By Willard F. Harley, Jr., PhD

In this series are articles, I've defined a date as time scheduled by spouses to meet each other's emotional needs for affection, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment. During that time, spouses are to give each other undivided attention to meet those needs effectively.

But then, what would you call a night out where spouses see a baseball game together and talk to each other about the game occasionally. Isn't that a date?

Let's compare that experience with a typical date that a couple has who are in love and anticipating marriage. They might go to the baseball game together, but the game itself would not be their primary interest. Their focus of attention would be on each other. They would talk to each other throughout the game and they would be very affectionate, holding hands and giving each other kisses from time to time. There would also be some form of sexual expression after the game.

Couples in a romantic relationship before marriage expect to be in a romantic relationship after marriage. They expect their needs for affection, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment to be met. If they decide to avoid intercourse prior to marriage, they make it clear to each other that there will be no hesitation to make love once they are married.

But what couples expect of each other prior to marriage isn't always delivered after marriage. The date that had included all four emotional needs is replaced by shortcuts. A husband often wants to make love to his new bride without any of the complications of affection and intimate conversation. He expects her to be available to him on demand. A wife wants her husband to be just as engaged in conversation with her after marriage as he was when they were dating, even though their conversation is no longer in the context of a romantic date.

So, instead of making their special time together as romantic as it was before marriage, they figure that now they can have what they need without the fanfare. But that doesn't work for most couples.

Willingness to Make Love: The First Stage of the Sexual Experience

The sexual experience has five stages: Willingness, arousal, plateau, climax, and recovery. Most of those who make love are usually unaware of each of these as separate stages unless they are brought to their attention by a sex therapist, such as myself. The experience seems to have a flow that is usually seen as a single event. And yet, almost all sex therapists recognize them as distinctly different stages because the failure of one or more of them usually contributes to sexual dysfunction. So, when I help couples that are experiencing sexual dissatisfaction, I try to discover which of these five stages are creating the problem. Then, I teach couples how to overcome those problems they face within those stages.

In chapter 6 of my book, His Needs, Her Needs, I describe these five stages and offer ways for spouses to address whatever problems they may be having with any of them. Its accompanying workbook, Five Steps to Romantic Love, provides worksheets for couples to help them discover solutions to those problems.

Far and away, the most common sexual problem I've seen couples face is with the first stage: willingness.

Granted, if a couple has problems with any of the other four stages of the sexual response, willingness can definitely be affected. But I've witnessed many instances of unwillingness to make love when there are no problems with any of the other stages. Wives are the most likely spouses to have this problem, and their most common reason is that they do not feel emotionally attached to their husbands.

In my article, "What Is the Difference Between Lovemaking and Sex" (in Resources/Articles), I describe lovemaking as the romantic ideal for most wives. Lovemaking is considered to be a physical act that is an expression of their emotional attachment to their husbands. Without that connection, wives usually feel sexually unfulfilled. Husbands, on the other hand, can be very sexually fulfilled without any emotional attachment to their wives.

So, the issue of willingness for wives has a great deal to do with what has gone on prior to lovemaking. They usually need to feel emotionally bonded to their husbands before they are willing to make love. For husbands, wiliness has more to do with their sexual craving than it does with just about anything else.

Husbands would generally like their wives to make love to them whenever they are in the mood: Just before they go to sleep at night, when they first wake up in the morning, or even when they wake up in the middle of the night.  If we are in bed together, why not have sex?

Of course, husbands can find opportunities during the day as well. It's not uncommon for a husband to come home for sex while the children are in school.

Wives may go along with their husband's seemingly insatiable desire for sex right after there are first married. But it doesn't take long before most husbands are introduced to the sexual stage of willingness. When the romantic dating that made their wives willing to make love prior to marriage disappears, their willingness tends to disappear as well.

Unfamiliar with their wives' connection between romance and sex, husbands will often try to face her unwillingness with the argument, I need it more than you do, so you should have sex with me whether or not you are willing. That argument actually works for a while in many marriages, but if a wife is unwilling, she doesn't usually experience the remaining four stages of the sexual response. She goes through the motions of having sex without any sexual fulfillment on her part. Then, a husband often chastises her for not being more responsive, as if she can get into the experience by simply deciding to make it happen.

Her willingness is not usually a choice on her part. It is a reaction to her feeling of being emotionally bonded to her husband. It is simply a reflection of her attachment.

