by Patsy Rae Dawson ~
If you're trying to survive in a sexless marriage, chances are you are living with someone "without natural affection."
Passionless marriages are not just a problem with dead bedrooms. A lack-luster-sex life is only the most obvious symptom of 24/7 character and love sins.
Yes, withholding emotional and sexual love usually involves MANY SINS. These character faults frequently develop and grow together. They cluster around the core issue of being "without natural affection" as found in 2 Timothy 3:1-5, which lists 19 clustered-love sins.
The FREE Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey. help you recognize the core problems in your sexless marriage so you can deal with the real issues.
6 groundbreaking checklists help you analyze your sexless marriage
Six groundbreaking checklists guide you through the 19 clustered love-sins found in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 and other scriptures relating to sexless marriages. These intensely personal simple questions help you analyze the true state of your relationship so you can work on the core issues and make healthy, loving decisions.
You'll receive 3 FREE reports over the course of completing the checklists to help you begin the journey of healing your crushed masculine or feminine spirit. You'll better understand why you got into a loveless relationship in the first place. And you'll receive action steps to help you begin correcting the situation.
The 6 checklists are based on 4 major scriptures
- Jude 22-23 teaches the 3 levels of increasing sexual sin in sexless marriages. They include Level 1: The "Doubting" Spouse, Level 2: The "Fire-Flirting" Spouse, and Level 3: The Morally "Polluted" Spouse.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 warns against Level 1 sexual naivety. God commands everyone to learn how to enjoy lovemaking. He is the avenger in these matters because he takes sexless marriages personally.
- 2 Timothy 3:1-5 details 19 sins commonly found in sexless marriages in escalating order. Three checklists explore this list according to the 3 levels surrounding being without natural affection.
- Exodus 34:6-7 reveals that God "visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the 3rd and 4th generations." The checklists look at your 4 generations: (1) families of origin, (2) marriage, (3) children, and (4) grandchildren.
You'll learn how these verses apply to your sexless marriage as you work through the 6 checklists. The personal questions help you apply these scriptures directly to your companion and yourself. One respondent said:
The 6 checklists help you analyze your marriage
- Are You or Your Companion Without Natural Affection?
The sin of being without natural affection is present in nearly every sexless marriage, but most Christians don't understand what it is. - Are Narcissism & Codependency in Your Homes of Origin?
Examining the childhood homes can help bring healing to sexless marriages. - Are You or Your Companion a Type 1 Sexually Naive Sexless Spouse?
All sexless marriages involve a degree of ignorance about God's plan for sexual love. - Are You or Your Companion a Type 2 Fire-Flirting Sexless Spouse?
Over time, the sexless spouse often starts to add specific sins to his or her sexual ignorance. - Are You or Your Companion a Type 3 Morally Polluted Sexless Spouse?
The older the marriage, the more likely the sexless spouse is progressing into deeper addictive sin, toward hatred of the loving mate. - Is Your Sexless Marriage Harming Your Children & Grandchildren?
Don't pass on to your children the inability to truly love their mate and your grandchildren.
You'll be surprised at how one unloving person without natural affection damages many lives over four generations or more. The harm continues until one person stands up and says, "It stops here." Use the self-assessment checklists now to open your eyes to the sin in your home so you can deal with the core issues intelligently and lovingly.
Click NOW to start analyzing your marriage with the FREE Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey.
3 FREE reports help you start your healing journey
FREE 42-page report: Everyone Is an Adult Child: God Doesn’t Tell Children to Love Their Parents—God Tells Children to Leave Their Parents. When you finish Checklist 3 you'll be given the password to pick up this report.
In this report you'll find:
- Three responsibilities God gives parents in raising their children
- Three attitudes God expects children to have toward their parents
- Three blessings God bestows on children who grow up in unloving homes
- Three ways God teaches for reclaiming your life and moving on
Over the years I've shared this report many times to help Christians unload childish problem-solving techniques they've saved from their childhood. Other times they wanted to know what their attitude should be toward an overbearing parent or in-law. Sometimes they asked if they were sinning because they felt relief instead of grief when an abusive parent or in-law died.
