Carry the Torch

Back in the day, if you said he's carrying the torch for her, you meant "he's in love with her". It's a brief beautiful way to say, "there's a flame in my heart burning for that special someone."

Well it came to me yesterday, that passion and desire is a flame we carry inside our hearts. And if we live long enough, and are married long enough, we will experience a difference in the level of our sexual desire and the sexual desire of our spouse. Not so much whether or not they desire us as a person.

I mean that everyone's libido goes through ups and downs depending on lots of factors including:

• their hormonal health (thyroid, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, dopamine, serotonin)
  
• the amount of stress in their life
• the amount of cardio exercise in their life
• the amount of strength training in their life
• how much they work out (working out at intense levels over a several months can cause some women to stop ovulating)
• their emotions and attitudes about themselves
• their emotions and attitudes about their sexuality
• their emotions and attitudes about their spouse
  
• their emotions and attitudes about their spouses' sexuality
• how often they cultivate their eroticism by reading sexy poetry, daydreaming about past lovely memories of lovemaking, etc.
• how often they experience and notice nonerotic pleasure
• how well they know their own body's capacity for pleasure and know how to experience that alone or with their spouse
  

Lots of factors play into libido. And these are just the ones that came to mind today! There are probably more. Y'all speak up if you can think of any more factors that influence a person's level of libido. Oh yeah! Like medications! Some medications have a documented side effect of reducing the sex drive.

So back to the torch idea. Torches flicker. The flames dance and move and change.
So does desire.

And it hit me yesterday, that one of the ways we can carry the torch for our spouse is to cultivate our own desire, the flame inside of us. Even if our spouse's torch flickers and wanes. Especially then.

What does this look like?
I'll give you a possible scenario.

Say a husband goes through a verrry stressful period in his work. Maybe he's a CPA and it's tax season. Maybe he's a doctor and he's on call a lot. Maybe he's a lawyer and he's studying for the bar exam or he's got a case that's gone to trial and he's working 16 hour days. Maybe he was the innocent victim of a round of layoffs at work and he lost his job. Whatever it may be, he's under a lot of stress. And depending on his own body and personality, it may be that his desire for sex is temporarily decreased. This has happened to Delighted Husband before.

And it occured to me yesterday that if these times of lower drive come into his life again, I can carry the torch for him. I can carry the torch of desire FOR him. I can keep the flame of love and desire from going out in my marriage my keeping my own pilot light lit.

Sometimes there's a fine line between partnership and codpendence. Our own skin is a boundary that says what's inside this skin is me and what's outside this skin is not me. We each have to own our sexuality. It's part of our self. However, when you get married there's this beautiful partnership. We take on the role of steward over not only our own sexuality but also for our spouse's sexuality. It's my pleasure and responsibility and delight to meet Delighted Husband's sexual needs. It's his pleasure and responsibility and delight to meet mine. But when one of us has our libido flicker or wane because of one of the factors mentioned before, we have to keep our own sexuality alive in healthy ways. We have to carry the torch. Keep the home fires burning so we have hot coals ready to reignite the fire in our spouse.

If you live long enough and are married long enough, you will each have a turn at being the spouse with the higher libido. Delighted Husband has certainly had his turn as the higher drive spouse. So have I. Keep your own heart alive. Invite your spouse to rejoin the party.

As I write, I am thinking of my friends who have shared their stories with me. Husbands and wives whose hearts are filled with sorrow and pain because their spouse has rejected them sexually on a long term basis. My love for my friends and my awareness of the reality of their pain makes me afraid to say anything on the topic for fear that the positive tone of my post will come across as glib or dismissive. I don't want to disrespect anyone or their pain.

I will say this. When my beloved was going through a tremendous time of stress from crushing external circumstances that caused his libido to flicker and wane, keeping my own pilot light lit by rehearsing sweet memories in my mind, remaining aware of my own pleasure, pursuing my husband and seductively drawing him back into the warm erotic playground of our bond is one of the most godly things I have ever done.

Wise words from a wise woman

My friend Vanna over at TMB had something beautiful and profound to say about women's sexuality. I'm in awe and my heart immediately gave a shout of joy as I read her words.

Vanna wrote:

Most women haven't been exposed to the idea and fact that sex was designed by God as a gift for THEM- their pleasure, their satisfaction, their release, their relaxation, their freedom... Sex is their right, not just an offering they have to make to the altar of marriage to keep a husband.

Vanna wrote:

A husband can't do it for his wife, encouragement is nice but until she has that "AHA!" paradigm shift, she'll be stuck in "He just wants me to enjoy it more so he can have it more" mode. Its still all about him until she realizes that she is actually getting in the way of her own sexuality... not just his. She needs a total renewal of the mind, and fresh outlook.

Amen, sista! (Applause) I can hear the roar of the crowd in a stadium as women stand up and cheer for themselves and for their glory..the magnificent sexual feminine glory they've been given by God.

Simple Pleasures

It is Sunday evening and our hair is still damp from swimming. We sit crosslegged on the beach towels spread out in front of the TV in the gameroom watching the Olympics. We're drinking cokes and nibbling on chips and gourmet salsa take out from one of my favorite TexMex restaurants. (Who can pick just one?) We're only nibbling because we already had our meal...cheese quesadillas bursting with savory smoky portabella mushrooms.

We are relaxed and happy all the way down in our souls.

I am so deeply grateful.

I love my family.

To Tear Down and To Build

This song is for Cahleen over at In His Footsteps.


