Do You Need a Sex Sabbatical?

What is a sex sabbatical? How do you know if you need one? What do you do during it, and how do you change up your dynamic afterwards?

In this episode, Sarah shares how a sex sabbatical can be a helpful way to reset your love life in marriage. If you're in a cycle of obligation sex, forcing yourself to have painful sex, or just feeling burnt out, used, or resentful about sex in your marriage, a sex sabbatical can be just what a wife needs. It can give her the time to reflect on how she got to this point, it can give her space to research and learn more, and it can give her time to plan out and design a better chapter going forward, after coming together with her husband again.

A husband and wife can use this time to develop other areas of intimacy in their marriage that may have gotten neglected. They can work on their communication, deepen emotional intimacy, and expand their repertoire of non-sexual touch. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Mary Bruno, Missing Pieces: Female Perspectives on Sex for Catholic Women (book)

Cana Feast Retreat Library (at-home Catholic date night retreats for a small dose of cemotional connection)

Abundant Catholic Marriage Course (comprehensive online program for a big dose of emotional connection)

Ruth Buezis, Awaken Love: The Truth about Sex That Will Transform Your Marriage (book)

MORE RESOURCES

Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)

Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)

Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

Transcript

0:50

Do you need a sex sabbatical? Maybe you do. A lot of women could really benefit from a sex sabbatical in their marriage. So in this episode I'm going going to share with you what a sex sabbatical is. How to tell if you need one, what to do during the sex sabbatical. And what not to do, and then what to do when you come back together again with your husband. So what is a sex sabbatical? This is a break. A reset time of. Abstinence in your marriage, usually about six weeks is a good amount of time to kind of break with old habits. Give yourself plenty of space to reflect on and journal about and pray about, um, how you got to where you were in your love life and then what you would like going forward and how to get there. And. Yeah, it, it's a, it's a good like interruption in whatever cycle or bad habits or, um, taking for granted or whatever may have been happening. Uh, so then you make a, a break and then start a new chapter. Start fresh after your sabbatical ends. How to tell if you need one. Well, if you're experiencing pain during sex, always, my advice to you is don't force yourself to have painful sex. So there's a good reason for having a sex sabbatical and then use that sabbatical for identifying resources to help you, um, heal from pain during, in, during intercourse. Um, do some studying, connect with a pelvic floor or physical therapist. Learn if maybe it's just you haven't been engaging in enough foreplay to really allow your body. To relax and open up, um, whatever it may be. So pain for sure is one. Um, and by that I mean physical pain, but emotional pain is another one. Maybe you are feeling hurt or emotionally or used by your husband or feeling used in love making, maybe. You are feeling distance from your husband and you're still having sex with each other physically, but you're, you just have not been able to cultivate that heart to heart emotional intimacy that is necessary as a foundation to good love making. So then you have the sex sabbatical so that you interrupt that pattern and devote some time to the emotional connection that has been lacking. Um, maybe it's that. You're suffering betrayal trauma because your husband has been using porn. If your husband's actively using porn, that is the best outcome for you and your husband. Your marriage, his recovery and your ability to enjoy love making is going to be. In most cases, if you stop having sex with him while he is actively using porn and, you know, wait until his recovery is real solid and he's not having slipups, you know, at least for months in between. Um, okay. So those are some good reasons. What else? Um, if you are living in an obligation sex lifestyle in your marriage where. The sex has been all focused on the husband. You think that this is a need for him and that your role is to be there sexually available to fulfill this need. Um, and all the sex is focused on your husband's pleasure and enjoyment. Then you definitely need a sex sabbatical to stop, reset, have some really good talks, learn for yourself, reflect how did you get to this point? Um, reframe how you both think about love making to get it more in line with what the Catholic Church teaches, which this, this is supposed to be a mutually enjoyable mu like, um, uh, coming together. That this, there's not no not supposed to be anything one sided about this. At all. That's not anywhere in the church's documents. And anytime the church talks about pleasure and lovemaking and the goodness and nobility of sex and marriage, it's always addressing both spouses equally. So obligation sex, that is a great reason for having a sex sabbatical. And you know that's gonna be, it's gonna require a lot of courage and strength on your part. To interrupt that, right? You're gonna need to find good language to talk with your husband about why you're not just gonna. I keep doing what seems on the surface to have been working for him, which is just to be sexually available, but truly it is not serving his greatest good. Right? It that sort of a dynamic of obligation sex is, as I've addressed in previous episodes, um, look for my marital debt episode entitled Marital Debt is Not Church teaching, for example. Um. That type of just husband only focus in love making, it does not help the husband become the best version of himself, the fullest whole, most whole, most holy, um, other centered type of man that God has created him to be because it just teaches him to seek self gratification and, you know, sort of selfishness and to use another person. For his own benefit. Um, that's, that's not really serving him. His growth, his um, his holiness, his ability to love. Um, and that's not really serving what marriage is supposed to be about either. If you read the church's documents on marriage. But it's entirely possible for you to say, you know