FREE 21-page report: Which Describes You? Codependent Enabler, Narcissistic Abuser, or Passionate Lover. When you finish Checklist 5, you'll receive the password to pick up this free report.
Codependent enabling and narcissistic abuse are opposite extremes of a low self-image and the inability to love one’s self or others. They are spectrum disorders of varying degrees like high blood pressure:
- They range from mild, to moderate, to severe, to life threatening.
- Untreated, they will get worse.
- The extreme end of narcissism is becoming a sociopath or psychopath. This can happen at a very young age.
Codependents and narcissists share many characteristics, but they usually manifest them differently. They possess other traits which are exact opposites. The following chart makes the similarities and differences easy to recognize.
On a piece of paper score and tally the below columns for yourself, spouse or steady date, mother, father, siblings, and children as appropriate. Expect to get a different score for your relationship with each of these people. Score your behavior for these relationships as it is now.
End of sample. Get the complete 2-page chart when you finish Checklist 5. Respondents who've accessed this chart state that it has shaken them up in regard to their own codependent behavior. Overcoming codependency with a companion without natural affection is a major first step in correcting the situation.
FREE 35-page report: Analyze Your Answers to the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey. When you finish Checklist 6, you'll receive the password to this report.
Based on your assessment if you're in a Type 1, 2, or 3 sexless relationship, you'll find an action plan for dealing with your sexless relationship. No matter what type of relationship you're in, you'll start with learning how to fight fair so that your discussions are productive. The report gives you guidelines for how you might overcome clustered love sins as applies to the 3 different levels of sexless marriages.
Sexual sin always grows. It never stagnates.
The earlier you learn the true nature of what you are dealing with, the better chance you have of enjoying a positive outcome. Of the long term marriages married 25-40 years, about 90% of respondents checked items indicating their companion is a Type 3—Morally Polluted, Hate Filled Sexless Spouse.
The longer respondents were married, the more items they checked for a Type 3 spouse. The level of pain the marriage caused the loving mate accelerated at the same rate as the growth of sin. Where is your pain level right now?
Previous answers to the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey reveal that most people don't realize what all is involved in being without natural affection. Thus, the checklists begin with the primary issue of being without natural affection. Then it expands to deal specifically with the four generations that are directly affected by unloving, sexless homes.
Click NOW to begin the FREE Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey to learn how to stop the misery in your home.
Time to Complete
The checklists consists of 6 separate lists. Each checklist will take 20-30 minutes depending on how much time you spend on the written questions. You do not have to complete it all in one session.
What respondents say
The last question in the checklists is: "What would you say to participants who are discouraged by the length of these checklists?" Here's a few answers in their own words:
Click NOW to begin the FREE Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey. You'll be glad you did like 90% of the respondents were.
Privacy Statement
All answers are completely anonymous as your name and email are not collected.
No identifying information is collected unless you've asked me for help and I've asked you to work through the checklists so we can get to your core problems quicker. Even then, you will enter a code word or phrase of your choice that I will not know who it belongs to until you tell me.
The checklists are not about collecting case studies. It uses Google Forms to project data summaries for identifying trends, averaging results, and projecting outcomes when sins in the home are not dealt with.
Click NOW to begin the FREE Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey so you can recognize more of the red flags.
Don’t Make the Same Mistakes I Did
In 1964, as an 18-year-old bride, I was eager for all that marriage promises. Almost immediately, I found myself in a sexless marriage.
Not knowing any better, I accepted the blame my husband heaped upon me. I was too embarrassed and ashamed to ask for help. I worked hard to be a better wife and earn his love.
I read Dr. Marie N. Robinson’s book The Power of Sexual Surrender and learned how to enjoy multiple orgasms easily. This had zero effect on my marriage, except I enjoyed sex more than ever.
I did not suffer silently, but challenged his lack of sexual interest frequently. But all the while, I focused on the wrong issues—our dead bedroom and his home of origin. The thought that character faults and sins could be at the core of our marriage problem NEVER entered my mind.
