“Is it wrong for me to motivate my wife into having good sex with me using money? Am I treating my wife like a prostitute by doing this?” This was part of an email I received from a Christian husband going by the name of Luke.
But before I answer this question from a Biblical perspective, I want to show more of his email to add more context to this story.
“Dear BGR,
I was hoping you could tell me if I am properly applying the principles, you teach based on the Bible on how to handle sexual refusal from your wife. My wife told me I was treating her like a prostitute because I decided to start crediting her spending account based on how often she has sex with me and I also give her bonuses for doing extra things like giving me oral sex and wearing lingerie.
Let me give you a little background to my story before I started rewarding my wife for good sex.
My wife and I have been married for over 25 years and we have three wonderful children who as of this last year have all left the nest. We have attended the same Baptist church for over 30 years (that is where my wife and I met). I work in a high paying profession and this allowed my wife to care for our children and our home for all these years which I still thank the Lord for each day.
My wife likes to shop whether at the stores in person or online. She has more clothes and shoes than any woman I know. She also likes it when I have taken her away on nice trips, just the two of us, even when we still had kids in the house.
While I do well financially, I have always tried to be responsible with the money I make so I put myself and my wife on a budget each month. A part of that budget is discretionary spending that we can spend on anything we like. I give my wife one credit card that is for our household budget including grocery shopping as well as personal care needs. I give her another credit card that is only for her discretionary spending. I then monitor and pay these cards off completely at the end of each month.
Her discretionary spending card has a 500-dollar limit and I did it that way on purpose. This means she cannot spend anymore than $500 in a month on things for herself she wants to purchase. 90 percent of the time she spends that money each month on new clothing or new shoes. And she uses the full limit every month.
Now on to the problems in our sex life. When we were first married in our early 20s, we had a pretty good sex life. We had sex probably at least 4 times a week and at least once a week she would surprise me by wearing lingerie when I came into the bedroom. Oral sex between us, me giving it to her and her giving it to me, was a very regular thing as well.
Over many years things gradually changed. My wife stopped wearing the lingerie. I would buy her a new set of lingerie from time to time to see if that would spark her into wearing lingerie again and she would wear it one time, then it would go in the drawer never to be warn again.
Then the oral sex stopped. First, she did not want me to do oral sex on her anymore. Then eventually she did not want to do oral sex on me anymore. I bought her flowers more often. I even tried to increase the frequency at which we would do weekend getaways. Nothing worked to reverse the downward slide of our sex life.
And then the frequency of our sexual relations went from four times a week, to three and now after 25 years of marriage we were down to about once a week having sex.
I have talked to her about this many times throughout the years and my wife just says “It’s part of the natural aging process, I just don’t want sex the way I did when I was younger. And you should just accept that. Why would you want to make me have sex when I don’t feel like it?”.
I know a question you would ask me is “If you insisted on sex more than when she offered it once a week, would she give it to you?” and the answer is yes. But on those occasions when I have, she makes it absolutely miserable for me with the looks on her face and things she says. So, it is not outright refusal, but it won’t be sex that is very satisfying.
Of course, I had Christian church friends tell me it was her hormones or she needed sex counseling. But anytime I brought these things up to my wife she just dismissed it telling me that “You need to stop making everything about sex! We are in our mid 40s and people are age don’t usually care about sex so much. Just leave me alone and be thankful for the one time a week we do have sex. Honestly, I don’t even need it then, I just do it for you.”
I started looking into what to do when your wife sexually refuses you online and I came across your site and your many articles. You opened my eyes to so much. I also read your articles on wife discipline and I could not realize how I missed this all these years. No one has ever taught on these things in the church we attend!
I did notice that you said a lot of these changes are harder to make with older women and that makes sense. For instance, I know I could never spank my wife. She has said many times over our 25-year marriage that if I ever raised a hand to her, she would have me thrown in jail followed by giving me divorce papers.
But I really loved the ideas you had for non-physical discipline. And I had a thought. Yes, I am supposed to provide for my wife’s necessities including clothing. But my wife literally has two full sized closets and two chests of drawers full of clothing! My wife could literally go years without needing another set of clothes.
I decided that instead of automatically paying $500 on to my wife’s credit card each month, that I would use that $500 as a reward for her good behavior, specifically her sexually behavior toward me. Generally speaking, my wife is pretty respectful of me and she keeps a clean house and I have no complaints in those areas. Pretty much the good behavior I would be rewarding her for would be how well she sexually pleases me.
