Quick Summary
Sheet Music has bounced around Christian circles for years, so I was excited to finally see what it was all about. Unfortunately I was a little turned off by what I read.
Imagine that your dad wrote a book about sexual intimacy in marriage. Seriously…just try. And while your dad is a psychologist who is very knowledgeable in the area of sexuality, his book is filled with cringey dad humor, outdated verbiage, and zero input from your mom.
This describes Sheet Music in a nutshell. It’s not bad…but it’s not great either. And while you’ll probably learn something, you’ll wince at a few things along the way.
Sheet Music, written from a faith-based perspective, offers to help you uncover the “secrets of sexual intimacy in marriage.” There are chapters that discuss the goodness of our sexuality, undoing sexual baggage, sex positions, and common issues or impediments to a healthy sex life. There are chapters addressed to each gender, and he even takes great care to include a section helping those who are virgins on their wedding night.
There is a lot to like about Sheet Music. If you’re sexually inexperienced or grew up in a church setting where sex and sexuality were never discussed, you’ll find many bits of wisdom throughout. Dr. Leman is also not afraid to be very blunt and straightforward about sensitive topics, which I can appreciate.
At the same time, Sheet Music dances with misogyny throughout the book. While I wouldn’t say this book is outright harmful like the disaster that is the Love & Respect material, there are moments in Sheet Music where it was very clear Dr. Leman wrote from a strictly male perspective. His book could’ve used a strong female voice in various sections to balance out the focus on male sexuality, men’s “needs” (groan), and male pleasure. It’s not to say that he never speaks to or advocates for women’s pleasure, it just never felt as balanced as it should be.
I’ll get more specific with a few positives and negatives below.
Favorite Quotes / What I Liked
“Great marital sex is about learning to love someone else the way he or she wants to be loved.”
“When you improve your marriage, you’ll usually improve your sex life. When you improve your sex life, you’ll usually improve the rest of your marriage. The two are intricately entwined, so making more effort in any one area is a very good investment.”
“I’m…wary that our culture tries to replace intimacy with technique. In search of the next great sexual experience, some people seem to go out of their way to concoct a ridiculous alignment of bodies or some new method to bring about a new pleasure, when what they really need is to work on their relationship.”
“Sex is about the quality of your entire love life, not the intricate alignment of your bodies.”
“In my practice, I’ve found that most couples spend 99.9 percent of their sexual relationship making love, and .1 percent talking about it.”
I appreciate that the first few chapters deal with the topic of sex for the first time as a couple. An untold amount of Christian couples who have patiently waited until their wedding night before having sex have been left radically disappointed, and the hurt can last for years. Imagine being given little to no education on a topic only to be expected to put it all together suddenly in one night. Turning on our sexuality is not like turning on a light switch that’s been off for decades. That’s simply not how sexual relationships work, and Leman does a good job helping set realistic expectations for a young couple.
Dr. Leman also explores many of the differences between sexes, including what turns men and women on (and off), what the sexual response cycles are like, and the differences that a sexual experience has on men and women as far as bonding. However, he does approach this topic with a very rigid idea of men and women (see next section).
Additionally, I appreciated his last chapter on body image as well as his epilogue about a sexual relationship for a lifetime with your spouse. Those chapters serve as great examples of the kind of wisdom that Sheet Music can offer within its pages.
Lastly, I am thankful that Dr. Leman approached sexuality from the perspective that it was created by God and gifted to a husband and wife to enjoy together. At no point was sex discussed in a bad light; instead, Leman continually celebrates the inherent goodness of our bodies and of our sexuality, a message Christians need to hear.
Sheet Music was not at all a wasted read. However, there are several aspects that would probably prevent me from widely recommending it to couples.
What I Didn’t Like
There are several moments in the book that I felt were borderline harmful as well as repeated uses of awkward and cringey phrases. While I understand that this is Leman’s way of bringing humor and levity into serious discussions, it just didn’t land for me. Here are a few examples:
- A heading titled “Why You Want to Make Hubby Happy” which talks about fulfilling a man’s basic “need” (Ch. 3). This as well as a few other sections make a slight implication that a man straying outside of the marriage is the woman’s fault (although Leman never outright says this unlike Eggerich’s Love & Respect), and the implication is also that men are such simpletons that the only thing that makes them happy is sex, and the wife’s primary job is to give it to them.
- A wife can give her husband a handjob while on her period to help her husband through that “difficult time” (Ch. 3). Are men so out of control we don’t have the self restraint to wait a few days?
- [Regarding men needing “release”] “It really can hurt! Your husband isn’t lying to you. There are times when sexual release feels much like an urgent need to a man. I’ll be honest with you: if there’s anything worse than this sensation, I haven’t discovered it” (Ch. 9). Again and again…what is with conservative authors discussing a man’s release as a need, similar to sleeping, eating, and drinking water? Is a man going to die without sexual release?
- [Regarding frequency] “If you’re not willing to commit yourself to having sex with this person two to three times per week for the rest of your life, don’t get married…..to get married is to commit to a regular time of sexual intimacy” (Ch. 14). I don’t wholly disagree about regular sexual intimacy being important, but quality is so much more important than quantity. It’s widely known and debunked that there’s a set number of times to have sex to be a happy couple. It ebbs and flows and changes over time anyway. The important thing is that both partners are happy with what works for them in that moment and time, and that they can have open conversations about it whenever it arises. To chain a couple to 2-3x per week as the golden standard is to set up a couple for disappointment and unrealistic expectations.
One broad complaint with the book is that it’s guilty of assuming that all men and women act, feel, and behave a certain way. The truth is that not all men are “always on.” It’s not uncommon for a woman to have a higher sex drive than a man. Each marriage is as unique as the people in it, and we have to be careful to assume that all men think and feel a certain way, and vice versa.
Lastly, one of my biggest pet peeves is that Dr. Leman continually refers to his penis as “Mr. Happy.” Now, I’m all for having pet names for whatever body part you want within the confines of your marriage if that’s what you both desire as a couple. But for a book widely circulated and written from a professional perspective, I found the repeated (over and over and over) use of “Mr. Happy” to be lazy and immature, like it was written by Bobby Boucher Jr. Also, please keep your private pet names to yourself!
(It’s possible you actually found the use of “Mr. Happy” to be funny and that it helped lighten the mood as you read. If so, I love that for you. It just annoyed the fire out of me for some reason.)
Conclusion
Does Sheet Music belong on your bookshelf?
That’s a question I’ve wrestled with up until this paragraph. I think my answer is no. There are so many more books, resources, articles, and materials you could use that present such a healthier and balanced version of what sex can look like in a marriage. In many places, it’s not that what Leman says is outright wrong. It’s just framed or presented in a way that I don’t think is the healthiest. Unfortunately, there aren’t tons of faith based material on sexuality out there and Leman I’m sure was doing his best to fill a void.
That being said, there is wisdom within Sheet Music. If you want to check it out, I’d encourage you to read with discernment as well as an open mind (something that is always true anyway). Better yet, discuss various sections with your spouse and see what they thought about various teachings or bits. There are definitely good conversations that could be originated from this material.
Made Well Marriage 