Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Dr. Joe Beam Reveals 3 Hidden Factors That Shape Your Sex Life
Enjoy the episode? Send us a text!
What if the key to a thriving marriage lies in understanding sexual dynamics? Join me, Dr. Joe Beam, as we unravel the mysteries of sexual compatibility in marriage. Together, we'll navigate the often turbulent waters of varying libidos, preferences, and the external pressures that can cause friction between spouses. Through real-life stories and my own insights, you'll discover how these issues left unaddressed can evolve into serious marital challenges, highlighting the necessity of open communication and resolution for a fulfilling partnership.
Explore the powerful influence of sexual education on your perceptions and expectations. From formal classroom settings to the often unreliable information shared among peers, our sexual education shapes us in profound ways. I'll shed light on the media's role, especially internet pornography, in distorting sexual schemas and relationship expectations. By acknowledging the impact of misinformation and unrealistic portrayals, we emphasize the critical need for accurate education as a cornerstone of personal growth and relationship satisfaction.
Uncover the roots of sexual schemas and their role in shaping relationships. We'll journey through stories of individuals grappling with the aftermath of past traumas and how these experiences echo into their intimate lives. You'll learn about the concept of sexual habituation and how it can lead to diminishing excitement over time. Although this episode focuses on identifying the origins of these issues, it sets the stage for future discussions on resolving sexual incompatibilities. Don't miss our next session, where Kimberly Beam Holmes will provide valuable insights on navigating financial disagreements.
Want to have the proven, practical steps to save your marriage?
Click here to sign up for our Save My Marriage Membership today!
📞 BOOK A CALL WITH OUR TEAM: https://marriagehelper.com/booknow
🔗 Website: https://marriagehelper.com
📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marriagehelper
👀 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marriagehelper
Follow our other channels!
📺 https://youtube.com/@kimberlybeamholmes
📺 https://youtube.com/@drjoebeam
Three things in your life determine your sexuality, how you think about sex, what you want to do when it comes to sex, what you refuse to do when it comes to sex. Would you like to know what those three things are? Because not only do those three things affect you, there are three things in your spouse's life that affects the way that he or she has sexuality, the way they think about sex, what they want to do and what they don't want to do. If you want to know, hang on. I'm about to tell you. Hi, I'm Dr Joe Beam, with Marriage Helper. This is a relationship radio program and I want to talk about sex, particularly when it comes to the fact that a couple may have disagreements about sex.
Speaker 1:Actually, people who go to see a sexologist or a sex therapist typically sexologists don't get the business sex therapists do. If people go to see a sex therapist, the number one presenting problem is disagreement about frequency. Either he wants to have more sex or she wants to have more sex, and yes, I said that on purpose. There are many marriages where the wife actually has a greater libido, a stronger sex drive, than her husband does, and so it's not always the man who wants more sex. Although that's more common, it can be the wife who wants more sex, and that's why they typically wind up going to see a sex therapist. Help us figure out how to solve this incompatibility. Another reason, of course, that people would go to see a sex therapist would be well, we are in general agreement about how often to have sex, but we have some pretty strong disagreements about what we do sexually. He wants to try that. She says oh no, no, no, no, no. Or she wants to try that and he says oh no, no, no. Now, as I said at the beginning of this program, that comes from three different things in your life. But first let me talk to you about how this can actually determine whether a marriage stays together or not.
Speaker 1:I remember talking to a couple of years ago. He was leaving her, divorcing her, and when I was asking him, give me the reasons, he said the 16 years we've been married, I have begged with tears in my eyes please make love to me, or at the very least, allow me to make love to you. And she would say, no, I'm not interested. And so, finally, I'm leaving because of the fact that I want to be sexually fulfilled and I can't possibly have that in this marriage where my wife is sexually frigid. Now, believe it or not, frigid is a word that's still used in sexology and in sexuality studies. It means one who has no desire, or it could be one that has some degree of desire but is inorgasmic, meaning that he or she can't reach orgasm, and so that marriage was falling apart because of the lack of sex. Now some of you people who are religious let's say particularly Christian people, for example would say well, no, you can't divorce your husband or your wife for that. You can only divorce them for adultery.
