3/14/10
I have to admit, Friday's comments took me a little by surprise, not just in the pathos of expressed sentiment, but in all the emails and Facebook messages from people wanting to know more intense details, and taking wild stabs at who might have posted what. And while I'm sure there are one or two on there that may not be entirely genuine (it is the internet, after all), let me just reiterate that you guys blow my mind with honesty and good writing.
Another surprise is that it has forced me to think defensively about marriage as an institution (disregarding for the moment the "having kids" question), because I really don't want people coming away from this exercise thinking marriage ruins sex... and once that's gone, the relationship will follow.
Sex remains - for all of us - an imperfect art. It's that way while you're a virgin, while you're dating, while you're falling in love, while you're married, while you're having kids, and while you're growing older. Most of us have had boyfriends/girlfriends where the sex was terrific and ubiquitous, and it became our benchmark for erotic satisfaction once the relationship ended. But it ended, all the same.
Sex is a primal act that calls upon men's most base nature. It's actually worse than that: we need the parasympathetic hormones ("rest and digest") to get an erection, but then we need the opposite sympathetic hormones ("fight or flight") to ejaculate. Necessarily, we're emotionally schizophrenic during sex, which is hard for us, because we're already trying so hard to be decent people.
It was a much easier dance when we were in our twenties and got hard while walking through the bra department at Sears, but back then, the drug of sex simplified everything. In a marriage, however, there's a lot to juggle.
We start each sexual encounter "making love", but we can only have an orgasm when it shifts over to "fucking", and then immediately we're back to being in a bedroom with our lifelong compatriot. We go from being in an emotional jungle frenzy state to sudden domesticity. Married couples that have great sex do so by learning to solve this paradox.
I'll throw something else in the mix: as men start to lose those old tomcat feelings you don't understand, they also lose a swath of their identity. Who are we, if we aren't ravenously titillated by the mere idea of schtupping everything in sight? Yes, it gave us years of endlessly stupid decisions made at the end of endlessly stupid nights, but the chase was divine.
I'm not going to speculate about what happens to a woman's sexual identity when she goes from nubile teen to confident fellatrix to monogamous to pregnant to breastfeeding to exhausted (to name but one road she can be on), because it's beyond my pay grade and many of the women in the comments section do a much better job. But the point of all this is simple:
SEX IS NOT A NO-BRAINER. FOR ANYBODY. AT ANY TIME. It is a delicate dance, and it's easy to fuck up. And you don't have to be married to ruin your sex life.
We'll get to the "having kids" thing tomorrow, and I'd love to know your thoughts on Friday's comments. But a few things stand out as true right off the bat:
• Lindsay's brother is oddly correct: "as long as ya'll are getting' some, you can work everything else out." (luckily, the opposite statement is NOT true)
• Neva also speaks wisely: "if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."
• Sex becoming less important does not mean you are settling, your heart is dying, you have lost all your passions, and you have ceased to mean anything. It just means that sex has become less important.
• Nobody is doing it right. At best, some people are doing it about 85% awesomely.
• There is a fundamental lack of communication between spouses/partners because we fear we'll destroy them with the truth.
• Despite all the drawbacks, despite our inner damage, our hangups, our tame/savage bifurcation... even though it all looks so bleak from the cheap seats... most marriages are absolutely worth it and richly deserve a toast.
>clink!<
Posted by Ian Williams at March 14, 2010 11:46 PMVery well said, on everything!!
As someone getting married on Wednesday, the last bullet calms the nerves.
"A confident fellatrix" as the peak of female sexual experience? You've been watching too much Deep Throat.
How about the thrill of being chased by all those horny guys, spontaneous hookups, passionate romances, new dynamics, new bodies, new experiences with each one YOU choose to bed? I think being out of the game with no chance for strange is an identity loss for many marrying women, as well.
Having not commented on Friday, I can't speak for myself, but I'd be surprised if anyone was lying anonymously. That would require a really lengthy repression, and it's hard for me to imagine *inventing* what so many people wrote.
We have so much nonsense attached to sex. If people were genuine and honest about what they want and how they want it, the world would be a Willy Wonka land of freakiness. If a husband and wife could look at each other, and he says, "I think I want you to stick your finger in my ass" and she says, "Okay. I think I'd like to have sex with a 19 year old Navy man that I'll never see again..." Even if they don't do it, it would lead us to a far happier world.