what? I love you so much. This actually isn't working for me anymore. I've, um, and I want our love life. See, again, say, talk about what you would like, ask for what you'd like. Don't complain about what you don't want, what you don't like. Say, well, I would like is for our love life to be even better. I would like to learn how to engage wholeheartedly in this with my whole self and really just enjoy it. Um, enjoy this coming together with you at a level. I had never, I honestly never have before. And so I need to take a break for a reset to study and learn, work on myself. We can work on our, our communication and our emotional intimacy, and then come together again in a way that will be new and fuller and richer and, and even better. So point to the good ahead as you're going to talk to your husband about, um, why you need to do this, right? And that is how I would like you. I just wanna empower you like you must give consent for love making in marriage to be listed you. That means you have choice, you have agency. You don't have to make love with your husband when you don't want to. That's pretty basic. Um, and again, I address this more in my marital debt is not church teaching episode, but you're entirely within your rights to say, you know what? I'm just, I'm not gonna be available. I'm not gonna be up for making love for the next six weeks. I love you so much. Let's have lots of touch in other ways. Stay close emotionally, but. For me, I really need this. And I know it might be hard, but I know we can do hard things and we can get, you know, we can grow from this and be even better than before because the truth is. You as an adult, you already have done hard things together before. Uh, if you're living a responsible good life, you've had to learn delayed gratification, and you've had to learn the value of hard work to get rewards in other areas of your life, like working out, like saving money, like, uh, you know, eating reasonable food instead of just junk food all the time. Like all these things are examples of how we choose the hard good for a greater purpose. In lots of areas of life, and you can do this with your love making as well. You don't have to keep having junk food, sex, fast food sex where it's just, you know, quick, just focused on one spouse, uh, not really feeling that deep or meaningful or, or, um, you know, feeling that, um, that depth of purpose and joy and delight of connection that you, you can, you can do the home cooked, you know, slow, roasted, slow food version of love making, but you, you have to learn how you need space. To learn that. Okay. So those are some indicators that you can use, that you could, that you need a sex sabbatical obligation, sex feeling used, feeling burnt out, physical pain, emotional pain, emotional distance, husband actively using porn, um, or in whatever way just sex has been focused entirely on the husband. Um, yeah, so those. Those are all good reasons that, and another way you can tell if you need a sex sabbatical is if you just think about that idea like six weeks without sex and you feel like, oh my gosh, that would be amazing. Then you know in your heart, your heart is telling you you do need this and present it as a need. It's not something you go and ask your husband's permission for. Even though you are a team and you do things together, like I said, you have sovereignty. You have consent, you know, over your, your body. You, you don't, you are not obliged to just be sexually avail, sexually available, whenever you can say, not now. Right? And this is a sabbatical. It's just a pause. It's such a short amount of time, given the overall length of the years and years that you're gonna be married together. This is not saying I'm never gonna have sex again. This is like. A really short, in the big scheme of things, pause to do a reset. And the fact of the matter is there's lots of reasons why spouses would need to abstain. Um, just because of life circumstances. This should not be. This like outta the blue, um, like unheard of thing that you, you would go a while without having sex. There's so many reasons like travel, like one of you is sick for a while or a hospital stay or, um, you know, an injury. Um, or you know, like one of you is deployed or postpartum recovery. Um, in some cases, you know, some women and their husbands need to abstain all through pregnancy if they have special medical reasons during pregnancy where total pelvic rest is necessary. So it's good to be able to have this skill of knowing how to abstain and having confidence in that and not being worried like, oh my gosh, we're not gonna be okay'cause we're not having sex. Uh, just having that as part of your repertoire for things you can do in your marriage. Okay, so what do you do during your sex sabbatical? And I've alluded to this a bit earlier. You can journal and reflect you, the wife, on like, how did we get to this point? How did I get to this point? What made me think that sex is just for my husband? What were the voices and the messages that I heard? That made me think that and bring God into this reflection. Be like, Lord, you were there, you were with me. What did you see? What did you hear with me? Um, and so some reflection and some journaling is really good. And then some study find, you know, read some books about. What holy healthy lovemaking should be like. Um, one that I, well, there's always Gregory Pop Jack's Holy Sex book. That's a really popular one for Catholics. Um, and then also I would recommend Mary Bruno's book called Missing Pieces. And this is a book by a woman author about how the female perspective on sex has been missing. Uh, so the full title is Missing Pieces, female Perspectives On Sex for Catholic Women by Mary Bru Bruno. In fact, I interviewed her for this podcast so you can find the episode with her. Um, just a few episodes previous to this. That would be a great book for you to read during this time. Um, just, you know, learn, learn what you can. You're very welcome to download my, um, nine tips for body, mind, and Soul, uh, for, for Catholic Women to en learn to enjoy love making more. That would be a really great, uh, springboard for your study during this time. And that is available, um, on my our cana feast.com website and in the show notes to this show and every show. Um, what else would be good? Okay. You know what you can do with your