If you’ve dealt with betrayal trauma caused by infidelity of any sort in your marriage, you may have felt like you have to keep having sex to keep your spouse faithful. Well-known pastors or even well-meaning people in your life may have even said so. Maybe you’ve even told yourself that. You might have heard something along the lines of “Just have more sex with him!”
I had once believed this. My husband and I both believed that while marriage doesn’t fix porn addiction, we believed it will help. I no longer believe this. A second D-day has already proven to me that getting married and “having enough sex”, whatever that means, doesn’t keep a spouse from watching porn. And today I’d like to debunk the myth that it does.
First, “Just having more sex” doesn’t work.
Infidelity and pornography use has nothing to do with how much sex you had. You could have sex with him ten times a day, and it still wouldn’t be enough for a sex addict. That’s because infidelity, porn use, and normal, marital sexual relations are completely different things! You can’t substitute godly, marital sexual relations in place of sexual immorality. If there was already an established pattern of sexual immorality before marriage (and that’s usually the case for porn use), just having normal relations in marriage doesn’t fix that.
Also, when one has had a steady diet of porn use for many years, it trains their brain to be aroused only by porn, not a human being, let alone one lifelong spouse. It makes the brain crave excessive sexual stimulation and variety. One person can only provide so much variety throughout a lifetime. This is really when having more sex doesn’t work. A porn user’s sex drive decreases, and only gets aroused by the porn. A real-life marriage partner won’t cut it. Real-life sex with one lifelong partner just doesn’t meet the level of sexual stimulation that a brain trained by porn requires. And that’s not the real-life partner’s problem to fix.
Also, “Just have more sex” is not supported by scripture.
The Bible does not speak highly of sexual immorality and the adulterers who commit it. Adultery is explicitly prohibited in the seventh commandment in Exodus 20:14. The Mosaic law orders adulterers and their mistresses to be stoned to death in Deuteronomy 22:22-25. Even God at one point divorced Israel because of her long-term habit of adultery in Jeremiah 3:8. Even the Lord Himself doesn’t tolerate adultery! The Apostle Paul also says that the sexually immoral will not inherit the Kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.
But I wanted to take a closer look at 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 in particular because this has often been taken out of context:
“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
Why did Paul say this in his letter to the Corinthians? If we look closely at the context, we find that he is not saying this to wives who were married to unfaithful husbands. Paul said this to correct the Corinthian church’s beliefs about sexual immorality. They believed that the only biblical way to avoid sexual immorality is to avoid sex altogether, even sex in marriage. And Paul’s basically saying, “No! If you want to get married, get married, and enjoy sexual relations with only your spouse. That’s not sexual sin!” But these verses have been misused to say that you’re obligated to give your man sex, no matter what. And that’s not what these verses are saying.
The Bible takes a completely different approach to dealing with sexual immorality. And never once does it say we need to have more sex to remedy it! It says we need to flee sexual immorality. It says we need to repent of it. It says we need to discipline and possibly excommunicate the sexually immoral in our midst, not tell their scorned wives to put out!
Lastly, it’s just bad counsel.
Anyone who counsels betrayed spouses to just have more sex shows that they have absolutely zero understanding of how infidelity works, and they do not understand how it affects betrayed spouses. You, dear betrayed spouse, deserve better counsel than this.
Here’s the message I get when I hear “just have more sex”:
“Oh. Your spouse cheated? He’s watching porn? You’re angry at him? Too bad! You still have to have sex with him, whether you like it or not. It doesn’t matter what kinds of issues are in your marriage, the Bible says sex is required, whether he’s faithful or not.”
This is just lazy counseling! And this is so incredibly wrong. It feels backwards. It’s just prescribing sex for lack of sex. I know that might seem logical at first glance, but sex is not the silver bullet to cure all marriage problems. We need to address the marriage problems causing the lack of sex before we can even think about addressing the sex. We can’t just gloss over marital issues and say sex is still required. That’s not an effective solution.
What if we looked at lack of sex in marriage as a symptom of more serious issues in a marriage, rather than seeing lack of sex as the problem in and of itself? What if we even saw lack of sex as a logical consequence of infidelity and other serious issues?
We need to care about infidelity. We need to care about porn use in marriages. We need to care about all issues in our marriages, because they will directly affect the sex lives of couples. We need to care enough about these issues to address them first, so that the sex life can be repaired.
If the idea of sex after betrayal just feels nauseating to you right now, it doesn’t mean you need to keep having sex anyway! It means there’s a serious issue in your marriage that is really hurting you! The marriage covenant has been broken by infidelity! That can’t be fixed by having more sex. That issue needs to be repaired before thinking about sex as a possibility again. Don’t force yourself to have sex anyway. It’s totally okay and understandable if you don’t want to!
I’d also like to call on pastors and the wider body of Christ to start coming up with better solutions to marital problems like these that are not just “have more sex.” Because that doesn’t work. And to keep doling that out as a quick fix will really hurt God’s people, their marriages, and our witness to the world. Dear Christian, we need to do better!
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