Rewriting Your Rulebook for Sex - The Family Podcast

Every couple brings a sexual “rulebook” into marriage, but true intimacy begins when you rewrite it together—with honesty, emotional connection, and God’s truth.

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The PursueGOD Family podcast helps you think biblically about marriage and parenting. Join Bryan and Tracy Dwyer on Wednesday mornings for new topics every week or two.

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Every couple enters marriage with a “rulebook” for sex—unspoken expectations shaped by personal history, past relationships, and family dynamics. To build a healthy sex life, you have to open that rulebook together and start rewriting it in light of God’s truth.

A great place to begin is by sharing your stories. How did your parents express love—were they affectionate or emotionally distant? What past experiences have shaped your views on sex, for better or worse? Shame, pain, or unrealistic expectations from your past can quietly impact your present. Be honest with your spouse—healing starts with vulnerability.

Your body image also plays a big role in how comfortable you feel in the bedroom. Be willing to talk about it. When couples are emotionally connected, they’re far more likely to experience intimacy on every level.

Remember, sex isn’t just physical—it’s deeply relational, emotional, and spiritual. That’s why the best way to improve your sex life might begin outside the bedroom. Learn each other’s love language. Serve one another. As trust and connection grow, so will your intimacy.

Proverbs 5:19 She is a loving deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love.

1 Corinthians 7:3-5 says, “The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 

Another word for deprive is defraud. Which means to cheat them.

John Piper ‘The practical application of 1 Corinthians 7:3–5 is not resolved by logic or taking turns or male dominance or female submission. It is resolved in the mystery of love that discovers even here, when our physical pleasure is more prominent than anywhere else, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). There is a holy and humble and self-sacrificing competition to make the other maximally glad. The logical stalemate is broken by the miracle of grace: With God all things are possible.”