My mom was talking about gay rights to a friend of hers, a heavy woman in her 70s, and the friend said, "I'm just disgusted thinking about what it is that they *do*" and my mom said, "well, I'm pretty sure they feel the same way about you, honey." If there was some way that a heavy woman in her 70s could own her sexuality, or a heavy woman in her 30s, or any and all women and men of every stripe, then maybe we wouldn't even be worrying about the rights of gay people. If we were all honest about our deep level of freakiness, then we simply wouldn't care how freaky anyone else is.
I agree, Sean. Reading Fridays comments, I was most struck by the fear of honesty and the potential for healing (sexual healing, ha!) if partners could only communicate openly. I kept thinking we might get lucky and have a "If you like piña coladas, gettin' caught in the rain" revelation!
I feel the same way reading people criticize Ian in these comments as I do when traveling abroad and talking to Belgians who criticize the States. Suddenly I'm Zell Miller, all because someone else is working my side of the street.
So, Bonobo, please understand that I'm being driven by a compulsion I don't fully understand when I point out that Ian didn't say anything about a peak. That sentence could have just as easily implied that monogamy was the peak, not confident fellatio.
While I'm at it, I agree with Ian that people could have changed a detail or two in the comments yesterday, Sean. I didn't post because I was afraid that too many people would know it was me. (What other 38-year-olds celebrated their 11th anniversary last weekend, have been with their wife for 19 years [shit, that's 1/2 my life] and have a fully-functional randy turtle outfit that they wear for spanky-spanky?)
If I had posted, I'd have been tempted to cast things in the best light possible, on the off chance that someone figured out who posted it.
Today's xkcd follows some of the themes addressed here (the mouseover text is also funny):
Lindsay, absolutely no offense taken and certainly none intended toward Ian. I agree with and enjoyed most of the post,Ian admitted he couldn't confidently speculate and, you're right, he never said "peak." But he was touching on female identity before settling down after just discussing male thrill of the chase. I read "confident fellatrix" followed by "monogamous" and thought he was either lost in male fantasy or simply a bit off track.
and Lindsay, HILARIOUS cartoon. I actually did LOL!
Even if they don't do it, it would lead us to a far happier world."
Speak for yourself! I don't want to know what my husband's secret fantasies are. It'd make me worry and feel inferior. And yes, that may speak to a lack of self-confidence on my part, but so what? To each his own though.
THIS, that Bonobo wrote on behalf of women:
"How about the thrill of being chased by all those horny guys, spontaneous hookups, passionate romances, new dynamics, new bodies, new experiences with each one YOU choose to bed? I think being out of the game with no chance for strange is an identity loss for many marrying women, as well."
Thank you for articulating the rush unattached women derive from getting a new guy into their bed. Some people don't like hearing that women -- "nice girls" -- take a voluptuous, voracious, hormone-fueled and unabashed interest in sex, and go for it. I recall feeling as I walked into a college frat lounge on a Saturday night that I was a sleek tigress on the hunt. "Rawrr." :-) No wonder Erica Jong scored so big with her novel "Fear of Flying" and its fabled "zipless f*ck". She broadcast what some of us were living, and with gusto.
She definitely wasn't speaking for all women though. I was so shy that I was even scared to look at my crushes until I was maybe 25. And I couldn't have sex without emotional attachment. I think one's experience in this regard also has to do with one's attractiveness. Walking into a room and being wanted by frat boys is not something I have ever or will ever know.
I definitely read over my Friday comments with a twinge of regret - just for the sense adding one more not enough sex story. But... there's a time for everything - and I had great fun being single, free and sexy - pursued and pursuing. But I'm no longer interested in just a sex partner - I have a life partner, truly.
In the time we've together we've had fantastic sexual encounters, it's just a lot further apart due to a myriad of things - working full-time jobs, having a child within the past year to name two. Like Ian says, it's an imperfect art - a balancing act. So while the sex is more infrequent than I'd ideally like, I am with someone everyday who makes me laugh, who shares the burden with me, who tells me I'm beautiful even though (probably especially when) I'm tired and cranky, and who has as much fun, love, worry and laughter as me in watching our son grow.
There's no question I would take this marriage, this little family, again and again and again over amazing, mind-blowing sex. So, yes, I'll toast to that!
Wow, Gray Mare, where were you when I was single and lonely? I would totally have sprinkled Piglet Tenderizer on myself for you.
Rabbit: Keep in mind that said frat boys already had their beer goggles firmly in place. You didn't have to be a knockout to get some action. But I take your point about shyness. I had been shy as a girl and then suddenly I wasn't, and I never looked back.
Piglet: We were and are legion.