I even came up with a way to motivate her each and every time we have sex. The $500 reward each month will be credited in pieces throughout the month. Each time we have sex she gets a certain amount credited. If it is just regular sex with nothing extra, she gets $25 credited. That means if we have sex 4 times a week, she gets $100 credit to her account that week. But to get to the $500 a month, that means she has to do some extra things several times a month. Extra things include her giving me oral sex as foreplay or her inviting me to give her oral sex as foreplay. If she gives me oral sex as foreplay, she gets an extra $10 credited. If she invites me to give her oral sex, she gets another $10 credited. If she surprises me with lingerie, she gets an extra $10 credit. And finally, there is the shower blowjob. If she comes in the shower and gives me a blow job (something she did often when we were newlyweds), she gets $35. There are also deductions from the standard $25 for each time we have sex. If she has sex in a less than enthusiastic way or with a bad attitude, I will deduct $5 so she will only get $20 for that session.
About three months ago, I sat my wife down and explained this new reward system. That her spending money would no longer be automatically given to her, but that it would be a reward. I showed her the passage in Hebrews 11:6 where the Bible says God “is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him”. I told her that this reward would be based on her diligently seeking to please me as her husband in all areas of our marriage including her respect for me, her keeping of our home and her performance in the sexual arena. I told her that while most of the time she is very respectful to me and keeps our home well that our she is not even coming close to sexually pleasing me.
She was very angry with me and uncharacteristically disrespectful when I laid out this new reward system. She told me “You are treating me like a prostitute! I am better than that! What kind of man pays his wife to have sex with him? Why would you want to have sex with me that you know your paid for? This is disgusting! A man should only want to have sex with a woman who feels like having sex with him, not that she is having sex with him because she is getting paid!”
What follows was my response to my wife.
“I know some men would just give up and accept whatever kind of sex you wanted to give them. Other men might go to the gym and get muscles and then play mind games with you by going out all the time making your think they were going to cheat if you did not start having sex with them more. Some men would bring the church elders in to shame you. But this is the method that I as your husband have chosen. I am not going to try and change your feelings on sex. I have tried to make you want to feel like having sex for years. And I am done playing these games.
You said I am treating your like prostitute, that you are better than that. Well, are you better than a prostitute? If a prostitute can smile and put on a show for a man she does not know or love and pretend like she wants him sexually and rock his world in bed then surely you as my wife can do this for me, the man that has loved and cared for you for over 25 years of marriage.
Whether it is hormones, the aging process or whatever I get that you don’t care about sex anymore. But if you want your spending money each month you are going to become a great actress in the bedroom! And I know you can do it. I see the smile and the thrill that comes on your face each month when I pay the bill on your credit card and you have spending money again. And if you put that energy into our sex life you will do just fine.”
So what has transpired over the last 3 months?
The first month my wife repeated her mantra several times that I was treating her like a prostitute. She refused to have sex with me for the entire month thinking she would break me and that I would come back to her begging for the scraps she once gave me. But I held firm.
And then credit card bill came and I only paid the minimum $25.00 so she had no money to spend. She was so angry and repeated her “I will not be treated like a prostitute! I am your wife!” mantra.
And about the second week of the second month her will began to break (so about six weeks into this process). And I don’t think it was just about the money. My wife and I were spending very little time together during the first month. I forgot to mention that was another area I took your advice based on Proverbs 21:9 which says “It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house”. Since she was so angry all the time – I went out a lot or went in my basement office a lot. And it was all this combined, the loss of time with me and the loss of my money for her to spend that finally broke her will.
One night, after about 6 weeks of doing spiritual battle with my wife’s sin nature, I came into my bedroom to be surprised by wife wearing lingerie I had not seen her in for 15 years! She literally spread her legs open and invited me to perform oral sex on her. And when I was done, she performed oral sex on me and then she road me like she had not in 15 years! She definitely earned $55 for that session!
And since that time over the last 6 weeks, I have felt like we were in our early 20s again. I have not had sex this much and this good in so few weeks in years. It is amazing! My passion for her is rekindled. She did test me a bit though because at the end of the second month with as good as she did, she only got to $325 in credit. She tried to get me to just give her the full $500, but I held my ground.