Speaker 1:I dealt with another couple once on the East Coast several years ago. They were both 26 years old. They had married when they were 21. So they'd been married five years, obviously, and sometime within the first year he did something. I never did declare exactly on what it was, but he did something that really irritated her, and so her decision was we will never have sex with each other again. Now, by the time he was 26 years old, his libido, of course, did not go away just because his wife said no sex. His libido was still there, and so eventually he wound up having a one-night stand. He felt so guilty about it. He confessed it to his wife and she said that's it, that's done, I'm divorcing. You, get out Now.
Speaker 1:I was talking to this couple and I asked her I'm not justifying his adultery, I'm not justifying the fact that he slept with somebody else, but can you at least realize that to a degree you share the responsibility of that temptation? Because they were church people and I was talking to them in a church building. I actually quoted scripture to them from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 7, where it says it's the obligation, it's the responsibility of the husband to fulfill his wife sexually and of the wife to fulfill her husband sexually. And it goes on to say do not deprive each other except by prayer, and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves again to prayer and I misquoted that a little bit so that you can devote yourselves again to prayer, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of fulfillment. So I said I'm not justifying his adultery, but you had some contribution to that because you wouldn't make love to him On another occasion.
Speaker 1:I know a couple. As a matter of fact, he was handicapped in the sense that he was blind. He was a pretty intelligent guy, but the blindness caused him some difficulties and problems and finally this woman falls in love with him and she marries him. She too had a handicap, and so it was kind of neat that these two people had found each other, because there was some speculation that because of their handicaps they might not find mates. But they found each other. They loved each other deeply. They've been married only for a few months. When she told me I'm divorcing him and I said why, what happened? She said he asked me if I would do oral sex on him, and that means he's a pervert and I'm not going to be married to a pervert. Therefore I'm divorcing him Now, hopefully. These are just some of the stories of course I could tell you, but these stories are indicating to you that sometimes couples have sexual problems.
Speaker 1:Another one I've run across many times, particularly with people who are religious, is that my church or my pastor or my preacher, my priest, my rabbi, somebody taught me that a particular sex act was a sin against God and therefore I don't want to do that. And now my spouse is encouraging me to do that with him or with her, and I'm refusing because of the fact that I consider it to be a sin and it's going to send me straight to hell. Then the frustration sets in on both of them, both the one who wants that and the one who's refusing that, and another situation similar to that would be starting off the same way. I can't do that because I've been taught it's wrong. But they do yield, they do participate and they do enjoy that participation. Now they've done something that they believe in their mind is wrong, sinful, but they liked it, and so now they continue to do it, but they feel guilty, and finally the guilt may wear off. But if the guilt wears off, so does their sense of doing what's right and doing what's wrong. Like, well, I guess you should just make yourself happy.
Speaker 1:All right, have you seen yourself in any of those stories or something similar? Well, let me tell you how you got to where you are, whether you're one who is sexually adventurous or one who is sexually reserved. I talked to a couple of years ago and he he said she's just so sexually inhibited. And she was standing there and she said I don't have any sexual inhibitions at all. And I said okay, you know, I'm a sexologist, I'm not a sex therapist, but I'm a sexologist, I study sex, I teach sex. And so may I ask you a question Feel free not to answer, but to tie it up as to whether or not you might be inhibited when it comes to sex. At what age did you first masturbate? She was grossly offended. I have never touched myself and I never will. Hmm, well, basically that does mean that she's sexually inhibited, but where did it come from? Why? Okay, these are the three things.
Speaker 1:The first thing has to do with education, now, not just formal education. Some of you may have had education in middle school or high school or even in college about human sexuality, and you learned about the anatomy, like that's what's inside the male, that's what's outside the male, that's what's inside the female, that's what's outside the female. You may have learned about the primary sex situation that people go through, and then the secondary and then the tertiary, about the development that people go through sexually as they develop. You may have learned a whole lot of things about those things. You may even have learned that it's extremely difficult to define an orgasm to someone who's never had one, and so sometimes you might ask a client have you ever been orgasmic, have you ever had an orgasm? And sometimes they say no, and sometimes they say a lot and sometimes they say I don't know, what do you mean? You don't know. I don't even think I understand what an orgasm is. Therefore I don't know if I've ever had one.
