Hi Mandy Mashburn — really appreciate your kind words; your empathy. And really, really appreciate your taking the time to look up the source of a quote I used.

I just reread the interview with Duggar, to see if I have a different take on it than I did when I originally wrote this piece…but I am left feeling even more itchy with her suggestion that women, wives, should “make themselves available to their husbands.”

Here’s the section that feels, to me, like a prescription for sexual subjugation:

Anyone can iron Jim Bob’s shirt, anybody can make lunch for him. He can get his lunch somewhere else. But you are the only one who can meet that special need that he has in his life for intimacy. You’re it. You’re the only one. So don’t forget that, that he needs you. So when you are exhausted at the end of the day, maybe from dealing with little ones, and you fall into bed so exhausted at night, don’t forget about him because you and he are the only ones who can have that time together. No one else in the world can meet that need.”

“And so be available, and not just available, but be joyfully available for him. Smile and be willing to say, ‘Yes, sweetie I am here for you,’ no matter what, even though you may be exhausted and big pregnant and you may not feel like he feels. ‘I’m still here for you and I’m going to meet that need because I know it’s a need for you.’ ”

There’s no mention of whether the woman feels desire for sex. In fact, it states that the woman might actively NOT want sex. But, according to this (and the training I received as a child, both in the church and in a cult), women should just give the man the sex he wants. As if she’s an owned thing, as if that’s her sole purpose. As if she “owes” him.

I just can’t get behind such a notion. If either partner in a relationship is “feeling that need,” and the other one isn’t, the former can take care of their own needs. No smiling, exhausted, not-feeling-like-sex “willingness” required.