In the third month though, she easily made it to the $500 and I even gave her a little extra walking cash because she exceeded it. There is so much freedom now in my sex life with my wife. I can initiate it any time I want. And if I don’t initiate it, she will! I never thought I would ever get to the point where I did not need sex. But there are some days I have had it so often in the days before that it does not even cross my mind! It is utterly amazing.
Now I get that the Red Pill folks will say “You should only want sex this genuinely desired by the woman” and the principled Christian patriarchal folks might say “You should not be paying your wife for sex. She should be motived by her God given duty to have sex with you”.
My question for these folks would be “And what should I be doing while I am waiting years for her to be motivated by her God given duty?”
Sure, would it be nice if my wife genuinely desired sex as often as I did? Yes. Should she have had been doing this our whole marriage from a sense of God given duty? Yes. Is my wife blinded to this her sin in this area of the duty to sexually please her husband? You bet. And I have preached that principle to her till I was blue in the face for years and I never got anywhere with her.
Others might ask me “Do you think your wife still thinks you are treating her like a prostitute by making her earn her monthly spending money by sexually pleasing you?” And my answer is I have no idea if she still thinks that way and is hiding it and I don’t care! Those thoughts would be wrong. But that is between her and God.
If all it takes are the right incentives to get my wife to have sex with me the way I want it – why would I care if she is genuinely in the mood or not?
So what say you BGR? Is it wrong for me to motivate my wife into having good sex with me using money? Am I treating my wife like a prostitute by doing this?”
Luke’s story raises several questions beyond what he has asked here at the end of his story.
Is It Possible for a Husband to Treat His Wife Like A Prostitute?
Remember that as Christians the Bible is our first dictionary. That means before I crack out the Websters dictionary, I look at the Bible. Whether it is defining what male and female are, what marriage is, what rape is, what slavery is or what murder is. Any word that is at all connected with moral issues must be defined by the Bible.
That means it is utterly irrelevant that most modern dictionaries define prostitution as “a person that engages in sexual intercourse for money”.
The Biblical definition of a prostitute is shown in the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38:15-18:
“15 When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.
16 And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?
17 And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? 18 And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.”
As we can see from the story above, a prostitute is MORE than a woman who engages in sexual relations with a man for something of value (whether it be money, cattle…etc.). According the Bible, a prostitute is woman who engages in sexual relations with a man who is NOT her husband for something of value.
The only way it is possible for a man to treat his wife like a prostitute is if he had her have sex with another man for money. But within the context of sexual relations between himself and his wife, it is utterly impossible for a man to engage in prostitution with his own wife because a defining attribute of prostitution is that a woman is having sex with a man who is NOT her husband.
This brings us to our next question.
Is it Wrong for a Wife to Insist Upon Payment for Sex from Her Husband?
The Bible says that sex is automatically owed in marriage as a duty simply based upon the marriage covenant as seen in 1 Corinthians 11:3-5:
“3 Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 4 The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”
Sex is pictured both as a kindness that that is rendered, literally paid like wages owed in marriage to one’s spouse. And to refuse sex in marriage is like keeping back a payment that is owed.
Therefore, it is crystal clear in the Bible that it would be a sin for a man to insist on some exchange of something of value or a service from his wife in order for her to have sexual access to his body and it would likewise be a sin for a wife to demand something of value or a service be done first in order for her husband to have sexual access to her body.
It is Wrong for a Husband to Motivate his Wife to Better and More Frequent Sex with Money?
We are taught today from many different sides, both liberal and conservative, that sex should only occur based on the mutual and genuine desire for it by both the man and woman. Therefore, a wife having sex with her husband which is motivated by duty, fear or even money is seen as immoral by most Christians and non-Christians alike in our culture today.
The problem is that the typical woman does not desire sex as often or in the same ways as the typical man does.
With this idea that sex should always be based on the mutual and genuine desire of both a husband and wife, myriads of books and web articles have been written in the last several decades on how to help stoke genuine sexual desire in women. The purpose of all these books and articles is to raise the woman’s desire for sex to be equal with that of the man who usually has the stronger desire for sex. In other words, it’s just another attempt in our modern equality obsessed society to make women the same as men.
But God did not make women the same as men in this area of sexual desire and what motivates desire in men and women is radically different.
Luke made it clear that his wife would not outright refuse him sexual relations. But if he insisted on it more than his wife offered it, she would give him sex grudgingly and it would not be as pleasant an experience. It does not appear that his wife was purposefully holding out for more money, but rather she genuinely just did not have the desire for the kind of sex and frequency of sex her husband was wanting. She made it clear that even the little sex she offered was done for him and not for her.
