by PAUL BYERLY | Aug 21, 2026 | 2=1
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3U51TQQ
Sex is literally the two becoming one flesh. While sex is neither the only nor the primary thing God meant by becoming one flesh, it’s certainly part of it. And all too often it’s a frustrating part.
In today’s world most folks reach puberty and sexual awakening a decade or more before they marry. This generally comes with some experience. Even in the church most men and women were sexual with someone, or multiple someones, before they met the person they married. Beyond that, there is experience with porn and mainstream media. And all of this creates sexual preferences and a sexual personality.
Unfortunately, a newlywed couple’s sexual preferences are often at odds. And as couples get married later in life, this is more common, and the differences are greater.
Few newlywed couples have what it would take to engage in a deep, calm discussion of sexual preferences. This makes early sex frustrating or difficult for one or both spouses. It may also leave one or both unsatisfied.
Generally one spouse, typically the wife, lets go of most of their preferences to make sex work. Of course it doesn’t really make it work. Perhaps their spouse is okay with it, but they are not. This can be a big part of a wife struggling with desire, arousal, and orgasm. She’s not getting what she needs for sex to be good for her, and what she is getting doesn’t work well, if at all, for her.
Often the person who has set down most of their preferences will push to exclude a couple of their spouse’s, which spreads the frustration around.
Because of all of this, many couples spend their whole marriage having sex that is barely okay for one of them and less than that for the other.
If you want better sex, getting there depends on your gender:
For the men:
It’s never too late to make a change. But to do that you have to be ready to let go of some of what you want and try new things. As sex is more difficult for women, the wise husband is quick to focus on what she prefers. Most men thoroughly enjoy their wife’s pleasure, so making it better for her is making it better for yourself.
For the women:
It’s never too late to make a change. But to do that, you have to be ready to be a bit more selfish about what happens in bed. Your hubby is easily aroused and can climax far more easily than you. His preferences make sex a bit better for him. Your preferences can be the difference between pleasure and frustration. Be bold about your pleasure, and know his pleasure will naturally follow yours.
And as always, if you need help, get help!
~ This is Paul, and Doing Sex Well takes effort.
If you want help with your sex life, consider The Marriage Bed Forum
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by PAUL BYERLY | Jun 17, 2026 | Perception
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4vZupB7
How our heart sees our spouse incorrectly is not always seeing them as bad or evil. We can project onto them weakness or brokenness that we’ve seen in others. We might even be doing this out of love, not wanting to hurt them or push them too hard. But a false image is false even if it is born out of love.
When I was a lad in the 60s and 70s, women were considered mentally weak and emotionally frail. A good man who believed that would make accommodations for it in how he treated his wife and what he expected of her. Despite any evidence to the contrary, his heart saw his wife as fragile.
A false view of our spouse cheats them and limits our marriage no matter why we believe the lie. Seeing your wife as fragile means you treat her that way. You worry she can’t deal with difficult things. This can lead to hiding the fact that you are struggling financially or are feeling depressed. Your wife is not a partner; she is a broken person you care for. You end up carrying more than you should, and you may eventually blame your wife for that.
We may also use a wrong view of our spouse to justify our own sin or not confess our sins. So, for example, a man uses porn and masturbates because he thinks his wife is too delicate to deal with his full sex drive. Or he chooses not to confess the affair he had because “it would destroy her”. Lies and half-truths are seen as a necessary evil because of our false image.
Does how you see your wife in your heart agree with what you see and hear from her? Have you given into a cultural lie or had your vision skewed by your past? It seems like a good thing to pray about.
~ This is Paul, and seeing your wife as fragile is not Doing Marriage Well.
On a totally unrelated note, it’s been way too long since I have mentioned that what you read here is donation-supported. If you value what I write, would you consider helping out? Thanks! While we always appreciate one-off donations, recurring donations help us budget.
This “hairy ant” was seen outside.
It’s a velvet ant. Actually a flightless wasp with a nasty sting!
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by PAUL BYERLY | Feb 14, 2026 | Men&Women
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3MlQ19z
When I was in high school, most guys talked about women as a collection of body parts that could be used for a guy’s sexual pleasure. They told dirty jokes that stripped women of their humanity and dignity. They bragged about pushing a date to do more than she wanted to do. It was a gross, toxic environment, and I marinated in it for years.
It’s a wonder I can see my wife as a person, especially when she is naked. And looking back, I can see I fell well short of what is right with God when we got married. I felt entitled to sex because she’d said “I do”. I would have angrily denied that back then, but I can see it now. My attitude justified my anger at her for not servicing my sexuality as I thought she should. It was not the only negative sexual message acting on me, but it was certainly there, and it certainly caused problems for us.
Far too many adult men are stuck in high school thinking with regard to how they see sex. We are surrounded by men who feel sexually entitled, from powerful men who believe that sex is theirs to take from any woman they desire to incels who despise all women for being denied the sex they think they deserve just because they have a penis.
I want to talk to you about how this may be affecting your sex life. But first, I want to beg you to look around and get angry about it. Don’t accept it as how things are. God did not make women to be sexual playthings, and it’s not okay that any man sees women that way. Please don’t accept it, and don’t give men who promote the idea a pass. You don’t have to make a big deal about it, but you can make it clear you do not agree and don’t want to hear it.
If you have sons, please work to show them something better than what the world is teaching them about sex and women. Don’t just teach them about consent; teach them women have so much more to offer than just sex. It’s not enough to tell them the truth; you must identify what they hear from other sources as wrong.
