Hey, Faggot:
This is going to sound odd, but I’ve been reading Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living by Lewis B. Smeades (Eerdmans, 1976), which is not as skinny a book as one would think, but that’s probably because it was written in the early 70s, just before the ascendancy of the sex-phobic religious right. As Susan Faludi points out in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, Christian sex manuals were once surprisingly progressive, even coming out in support of sex-fer-pleasure and a woman’s right to expect the odd orgasm now and again. (Get me–I’m citing sources. Next week, footnotes.)
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Nowhere is it written that a marriage is a failure if the sex isn’t good. And there are no guarantees: just because you feel someone in every cell of your body today doesn’t mean he’ll have the same effect on you next week, next year, or 20 years from now. Had you run off with that lover of yours, you might have eventually found yourself stuck with the exact same problem you have now with your husband. So, take the pressure off: stop thinking of your marriage as a failure just because your husband is a lousy lay, and give him credit for what works. And take the odd lover now and again for kicks.
As far as making it work, so long as you don’t want to have kids, you’re reconciled to never being able to marry, and you’re braced for chilly receptions at reunions, weddings, and funerals (of relatives whose deaths you’ll doubtless be blamed for causing)–in short, if you can handle the pressure of being gay–then you’ll be able to make this relationship work.
Here’s some red-hot insight just for you:
