She tries to be sexy, so her husband won’t look at other women. In another couple, she thinks sexy is nasty and resents her husband for wanting an erotic wife. Both have a view of sensuality tainted by marriage in a sin-driven world. Does sexy fit in a Christian marriage relationship?
My own mom worked to squelch any curiosity or appetite for developing my inner “vixen.” Along with my sisters, she made sure we had a good supply of granny panties and flannel nightgowns to keep us feeling pure. She hoped and prayed and mothered us for purity of heart, mind, and body. Still, we wrestled with our own flesh and experimented with love in a fallen world. Once married, I needed some re-education to become a wife who enjoys the intimate side of married life and embraces my role as lover. I discovered that sexy is most at home in marriage.
Past experience largely determines a woman’s response to sexuality. Like perfume on a man’s shirt collar, moms have a way of passing on the fragrance of their own intimate history. Good or bad, the stink lingers. Like any other stain, we have to restore the garment to its intended condition.
Sexy marriage is biblical
God provides physical intimacy in marriage to satisfy longings for affection; “because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband,” (1 Corinthians 7:2) going so far as to say, “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,” (v. 4). God applauds a sexy marriage where a husband and wife enjoy each other and embrace their relationship as lovers.
To bring your outlook on sexy marriage back to where it belongs, ask yourself:
- Do I or someone who influenced me have intimate history that makes me see my sexuality negatively?
- What media in the past or currently contributes to my expectations of myself and intimate relationships?
- Is there sin in my past or in my partner’s past that needs to be confessed/forgiven/healed?
- Has pornography planted visual standards in my mind or my partner’s mind to complicate matters?
- Am I living with habits or conditions in my own life that hold me back from being or provide excuses not to be sensual?
Sexy marriage is out of place today
Sadly, God’s beautiful plan for the sexual pleasure between a man and a woman committed in marriage has been smothered by the world. Covenant love’s freedom and enjoyment has been blackened by ugly examples of distorted intimacy. Headlines with words like the Pickup Artist Community, Santa Barbara virgin shooter, child sex slavery, and kidnapped Nigerian girls turn thoughts of sexuality into a distasteful, offensive, violent, and tragic concept. What was created to be beautiful has been hijacked, and many Christian marriages are caught in the fallout. Media portrays sex outside of marriage as more exciting and more fulfilling. It’s a lie. The Enemy is a master at taken something good and twisting into evil. Let’s open our eyes when it comes to being sexy.
“Sexy” doesn’t belong to the pages of Play Boy. Sexy isn’t just for women with gym memberships or bikinis. Sexy isn’t for R-rated movies or bar stools or sexting. No, sexy is at its best when one woman knows one man has promised to love her through the seasons of life. She may come from a history of granny panties or bad choices or broken relationships or regrets or new beginnings. But in marriage, sexy finds an invitation for free expression, giving without restriction, and delight without sharing. Marriage is the place where God designed sexy to be right at home.
5 Steps to take if you don’t feel sexy
- Throw out any granny panties and (all but 1 – It gets cold!) flannel nightgowns.
- Go buy yourself something pretty. Little things don’t have to cost a lot.
- Clean up your bedroom, make 1 improvement, and light a candle.
- Do 3 things to clean yourself up: shave your legs? Paint your toenails? Buff your heels?
- Pray about it. Really. Ask God to show you the root(s) of what might hold you back.