As for you, unless you grew up unusually sheltered, you were exposed to a great many unhealthy, sinful, and downright evil thoughts about sex. Being exposed to such things as your sexuality was being formed means they get down in deep. This makes it difficult to see how they may be influencing you years later in your marriage bed.
Your best option is to ask your wife what she sees in you and experiences from you that she doesn’t like. Listen carefully, and don’t get defensive! I’m not saying everything she relates is right, but if it’s a problem for her, then it’s a problem for your sex life regardless of anything else. Once you have heard from her, pray and ask God to help you see the truth.
God created sex as a beautiful, wonderful thing. Humans twisted and perverted it. God’s way is superior in every way. Seek God’s way!
~ This is Paul, and our society does not help us Do Sex Well.
Yes, it says “Rabbit Retribution”.
When we had a house rabbit, it kept him from chewing things he should not.
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by PAUL BYERLY | Feb 13, 2026 | Men&Women
Podcast: https://bit.ly/4qAHa1J
Over on Quora, some guy was asking, “Why do women have it so much better than men in our society?” Most of the answers were from women who disputed his claim in strong terms.
Part of the common morning prayer for Jewish men is “Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a woman.” Would you say AMEN to that? How many of the men who claim women are better off than men these days would want to be a woman? Probably none.
One of the scary realities of being a woman is that men are stronger than you. Years ago researchers looked at female college athletes and fratboy couch potatoes. They found the guys who didn’t work out had the same lower body strength as the women who trained hard. And they had greater upper body strength. Most men could best most women in a physical challenge. The next time a woman you don’t know treats you like a potential rapist, please see past being offended and think about the reality she deals with every day of her life.
Another place men are often stronger than women is emotionally. I’m not saying women are emotionally weak or silly. What I mean is men tend to be emotionally ‘thicker-skinned’ or harder. We push hard. We go after what we want, regardless of the cost to others. Most women are not emotionally equipped to do that, and those who try get called rude names.
Most women have been run over by a great many men in their lives. What’s really tough is most have been run over more than once by men they love and respect. Including their own husband.
Often the men doing this don’t mean to. They are just treating her the way they treat other men. One of the big lies of our age is that men and women are basically the same. In days gone by, men treated women differently than they treated men. Today we have far less of that, and women get hurt because of it. Listen, husband: even if you have a strong wife who can stand up to you emotionally, it’s not how she prefers to interact.
This is exactly why Peter’s instruction is so vital for us to hear today. When Peter told us women are the weaker vessel, I don’t think he was speaking primarily about our physical strength. Live in an understanding way and show honour doesn’t make sense if he is talking about muscles. He is talking about our drive, our force, our push. We are to understand that our wife is not the same, and we are to honour how God made her.
In the past, I regularly ran over my wife and didn’t even feel the bump. I hate that. And honestly, I still struggle to not do that. I don’t want to do it! How God has made me makes it so easy to do it without intent or awareness.
Do you need to adjust how you deal with your wife to live with her in an understanding way that shows honour?
~ This is Paul, reminding you that Doing Marriage Well looks different for every couple.
And so it starts…
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by PAUL BYERLY | Feb 12, 2026 | Men&Women
Podcast: https://bit.ly/3Zx9Ttf
As I was working on this week’s posts, my wife came in from working in the greenhouse. The eight-year-old girl who lives on the property was stuck in the mud. And she was really stuck! After I lifted her out of her rain boots and set her on a board I had brought, it took a good deal of my strength to pull her boots out. She probably could have gotten her feet out of her boots, but what then? Her next steps would have cost her her socks, and she would likely have become stuck again.
The situation is an apt metaphor for why I am spending a week ranting about how we treat women. Far too many women are stuck in the mud of culture, sin, and male selfishness.
I should clarify I don’t think the men reading this are horrible people. The kind of men who make the world more difficult for women don’t read blogs about doing marriage well. But not being part of the problem isn’t enough; we are called to be part of the solution. And to be part of the solution, we have to understand the situation.
There are women in the world who are dismissed as angry, raging feminists. No guy is going to listen to a woman who says the solution to women’s problems is to castrate all men. But here’s the thing: that rage is a wrong reaction to a very real problem. Most men don’t hear about the truth of being a woman in our society. The women around us don’t share the truth because they don’t want to be put in the same category as castration-advocating radicals.
Another reason we don’t hear the truth is female acceptance. It’s the world she lives in, and there is no reason to think it’s going to change, so the best thing to do is to accept it and live within it as best you can. Some women go further, to a place that looks a lot like a Stockholm Syndrome situation.
I’m sorry for how the world treats my wife. No, I am ANGRY about how she is treated. But I can’t change the world. I can listen to her and agree it’s wrong. I can choose to make our home a place where she is not a second-class citizen. I can honour her for who she is and for the gifts and calling God has placed in her. I can further make an effort to help her use those gifts and callings. And I can commiserate with her and comfort her when she is not allowed to do that. What I will not do is tell her to pull herself up by her rain boots when she is stuck in cultural mud!
Have you gone along with culture treating women in ways that do not honour God? Have you laughed at jokes that make God’s daughters things for male pleasure? Have you remained silent rather than speaking up? Have you ever risked your position or reputation for a woman because it was the right thing to do? You know, like Jesus did with the woman taken in adultery or the woman who washed His feet with her tears.
How can you advocate for women? How can you protect them? How can you make them feel safer and be safer?
~ This is Paul, and pulling a little girl out of the mud is the most important thing I did today.
The driveway needs more rock!
But at least we are getting nearly a dozen eggs a day.
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