Review of The Sexually Confident Wife

When I received an e-mail from the publishers of The Sexually Confident Wife asking if I wanted to review it,* I was skeptical. After all, "sexual confidence" in our society usually implies acting like a porn star. I imagined a lot of Sexual Codependents' Magazine (ahem, I mean Cosmo Magazine) type fluff on "10 Sex Tips All Men Want You to Try" or "Hot New Techniques that Will Leave Him Begging for More" or "Become His Personal Porn Star."

While the marketing material (always a reliable source of information) implied that this book was different, what really led me to not judge a book by its title and give it a go was the fact that I had heard of the author, Shannon Ethridge, through the Every Woman's Battle series, which some other women in my S-Anon group found helpful.

The Sexually Confident Wife has the broad purpose of helping women (regardless of their issues) gain (or regain) sexual confidence within their marriage. Because the scope is broad, I believe this book will be more helpful to some than others, particularly women who come from more repressive backgrounds or women who have had issues with their own sexual acting out. However, I am coming at this review solely from the perspective of whether or not the book was helpful me, as a generally sex loving, body confident woman who is in a continuous process of healing in my marriage to a recovering sex addict.

The book starts with a variety of questions designed to help pinpoint the areas that may have caused women to lose their sexual confidence. Not surprisingly, my areas of concern centered around trusting my husband, believing that I was entirely safe with him and carrying memories of past hurt into the bedroom with me. Unfortunately, the book didn't deal a lot with these specific issues. Shannon Ethridge infuses the book with much of her own personal experience, which is in many ways the opposite of mine: she was the one acting out in her marriage, so it took some mental gymnastics to make some of her experiences apply to me.

In addition, she addresses the stereotypical imbalance in the bedroom quite a bit: men want lots of sex, women don't. She gives a number of suggestions on how women can deal with this imbalance of desire. However, the problem for me, and for partners of sexual anorexics is quite the opposite. The women will often have a stronger desire than the men and will experience hurt and rejection that that their advances are not accepted. The book doesn't deal with this reverse scenario much at all. What do we women do to maintain our confidence when our husband's are withdrawing due to their own issues and traumas?

Some of the best chapters in the book focus on getting to the root of our sexual insecurities by healing the scars of childhood sexual abuse, looking at the messages we received about sex in childhood, improving our body images and cutting painful ties to the past. The most interesting to me was Chapter 5, "Cutting Soul Ties That Bind," which contains an exercise on looking for the common thread between your favorite movies, books and songs and seeing how that reflects upon the (potentially hurtful) ways you view relationships and the ghosts you carry into your sexual present.

If you all care to psychoanalyze me: my favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life, my favorite books include Wuthering Heights, A Tale of Two Cities and Peter Pan, and my favorite songs... Well, you've probably got the idea already, but to take a line from one of my favorites by James Taylor, "they were true love, written in stone..." If it's got true love in it, especially with an edge of tragedy or bittersweetness or loss or sacrifice, I'm all over it. And I'm still chewing on that knowledge, which has been quite enjoyable (ok, yes, I enjoy those kinds of things) and helpful.

What I found most disappointing was that, while the book tried to go about things differently (for example, showing drawings of real, imperfect, women's bodies) and did discuss boundaries, there was still plenty of material that tended toward the Cosmo pop culture perspective that I feared: that pleasing men (through anything from shaving and vaginal deodorants to pole dancing) is something that creates sexual confidence. What I found most problematic from the perspective of sexual codependency was the emphasis on the woman's power to keep the man faithful. For example, from Chapter 10 (Tantalizing Sexual Techniques):

"while it is never a wife's fault that her husband turns to pornography rather than to her for sexual gratification, we do possess the power to lessen his desire for it."

And from Chapter 17 (Whipped Cream and a Cherry), which talks about a woman who created a personal Playboy magazine for her husband while he was away in the military:

"When a man knows he has a woman like that at home, why would he wast his time looking at or even thinking about any other woman? A well-fed man doesn't feel the need to go looking elsewhere for scraps. he knows where his satisfaction can be found -- in you!"

This is the very lesson that has to be unlearned by those of us who are married to sex addicts (and have, in many cases, including mine, tried a variety of sexually uninhibited and adventurous techniques in a misguided attempt to control our husbands' addictions and get his interest to stay on us). We sexual codependents have had to learn that no matter what we do -- no matter what techniques we use or how exhibitionist we become or how comfortable we are with our bodies or how much we show our husbands love and respect or how sexually confident we become -- our husbands will continue to act out until they love and are confident in themselves. Maybe The Sexually Confident Husband is next?

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Just one last quick funny story about the book. In Chapter 7 (Befriending the Body Image Bear), Shannon Ethridge discusses how men have "their own body image hang-ups," among other things that "they fear they are too short and too pale." My husband, whose skin is a beautiful dark chocolate color, giggled when I read that part to him!

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* In the interest of full disclosure, I was not paid for this review, but did receive a free copy of the book. And that's no small incentive to someone like me. I'd be happy to stand on a street corner with a sign that reads, "Will work for books." (Back to top)