Speaker 1:Now, with the proper education, now let's start with formal education, then go to informal education. Formal education would be a class taught by a teacher who's been instructed about anatomy and about sexuality, and that teacher then shares that with his or her students and people learn, and so that's part of sex education. But the greater part of sex education actually comes informally. I had one of my students when I taught human sexuality at Lipscomb University a few years ago. I taught once per semester. I had one of my students when I taught human sexuality at Lipscomb University a few years ago. I taught once per semester. I mean not just one class per semester, but that's the only class. I taught that semester of human sexuality, 16 sessions of it, and the next semester 16 more sessions, with a new group of course. And I had one of my students tell me on one occasion about something about the female anatomy. First of all, he corrected my pronunciation of a certain part of the female anatomy, to which I replied no, that's not right, I'm pronouncing it correctly. And then another time I taught something and he said I know that's wrong. And I said really how he said, because my roommate told me. And then he said I didn't, roommate.
Speaker 1:You see, education is not just what you learn in a classroom. Education is what you learn from life, and so part of your sexual education has been what your buddies and friends have told you, whether they're male or female, and it probably started relatively young it could have been as young as I'll show you mine if you show me yours. It could have been a little bit later than life. When a bunch of girls are sitting around talking about sex or a bunch of boys are sitting around talking about sex and they start sharing the things that they have heard or the things that they think, and those conversations are usually full of misinformation Well, I heard this, I think that, et cetera and they go on and the other people buy into it and believe it. Wow, that must be true, why? Well, my friend told me how old is your friend? Twelve.
Speaker 1:We probably wouldn't call him or her a sex expert, but you're still learning from whatever the people around you think about sex. You're learning from television about sex. You're learning what people do in sitcoms when they become very enamored of each other. You learn from movies about sex and you start to get a paradigm that fits into that, like, wow, that's one of my schemas. As a matter of fact, that's what we call these things, sexual schemas.
Speaker 1:A schema is something that you filter information through to make a decision. So, for example, if you live in a country where people drive on the right-hand side of the road and then you rent a car in another country where they drive on the left-hand side of the road, it's more difficult to do. Why? Because your driving schema is a right-hand driving schema, and so you interpret seeing other traffic, you interpret your speed, you interpret traffic lights, you interpret traffic signs all based on that schema of how you learn how to drive, and so driving on the left-hand side can sometimes lead to some pretty bad situations because of that. Well, the same kind of thing applies to sex. When it comes to your education, formal and informal, you start getting an idea of what sex is supposed to be like and what you think sex really is like. Way before you ever have or typically, way before you ever have, your very first sexual encounter, you say really Mm-hmm Actually, and that education can mess you up royally, because some education like that is just so wrong.
Speaker 1:And then if you have been watching pornography, either renting or buying the CDs, or these days you don't have to leave your house. You can get to the right channel or make the right subscription or go to the right site on your computer and you can see hardcore triple X pornography, some of which is actually called gonzo pornography. You say I don't know what that is. If not, I'm glad you don't. Gonzo pornography isn't even about relationship at all, because they found that movies that are pornographic, that actually build relationships like the man falls in love with a woman and she falls in love with him and then that leads to actual sex on the screen that women tend to find that extremely romantic and so they'll watch that kind of pornography because they see it all together in the concept of a relationship. Gonzo porn has no relationships in it whatsoever. It's just sex, nonstop sex, all kinds of sex, many people involved in the sex, sometimes animals involved in the sex, and it's basically animalistic in behavior, it's animalistic in the things that they represent. So if you have been watching pornography one way or the other, whatever point it might be, it has become part of your schema based on your education. As a matter of fact, in the world today, the number one method of sex education is internet pornography, and that's not just in the USA, it's not just in what we would call the Western countries, it's in the Mideast, it's in the Far East, it's in the Sahara, it's in the sub-Sahara part of the world, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1:I actually saw this with my own eyes, as opposed to seeing it with somebody else's eyes. I guess I was way back in the bush in Africa many years ago and the missionaries I was with they took me to a village and in this village there was a store that sold pornographic tapes. And I said they don't have any electricity here. I don't see any televisions. How would anybody be able to watch this? Oh, somebody's got it. As a matter of fact, the only television here might be in that store and they've got a generator or something that generates electricity and people pay out here in the middle of nowhere what we would call a lack of civilization although it really is its own kind of civilization and they're coming in here and watching pornography and that's what they're learning from. And so experience I'm sorry. Education oh, let me get ahead of myself.