husband? Lots of non-sexual touch, so I, you shouldn't be shunning each other during your sex sabbatical. You should be expanding your repertoire of non-sexual touch and. L leaning into that and communicating well with each other. Maybe for him, just a hug or just a handing holding hands feels really arousing and he, he can't handle that. But maybe you can find ways, ways that you can touch him. That aren't going to make him think immediately of sex. Maybe if he's sitting at a table, um, you can come behind him and rub his shoulders or, you know, touch his hair or neck, talk with each other and find out what, what are ways we can touch each other that are non-sexual, that can help us literally feel in touch. And then also. Really work on your emotional intimacy, your heart to heart connection. Learn how to talk with each other about your interior self, to share and receive, to hear and feel seen on this level. And my husband, Nathan and I, this is, we've spent a lot of time developing resources for this. We have our little way of marriage workshop free online. We have our Cana Feast Retreat library and our Abundant course. Those are all resources designed to help Catholic couples grow in their emotional intimacy. But there's others out there too. There's secular resources like those produced by the Gottman Institute. Even just something as simple as asking each other every day, what was your strongest emotion today? What? Um, that's a great way to find out what's inside each other. Usually comes with a story and it involves some more full sharing and it's better than just saying, how was your day? Fine, right? That's goes, falls kind of flat. Um, so yeah, work on your emotional intimacy during this time. This is hopefully going to help draw you together at a deeper. Personal level so that when you do come back together again in physical love making, you'll have that foundation in place and then you have to keep nurturing it, you know, in the, the days and weeks and years ahead. Okay. And then you know what else you can do? You can study sex technique so that you can get some more ideas for what to do. Um, when you do come back together again, I would encourage you to check out the Christian friendly sex positions website. That is a great place to learn in a safe way. Some different foreplay and um, and intercourse positions and techniques, or married marriage bed tips. Or Ellen Holloway's, um, Catholic Sex Positions Guide or sex positions for Catholics Guide that she has in our vines in Full Bloom, um, uh, platform. Um, another book that is written by a Christian woman that can help you. With this is Awaken Love by Ruth Booze. There's a bit of description of some foreplay techniques in here. So yeah, just learn some skills, learn some new ideas. Think about how would you like lovemaking to go, and that's really your goal here. After you've done your reflection in your study, then do some planning and dreaming and vision casting. Like think about if it's five years from now and. We've, we've gotten past the sex sabbatical. We've gotten past the unhealthy dynamics. The unhelpful dynamics, um. What would it look like for me to really enjoy love making in our marriage? If our love life was so flourishing and we're we're both thriving in it, what would that look like? And think about like the feelings you wanna have. Think about. Maybe run through an ideal scenario in your mind of like how it would go starting from planning and initiation and then, um, the before play and then the actual transition, time of rest, and then foreplay and then, you know, love making, um, and intercourse all of that together. Like what, what would be some things you would like to have included in your flourishing dream love life. I really spend some time thinking about that. What would you like? And then when you come back together again at the end of your sex sabbatical, I really wanna encourage you, the wife, to take the lead you initiate so that you can. Show like how you would like initiation to happen or invite, and then really take a lead in foreplay. Really find your voice. Use your voice. Ask for what you'd like, suggest some things, give some feedback. Um, say what feels good, say what you think might feel good, that you'd love to try. Really find yourself to be more of a full, conscious, active participant in the love making. Um. Right. Just there's, there's so many possibilities here that's, I teach lots of different aspects of this in my course. Um, but you know, even on your own, you can think about like, what would I like this to be like? And then talk with your husband about it before you come together again. Say like, you know, I think it would be really great to have such and such as part of our love making, or to feel in this way about it, or ha to have initiation happen more like this. You know? And a lot of times you can get a clue for what you would like by noticing what really bugs you or what you don't like, and then thinking what is the opposite of that? It's a great way to get that information about what you would like. A lot of people stay really stuck and fixated on complaining about what they don't like and then thinking they're a victim of that circumstance. The truth is that you're not, you are the hero of your own story. And you can write this new chapter of your love life by having some main character energy, by leading, by communicating, initiating, inviting, suggesting, um, taking an active role. I think your husband's gonna love it. I think he's gonna love seeing you show up. And even if you're not a hundred percent confident, you're not totally sure you know what you're doing, but you're willing to try, you're willing to laugh about it if things go sideways or you try something and it doesn't really do much and be like, oh, well at least we tried. And, um, you just, I want you to sort of nudge, open this possibility, this like sense of flexibility. And, uh, growth mindset and the sense that like, we don't always have to make love in the exact same way that we always have. Let's learn and grow in this area. Learn some new skills, some new ideas, talk with each other in a new way while we're making love, uh, all, all these sorts of things. So I hope that's helpful for you as you think about a sex sabbatical and whether it could be something you could really benefit from. God bless. I'll see you in the next episode.