I had a great time as a single girl. I was good-looking (although somewhat to my continuing chagrin the compliment I usually got from men was "You're cute" rather than "You're beautiful"), and I knew how to flirt and converse and keep male attention focused on me. It gave me a charge to know that men desired me, and all the come-ons and subtle competition going on around me were like a steady stream of ego-boosting compliments.

I liked the sense of Power my charm and my smooth little body gave me. I had Something men wanted (even if in most cases it was little more than social acknowledgement of their masculinity), and they would almost invariably make an effort to be agreeable and entertaining. It was my perception that even men who weren't really pursuing me sexually (faithful mates, co-workers, no-hopers) tended to be smiling, helpful and positive toward me, even forgiving me for things that they might not have forgiven less attractive women.

Having been brought up to be a Nice Person (and, frankly, knowing that excess bitchiness could subtract from my attractiveness), I tried not make too much of my unfair advantages in this respect, but let's face it, when you have Power, there is a thrill in using it.

So I did.

I enjoyed the whole process of erotic attraction and sexual conquest: the first lighting up of a guy's eyes, the circling dance of flirtation, the uncertainties, the kisses, the longing, the capture, and (whoa howdy) that exquisite First Time, when most men would knock themselves out to make sex slow, hot and fantastically pleasurable for me. Did I ever love THAT!

Unfortunately, however, the initial Power of Eros tends to be short-lived. You both have sexual energy and affection to burn in the beginning, so it's easier to remain on your best behavior for a while. Things are very exciting while your infatuation is at its height, but familiarity and certainty soon take the sharp edge off the experience of relationship. This has nothing to do with character or intention or any kind of moral failing. It is simply a physiological fact of life: any repeated stimulus eventually evokes a reduced response. So there is no way in this world to sustain the energy and romance of a new relationship at its most thrilling pitch.

Everybody knows this, of course. Or perhaps I should say that everybody "knows" it. Because it is easy to pay lip service to this truth while not really believing it, down at the center of our most emotional and irrational selves. We can (and very often do) intellectually acknowledge life's limitations while still craving the impossible.

My husband and I had a tornadic courtship under highly charged circumstances. There was drama, there was competition, there was conflict and high romance and furtive sex and enforced separations and relieved rendezvous. We were apart more than we were together during our engagement. And then we got married.

All of a sudden my role in the universe tilted and turned upside down. I was no longer a Hot Single Girl with a thousand erotic possibilities circling around me every day. Now I was a Married Woman, and there were going to be no more sexual choices, no more new adventures in sex and romance. This man, my husband, was all I was ever going to get again, erotically speaking. No more dancing and drinking and flirting with new men (their eyes lighting up at me, admiring me, showing me I was Wanted). That silly, fun, exciting stuff was all over now. I had to Settle Down and take care of my house and my strange children and my One man now. Forever.

How could I make such a transition? It was going to be impossible!

And it would have been, if my interest in sex hadn't suddenly disappeared. Lucky for me, eh?

Here's an interesting public comment from the above discussion of my loss of libido after marriage:

Why were you surprised that it should "happen to you"?

Look around you and see all the women with one or more children. In many cases they tried to keep their own dream of wedded bliss alive even after the first child. A second child did not help. The solution to their own waning interest and his painful behavior then seems to be somewhere in solitude. "Just leave me alone!"

Because I felt so sexy and so erotically oriented when I was single, I figured I would remain that way even after I was married. My Cosmo Girl culture told me that Normal, Healthy Women are "just naturally" interested in sex, and lots of it. So, I smugly assumed, obviously a terrific, liberated, womanly woman like me would NEVER end up like those Sick, Abnormal Wives I saw all around me, right?

Yet I ended up Sick and Abnormal anyway...or at least what my society considered Sick and Abnormal, and my knowledge of the contemptuous judgment of my culture made the experience of losing my libido even worse.