That's why I encourage wives to make love only when they are enthusiastically willing. If they are reluctantly willing, they're not really willing, and the other four stages don't have much of a chance of taking place for her.

What I'm leading up to here is that a date, as I define it, helps create enthusiastic willingness for a wife to make love.

But a Date Doesn't Necessarily Create Enthusiastic Willingness

When a wife complains that making love on every date is unrealistic, I usually want to know what their sexual history was before marriage. In almost all cases, they tell me that sex was great on almost every date and that they had looked forward to it. Even those who wanted to be married before intercourse tell me that sex was definitely on their minds when they were dating.

What has changed, wives usually tell me, is that their time together prior to making love now isn't very romantic. When their husbands make an effort to be somewhat affectionate and try to show an interest in how her day went, they know that it's because they just want to have sex, not because they really care about them. When they were dating there was much more time for affection and intimate conversation. It was specially planned. Now it's an afterthought.  

If a wife resists making love, she is usually not in a romantic relationship with her husband. But the same can be said for a husband that resists being affectionate or intimately conversant with his wife. That's why I don't consider what they do together to be a romantic date unless all four emotional needs are met with mutual satisfaction.

Obstacles to Romantic Dates

The four couples that I introduced to you in this series all had obstacles to overcome before they were having romantic dates.

The first couple had the fewest obstacles. All they needed to do was to schedule time to date. Once scheduled, their ability to meet each other's emotional needs took over and they were in love within a few weeks. Lovemaking was definitely not a problem for them once they found time to date.

The second couple had developed such independent lifestyles from each other, that their romantic skills had become pretty rusty, and it took a while to get those skills back to where they were before marriage. But after they had improved those skills while dating for a while, and their lifestyles had become interdependent instead of independent, everything eventually fell into place. She never once complained about too much lovemaking.

The third couple had a lot further to go before lovemaking could even be considered. First, they had to learn to completely eliminate all Love Busters which had driven their Love Bank accounts below the hate threshold. Then, they had to learn to apply the friends and avoid the enemies of intimate conversation.   Their memory of what it was like to talk to each other when they had been in love helped guide them to what they both knew had to be restored. When all of that was in place, and their Love Bank balances were eventually above zero, they were able to address the issue of lovemaking. While it wasn't exactly the passionate experience of a couple in love, they were able to make it mutually satisfying for each other, and that was enough to make Love Bank deposits for both spouses whenever they had a date. When both of their Love Bank accounts finally breached the romantic love threshold, lovemaking became second nature for them whenever they had a date. They were finally in a romantic relationship with each other.

The fourth couple was my biggest challenge of all because they never had been in love with each other. Neither spouse even knew how to meet the emotional needs of affection, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment. Furthermore, the wife had developed a very serious sexual aversion due to her efforts to have sex when she was not emotionally or physically prepared for it. But over time, even these obstacles were overcome, and they, too, fell in love with each other. As was true with the other couples, lovemaking became something that they both looked forward to when on a date.

Granted, there are conditions that make lovemaking on a date almost impossible. But whatever those conditions are, they would usually make meeting any of the other emotional needs almost impossible, too. Illness, for example, pretty much ruins any date. When these conditions exist, a date should be postponed.

If a physical illness affects the vagina or penis, however, my advice is usually to engage in sexual experiences that do not require having intercourse. There are many who avoid intercourse right up to the day they are married, and yet experience some form of sexual fulfillment on almost every date when they're in love.

Most women feel that lovemaking should be a natural expression of their love for their husbands. It should not feel like a responsibility. But the same can be said for the meeting of all emotional needs. We want to meet and have our emotional needs met almost instinctively. It should not be something that's done out of duty. And when a couple is in love, instincts do indeed carry the day.

But when a couple is not in love, instincts are not much help. And yet, the path to restoring and maintaining romantic love is to meet the most intimate emotional needs of affection, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment.

So, most couples I've counseled who are not in love, but want to be in love, must use their intelligence to eventually get their instincts to cooperate. A woman can be enthusiastically willing to make love to her husband when she is not yet in love with him, but that requires careful thought and planning on her part. She must discover the conditions that make her sexual experience thoroughly and predictably enjoyable for her. But once the romantic love threshold is breached, careful planning is not as necessary. Instincts then become a sexual asset rather than a liability.

Click to read Dating the One You Married, Part 23 (major life disruptions).