I believe most people don't believe it to be realistic today because most people including myself in the past are so focused on themselves and their feelings and their rights and their pleasure and their individuality that they miss the point of marriage altogether. There was a couple I heard about, (a true story by the way), this married couple went to a counselor who happened to be a pastor also because they were (as a couple) concerned about the intimate part of their marriage in that that part of their marriage wasn't as vibrant and fulfilling as it once was. The pastor discussed this with them and at the end of the session they made another appointment for a future session. He told them that between the time before their next appointment he wanted them to have sex every day. This surprised me and I imagine them also because I would have expected the pastor to tell them to abstain from sex going with the belief that absent makes the heart grow fonder. What the pastor also instructed them was to focus entirely on pleasing their partner during sex and not themselves. When this couple returned for the next session they were happy and excited because the excitement and pleasure and fulfillment of a vibrant intimate life had returned to their marriage when they decided to focus on what their spouse needed as being more important than their own needs.
There was another couple I new personally. The husband and I were involved in a type of business arrangement. I had been talking after my divorce about how many wives continually find excuses to not have sex with their husbands and this husband told me as a matter of fact, in other words he wasn't bragging, that he had never had that problem and he and his wife had been married for 40 some years at that point. You could wonder if he was being truthful. I basically got conformation on this one day at their house, we had been having coffee and just talking, him and his wife and myself, nothing sexual at all going on, I was in my upper 30s at the time and them in their 60's and his wife surprised me by telling me that when she was going to get married her grandmother told her that if she wanted to have a happy husband then when he was in the mood she should just grin and bear it, in other words be happy that her husband desired her and give herself to her husband. Many women today do not agree with giving themselves to their husbands freely in that way, but look at the difference, this husband and wife were still in love with each other after over 40 years of marriage and many of the women today who do not agree with giving themselves to their husbands freely like she did are divorced and miserable and looking for someone else to magically make them happy, many men for that matter in the same state.
This day and age is in the state it is in with an ever increasing divorce rate because we have rejected the true ideals of marriage which is caring for each other as more important than ourselves for an alternative which is selfishness and a belief of taking care of I and me as being more important.
Please don't take this the wrong way, I am no better than anyone else, I have made many of these same mistakes in the past that is why I am also divorced. I am not seeing anyone at present, actually haven't seen anyone for over 5 years, trying not to make the same mistakes as in the past. All I am trying to say is that I believe we need to consider the needs of others as just as important or more important as our own needs most of the time and that the morals of the past that many people are rejecting were actually a very important foundation for a happy life and a fulfilling marriage.
I thank you for your response, your comments, and I sincerely hope you accept my comments in a loving way and not meant to be judgmental, just feel the need at times to express my thoughts. less