Speaker 1:Education is one of the strongest things about your sexual schema. So let's say you have a guy who has been watching sex on pornography. His friends watch pornography and give him all kinds of details about their sexual encounters with other people, and he now gets married to a woman who has never seen any of that and never been around those kind of friends and he says let's do this because he's seen it on pornography. It might be anal sex, it might be oral sex, it may be bondage, it may be all kinds of things to which she would likely be in horror of hearing Like what, what do you mean? Normal people don't do that. Good people don't do that. Godly people don't do that, and I'll guarantee you that couple's going to have some sexual difficulties because of the fact that he wants to do that, because his experience has said that's what everybody does.
Speaker 1:I was at a World Congress of Sexual Health that's been several years ago now I think it was about 2008, so it's been a while and some of the speakers there were saying marriage as we now know it in the world is doomed, and their logic was because of the fact that the primary sexual education in the world is internet pornography. They are programming young men and, by the way, a tremendous percentage of young women also watch internet pornography. They're actually programming these young men and these young women to get to the point where they think everybody wants to have sex all the time and that's what they're going to expect from their partners when they get married. Realistically speaking, not even porn stars want to have sex all the time. They get paid to be on that screen doing whatever they're doing. But if you have that kind of education, unless your spouse has had a similar education, you probably are going to have some sexual incompatibilities.
Speaker 1:Oh, one other thing that's very important. I forgot to mention your parents, the way they demonstrated sexuality. If your parents were always angry at each other, saying bad things to each other. You didn't see any hugging. You didn't see any kissing. You didn't see any affection of any kind pass between the two of them. That actually affects your education about sex as well. As opposed to, parents who are very affectionate toward each other will hug each other in front of their children, sometimes kiss each other in front of their children, obviously not going to make love in front of their children, you understand, but present a positive sexual model. You say so, that's it. It's whatever education we've been through, and the fact that my husband or my wife and I have been through different educational processes means that we might have some compatibilities. Yes and no. There are two more things. That one was education.
Speaker 1:The next thing is experience. Whatever experiences you have had before you met each other and whatever experiences you have had since you've been together also become part of that sexual schema furtively masturbates in their bedroom late at night and maybe on their cell phone. They've called up some porn to help them get excited, for example, and now they're looking at all that and they masturbate and they feel guilty because of the fact they know that their parents would be very much against that, and they have learned either the male or the female to orgasm as quickly as possible so that you don't get caught. Does that experience then affect sexuality later in life? Absolutely One. This is certainly not all the reasons, but one of the reasons that some men have trouble with premature ejaculation is because they masturbated so much when they were young. They had trained themselves to orgasm as quickly as they could so that they wouldn't have any guilt, and now their body's programmed to that, and so they're finding themselves experiencing premature ejaculation. Now, is that fixable? Yes, and of course premature ejaculation can come from other reasons as well.
Speaker 1:But because of experience, or it might be because of your first sexual experience with another person. You say what do you mean? I talked to a couple of years ago where that she, in the sense of how we talk about it in sexuality, was frigid. She was inorgasmic, as a matter of fact, no libido evidence at all, what we would today call asexual. I don't want to have sex, I have no interest in sex. Why don't you just, you know, let's just live together, be buddies and let's leave it at that. I was trying to help that couple and I started asking her and I asked if you ever were talking to me about sex because you were having trouble in your marriage.
Speaker 1:One of the first questions I'm going to ask you tell me about your first sexual experience. Now, I don't need to know every detail. I'm not looking to be exhilarated by your experience, nor to be disgusted by your experience. All I want to know is what happened. Give me the generals, don't tell me the little details, because I don't need that, I don't want that.
Speaker 1:And so in this particular case, this woman, when she was a young child, she said I only had the vaguest memories of this, but I was in this building and there was a man in that building with me. Actually, he was a teenager, I was probably three or four, I think. She said and my vague, vague memory is that my pants and my panties, or my shorts, I think she said my shorts and my panties were off and I was crying, and that's the only memory I have of that. Well, you know as well as I do that that very likely indicates some kind of sexual thing occurred there that has driven her to the point where she sees sex as painful, as wrong, as abusive, etc, etc. And now she's married to a man who has a sex drive. He wants to make love to his wife and she's like I don't want anything to do with it at all. And where does it come from? Experience. It's not always experience as children, although unfortunately, way too often it is. It can be experience when you reach your teenage years.