One of the worst ways I deceived myself was to say, “My spouse is perfect except for sex.” Because I believed that lie, I didn’t recognize the red flags of secret sin. And I falsely assumed that because he wasn’t interested in sex with me that he was adultery proof.
About 10 years into the marriage, I gave up on my husband ever becoming loving. I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to do about it.
I considered, Do I want to have an affair? I ruled that out because, If I’m enjoying sex with someone, I don’t want to sneak around. I want to live with him as my husband.
I then thought about divorce. I asked myself, What kind of man am I attracted to? At the time, I had only one word—perfectionist.
But I’m married to a perfectionist. I might as well stay where I am and figure out how to live with a hard-to-please man. I’ll just have the same problems with the next husband. I mistakenly thought that perfectionism was the reason we had a dead bedroom.
I truly loved my husband and enjoyed the life we had together so deciding to stay was easy, although very lonely.
I tried to do what the Apostle Paul did and learn to be content in the situation I found myself. I thought I was just dealing with hang-ups. However, Paul never intended for us to learn to be content in an environment of sin.
The problem was, I failed to recognize the sin in my home. I didn’t know anything about “being without natural affection.” I mistakenly thought it applied only to homosexuals. Although I knew and taught about the 3 levels of sin, it NEVER occurred to me to apply them to the sin of withholding sexual love.
It took two books to wake me up and to stop accepting my husband’s blame for his sins against me:
- Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery & Desertion by Barbara Roberts. Barbara educated me that “without natural affection” refers to “without love for family members,” and opened up a whole new area of study (29). It is not a homosexual word at all!
- Intimacy Anorexia by Dr. Douglas Weiss. Dr. Weiss exposed the addiction of withholding emotional and sexual love while deliberately inflicting pain. He lists 10 characteristics of being without natural affection. The Bible expands his list to 19 sexless-marriages sins in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 that the checklists are based on.
Could my marriage have been saved if I’d known this material earlier? I’ll never know. The Apostle Paul says:
1 Corinthians 7:16: “For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?”
I do know that if I’d had the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey, I would have been fighting the right spiritual battles with my husband. A lack of sexual frequency is not the only problem. It’s just the most obvious symptom of 24/7 character sins…and secrecy.
If I'd had just the first checklist on being without natural affection, my eyes would have opened. I would have been headed in the right direction to resolve our issues.
For the most part, as Christians we’re as Jesus described:
Luke 16:8: “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” (NIV)
We don’t have much in the way of street smarts about secret sexual sins. That has certainly been true in my case. I spent 46 years in a loveless, sexless marriage because I treated it like a Level 1 sexless marriage—ignorance on my husband’s part of God’s wonderful sexual teaching. I didn’t know about Levels 2 and 3 and how sexual neglect gets worse. I didn’t know about the daytime clustered love sins that surround dead bedrooms.
Don't make the same mistakes I did by trying to solve the wrong problems and not knowing about being without natural affection or the 3 levels of sexless marriages.
Click NOW to begin the FREE Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey to help you discover what it means to be without natural affection.
We Should Make Judgments Based on Conduct Instead of Words
The Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey are all about conduct. You’re dealing with a sinner who has learned how to manipulate and blame you. Dr. Douglas Weiss says in Intimacy Anorexia don’t believe anything they say—believe what they do. Jesus says:
Matthew 7:16: “By their fruit [actions] you will recognize them.”
It’s easy to think, “That’s just the way he is” or “That’s just the way she was raised.” Or the most deadly way we deceive ourselves, “My spouse is perfect except for sex.”
Sin never stagnates. It always grows. It gets so bad in the retirement years that it devastates everyone it touches.
My Greatest Regret Is the Damage Done to My Children
Because of my naivety about sexual sin and how it grows, I failed to protect my children. Children are easily damaged when one parent doesn’t know how to love the mate intellectually, emotionally, and sexually. As adults, we can choose to ignore our feelings, compromise, and stay.
