This is Part 2 of our interview with Sheila Gregoire. You can check out Part 1 here. Don’t forget that we are also hosting a GIVEAWAY with this interview, so make sure you read all the way through to find out how you can get entered to win!

You have two other great books, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and Honey, I Don’t Have a Headache Tonight, that address a subject often neglected in the Christian community – sex. Tell us why it’s important to get this conversation going.

Mostly because the conversation is already happening. It’s just that we’re talking to the wrong people. I wrote a post on my blog, How to Love, Honor, and Vacuum, on the seven lies that Hollywood tells us about sex. The fact is you cannot live in this culture without picking up our society’s ideas about sex. If we in the Christian church don’t talk about this, then the only place where people are going to get to figure out about sex is going to be from movies and the culture that we live in. And that’s really dangerous.

How do you think today’s culture plays a part in all of this?

The biggest lie that our culture tells us is that sex is entirely physical. Here’s the truth: sex is designed to unite us on three levels. It’s supposed to be physically intimate, spiritually intimate, and emotionally intimate. Truly you do feel like you’re one flesh, one person. It’s supposed to be a way of really expressing love.

What happens is that when you take sex out of the marriage context, you’ve taken sex out of relationship, and all you have left is the body. It becomes entirely about the physical. How do you then make sex better? You do weirder and weirder things physically. The stuff that’s becoming mainstream now would never have even been mentioned forty years ago. It’s becoming quite graphic everywhere now because that’s what we’re doing. When all we have is the physical, sex becomes really cheap. You’re seeing it even in Christian relationships because you’ve got the influence of porn, which does the same thing, and you’ve got women worrying about their body image because they feel like they’re not sexy enough. It’s really a big distortion of what God made sex to be.

Do you have any advice for someone who has maybe stepped outside of the bounds of marriage and has some sexual baggage? How can they overcome their past for a sexually fulfilling relationship within marriage?

Let me give some encouragement first of all. You are absolutely not alone if that is the case. When I did my surveys for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I surveyed 2,000 people. Of people who were serious, committed Christians who don’t just go to church but actually believe, only 40% were virgins when they got married. That means 60% were not. This is something with which a lot of people are dealing. You’re not alone.

The other encouraging bit is that when I looked at the stats for who has a great sex life, even those who had sexual baggage, when you look at their marriages ten, fifteen years after the wedding, they tended to rate their sexual life as really good. What makes a big difference is whether or not you’re a Christian. If you are a Christian, most people tend to get over those things, so that’s some encouragement.

As to how you get over them, I think that a lot of it is just recognizing that sex, once you’re married, is a very different ballgame. Practice just being with your spouse and truly being intimate. Don’t just have sex because there’s a difference between having sex and making love. Look into their eyes, really enjoy just touching them, and being intimate, then it will start to feel different for you. That can help, along with a lot of prayer and time. God’s power really is available to us. You don’t need to live in that kind of guilt. If people are living in that kind of guilt, I would say, “Why would you let your past, for which Christ already paid, wreck your present and your future?” There’s no point.

Why is sex so important in marriage?

It’s the only thing that truly sets you apart from any other relationship. I can unconditionally love my kids. I can live with a roommate. I can be committed for life to my parents. All of these things you can do with other people, but making love is something which is really only for your spouse. It’s like every time you make love, you reconfirm that commitment. So it is vitally important.

God created it to be something really good. He created it to kind of mirror that intense desire we have for intimacy with Him. Like He put inside each of us this intense feeling of, “I just want to be totally united with God.” The way that God talks about the sexual relationship is very similar to that in the Bible, so it’s interesting. It’s like we have this real need to be united to God, and God also gave us this real need to be united with our spouses to mirror that. It’s something that’s really mystical in a way, has a lot of spiritual significance, and really does bind you together. It isn’t something that’s optional. If you kind of feel like, “Well, it’s only ho hum, he makes too big of a deal of it anyway, and I’m too busy,” you’re missing out on something so important. Just don’t settle for that. Why would you settle for less than what God designed you for?

Well, isn’t it interesting that before we are married we just can’t resist having sex because it’s the greatest thing ever, and we can’t live without it? Then we get married, and it becomes a burden and duty that we do so much to avoid.

