My wife says no sex before church

Dear Pastor,

I am 53 years old and I have been reading your column for many years. I was introduced to your column by my first wife. She is now deceased. We have four children together, but only one is living in Jamaica.

I have remarried. My present wife is very fussy. She, too, was previously married before her first union ended in divorce. She is 45 years old and she has made a schedule for the days or nights when we should have sex. When it comes to a Saturday night, she doesn't want me to touch her at all because she has to attend church on Sunday.

She said it doesn't feel right for us to have sex and then get up and go to church. She cannot show me anywhere in the Bible where having sex is forbidden on a Saturday night and then attending church on Sunday.

This woman is allowing her religion to come between the both of us. Her previous husband divorced her because he told her that he wanted children but she was unable to conceive. When I met her, I told her that that will not bother me because I do not want to have any more children, so we got together and we got married.

The first time this woman and I had sex was when we went to spend a weekend together at a hotel. Having sex on a Saturday was not a problem then, because we got there from the Friday evening and we had sex. We played around all day that Saturday and she did not complain. We did not attend church the Sunday; it was not even mentioned. We had sex when we woke up Saturday morning, we had sex when we had dinner and we had sex during the night. She never complained that we were doing it too often. Her only complaint was that I am large.

Sometimes I don't know what to do because now when I want to make love to her, she said I should stick with the schedule that she has made out. We can have sex on a Wednesday night and on a Friday night, but nothing on a Saturday night. And she makes a big fuss if I try to arouse her.

I would like you to show me, from the Bible, if my wife has the right to object having sex with me and only allow me to do so when it pleases her.

K.S.

Dear K.S.,

I can assure you, sir, that there is nothing in the Bible that forbids a man and his wife from having sex on a Saturday night or on a Sunday.

However, I can tell you that while I was in school studying for the sacred ministry, a young man who was one of my seniors told me that he and his wife did not have sex on a Saturday night. He said every Saturday night he had to abstain from sex because he had to prepare himself for preaching on Sunday. He was my senior, so I did not question the veracity of what he was saying. Looking back on the life of that man, he became a minister of religion, but the marriage did not last. They are divorced and his children hate him. He is now married to another woman.

Allow me, please to tease you a bit. It seems to me that if you want to make love to your wife on a Saturday evening or on a Sunday, you might have to take her back to the hotel where both of you engaged in love making and she did not complain about it. But seriously, my friend, your wife is talking nonsense. Both of you should make an appointment with a family counsellor and discuss these problems.

Pastor