But our children are powerless and stuck with immature abilities to deal with their parents’ shortcomings. They bear the scars for a lifetime. Children as young as two are beginning to imitate their parents’ narcissistic or codependent behavior. We often don't know until it's too late with our children that we’ve compromised with our spouse's sin and character faults.
Forgiving myself for not recognizing the need or knowing how to protect my children has been the hardest ordeal I've had to face in my whole life. Consequently, I'm driven to warn parents about the harm done by a mother or father who doesn’t know how to love the other parent…or their children.
Here are some ways both you and your children may be masking in order to survive an unloving home environment:
No Apologies--But I’m Making It Easier
The Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey is comprehensive. I make no apologies for that. The general characteristics of the 19 clustered love sins as revealed in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 are universal among sexless spouses. But the application of the general sins is as unique as our spouse’s life experiences and home of origin. For that reason, the checklists give assorted examples of the sins to trigger your thinking and spawn some ah-ha moments.
- Thus, I broke up the checklists into 6 parts to make it easier for you to assess your relationship and the effect on you and your children.
- Each part takes about 20-40 minutes depending on how much time you spend with the few written questions.
Click NOW to begin the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey so you can start making healthy choices for yourself and your children.
What People Say About the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey
| These checklists are a form of therapy itself. It takes time but each questionnaire is important.
I stayed up till 12:15am this morning to finish your checklists. It was long because my answers were long. I enjoyed the lesson and how it was presented. I had to read a couple parts a couple times to understand who I was remarking on. Once I looked at the choices though, it was pretty self explanatory. I hate that no one took the time or cared enough about my husband and me at 19 years old to teach us God's plan for marriage before we married. What neglect from Christians to let us walk into marriage so lightly! I'm angry about that! Great way to present! I'm worried what my children will live like seeing me live like this. I learned that I know about sex intellectually, but have trouble accepting some truths. |
It's VERY clarifying. Worth the effort. I learned that a biblical marriage is supposed to include sex. "Without natural affection" includes more than I thought it did.
So sad that my children have been affected by generations of abuse both from my family of non-Christians, as well as his family of Christians, and then the abuse from their father in being an adulterous man while claiming to be a Christian teacher, preacher, godly, and all that time he was a worldly man when away from home.
I wish I would've known how to protect my children more, but they don't blame me. They appreciate the good that I taught them.
There are a lot of deep issues out there! I am blessed!
I learned that my sex education was terribly lacking, and I only had knowledge of the physical side.
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Thank you in advance for your participation in the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey. Your anonymous answers will expand and improve my teaching on sexless marriages, which I will share with you in the Embarrass the Alligator Newsletter and articles on this website. Together we can grow and become more effective in our personal lives and in our efforts to teach others.
Click NOW to begin the Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey so you can do Checklist 1 and see if your sexless mate is without natural love for family.
We live in the real world where everyone has to make his or her own choice if they are going to be loving or without natural affection (2 Timothy 3:1-5). We can only make that choice for ourselves and attempt to hold others accountable for their own choices.
May God forgive us all for our naivety and gullibility in the past. And may he bring us into his marvelous light and love that we might be bright beacons for those in the world who desperately search the Internet for answers to the #1 marriage problem--sexless marriages and dead bedrooms.
To God be the glory forever and ever as we celebrate his love for us and our children.
Always in his service,
Patsy
Patsy Rae Dawson
P.S. Please share this information about the checklists with your family, friends, and spiritual leaders so they can benefit from the eye-opening experience of participating in this Sexless Marriages Self-Assessment Survey. The questionnaire covers Narcissism in Your Family of Origin, Naivety and Clustered Love Sins in Your Marriage, Enabling and Narcissism in Your Children. and Potential Harm to Your Grandchildren from Sexless Marriages.
Patsy Rae Dawson is a Sexuality and Personality Breakthrough Coach. She's been teaching women how to enjoy vaginal orgasms since 1973. She works with clients who have tried almost everything to save their sexless marriage without much success. Patsy helps clients get to the core issues in their sexless marriage so they can make healthy decisions for themselves and their children.