Practice, Practice, Practice

February 25, 2023Changing Your Perspective, Choosing Growth, Making Changes, Sex Tips

If it's hard to make sexual changes, look for ways to practice in nonsexual contexts.

Long-time habits are hard to break. This is especially true for habits that have helped us feel protected, in control, and comfortable.

When I began my journey to address sex, I had quite a few habits that I knew I needed to change. The biggest one was that I responded to every sexual approach from my husband without even thinking. I had an automatic no. I had other habits of thought and body language that were on my Habits to Change list, but the automatic no was the biggie. It isn’t that I told myself that I could never say no to sex. It was that I never gave myself the space to even think about whether I wanted to say yes or no.

Changing a Habit

Changing a habit requires us to do two things:

Stop our old bad habit (which is so automatic that we may barely be aware that we are doing it).
Replace it with a new good habit.

This isn’t necessarily an easy process, but with intention, time, and a willingness to keep going even when we mess up, we CAN change bad habits.

When it comes to sex, though, change isn’t so easy. Why? Here’s what I think:

We are so vulnerable in this area. Sex—and sexual habits—come from deep inside us and are shaped by hurts, fears, and former experiences. When we attempt a change, we expose emotionally raw areas that we’ve been trying to protect.
Healthy and joyful sex can be such a powerful and connecting experience between a husband and wife—and between the couple and God. We have an enemy that wants to interfere with this intimacy. Attempting changes that draw us closer to our husband is sort of like putting a spiritual target on our back.

When Sexual Change Feels Like Too Much

When I was working to make sexual changes, I was so overwhelmed. I could know what the bad habit was AND know what I wanted to do instead—but because it was in the context of sex, it felt like it was just too much at once.

Let’s look back at my bad habit of saying an automatic “no.”

When it came to sex, I couldn’t figure out how to stop by automatic rejection of my husband’s sexual advances. Even when I knew his request was forthcoming and I reminded myself to take a deep breath and think before answering, as soon as he said he’d like to have sex, I could feel the panic rising while my mouth said the thing I’d told myself not to say.

However, at some point I realized this was a bad habit that I also had outside the bedroom. When my husband asked me to take something to the dry cleaner or make a phone call for him, I said no before my brain had even processed what he was asking of me.

Making a change in a sexual context felt impossible—but I believed I could make the change outside the bedroom. So that’s just what I did.

I practiced not saying no. More specifically, I practiced pausing, taking a deep breath, thinking, and only then responding. Nonsexual requests didn’t feel quite as high-stakes to me, so I used those as an opportunity to get comfortable Every non-sexual request was an opportunity to practice. “Chris, could you please wash my whites tonight?” “Please pass me the salt.” “Is it okay if I turn the TV on?”

Think of all the other things we practice in order to grow and learn. We do practice drills with a ball to get comfortable handling it. We learn simple dance steps to provide a foundation for the more involved moves. We learn a few notes and simple songs to begin playing an instrument, and we practice to build into being someone who can make good music.

I practiced my “pause and think first approach for several weeks—long enough that it had become so automatic that I didn’t even have to think about it. It had become a habit.

Moving the Change to the Bedroom

Once I was comfortable pausing and thinking outside the bedroom, I was ready to try it again in a sexual context.

And you know what? It worked. I had gotten so used to pausing before answering my husband when it came to small things that my new habit still worked when my husband initiated sex.

Changing this habit paved the way for making so many more changes—and it happened because I practiced.

I f you are trying to make sexual changes and just can’t seem to do it, try to practice outside the bedroom. Practice may not make perfect, but it can definitely lead to progress.

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19