Rabbi's Rx For Sexless Marriage

Sex is the ultimate expansion of one's life—of course this occurs literally with physical arousal. Many things in the body expand (no, I won't elaborate), but it also happens figuratively, with the arousal and expansion of one's inner life. We expand like a sponge. It is at the moment of sexual peak that we are most able to stake in all stimuli, and to take them in most fully. Thus the slightest word from a lover can either bring us to the highest ecstatic peak, or else to the depths of emotional pain—should the word be a careless or callous one. This is often named as the cause of female "anorgasm," a woman's inability to sexually climax. A man makes a snide remark about something strange that his lover says in the throes of passion, or the way that she looks in the throes of ecstasy, and the woman becomes completely cut off from that part of herself. She has absorbed fully and devastatingly the thoughtlessness of her lover. It can take years to recover, if ever.

Reprinted from The Kosher Sutra: 8 Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life by Shmuley Boteach copyright 2009 Harper One. Read more about Rabbi Shmuley at www.shmuley.com.