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Why You’re Not Having Great Married Sex and What You Can Do About It

Dr. Mike was a guest on the Relationship Prescriptions Podcast with Dr. Carol Tanksley. Dr. Carol is a licensed OB-Gyn physician and has an earned Doctor of Ministry. Today, she is an author, speaker, personal coach, and hosts a popular blog and podcast.

Dr. Carol interviewed Dr. Mike about the release of Secrets of Sex and Marriage. They talked about the book, research from the Marriage Intimacy Project, and some of Dr. Mike’s favorite topics from the book, including sexual vision and differences in sexual desire in marriage.

 

 

You can listen to the podcast on her website or most podcast hosts including:

 

 

You can also view this podcast recording on Dr. Carol’s YouTube Channel:

The episode from 2/7/2023 is titled: Why You’re Not Having Great Married Sex and What You Can Do About It

Program Excerpts:

 

Dr. Carol

Why doesn’t my spouse want more sex? I’m Dr. Carol, and this is relationship prescriptions. That is the single most frequent question for which people come to our website at Dr. Carroll ministries. But perhaps a more important question is, how can we get on the same page sexually?

To help me unpack a lot of this data and information and encouragement of a very special guest Dr. Michael Sytsma.

Dr. Sytsma

Well, first, it is most common in husbands. But what our research showed is for about one in four couples, the wife is feeling that. And so, I don’t ever want to leave out, that’s a lot of wives that come into my office and say he just doesn’t like my body anymore. And he looks over and he says, “Yeah, I actually do.” That’s not it. They have a mismatch in desire. What I tell them is, you know, there are several things that we’ve learned. First off, they’re probably not as far apart as they think they are. And that’s one of the things we point out in the book

 

Dr. Carol

I can imagine that this mutuality that you’re describing, can get skewed on either side. And you kind of alluded to this. But for a man who says, you know, give me sex when I want it, because I need it. He is truly missing the whole experience. And for a woman who complains and beggs her husband if he’s not responding, or more statistically common. Well, I in no, I’m not giving you my body, neither- nobody is getting what they want. How do you help couples get to more of this mutual experience that truly benefits them both?

 

Dr. Mike

Well, I think it starts with having a good vision in mind. What do we want our sex life to look like? And how do we accept each other’s influence to create a rich vision. You know if he says,… if he’s the higher desire person, and he says, “Well, I want to have sex three, four times a week.” And she says, “I don’t know that I can do that and feel really connected to you. But we could do one to two times a week.” And and they wrestle with it until they create a vision that they both can be on board with. The moment either of them starts demanding their own way. Well, that’s totally counter to Scripture. That is not what any of scripture says is going to work.  …