Guest Post from Sheila Gregoire: Sex and Marriage

Note from Julie Anne: Sheila Gregoire, blogger (To Love, Honor and Vacuum) and speaker and fellow advocate, reached out to me and asked if I would pass this along. I love what she is doing and stand behind it 100%. It’s time to shine the spotlight on destructive teachings – ones that harm marriages sexually. I encourage you to take the survey now taken by over 46,000 people. I did! ~ja

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Guest Post and Request from Sheila Gregoire

On this blog, Julie Anne reveals a lot about the dark underbelly of the Christian church today–the abuse scandals; the power-hungry movements in the homeschooling world; the misogyny that’s all too often at play in various denominations.

She exposes what needs exposing.

I kind of feel like I do that with Christian marriages.

You see, I write a sex & marriage blog, and I’m quite up front about how God made sex to be a mutual thing (not just for the man). And I’m quite open about what that should look like. And because I’m so open, I attract a lot of desperate people. The first thing I do, every morning, is check the comments that came in overnight. And inevitably there are at least two from wives whose husbands are porn addicts; at least one from a woman whose husband is having an affair; a few from men in sexless marriages; several from angry men who think women have wrecked marriage; and then there are those from people with so many issues I’m exhausted just reading them.

It’s depressing, honestly.

And a few months ago I had a revelation. All of these same problems keep cropping up, over and over again. Being a church-going Christian does not keep people from having sex problems in their marriage.

Maybe the problem, instead, is that there isn’t good teaching in the church about how to deal with sexual issues.

I’ll be honest. I have my theories about what’s going on. But there are two problems with that.

First, they’re just theories. I don’t have actual proof.

The second is a little infuriating. I’m a woman. And it’s men who write most of the best-selling marriage and sex books for couples. They’re not likely to listen to my theories.

So I want to make sure they’re not just theories.

Together with two researchers, I’m embarking on what I hope will be the largest survey of Christian women’s marital and sexual satisfaction. We’re looking at marriage and sex from a whole lot of angles (if you’ll excuse the pun) to uncover what makes great sex–and what wrecks women’s sex lives.

We’ll take a long, hard look at the data, and we’ll be able to tease out what creates healthy marriages, and what poisons marriages.

It won’t just be theories. It will be evidence.

To do that, I need you. I can’t do it alone. Joanna, my statistician co-author, is waiting eagerly to do the number crunching. So can you give her some numbers to crunch?

If you’re a woman and you’re married, or you’ve ever been married (divorced, remarried, or widowed is more than welcome!), please fill out our survey.

Take the survey here.

And then, once you’re done, can you share this link (https://www.research.net/r/baremarriagesurvey23) with three of your friends and ask them to take it, too?

I’d so appreciate it! Let’s get to the bottom of this, together.

If you’ve returned here to comment after taking the survey, please refrain from speaking specifically about any questions, so as not to “prime” those who haven’t taken the survey yet. Thank you!

Sheila Wray Gregoire blogs everyday at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, where she tries to get beyond Christian pat answers and help people stop seeing marriage as a to-do list, but instead as a passionate adventure. She’s the author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage.