Instead of being prudish and sexually inhibited, the Bible plainly teaches nine stages that a person’s sexual development and awakening goes through. A lack of respect for these stages often results in inhibited sexual desire and pleasure.
Indeed, "sexless marriages" is the #1 marriage problem googled with women making only slightly less than 50% of the inquires.
The first five stages are our parents’ responsibility toward us with the three most important ones occurring before sex education in the schools ever begins. The remaining four growth stages are our personal responsibility regardless of whether we grew up in a loving or a dysfunctional home:
Parental Responsibility for the Child’s Sexual Development
- Gestation
- Infancy
- Childhood
- Adolescence
Overlapping Parental and Personal Responsibility
- Courtship
Personal Responsibility for Sexual Growth
- Honeymoon Year
- Middle Years
- Senior Years
- Divorce to Protect the Next Generation
Sadly, we fail during nearly every one of these stages to teach our children and to learn for ourselves about God’s marvelous design for sharing love in our home. Notice the Bible’s teaching:
God Uses the First Three Stages to Describe His Love
In Isaiah 66:7-13, God uses the portrait of a mother experiencing an easy delivery and then nursing, carrying her child on her hip, and fondling the child on her knee to illustrate his own love for the Israelites.
Science now knows that sexual activity during pregnancy floods both the mother and her unborn child with hormones of love. Many mothers-to-be who have never enjoyed an orgasm do so during pregnancy due to surging hormonal feelings of love for their unborn child and its father.
Additionally, pregnant sex exercises and strengthens the woman’s pelvic floor and muscles, which helped the Israelite woman give birth “before she travailed” (verse 7). Indeed, Jewish women were known for their easy births.
From conception, throughout the pregnancy and the birth process, and then when nursing; both the mother and her baby are bathed in God’s special hormones of love and tranquility. For more information, listen to Oscar Miles and I discuss these verses in Isaiah:
- “Hormones of Pregnancy—Why women need great sex to be wonderful mothers”
- “Hormones of Nursing—Why women need great sex to be wonderful nursing mothers.”
The Song of Solomon Is a Parental Guide for Sex Education
God designed that the first five stages be taught in the home by the parents. This is the overriding theme of the Song of Solomon. Her mother’s words and example enabled the 13-year-old Shulammite heroine to see through King Solomon’s infatuation with virgin breasts and his inability to bond with any woman.
Through parental sex education and example, the maiden escaped a disastrous unloving marriage to an emotionally and sexually defective man. She said both she and her Shepherd boyfriend began learning about love and preparing for a wonderful marriage as babies sucking their mother’s breasts:
Song of Solomon 8:1:
“Oh that you were like a brother to me
Who nursed at my mother’s breasts.”
She credited her mother with teaching her verbally about sexual love and preparing her for marriage. Because of her mother’s teaching and example, she looked forward to married lovemaking:
Song of Solomon 8:2-3:
“I would lead you and bring you
Into the house of my mother, who used to instruct me;
I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of my pomegranates.
‘Let his left hand be under my head
And his right hand embrace me.’”
She repeated the theme a third time to the palace maidens. She begged them to learn the lesson her mother taught her—not to force love, but to allow a true intellectual and emotional bond to develop between her and the king before marrying:
Song of Solomon 8:4:
“I want you to swear, O daughters of Jerusalem,
Do not arouse or awaken my love
Until she pleases.”
The Song of Solomon climaxes by applying the theme to the parents of future generations of children—to you and me. At the wedding, the maiden’s brothers asked how to protect their baby sister from falling in love with a dysfunctional male:
Song of Solomon 8:8:
“We have a little sister,
And she has no breasts;
What shall we do for our sister
On the day when she is spoken for?"
You can learn more about what God wants parents to teach and exemplify for their children in the climax of The Song of Solomon Love Triangle: God’s Soulmating and Lovemaking Guide for a Lifetime of Passionate Sex. You can read the first four chapters free here. It contains Solomon’s Siren Song (to answer speculative questions such as how Solomon might have dealt with losing the girl) and Stacey’s Story—[How One Wife Overcame] A Sexless Marriage.
God Wants Us to Become Better Lovers Throughout the Three Married Stages
At every stage of life from conception to death, God instructs us to be continually learning how to better love our mate intellectually, emotionally, and sexually. Notice the responsibilities God gives us when we marry:
God addresses honeymooners in Deuteronomy 24:5. He commanded bridegrooms to stay home for a year making love to their bride, being playful, experimentive, and joyful. A year of frequent passionate lovemaking strengthens a couple's emotional and physical intimacy to protect them from the normal trials of life.
God rewards mid-lifers and helps them relieve the stress of working so hard to make a living by rejoicing in each other’s arms:
Ecclesiastes 9:9: “Enjoy life with the woman whom you love [literally sexually or otherwise] all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life, and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.”
God reserves the best sex for older couples:
Proverbs 5:18-19:
“Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice in the wife of your youth.
As a loving hind and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
Be exhilarated always with her love.”
What’s the difference between honeymoon and midlife sex with lovemaking in the golden years?
Young adults are first aroused and then they make love.
Older couples start the process and then they’re aroused to the most tender, emotional sex of their life.
God Designed Divorce to Protect Future Generations From Love-Defective Parents
If we don’t understand how important the hormones of love and sex are in God’s lifetime design for husbands and wives and their children, then we’re going to have a simplistic view of divorce that ignores God’s creative sexual genius.
In a nutshell, scriptural divorce is about too much sex with others (adultery) or with one’s self (masturbation and sexual addiction) or too little sex with one’s mate (passionless bedrooms).
The first five stages of sex education demonstrate that God wants children to grow up with parents who passionately love each other. God the Father set the example for his earthly children to love each other and their own children.
Two verses about divorce expose the harm done to children by unloving parents:
- Malachi 2:3: “Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it.”
Why?
Verse 14: “Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.”
- 1 Corinthians 7:14-15: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves [divorces], let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.”
God's teaching on divorce provides powerful incentive for sexless partners to overcome their lack of proper sex education in their home of origin so that they can learn how to fully love their mate and children.
For more information, read my article "Your Marriage Vows Imply the Right to Divorce a Sexless Spouse" and listen to Bonnie Kaye's interviews of me on “Divorce in Sexless Marriages.”
This article is adapted from my ebook Everyone Is an Adult Child: God Doesn't Tell Children to Love Their Parents, God Tells Children to Leave Their Parents. You can get this eBook free when you participate in the Sexless Marriages & Without Natural Affection Self-Assessment Survey.
Patsy Rae Dawson is a Christian sexless marriages and joyless bedrooms coach and consultant. Learn more about the nine stages of sexual awakening and the secret of the vaginal orgasm from her book The Song of Solomon Love Triangle: God’s Soulmating and Lovemaking Guide for a Lifetime of Passionate Sex. Are you in a sexless marriage? Take Patsy’s free Sexless Marriages & Without Natural Affection Self-Assessment Survey. Six checklists explore surprising core issues to help you start solving the real problems.