That stack of books is all the reading I’ve been doing about sex, marriage, and relationships. Some of the titles I’ve already mentioned in other posts. I could wait until I got through the rest of the pile to write about them, but I wanted to feature my top two books from the pile, one on marriage, one on sex.

1. Marriage on the Rock, by Jimmy Evans

Of all the books I read on marriage, this one was the most helpful. It was faith-based, practical, easy to read, and offered immediate solutions and encouragement. It offers insight for your marriage no matter what shape your relationship is in. It’s a book I plan to re-read.

The book does a great job of describing the needs of both husbands and wives. If your spouse is willing to read it, too, all the better. And the book offers guidance for folks who are in a relationship where their partner is unwilling to change.

My only caveat is the section about wives meeting their husband’s physical needs. My problem was this: Evans says wives need to accommodate the husband’s level of desire. Period. The argument is that sexual connection is so fundamental to the way husbands bond with their wives that wives need to just make it happen.

In marriage we try to meet one another’s needs to the point of self-sacrifice, and I’m not at all in the “withholding sex until you get what you want” camp. But if your partner is unable to support you emotionally, I don’t see how meeting his sexual needs without any accommodation for the wife is going to benefit either of you. This seems to me to be the breeding grounds of resentment, especially if a wife is “fulfilling her duty,” but her heart is not in it. I don’t just mean resentment on the part of the wife.

I must mention, the book encourages men to listen to and affirm their wives, and teaches them how to do it. It lets husbands know that when a woman’s emotional needs are met, she will joyfully be available physically, which I have found to be true.

In our own marriage, I found this book to have the most usable and digestible information, along with tangible tools to bring about change for both partners.

2. Come As You Are, by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.

I have 5-6 books just on the topic of sex in my stack, and this one quickly and easily rose to the top. I tried a couple of Christian books about sex. I still may go back to them. But I found that overwhelmingly, those books perpetuated the guilt and shame I have already been fighting with. Part of the effectiveness of this book is that it meets you wherever you are and lets you start there.

The book isn’t just about sex. It’s about the way you view yourself. It’s one long therapy session. I found that it changed the way I look at my emotional life and how I treat myself and my feelings, as well as my feelings about my feelings. (That is a thing. They’re called meta-feelings. And if that were the only thing you learned from this book, it would still be worth reading).

I don’t want to pretend this book wasn’t about sex, though. I learned about the current research on female sexual response, what is normal (basically anything that isn’t painful), and how it differs from men. Nagoski addresses the cultural and media messages that inform ways we think we should feel and act. She talks about body image, the brain’s role in sex for women (it’s huge), and the role of context (again, huge).

Nagoski uses a combination of scientific research, anecdotes, and her own encouraging voice to guide you through. While I’ve known about mindfulness for a while now, Come As You Are is the book that gave me the tools to practice it effectively.

By the time I was finished reading, there were post-its sticking out of this book in all directions and pencil markings on many of the pages. I have already re-read sections of it. When I got to the end, I realized I had been blowing right past the footnotes in each chapter, and so I read all of those that were more than a sentence, and skimmed the rest. It ended up being pages of very interesting, and at times entertaining, information.

Of the dozen or so books I’ve read on these topics so far, these two titles shown individually as the most helpful, practical, and readable books on their subjects. Look out for a second post as I continue reading books in this genre.

If you noticed the second book isn’t visible in the stack pictured above: it’s the middle of the three brown paper covered books. I keep grown up books about sex covered so that I can read them during the day without a bunch of questions from the kids.