What happened with Luke’s wife is common with many women as they age where their libido decreases. Sometimes it might also have to do with other outside stresses or medications or weight gain either by herself or her husband. A woman’s libido can also decrease simply because the newness and excitement of her relationship with her husband has wore off.
For a woman sexual desire is primarily fueled by how she feels and not simply by physical need. In other words, a woman’s desire for sex with a man at any given time is like a physics equation with several complex variables that all need to come together in just the right order to spark her desire.
On the other hand, a man’s sexual desire follows the simple Biblical equation that “they two shall be one flesh” (Eph 5:31). A man literally sees a woman’s body as something to be consumed and he has a furious appetite to explore a woman’s body by viewing it, tasting it, feeling it and finally indwelling it where he ultimately leaves his mark on it with his seed.
The idea of trying to make men and women the same in their sexual desire, whether it is regarding frequency or what kind of sexual things are desired is about as futile as the goals of the transgender movement. You will never make a man a woman nor can you make a woman a man.
The Scriptures never place any prerequisite of mutual desire for sex on a man and woman coming together in the act of sexual relations. The only prerequisite that God places on sex is that it is between a man and woman that have entered into a covenant of marriage with one another (Hebrews 13:4). In other words, God has no problem with a man initiating sex with his wife at any given moment and her giving him her body for his sexual use even if she does not desire it at that time.
In fact, God commands a man to use his wife’s body (Romans 1:27), to literally drink his fill and satisfy his every sexual desire with his wife’s body (Proverbs 5:18-19). And the wife is commanded to be “loving”, “pleasant” and to “ravish” her husband by making him feel loved through the sexual use of her body.
But what about the husband motivating his wife with her spending money to do all the sexual extras he wants and have sex more often and enthusiastically even if she has to fake it? Nothing in the Bible forbids a man from motivating his wife to pleasing him better sexually through giving or taking away things from her as long as they are not things God requires him to provide for her. And no Scripture stops a wife from faking it and putting on an elaborate show in order to ravish her husband sexually as God commands.
Christian wives “faking it” is a related but still separate discussion from this one of a man using money to motivate his wife to fake it. For more on that subject see my article “Why Christian Wives SHOULD fake it”.
Biblical Sexology 
This is an interesting and unique situation, and unfortunately, though it seems to be working for him, Luke will find himself on the hate list of both christians and non-christians alike. Best case scenario is his wife just keeps on board with the program and everyone is happy. Worst case scenario is that someone, a friend or a doctor, hears about the arrangement and tells the wife she is “being abused” and helps her go down all the channels to start a divorce complete with asset raping. I’ll pray for this man and that his wife will keep her head on straight and accept a good thing.
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This woman’s sexual desire for her husband probably truly increased (as her respect for him increased) by the way he laid down new rules for her to follow and then did not give in when she tried to force him to submit to her will but rather held fast and insisted that she submit to his will. The key to his success (IMO) is when he employed discipline (removal of his time and her discretionary money) to encourage and enforce her obedience.
Women (on the inside) want to be dominated by their husbands as long as it’s done in a benevolent way and there was nothing he was doing that was not (ultimately) in her best interest. Nice job Luke.
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I do not think this is the right solution. Just like Luke, I am also the provider of the family but I know being my wife and the mother of my children is a full time job for her. I give her the monthly allowance for that and not for just sex only. I can understand why she feels like a prostitute because Luke is only rewarding her for sex and not for being his wife and the mother of his children.
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James, when I reward my children for good grades in school, I expect their grades in every class to be good. If they got A’s in all classes and and an F in one, they do not get the reward that card marking. It is the same with being a wife. A woman could be a great homemaker, and mother and but she cannot be a good wife while she refuses to satisfy and ravished her husband with her body as God commands.
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A good wife must follow all the rules of marriage. Sexual relations are one of those rules and she does not have the right to refuse her husband. Maybe that is too simple an explanation for a more complicated situation.
I get an allowance for hair and beauty appointments which have been approved, likewise with clothes. Any extra money that I would like have to be approved by my husband. I wouldn’t expect him to pay me for each invidual think I did.
If I wasn’t interested in sex then I would talk to him and ask his forgiveness and advice. But the bottom line is still that it is a wife’s duty to give her husband sex when he wants it.
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