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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on how responsive desire is actually a blessing, because I was getting so many emails from people lamenting the fact that either they or their spouse has responsive desire.



It was extremely well received and I got a lot of emails from husbands and wives telling me how it’s helped them, either as one with responsive desire, or having a spouse with it.



Then one asked me to write a reciprocal post about spontaneous desire.  In her case, she’s the one with spontaneous desire, and he has responsive desire.  This, unfortunately, has led to a lot of frustration for her in her marriage.  



I don’t think this is an isolated incident.  In much the same way that responsive desire spouses can think that they’re broken because they don’t want sex all the time, spontaneous desire spouses can start to feel like their desire for sex is a burden.  Likewise, those with responsive desire can sometimes feel that their spouse’s spontaneous desire is overwhelming. Sometimes they feel like their spouse always wants sex, or only wants them for sex. Sometimes they classify their spouses as sex addicts, and write their desire off as a pathology to be downplayed, ignored, mitigated or suppressed.  That it’s their job to hold back their spouse’s desires.



Writers in the 1800s didn’t help this mentality.  Sadly, one of the founders of the denomination I’m in wrote this:



Sexual excess will effectually destroy a love for devotional exercises, will take from the brain the substance needed to nourish the system, and will most effectively exhaust the vitality. No woman should aid her husband in this work of self-destruction. She will not do it if she is enlightened and has true love for him. The more the animal passions are indulged, the stronger do they become, and the more violent will be their clamors for indulgence. Let God-fearing men and women awake to their duty. Many professed Christians are suffering with paralysis of nerve and brain because of their intemperance in this direction. – Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church 2



And this:



It is not pure, holy love which leads the wife to gratify the animal propensities of her husband at the expense of health and life. If she possesses true love and wisdom, she will seek to divert his mind from the gratification of lustful passions to high and spiritual themes by dwelling upon interesting spiritual subjects. It may be necessary to humbly and affectionately urge, even at the risk of his displeasure, that she cannot debase her body by yielding to sexual excess. She should, in a tender, kind manner, remind him that God has the first and highest claim upon her entire being, and that she cannot disregard this claim, for she will be held accountable in the great day of God. – Ellen White, Adventist Home



And I know it’s not just in my denomination that this occurs.  It was a fashion of the day to believe that having sex lessened your “vital force”.  That is, the more sex you had, the shorter your life would be.



Some 150 years later, this mindset still exists in much of the collective Christian subconscious leading many spouses to wonder what exactly is good about spontaneous desire?  What’s good about having it, and what’s good about having a spouse who has it?



What’s good about having a spouse with spontaneous desire?



Without them, sex might not happen outside of trying to conceive



Think about it.  Responsive desire spouses need someone to turn them on, to arouse them.  But if neither spouse had the impetous to do so,