Having Regular Sex Doesn’t Keep Marriages Together

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A pastor recently stood before his congregation and preached what many quietly consider an unspoken rule of marriage: couples should have regular dutiful sex which he termed as “maintenance sex.” The idea being that when you eat well at home, you won’t go looking for food elsewhere.

It sounds practical on the surface, even logical. But I’ve been sitting with it, and the more I think it through, the more I believe that preaching this from a pulpit (giving it religious weight and public legitimacy) causes more harm than it prevents. Not because the underlying desire for connected, frequent intimacy in marriage is wrong, but because “maintenance sex” as a concept is not experienced equally by husbands and wives.

Pretending otherwise is where the danger lives.

What “Maintenance Sex” actually looks like for women

It took a federal law for marital rape to become a punishable offense. Let that sit for a moment.

That legal reality tells us something important: women are not automatically protected from sexual coercion simply because they said “I do.” And while marital rape is now punishable in many countries, in large parts of Africa and beyond, married women are still shamed into silence when this happens — unable to name it, report it, or even fully recognize it as something wrong being done to them.

We’ve heard stories (and many of us know them personally) of wives who had just given birth being pressured into sex while still in hospital beds. Women whose post-delivery stitches were torn because a husband couldn’t wait. Women who surrendered their bodies to prevent cheating that happened anyway.

And beyond the extreme cases, there’s the quieter, daily reality: women enduring sex that is dry, painful, and joyless — going through the motions not out of desire but out of obligation. Bleeding, discomfort, dissociation — all to fulfill a “maintenance” quota that benefits exactly one person in the room.

This is what “just lie down” (the pastor’s own phrasing) communicates to women. That your body is a service, your comfort is secondary, and your role is availability.

What “Maintenance Sex” looks like for men

The experience is almost the inverse.

In many African households, a woman who openly desires sex or initiates it is considered too forward, too wild — adjectives that would never be applied to a man doing the exact same thing. Modern women are pushing back against this double standard, and rightly so. But the playing field is still uneven.

Here’s the biological and social reality: a man can say no to sex and face zero social consequence. He is the “head.” His refusal is accepted. A woman’s refusal, however, is frequently treated as betrayal, neglect, or provocation.

And physiologically, when a man engages in sex — even maintenance sex, even reluctant sex — his body typically responds. Arousal follows function. There may be discomfort on rare occasions, but pleasure is the overwhelmingly likely outcome.

For a woman, that equation is reversed. She can be physically penetrated while experiencing nothing but pain and psychological distress. Her body’s participation does not guarantee her pleasure, her comfort, or her safety. Maintenance sex for a man often means a release. For a woman, it can mean trauma quietly absorbed and never named.

It’s also worth noting honestly, without judgment, that in many marriages, it tends to be the husband who desires sex more frequently.

So when a pastor frames maintenance sex as a shared, mutual obligation for both partners, but then uses language like “just lie down,” the actual target of that instruction becomes clear.

What it means when a partner withdraws from sex

When a man stops wanting sex in his marriage, the reasons tend to be internal: he may be cheating, he may have lost attraction, he may be punishing his wife, dealing with health issues, or overwhelmed by work and life circumstances.

When a woman withdraws, the reasons are almost always external, and they’re quietly screaming for attention:

She is struggling with domestic labor and childcare with no relief in sight. She is carrying the invisible weight of the family’s emotional and mental load. She is living with a husband who dominates rather than partners. She is exhausted from her own paid work with no support. Her body hasn’t been properly cared for — no foreplay, no attention to her needs, no curiosity about what actually feels good for her. She may have underlying health issues — hormonal imbalances, vaginal health concerns — that no one has ever asked about or addressed. Or perhaps, like a man, she has simply lost attraction or is struggling in the relationship.

Interestingly, in African culture, when a man withdraws from sex, the first assumption is often that he’s cheating. When a woman withdraws, cheating is almost the last thing considered. Her withdrawal is more likely to be met with pressure, guilt, and the very sermon we’re discussing, rather than curiosity and care.

What we should be talking about instead: Intentional sex

Let’s retire maintenance sex. Not because intimacy in marriage doesn’t require effort — it does. But because “maintenance” frames sex as upkeep, as a chore, as something one partner performs for the sake of the other’s fidelity. That framing is reductive, and for women, it can be quietly devastating.

What marriages actually need is intentional sex — intimacy that both partners genuinely want, are emotionally present for, and walk away from feeling closer because of.

And getting there requires actual work. Not the work of gritting your teeth and lying still — but the relational work of paying attention to your partner as a full human being.

If she’s not in the mood, ask yourself what her days look like. Is she carrying too much of the domestic load? Share it. Is she stressed about work? Help where you can. Is she tired? Let her rest. Hold her. Watch something together. Make her a meal. A good massage goes further than most people realize. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

If she’s consistently in pain during sex, that’s not something to push through — it’s something to address. Suggest a health check. Look into hormonal health, vaginal health, overall wellbeing. Her comfort is not negotiable.

If she’s simply not interested, sit down and have an honest conversation. Is she still attracted to you? Are you contributing to her unhappiness in ways you haven’t acknowledged? Are there things she’s asked you to work on that you’ve dismissed? Start there.

Here’s what’s true about women’s sexuality that too few men are taught: for most women, the path to physical desire begins in the mind. Attraction is intellectual and emotional before it is physical. If a woman feels seen, supported, respected, and safe with her husband, her body will follow.

The clitoris responds to the brain. The brain responds to how she’s been treated all week.

And for the men reading this — solo pleasure, while understandable, is genuinely incomparable to mutual intimacy. The depth of pleasure that comes from a partner who is fully present, genuinely aroused, and experiencing real joy alongside you is something else entirely. A husband who is intentional about his wife’s pleasure — who prioritizes her orgasm, her comfort, her experience — doesn’t just make her happier. He makes the intimacy between them something worth protecting.

That is what keeps a home together, not obligation or maintenance, but intention.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.