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I don’t recall where I came across this quote:

You mustn’t force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex. ~ Mary McCarthy

It’s simple, brilliant, and oh, so true. And those who try to help married couples run into folks doing this wrong all the time.

Sex is great. I think God intends a married couple to have sex regularly. And I know a healthy sex life helps a couple feel closer and can smooth out some bumps in the marriage. But no amount of sex will solve relationship issues. Or make them not matter.

You can possibly give a young man so much sex he will give you a pass on relationship issues for a time, but that won’t last forever.

The reverse is also true. Your marriage can’t be loving or supportive enough to make sex unnecessary or make it okay that you’re not having it. A person who has sublimated their sexuality might think that should be possible, but it’s not. Very, very few men would be okay with a sexless marriage, and not a lot of women would be okay with it either.

Good sex and a good relationship are related, but they are two things which are both needed for a healthy marriage. 

When couples have problems, each may focus on the aspect they see as most important: one wanting to work on the relationship while the other wants to work on sex. And that disagreement just makes things worse.

You can’t have a truly good sex life with a poor relationship. And you can’t have a great relationship with a poor sex life. So what do you do?

In our experience, you find a way to have a functional sex life. That might look like intercourse once a week and something else when wanted by at least one spouse. Nothing fancy, just basic sex. With that done, you dig into the relationship and work hard to make it strong and healthy.

Often making the relationship good will improve sex without any effort. When this is not the case, you work on sex again after the relationship is solid.

If you and your wife are at cross purposes on your relationship and sex life, have a discussion about this way of dealing with both.

~ This is Paul, and Doing both Marriage & Sex Well can be a bit of a dance.

PS. Widget does what the dog in the image is doing all the time! 

Hiding from the heat.

I need to get their shade cloth up.

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with Nano Banana 2
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