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For his most recent book, Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage (Tyndale), psychologist Kevin Leman researched the sex lives of married Christians to find trends, concerns, and questions in a subject that Leman says Christians don't talk about enough.

Leman is author of The Birth Order Book and How to Make Your Children Mind Without Losing Yours. He also hosts a daily TV show called Reality Talks.

What difference do you see in how Christians treat sex compared to those outside the church?

When was the last time you heard a pastor get up and say, "I've got a 12-week series starting next Sunday on Song of Solomon"? You don't hear that because we have allowed the world to pervert the word sex.

By not talking about sex to our kids and not honoring it the way we should in marriage, everybody ends up paying. The average marriage today lasts seven years. It's been sort of fun to watch support build in the Christian community for Sheet Music. People are saying, "It's about time somebody tells people the truth."

With sex being so polluted by the world, how do we take it back as something pure and beautiful in marriage?

The way you do it is to make sure that you are each other's lover. You should go out of your way to entice your lover. Ladies, when was the last time you seduced your husband? When was the last time you met him at the door? When was the last time you took him on an overnight?

Gentlemen, when's the last time you set something up for your wife to go away by herself? I wrote an article years ago called "How to make love to your wife without ever setting foot in the bedroom." When you're at the store and you call and you say, "Honey, I'm at the store. Is there anything you want me to bring home?" or when you take out the garbage, that's foreplay.

Now, if you're getting off into kinkyville, and think you've got to go get pornography and all that kind of stuff to enhance your marriage, you're barking up the wrong tree. I take a hard line on that in this book, because pornography, as you know, is a devastating force in society, costing us marriages and millions of dollars.

How did you conduct your research into married couples' sex lives?

I interviewed tons of couples from the Northwest. I wanted couples who didn't know me. We set up telephone interviews so it wasn't face-to-face. I was astounded at the honest and forthright way in how they described their sex life.

All of the people I talked to were in Bible study on a weekly basis. I was astounded at how active and how hip their sex life was. It was certainly different than mine was 36 years ago, when I married.

If there is a problem in the sex life of a couple, how does the conversation to approach it begin?

For many people there won't even be a conversation. But, for some spouses, it might start with taking the time to write a love note in the truest sense of the word to convey those type of feelings. Sex needs to be a part of your life. If it's not a part of your life, the chances of you staying married, quite frankly, are not real high.

What counts are the little things you do to try to communicate the idea that "I love you as you are." A tough part in marriage is realizing you're two different people who have came from two different backgrounds. We're commanded to become one. It's not just a good suggestion or a grand idea-it's a commandment.

I go to bed at 10 at night and what does God give me as a lifetime partner? He gives me a raccoon. My wife stays up until 1:30 in the morning, goes out and tips over garbage cans, and then comes to bed. So we're different. And the fact that we're different gives us a shot at becoming a couple.

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August (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47