15 Charis,

You said:

But God does tell Eve “your desire will be for your husband” in the context of mentioning increased pregnancy and childbirth twice. Many church fathers understood it as a sexual desire (in a very disrespectful demeaning manner). While I disagree with their disrespect of a woman’s sexual desire, I do wonder if they were seeing something that we have wrongfully dismissed (because we don’t want to acknowledge that the increased sexual desire of the woman is a consequence of the fall)?

It may be that many church fathers understood God’s words to mean that she will have a sexual desire for the man, but many of the same men blamed the woman for the man’s problems. They weren’t looking at the issue with unbiased eyes. However if I had a roomful of women and I asked them to tell me about the desire that they have for their man, I would say that most women would describe their need for emotional intimacy and friendship/partnership. I would venture to guess that most women would not describe an overriding sexual desire as primary nor would they describe their need to dominate the man. Sometimes I just wish that men would stop thinking that they know who women are and just take the time to ask women how they think instead of just assuming. Perhaps this would have cleared up a lot of misconceptions even by the early church fathers.

As far as an increased sexual desire of women after the fall, I don’t see any evidence for this. Many women have a problem the other way especially those who have a number of small children that keep them busy from morning until night so that they fall into bed exhausted. Tell them that their “desire” is increased from the time of the fall and I’ll bet you’ll get a laugh back.

I think the biggest thing that women have for men that can be unhealthy is a desire to be needed and wanted that makes many women “men pleasers” and ones who are ripe for abuse because they are feel like they need a man.