Speaker 1:Maybe she's 15, he's 19, but they start dating each other because she developed quickly, going through the secondary and tertiary sexual development, and so therefore she has breasts and she looks like she's a lot older than she is, and he starts dating her and he forces her into sex. Maybe he forces her into doing oral sex on him. Maybe he forces her into intercourse. Now, I'm not talking about the fact that he's using a gun or a knife or he's hitting her beside the head. When I say force, he's using his peer pressure. All those other things are evil as well, but here he's using peer pressure. If you loved me, you would do this. So please do that for me. And so she does. But she feels guilty, she feels unprepared, she can't figure it out. It's even worse if that person doing it to her or to him is a relative, like a father or a mother, aunt, uncle, grandfather, grandmother. Makes it even worse then, but those experiences definitely affect your sexual schema.
Speaker 1:I was working with a couple several years ago. They're very intelligent people. He was a physician, she was a pharmacist, smart people, a lot of education, and they had been married oh, I think 35 years, when I was working with them about a particular problem they had and she finally, after 35 years of marriage, told her husband about the sexual abuse he endured when she was young. He was flabbergasted. He said why didn't you tell me before? Because if you had, I wouldn't have been pushing you all these years because I'd be realizing I was hurting you by that. Now, without having time to tell you how, I'm telling you that they were able to work it out so that they could have a decent sex life with each other.
Speaker 1:So the first one is education, the second one is experience, the third one is expectations. So what do you mean? What you expect sex is going to be like when you finally get into a relationship that matters to you? Some people, of course, are going to do that pre-marriage, although I don't have time to explain, but there are a lot of problems that come with that, and some are post-marriage, like on the honeymoon night. Here's what I'm expecting to happen. And it doesn't. It's flawed. Somebody hurts the other person's feelings. Now you say okay, dr B. So expectations he thinks we're going to make love every day, and maybe at the beginning they do.
Speaker 1:I remember a couple where he wanted to leave her because of the fact that she didn't want to have sex every day anymore. They've been married like seven or eight years. She'd had a couple of children in the meantime. He said when we were dating each other, she was hot to trot I'm using his phrase and in an early night marriage she couldn't get enough sex. And now I feel like I have to ask for it or beg for it. And I said to him don't you think that that's probably very logical? For a couple of reasons. One is in the meantime she's had children and therefore they get a lot of her attention. And another is you have reached what is called sexual boredom. Actually, it's called sexual habituation, to be exact. And sexual habituation doesn't take seven years to get to About two, about two years into having sex with a person. Things get habitual, they're not exciting anymore, they're more like well, this is what we do every time. You can still enjoy touching each other, you can still enjoy kissing each other, you can still enjoy orgasms that you have, but the thrill of newness is gone. And if you say, how do we get it back? Is there a way? Yes, there is a way.
Speaker 1:Now I've given you the three schemas. You have your own schema that came from those three things, the way they blend and meld together. Your spouse has a sexual schema based on his or her three things and how they blend and meld together. And when you have contradictory schemas or at least conflicting schemas I want that, you want this, I want this, you want that there can be a lot of sexual problems that occur. You say, can you help us with that?
Speaker 1:Yes, but in this particular video all I wanted to do was to help you understand where it came from. It doesn't mean your spouse is being angry necessarily. It doesn't mean necessarily that your spouse is trying to punish you. It could be. But it doesn't mean that. It could just mean that because of your histories, that's where the incompatibility is coming in and that can be fixed. But hand in hand with that, if you have relationship problems, you'll have to fix those first. You say really Really, because if you can fix the relationship problems, then you can fix the sexual incompatibilities.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're thinking, hey, you kind of did a bait and switch. I thought you were going to tell us how to overcome sexual conflict, I don't have time, not in a 25 to 30 minute video. So what I've done is help you understand where the conflict's coming from. Thank you for coming to Relationship Radio. In the next episode we'll actually be talking more about solutions than how the problem came to be. In the next episode we're going to be talking about what if you have financial disagreements how do you handle those and our CEO, kimberly Beam Holmes, will be with me on that program. Until then, we hope you have a good life and we'll see you next on Relationship Radio.
.png)
.png)
