Over the years I’ve told many men, “No, sex is not your love language.”  But a couple of years ago I started to wonder if I was wrong about that.

Gary Chapman, the author of The Five Love Languages, includes sex as part of the touch love language. Okay, but I see problems with that. I know men and women who feel love via sex but have little interest in other forms of touch. I also know women and a few men who are all about touch who have little or no interest in sex. I hate to say Chapman is wrong, but I think he might be.

One of the things that got me thinking about this was something a wrote a couple of years ago over on The Generous Husband:

“One interesting idea offered in something I read is that sex is actually more emotional for men than for women. The theory is sex is one of a men’s few ways of making emotional connection while women are able to feel emotionally connected in many more ways. This could mean some of our “I need it now feeling” is about an emptiness in our hearts rather than just a fullness in our pants.“ ~ From Maybe It’s Not Just Between Your Legs

Then Chris, AKA The Forgiven Wife, wrote A Husband’s Emotional Need, based in part on my post. Among other things, she suggested to women that “some of that drive your husband has to be sexually intimate with you is about filling his heart, not just about dealing with an erection. Emotional need, not just physiology, drives his sex drive.”

I know there have been times I wanted sex not because of a physical desire, but because of an emotional need to express and receive love. Most of the time I feel both desires to some extent. Sex is certainly not the only way I feel love, but it is one of the ways.

And yes, if this is true, it will be true for men and women. And, if it’s true, it makes sexual refusal all the more hurtful to those for whom sex is a love language.

~ Paul – I’m XY, and I’ve been known to be wrong!

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