where the man might have a refractory period lasting longer than 24 hours. There has been a push to pathologize long refractory periods and medicate the condition. Viagra and similar meds can have real dangers and side effects and I would hate to see men spurred into taking them by facing requirements set up by a pastor.
One of the videos does mention a workbook for opening communication and sharing about one’s needs to his/her partner. At least that seems like a good thing.
30 days? Hasn’t this pastor ever heard of the menstrual cycle? Re: intimacy versus sex, have you seen the gift book “P*rn for Women” - pictures of hunky men doing the dishes, taking out the garbage, asking the woman about her feelings, etc.
Seriously, Hugo, amazing post. One of your best and that’s saying a lot.
Excellent post.
I actually feel a little sick to my stomach reading about this. Aren’t there already plenty of suggestions in the Bible for the myriad ways one might live a Godly life without the Relevant Church’s misguided proscription?
It’s a lifetime of work just to get the “love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself” part. Who do these guys think they are coming up with further instructions?
Oh, I get it. On Relevant’s website, it says that one of their Core Values is “To COMMUNICATE the Truths of the Bible with CREATIVITY and RELEVANCE.” Alas, the creativity has gone awry.
In other words, to me this isn’t so much about sex as a means to reclaim or restore intimacy, but about power. The pastor wants to be able to tell me what to do in my bedroom because “people are not having enough sex.” I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to tell me who to vote for in November.
Quite obviously, the church assumes some sort of Edenic context for a relationship in which there are no work/ family/ life responsibilities, and no headaches, backaches, or PMS days. I wonder how Mr. Pastor gets his sermons done if he has to walk the daily mattress walk.
HOWEVER, from what I understand, this was trying to get at the old boys’/ wives’ tale that sex stops once you’re married and that you get laid only if you’re single. That’s why the reverse challenge was for unmarried couples to stop having sex for 30 days. In other words: Another misguided way of promoting the heterosexual legal normative.
I understand your criticisms, but I also believe the maxim: “Act as you would feel.” Sometimes — and I expect vehement disagreement on this point, but it’s nonetheless my experience — acting as though you feel a certain way in fact creates those feelings. Try smiling. I mean seriously — do it right now. Try it. Smile the hugest most ridiculous grin right now at your computer. Now hold that ridiculous grin for ten seconds. Ok now stop. Don’t you weirdly FEEL happier, even in just the smallest degree? Going through the motions often triggers the feelings the motions are “supposed to” reflect. And for me, once in a while I have sex with my husband when maybe I wouldn’t have initiated, or am not revving to go. And you know what? Nine times out of ten, I feel closer to him, happier in the moment, and glad I did. In my case, fulfilling what I DO see as my duty (I’m getting ready for the epithets to fly…) actually creates desire.
Just thought I’d share.
Yes, I tried it. No, it didn’t work. If you’re sad, you should show it rather than internalize it with a phony smile.
On the plus side, I sure am glad I tried your experiment with smiling rather than sex. THAT would have been ugly…
Snide.
Try smiling. I mean seriously — do it right now. Try it. Smile the hugest most ridiculous grin right now at your computer. Now hold that ridiculous grin for ten seconds. Ok now stop. Don’t you weirdly FEEL happier, even in just the smallest degree?
Yes, this is why retail workers, who are required to smile 8 hours a day at people they neither know nor like, are the happiest people in the world.
Look, if you get off on ‘doing your duty’, more power to you, seriously. There are way weirder kinks out there, and you’re not hurting anybody and you’re clearly helping your own relationship. But it’s no more applicable to the general public, or the general Christian public, than a suggestion that we all start having sex in combat boots and rubber corsets just because you personally happen to find it stimulating.
I would also add that having sex as a duty would merely make me feel angry and resentful. But discovering that someone was having sex with me as a duty would make me feel angry, resentful, degraded, and nauseated. When it’s not a mutual kink, duty sex is the greatest insult you can offer a spouse short of adultery.
It’s worth distinguishing between duty in the sense of merely following rules without any further reason and duty in the sense of what you refer to as going the extra mile for another person or doing what you’d want them to do for you if you were the one strongly desiring sexual connection. The first kind of duty is worthy of the criticism you’re offering here. The second is not.
I one partner strongly desires sex and the other does not, they can either both stubbornly refuse to back down (in which case one wins and the other doesn’t), or one of them can give in to the other’s wish. If it’s the one who didn’t want sex who gives in, that seems to fall under your criticism. It seems as if it’s duty sex rather than desired sex. I want to argue that your conclusion doesn’t follow.
If the person is motivated by love for the other person, then this can be an instance of the Golden Rule or the extra mile (as you noted). I think you’re right that setting an arbitrary rule to get people to have sex more often isn’t going to ensure that people have such motivations. What might be better is going back to those motivations. Nevertheless, it seems to me that you can have high expectations for people if you think Golden Rule and extra mile considerations are morally obligatory, as Jesus clearly taught. He said we ought to have such motivations, and it does imply that we ought to seek to do to others what we would have them do to us in similar conditions (i.e. when you yourself are the one who has a very strong desire for sexual relations). It does imply that we seek to go the extra mile for the other person in sexual relations. It doesn’t imply doing so as a mere rule. That wouldn’t satisfy the command at all. The command is to seek to be motivated by love for the other, and that kind of rule-following isn’t at all mere duty.
What you say seems to me to amount to a criticism of the Pauline command that husbands and wives should always seek to be available to each other sexually except in times of special devotion to intense prayer (I Corinthians 7). Now maybe you have another way of reading that or maybe you just reject that part of Paul’s teaching, but it does seem to me to be a legitimate application of the Golden Rule and extra mile teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, at least when taken the way I’ve been describing. I think you’re right to reject this particular proposal, but I also think you’ve taken it a little too far.