Should couples role play in the bedroom?

From the first year of this podcast, we decided to tackle mature topics and uncomfortable questions. No apologies. If you feel comfortable asking, we'll address it. It goes without saying that today's question is a mature question for married couples. The question comes from men and women. Here are three representative emails that I have selected.

The first, from an anonymous wife: “Pastor John, I have a question. It's embarrassing. But here it is. My husband likes to use bedroom role play and various levels of bondage and domination. He wants me to say things like “I am your slave”. He wants me to wear certain necklaces around my neck. To the extreme, he likes to fantasize that he rapes me. But he is a very nice person outside the room. He just asks me if he can carry out the fantasy in bed. What should I do?".

The second, another anonymous wife writes: “Dear Pastor John, thanks for the podcast. I have been married for twenty years. Before we got married, my husband told me that he had a problem with pornography. After we got married, he asked me to try some of the things he had seen in the movies. I accepted. Our premarital counselor told us that all was well in the marriage bed with mutual consent, and I wanted to please my husband. But this has had a detrimental effect on our marriage. Now I'm to the point where I don't want any physical intimacy and he doesn't feel loved. Was it okay for us to do those things, since we agreed to it at the time? I think dominance in the bedroom is completely unbiblical. My husband still thinks it's okay if there's mutual consent."

The third and last one is the question that also comes from a husband: “Pastor John, my wife recently told me that she was unfaithful to me and that she has not had an emotional connection with me in sex or in general since we got married three years ago. . She wants to engage in dominant sexual acts that I see as sinful. She thinks I'm too boring in bed. She now she wants to leave me so that I can find a new wife and so that she can have sexual experiences with other men. How do I respond? Pastor John, how would you respond in this case?

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Here are five perspectives on sexuality that I hope will help guide couples if they are willing to seriously seek God's will for their sex lives. I promise you that God's will for your sex lives is the most fulfilling way of life.

God's will for your sex lives is the most satisfying way of life

fantasized sin

First, fantasizing about sin it is sineither. Acting out a sinful situation or behavior in your mind for his pleasure—a sinful situation or sinful behavior if you did it outwardly—is sin in your mind. If this is true of fantasies, then it is even more true that pretending to sin is sin. To pretend to do something that, if you did it when you are not pretending, is a sin, that pretense is a sin. I say this because of Matthew 5:27-29.

In other words, Jesus' standard of holiness is not merely a standard of bodily deeds, but also of mental delights. If you seek a pleasure in your mind that is illicit for your body, you are sinning. What is sin? Think about it. Sin is the preference of the heart for anything over God and the ways of him. Sin is not primarily the movement of the muscles or the body. It is first and foremost the movement of the soul, the movement in search of pleasure in a way that God has forbidden. It is the failure to seek pleasure in God Himself above all else.

Sin is the preference of the heart for anything over God and His ways.

So it was either an exaggeration or a mistake (I'm not sure which the counselor would admit) when the premarital counselor said that anything mutually agreed upon in the marriage bed is permissible.

• If you mutually agree to act out rape, it is sin.
• If they agree to pretend to have sex in a public square with a thousand people watching, it's a sin.
• If they agree to pretend that they are two strangers who happen to meet in the woods and have sex, they are sinning.

the fantasized sin it is sin, no matter how many people agree on it. The acted sin it is sin.

sex for self interest

Second, demanding or coercing unnatural and bizarre sexual acts when they displease the partner is a sin.

• The scripture says, "With honor, giving preference to one another" (Rom 12:10).
• Do nothing out of selfishness or vainglory, but humbly each of you consider the other [incluyendo a tu cónyuge] as more important than himself” (Phil 2:3).
• “You do not belong to yourselves, because you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:19-20).

the fantasized sin it is sin, no matter how many people agree on it. The acted sin it is sin

All this leads us to the conclusion that in the marriage bed, the desires, pleasures, disapprovals and dislikes of the other person are as important as ours, even more so. Pushing for one's own bodily satisfaction at the expense of one's spouse's displeasure is:

• a failure to honor the other
• a failure to regard the other as more important
• a failure to glorify God with your body
• a failure to show that you do not belong to yourself, but were bought with a price, now you belong to Jesus.

If you need more kinky sex—more weird and unconventional sexual acts at the expense of your spouse's enjoyment—you're elevating your appetite above her delights. That is not the way of Christ.

The folly of the forbidden

Third, if you pursue an imagined sexual act or sexual situation because it is more stimulating, scintillating, or pleasurable because it is forbidden, then you are living the path of the foolish and embodying the principle of bondage. "The lack of understanding [el necio] It says: “Stolen water is sweet”” (Proverbs 9:16-17). If you seek the forbidden water because its prohibition makes it sweeter, you are a fool.

Paul referred to the principle this way:

In other words, when you see that a child has no interest in a toy until it is forbidden, you are observing the bondage of a sinful nature.

If you seek the forbidden water because its prohibition makes it sweeter, you are a fool

Therefore, in the marriage bed, to the extent that you seek some act as more pleasurable because it is illicit, you are in the bondage of a fool to a sinful impulse.

messy wishes

Fourth, if sexual desire has become so prominent in the way you seek satisfaction in life that you have to push the limits of sexual conventions to be a happy and fulfilled person, your God and your purpose for living they have become too small. Bodily appetites become gods when God diminishes. The sexual urges become too great when we lose the great purposes for our lives.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "Beholding the glory"; that is an infinitely beautiful thing that he just mentioned. "Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory." In other words, we need a big, beautiful, glorious, transcendent, and majestic vision of God and his purpose for our lives if we want sex to remain in his nice little place.

love where it matters

Finally, I would especially like to say to men that if they hope to have an exciting, joyous, and mutually satisfying sexual relationship with their wife for the next fifty years, they will not achieve it at all by demanding or expecting ever more bizarre feats. On the contrary, you will achieve it by dedicating 99% of your effort to loving your woman well outside the bedroom, so that she finds in you someone she really wants.

I do not promise paradise. There is too much brokenness in the world. But I do promise you that you will not find fifty years of mutual pleasure in the way of perverted performance.

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Originally posted on Desiring God. Translated by Team Coalition.