Sheila, where did the book idea
came from?
A couple of years ago my husband and I
started speaking at marriage conferences. I never thought I’d be known
as the ‘sex lady’, but we loved doing the sex talk — we could lay it all
on the line. And people reacted to that.
All of
this stuff that I assumed everybody knew, most people don’ t know
because there is very little good information out there. I thought,
A woman needs to write a book
from a woman’s perspective on what sex is really like to prepare women
for marriage. It’s about time women heard it from a ‘big
sister’ — that’s what I’m trying to be in this
book.
You’ve
been writing on this topic for some time . . .
I’ve been writing my
To Love, Honor and Vacuum blog since 2008. Some
of the emails I receive are heart breaking and I thought,
Wow, if people are really dealing with
this, then we, the Church, need to start talking about it more openly
and provide some real teaching. There’s this taboo that
we’re not supposed to talk about sex ?I don’t believe that.
Tell me about
your research
I conducted three surveys, which
included several thousand men and women — it was quite eye opening.
What were those
surprises?
When I was a young woman about to get
married I read a bunch of Christian books that talked about the
honeymoon and how to make your wedding night wonderful. They were all
focused on how to have an orgasm. It made me so stressed. I thought,
I don’t want my wedding night to
be something that’s a failed experience. I don’t want all this
pressure. I decided to check into how many women actually
do have a good time on their wedding night and the number was
surprisingly low. Very few people have physically good wedding nights.
But that doesn’t mean that their sex life is doomed.
The women who were virgins who had a horrible time
physically on their wedding night were as likely ten years later to have
a good sex life as those who had a great time.
Your
wedding night makes no difference — we’re putting way too much emphasis
on it.For me, I think if I were a young bride getting married that
would be a big relief to know. So, relax, have fun, get to know each
other with no pressure.
How would you set expectations for a couple on their wedding
night?
I would say to them: Do what you want to
do and don’t plan a whole lot. Don’t worry. Let what happens happen and
remember that you’ve got years to figure this out.
Some women suggest that you don’t do anything that
night because you’re so exhausted and to wait till the morning. But I’m
not sure that’s realistic for a lot of guys. Some people have wonderful
wedding nights from a physical standpoint and some don’t. But
it doesn’t matter. Enjoy being together and the rest will come
together. Every women needs to get that simple
message.
When you’re together for the first time, the
man doesn’t always know what he’s doing, which means it’s not going to
feel very good for her. And if it doesn’t feel good for her, she might
wonder if something’s wrong with her body — which is not the
case.
We need to understand it’s a learning
curve. Instead of measuring sex by each individual encounter,
look at it over the course of a lifetime. It’s going to be getting
better.
The second surprise from my research — and
this one was quite sad — was that about 42% of women reported making
love less than once a week. I thought,
Okay, that’s a problem ; I’m pretty sure that most men would
rather make love more often and that’s when I decided to
survey the men and see what their perspective was. Sure enough, they
agreed. About 42% said they’re making love less than once a week and the
men were very frustrated by this. I think that’s something that women
really don’t understand.
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