There are all kinds of reasons why it becomes a burden. For a lot of people, it just never felt that good. For a lot of women, the earth has never moved, and they wonder what all of the fuss is about. There honestly are a lot of people in that group, and what I would want to say to them is, “It really can be great. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s not like your body doesn’t work.” It just means you need to treat this like a research project. Get a couple of good books, and read them with your husband. In The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex I lay out how to make it feel good. Don’t settle for mediocre. If it has never felt good, even if you’ve been married for ten or fifteen years, it doesn’t mean that it can’t. You just need to learn how to make it work a little better.

Then often it’s just the emotional issues. We start resenting each other, getting bitter, misunderstanding each other, and it just grows from there.

Something that also often occurs, but isn’t addressed, is sexual dysfunction. Do you have any advice for someone who might be experiencing physical issues?

The biggest problem that people are seeing right now, which is actually quite new, is that men’s libidos are diminishing quite a bit. People always picture the guy wanting it all of the time, and the woman doesn’t. Now, in about 30% of marriages, it’s the opposite to where the woman has the higher sex drive, and the man doesn’t have much of one at all.

Sometimes that’s got physical roots, and you should always get that checked out. Often though, a low male libido is caused by general male passivity or problems with porn use either now or in the past. Porn does incredible damage to people’s sexuality. How do you get aroused and excited by a person instead of an image? It is a huge issue that people need to overcome. That’s something new that we’ve got to figure out, and the next generation coming up is going to have to figure out.

Why do you think so many women avoid sexual intimacy in marriage, and how can they get engaged?

I think it’s actually a basic misunderstanding of how a woman’s sex drive works. We see guys, and they are aroused in a minute. They’re ready to go, and we’re not. So we assume that if we’re not aroused, then we don’t want to make love. I’m not in the mood therefore I can’t. We think the definition of being “in the mood” is that you’re actually aroused, panting, or you’re saying, “Let’s get it on!”

Actually, a study that was done out of the University of British Columbia, found that for the vast majority of women, our arousal and desire came after you started making love. It didn’t come before. If you have a good attitude about it, jump right in and go for it, your body usually follows. For women our sex drives are entirely in our heads. If you’re not in the right frame of mind, it doesn’t matter what he does to you, you’re not going to get turned on. If you are in the right frame of mind and you decide that you’re going to have fun, then the chances are, you will. For a lot of women, we’re waiting for that moment when we’re in the mood, and if you’re honestly waiting for that, it might happen once a month when your hormones are especially high or something. If you just decide, “I’m going to have fun tonight,” you can get in the mood.

If there were one trick or tip you could give couples out there about having a great marital sex life, what would it be?

Ok, this is going to sound kind of weird and not necessarily related to sex, but laugh together every day. Honestly, just laugh together. Sex becomes too serious, and the best trick for having good sex is having a really good friendship. Often when couples are having trouble in the bedroom, they think the solution is always in the bedroom, but more often than not, it’s outside of the bedroom. It’s finding a hobby you can do together, going for a walk after dinner and getting all of your thoughts out, and talking. Just spend time together. When we remember that we actually like each other, sex goes a lot better.

The majority of couples spend less than 30 minutes a week talking about non-logistical things. Logistical things would be like: whose going to pick up the milk? Suzy has karate lessons tomorrow. Your mom just called, she had her MRI, and we’ve got to take her to a follow-up appointment. The average couple doesn’t talk about anything that’s not logistical, and then you think that we’re actually going to want to get into bed together? That’s your non-sexy tip.

If I can give a sexy tip, I would say, when you are actually in bed, spend a lot of time just touching. Take baths together. Massage each other. It helps you to be present since so many people now have a really hard time being present because they’re trying to recover from porn, images they found when they were teenagers, or whatever. The more time you can spend just touching each other and feeling that intimacy with each other, the more stupendous sex is going to be.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Here’s something that I like to tell couples. You never drift together. You can only ever drift apart. If you’re drifting, you’re growing apart. You absolutely need to be deliberate with your relationship. That means deliberately forging your friendship. Deliberately going out of your way and meeting his needs even if you don’t want to. Deliberately thinking about what she needs and talking to her about her feelings even if you don’t want to. Your marriage is so important, and so many of us spend way more time on our jobs, hobbies, and churches than we do on our marriages, and that’s a big mistake.

A huge, “Thank you!” to Sheila for taking the time to speak with me and share with us some great words of wisdom. Make sure to check out Sheila’s website, grab her latest book, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and connect with her on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter!

Copyright © 2012, Foundation Restoration.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No reproduction allowed without written permission from Foundation Restoration and/or the author.

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