I know what it is to feel as though your heart is being deconstructed and reconstructed. Girl, you're in good company. And the Master Architect is in love with you. I think you're pretty great too. :)
Love,
SW

"There is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build."
—Ecclesiastes 3:3

Still a Wild Man

This song is for The Wild Man over at Postcards from the Sexual Crucible.

WM, Ricky Van Shelton and I celebrate your desire for your beloved wife. After twenty years you still want her and love her and desire her and I think that's fabulous. And like that other song Ricky sings, you're keepin' it between the lines...channeling all that desire only toward her. Sometimes you desire her more often than she will allow and still you're keeping it all for her. Good on you!

I can't deny that
somewhere inside there's a wild man
mama always said son dontcha let it get out of hand
so if I go crazy now and then baby, you've got to understand
ohh I'm a wild man
yeah that's what I am
I'm a Wild Man

comin through the door
I know what it's all for

wound up so tight
but I know tonight
I don't have to hold back
when I'm holdin' you close

You're a good man, Wild Man, and better things are comin' for you and your Wild Woman. I just know. They're happening already.

Love,
SW

Would you like to have an orgasm? Well DUH!

Duh is what it sounds like.
DHA is what it's spelled like.
Ooooooh! is what it feels like.

Who knew that taking fish oil capsules would make you feel so good?
Golly Moses.
(Mona Lisa smile that morphs into mischivious grin)

Cardboard Testimony

Sometimes it's good to take stock of where you've been and where you are today.
Sometimes it's real good.

Here's mine:

sexual abuse victim
constant terror and shame
afraid of my own sexuality

passionate healthy marriage
owner sensuouswife.com
encouraging couples to go for healing & hotness

Welcome Wild Jesus

Welcome Wild Jesus readers.
Can one of you please let me know what your blog is about? Could I have a week's guest pass? That okay with you? I'm flattered, and also curious as allgetout.

Love is the most important ingredient

Y'all know how much I love to cook. To me, cooking is edible art. And love is the most important ingredient.

We have some dear friends we have not seen in months, almost a year, even though they live 45 minutes away. We had planned and rescheduled several times to have them over and finally made plans for them to come share a meal at our home today. When I invited our friends this third time, I had no idea that my presence would be required in Corporate America today.

Delighted Husband picked up some Boston Market drivethru and set the table. Our friends who had offered to bring dessert, picked up some brownies from a grocery store bakery and a carton of ice cream. We ate as soon as I got home.

And you know what, y'all? It was a delightful meal. It wasn't the food. The food was was alright, but I was mostly too tired to eat. It was the love.

Women Olympians

I am watching my favorite part of the whole Olympics...the Parade of Nations.
I have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.
The women.
They are so beautiful.
All so different
so differently beautiful
and all of them so beautiful I have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. Unplanned, these words keep leaping from my throat,
"Look at her! She's so beautiful!"
There is no formula. There is no specifications list. No engineering document dictating cheekbones must be at a particular angle or eyes must be a certain size. I look at each woman Olympic athlete and I see a woman in her glory. And she knows it. This is perhaps the the crowning moment of her life. And she is so beautiful. And she knows it. So alive. Beaming energy so vibrant it makes the stadium lights redundant. Glory.

Women are so beautiful.

Good Time

Okay darlings, it's Thursday night. You have plenty of time to learn this dance before Friday night.

The quickest way to a woman's heart

One night this summer, Delighted Husband and I were tired and achy after taking the kids on a 4 mile hike. We very much wanted to be together but we had to laugh at ourselves laying still and holding hands and groaning with pain. "What a hot couple we are" as we laughed at ourselves. We were still naked and smiling at each other so that was a start. Delighted Husband has access to all these cool overseas radio stations on his phone, so he was scrolling through some stations and he found a really great classical station broadcasting from London. The classical music was beautiful and rich and still and didn't require us to move. (you know what I mean by that. some music just makes you want to dance. you just try to be still while listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo!)

We were cuddling and talking about the children. We had planned to have a shagfest much earlier in the evening, but something the DC said set off a little beep beep beep in my heart letting me know they needed some quality time and connection with their dad and me. I knew instinctively that the best way to get them to connect verbally was to get them away from any and all electronic conveniences so I drove us all to one of our favorite nature trails. There's nothing like a long trail with nothing but the sound of wind whispering in the trees to get a kid to talking. Sweating helps too. Something about physical labor gets you talking honest and from the heart, and we were hiking at a steady clip!

I hung back for a while, watching my husband interact with the children. God, I love that man. I wasn't eavesdropping exactly, but I think for a while they forgot I was there.

It was this memory that came to mind as I cuddled with Delighted Husband listening to Rachmaninoff that night. I told him, as I have told him a thousand times, that seeing him share from his heart with the children, offering him manly heart in a fatherly way I could never imitate just sets off a little joy alarm deep inside my body. Every cell in my body says, "Girl! This is the one! Get this man to get you pregnant asap!" I told him and we laughed gently. My body can no longer get pregnant. But apparently places in my heart and my loins never got the memo, cause they keep on tryin!

I rolled over on top of him and he grinned hello. And after just a few seconds of fondling, I was aroused and ready to move. The soft candlelight on the dresser cast a lovely shadow of my hips as I moved over him gently. As passion is known to do, momentum picked up. Orgasmic steam built up and blew. And I rolled over collapsing in an exhausted tangle of limbs. Good man that he is, he moved enough for the both of us for his turn and came home to me quickly. We both submerged into sleep and next thing we knew the alarm clock was ringing.

Apparently one of the quickest ways to a woman's heart is her children. And definitely the quickest way to my loins is my heart! ;)
He knows all the shortcuts, my Delighted Husband.