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	Thursday, September 9, 2004

As promised at the end of the "Reward For Good Behavior?" post, here's another email -- from a woman this time.

"Bonnie" writes:

I was reading [on the blog] about men who look at porn. Im having a hard time. My husband does not have orgasm with me but masturbates with porn on the net. He has a lock on the door. I recently woke up in the middle of the night and the door was locked and I blew up and confronted this with him. He explained he was not chatting and just masturbating with the porn. He said he was doing a good job juggling both me and the porn. I am very sexual and he does take care of me sexually. So now I dont ever say anything. But one thing for sure he was very upset like I intruded and tried to take control.

I really was shocked by this deep addiction of his. I do have a somewhat of a resentment and I wonder if I can get over it. Can you tell me how to handle a man like this in the best way? He also tries to make me jealous looking at other women when we go out. I really would appreciate your opinion on coping etc.

I was struck by two things in this email: first, the fact that Bonnie's husband doesn't have orgasms during sex with her, and second, the way Bonnie phrased her request for advice, asking "how to handle a man like this"?

Lissen up, everybody: The first rule in dealing with marital crisis is:

Don't try to handle your partner, try to handle YOURSELF.

I know Bonnie didn't mean to ask how to manipulate or "work" her husband, but it's revealing that this is the expression/concept we usually use when we are having worrying conflicts with our spouses. It essentially asks, "How can I get control of this person so they stop upsetting me like this?"

This couple is in a power crisis, both of them trying to maintain their autonomy and their influence over the other while desperately fearing that they will be "taken over." Mr. Bonnie's sexual problem is one of two things: he is either holding back his orgasm (consciously or unconsciously) to maintain his erotic independence, or an over-indulgence in porn has turned into a fetish (conditioned orgasm which possible only with imaginary women and difficult or impossible in real sexual encounters).* Maybe his problem is a combination of both of these possibilities, if he has turned to porn as a way of disconnecting from his wife or denying her the satisfaction she would feel if he "lost control" in bed with her.

Bonnie, on the other hand, wants her husband to validate her, to reassure her about her erotic power and attractiveness with his body's responses. But Mr. Bonnie, perhaps feeling resentful, overwhelmed or "invaded" like Ricky's wife, escapes into his private sexual space and refuses her demand to be sexually complimented. Then to make sure she understands his total independence from her and how resistable she is, he Does His Duty without coming, has all his orgasms with air-brushed fantasies, and overtly admires pretty strangers.

My advice to both these people is to stop responding to your spouse's attempts to control you -- or escape you -- with frantic, anxious reactions that only raise the emotional stakes and induce ever-greater fears and rebellions. Don't look into your spouses actions and reactions as if they are a mirror of what you really are. You are an adult who doesn't need Mommy or Daddy's approval (or rejection) to define your self.

You do not need to submerge yourself in your spouse's emotional crises or respond as they demand in order to get your "If You Really Loved Me" certificate -- and you don't have the right to create Love Tests and Symbiosis Schools for your partner, either. If they don't respond to you the way you want or provide what you think you need, ask yourself if "what you want" isn't actually a demonstration of your spouse's submission to your will. Being fused together at the emotional hip (responding fiercely, rejecting coldly, wringing your hands, evading, demanding reassurance, reproaching, punishing, escaping, bribing) is unhealthy for marriages and other living things.

So back off. Let go.

Forget the desperate attempts to reform others or conform yourself to them.

Get on the road to who you really are (here's a hint: you must not be your partner's parent; you cannot be your spouse's child).

Move toward an independent, fully adult understanding of what you really need (say it with me, everybody!):

Love, not Power.

Then walk back -- with open arms.

.

*Anything (shoes, belt buckles, rubber duckies, you name it) can become a fetish when it becomes strongly associated with orgasm and is deliberately repeated to the exclusion of other orgasmic activities. Sex toys and other libido stimulants can be lots of fun, and most people don't acquire severe porn or "prop" fetishes because they continue to be orgasmic with real people and in varied situations. But once orgasm gets more or less disconnected from actual encounters, as it seems to have been for Mr. Bonnie, crippling, exclusionary fixations on porn are tragically common.

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