The Act of Marriage is concerned with helping couples, particularly the female partner, to achieve sexual satisfaction. The book was first printed in 1976 and boasts a readership of over 2.5 million readers. While the book is written to be understood by anyone, the primary audience is meant to be Christians. Indeed, the book is noteworthy for opening up dialogue among Christians about their sexuality—especially female sexuality and sexual satisfaction. Unlike other self-help books which address human sexuality, The Act of Marriage helps readers identify how their spirituality and religious beliefs can enhance their love lives. Since its initial publishing in 1976, The Act of Marriage has been published again in 1998 as The Act of Marriage, Revised & Updated and again in 2000 as The Act of Marriage after 40: Making Love for Life. Rolling Stone magazine criticized the book as "an explicit Christian sex manual, condemning petting, abortion and homosexuality." However, many Christian groups hail the book as a milestone in contemporary Christian sex education. It has been endorsed by "Pastors, doctors, and psychologists alike". This claim of professional endorsement, however, is made by the publisher without any accompanying data which would allow for verification and there have been no statements of this nature made by the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association.
Chapter summaries
Chapter 1: The Sanctity of Sex
This chapter sets out to convince the reader that sex is holy and sacred, not dirty—an attitude they have found to be prevalent among the couples they have counseled. They cite several examples in both the Old Testament and New Testament where intimate behavior between married persons is commended.
Chapter 2: What Lovemaking Means to a Man
In this chapter the authors set out five benefits that men derive from intimacy with their wives:
It satisfies his sex drive, which is usually greater than his wife's.
The husband will have claim over his wife and the wife will have claim over her husband.
It creates a unique union and method of communication between two people that cannot be shared with anyone else.
Overall, the chapter is concerned with convincing couples that sex is a blessing from God, but that it should only be experienced within the bonds of marriage.
This chapter outlines the basic steps taken during a lovemaking session. It includes preparations that should be taken, foreplay, the act itself, and the "afterglow" that follows completion of the act. They stress the importance of the husband waiting until his wife is fully aroused before entering her vagina and proceeding to orgasm. They recommend that a couple use their honeymoon for experimentation so that they can best learn how to please their partner. The importance of clitoral stimulation to achieve female orgasm is again stressed. Male and female sexual responses are again compared and a brief discussion of positions is given.
This chapter gives nine suggestions on how women can satisfy their husbands and achieve satisfaction themselves during the sex act.
Keep a positive mental attitude. This is broken down into three parts: have a positive attitude about sex, a positive attitude about yourself, and a positive attitude about your husband.
Remember that your husband is stimulated by sight.
Avoid nagging, criticizing, or ridiculing your husband.
Remember that while you may not be in the mood for sexual relations when your husband makes advances, you are capable of responding and "getting into the mood."
Communicate with your husband and tell him what pleases you.
Pray and ask God for help in achieving sexual satisfaction.
Chapter 9: The Unfulfilled Woman
This chapter declares that many wives are not as satisfied by sexual encounters as they could be because they fail to achieve orgasm. Eleven reasons are given why women might experience dissatisfaction with sex and suggestions are given on how to overcome those problems.
Ignorance on both her part and her husband's part on how to achieve clitoral orgasm.
Feelings of hate or hostility towards someone else, especially her husband.
Feelings of guilt, especially those brought on by premarital sex premarital or extramarital indiscretions.
Fear that she will not be able to be satisfied or satisfy her husband.
Being unwilling to surrender herself to her husband.
Having weak vaginal muscles.
Chapter 10: The Key to the Feminine Response
This chapter explains how Dr. Arnold H. Kegel started training women to exercise their pubococcygeus muscle in order to curb postpartum incontinence. It was discovered that a side effect of this exercise was to improve women's ability to experience orgasm. The authors recommend an exercise regimen for women seeking to improve their sexual response.
Chapter 11: The Impotent Man
This chapter gives nineteen reasons why husbands may experience inability to maintain an erection or ejaculate and gives suggestions on how to overcome those problems.
The onset of age: they will lose vital energy as they get older.
Feelings of hate or hostility towards someone else, especially his wife.
Fear.
Ridicule from his wife.
Feelings of guilt, especially those brought on by premarital or extramarital indiscretions.
Having unreasonable expectations about how he will be able to perform as his age increases.
The authors express their belief that a husband and wife should produce as many children as they can reasonably manage and deplore several reasons some give for avoiding parenthood. They counter with several reasons why parents should seek to have and raise children. They then give suggestions for contraception that they believe are appropriate for Christians. They recommend, in order of reliability, birth control pills, condoms, diaphragms, vaginal foam, the rhythm method, and coitus interruptus. They recommend against permanent methods, such as vasectomy and having tubes tied.
Chapter 13: Sex Survey Report
The authors report the results of a survey they conducted. Their intent is to show that a) Christians have more fulfilling sex lives than their non-Christian counterparts and b) Christians don't have the Victorian attitudes about sex that they are stereotyped as having.
Chapter 14: The Missing Dimension
In this chapter the authors advocate that the most important element to a satisfying sex life and a satisfying life overall is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They advocate a Christian lifestyle and suggest that a shared belief in Christ will help a couple overcome incompatibilities.
Within academia, the Act of Marriage is viewed as an interesting insight into the ever changing relationship between mainstream religion and sexual practice. Michigan State Professor, Amy DeRogatis, took a deep look at this book and others of the sort to explore the impacts they have on gender roles within Protestant Evangelical tradition. While it pushes the boundaries of accepted sexual practice within Evangelical heterosexual marriage to that point, it upholds a strictly complementarian view of gender. At some points within the text it describes men as "beasts" and "uncontrollable" in the context of sexual desire, while it paints women as pleasers and far less sexual than their husbands. Although this seems overly traditionalist, they were not out of line with commonly held cultural belief. Even secular author Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex promotes the idea of natural gender roles and a far more sexually driven male.
