Dear Frustr8ed
There are a lot of ways to handle this. You'll need to pray and get peace about whatever choice you choose.
Someone recommended Ahtol Kay's book. Be careful with that stuff. Part of his strategy is exercising, dressing smart and looking attractive. Another part of it is getting attention from other women and letting your wife know you will leave her if she doesn't live up to her end of the marriage bargain. There may be some good things to try. One good strategy I've seen at the site-- not unique to there-- but good nonetheless is if your wife goes ballistic, yells at you, or talks to you with disrespect is to just to disengage. Tell her she can't talk to you unless she talks to you respectfully. No yelling, etc. That's the one good thing I can think of from that philosophy. There may be some other useful things. There are some interesting thoughts there, but you definitely don't want to accept the whole philosophy.
One thing that whole philosophy stresses is that women like men who lead them and kind of give them boundaries on their behavior. They push a little, maybe scolding, nagging, yelling, or asking you to do stuff for them that they think they want you to do. But when you coddle them, they respect you less and are less attracted to you. So if you won't tolerate yelling, nagging, and won't engage or reward the behavior, that's more attractive to them. If you won't go to the store to buy some stuff for them when you are busy and they can do it themselves, they are supposed to be more attractive to you. Kind of like the idea that women don't really want what they say they want. Or they think they want it, but they want a man to lead them. The guy who capitulates to his wife is called 'beta' and the strong leader type is called ''alpha''-- though there is good beta in being a good provider and family man, too. That's the general idea of that philosophy. Be careful with it because the author is an atheist and is not anti-divorce. He recommends using divorce as a kind of threat and motivator to make women shape up and do their part in marriage.
There are different ways to recommend this:
1. Spiritual angle.
- Study the Bible and pray with your wife. Study I Corinthians 7 on fulfilling marital duties to one another. Ask her how she's doing. She might resist discussing it if it's just you, so you can bring in some kind of outside expertise.
There is a survey in the back of His Needs, Her Needs-- secular, but it's got some good stuff in it. The book tells readers that they are to meet each other's sexual needs. You could have her read Dr. Laura's book on the proper care and feeding of husbands to hear the same thing from someone with Dr. in her name who is not a psychologist. I haven't read all of either book, btw, so I can't take responsibility for it.
There is a book The Excellent Wife I thumbed through, which encourages wives to have sex with their husbands whenever they want it. I disagree with the period sex being okay. That's specifically mentioned in scripture, a sin for the Gentiles in the Old Testament-- perhaps included in 'porneia' in Acts 15 in my opinion. But she is down on other sex acts the Bible doesn't condemn, which she describes as homosexual or gay.
The good thing is it does tell wives to have sex. I haven't read the whole book either.
You can read through books on marriage with her taking the angle that you both need to work on your marriage.
Pray with your wife every night. Take devotions seriously. Pray about her fears and the sex issue whenever you pray. Keep it as a topic on the table for discussion all the time.
2. The serious talk.
I wish my wife would give me more sex, but we probably meet the national average these days. We've got little ones.
I think it was after the first child, I gave her a break, of course, to heal up-- but we went with little or no sex for waaaaayyy too long. Six months later we were rarely having sex. I was pursuing. We went from a very active sex life the first year or two to that.
One day, I was talking to her, and I told her the no sex thing had to change. It wasn't right, and I wasn't pleased with it.
3. Hard ball.
If one of your kids isn't doing their responsibility as a child, what do you do? You are head of the house. You probably get firm with the child.
Your wife isn't a child, but she isn't doing her responsibility as a wife. You could take away priviledges.
"If you don't have time to have sex, you don't have time to watch TV/use the computer/IPad, so I sold the TV/computer/IPad while you are out. If you show you can manage your time well enough to meet your obligations as a wife, we can talk about getting the TV/computer/IPad back."
Insist she move back into the bed with you, sell the other bed. Then tell her to sleep on the couch if she won't sleep with you.
The thing is, you don't want to imbitter your wife or tempt her to sin. So keep your thumb on the pulse of her emotions and don't push her so hard that you'll tempt her into some kind of sin if you 'discipline' her in this way. Since it's psychological in her case, some of this stuff might be way too extreme. But here is one last one.
Church discipline. She's embarrassed about her church knowing. Study church discipline in the Bible-- Matthew 18, I Corinthians 5, and various other passages. She's sinning by defrauding you. So tell her if she doesn't shape up, your going to get two or three other witnesses to confront her about her sin. Schedule a meeting with a pastor from your church and his wife. While he's about to coming to the room, tell her you are going to go through the Matthew 18 process and they will be another witness to it. Then have a counseling session. Be sure to mention how you expect them to take obeying Christ's command to 'bring it before the church' seriously if your wife does not repent.
That may seem extreme, but these are the 'hardball' suggestions after all. Maybe these thoughts will get your ideas going. You may have to take more drastic measures than you are now, but use the least amount of pressure necessary to get satisfactory results.
It's possible your wife is kind of depressed. You could look up supplements to help for that, and get her to exercise. Go jogging or swimming with her. That might help with depression or other emotional problems.
If you can find some research that shows that sex is good for the heart, you may be able to get her to have sex for medical reasons, too.
What she is doing is wrong. She is wronging you. She's opening you up for more temptation. She's hurting your marriage by depriving both of you of the physical intimacy that comes from sex together. It's not good for you. It's not good for her whether she realizes it or not. Sinning against the Lord is not good for you either.