But there is nothing at all abnormal about a woman losing sexual interest in long-term partner. Not just because of the phenomenon of habituation which I mentioned yesterday, but also because evolution may have designed women to be, if not overtly polygamous, at least serially monogamous.

This is a hard idea for some people to accept. It was really only duing the last century that we decided that there was some optimal level of sexual interest that "normal" women should consistently feel. For centuries before that, although at varying levels of intensity, the mythology of womanhood has held that there are "good women" and "bad women." Good women were "naturally" monogamous because they weren't very interested in sex, and bad women were "naturally" promiscuous because they were TOO interested in sex.

These two types of women were generally considered mutually exclusive. But now we know they are very often one and the same, and the reason most women tend to cycle between the two modes of sexual existence aren't just psychological, but possibly the result of our evolutionary development.

Consider a current theory regarding why sexual reproduction became so much more successful than the simpler forms of making new plants and animals, like parthenogenesis or budding. Needing two germ cells from different organisms to create a new one makes reproduction far less certain and more energy intensive than simply splitting oneself in two, so why did nature come up with such a complicated way of doing business?

As outlined in Matt Ridgely's book The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature the constant remixing of genes that sexual reproduction makes possible helps to ensure the survival of a species. Nature urges most animals toward a variety of sexual partners in order to mingle the most genes in the greatest number of combinations, increasing the odds that a useful or resistant genetic combination will be available when an environment changes or a new germ or parasite threatens. ("The Red Queen" is Ridgeley's trope for organisms' need to "run ever faster" in the genetic sense to stay head of new challenges to their survival.)

Up until recently, the most common assumption in the scientific community was that the more urgent and less discriminate male sex drive was nature's method of spreading genes around. The main female contribution to this paradigm was to literally incorporate a given gene mixture and then nurture it past its vulnerable infancy on its way to the next generation.

In this concept, a woman's sex drive had to be strong enough in her youth to be receptive to initial pollination, so to speak, but didn't really need to have any active role in the species recombination effort. In fact, as I alluded to earlier, it was in a tribe's best interest if a woman's sex drive didn't interfere with her attention to nurturing babies and accomplishing her food and cave maintenance duties. In that sense, it is indeed "natural" for mothers and married women to lose interest in sex. So, this theory goes, the development of frigidity in a long-term relationship is nature's way of ensuring female fidelity.

However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) the thing that is overlooked in this idea is the fact that such an understandable or "natural" loss of interest in sex wasn't -- and evolutionarily speaking, never could be -- permanent. If nature had arranged things such that a woman who'd accepted a "successful" deposit of sperm never wanted to have sex again, even the most peripatetic male population couldn't initiate enough different combinations through the bottleneck of singular nine-month pregnancies to satisfy the Red Queen's requirements.

So nature had to find a happy medium, let's say. It had to tune women's sex drive carefully, so that it tended to "turn off" in certain circumstances (preventing wholesale abandonments of vulnerable children and tribe-sustaining homes), but it also had to encourage women to continue to have sex throughout their lives -- preferably (from nature's point of view, anyway) with MANY DIFFERENT MEN.

It's interesting in this context to note that at least one study has shown that there seems to be a common limit to the most "romantic" part of sexual relationships, which seems to somewhere in the range of 30-36 months. In other words, the "high," exciting, infatuation phase of any new relationship very seldom lasts more than three years for either partner (unless there are unusual factors at work).

Three years is approximately the time it takes to complete a pregnancy and get children to the stage of eating and absorbing ordinary food, talking enough to make their needs known, walking reasonable distances on their own and actively seeking relationships outside the family. (The "Terrible Twos" mark the first point in childrens lives when they appear interested in separating from their parents).

Three years is also the time period in which even the least fertile of women is likely to get pregnant. About 75-80 percent of normally fertile women will conceive during a year of regular unprotected intercourse. Those who have more trouble conceiving, or whose partners are less fertile than normal, will take longer, but after three years there is a good possibility that a given couple who haven't conceived together, won't. An "unproductive" pair might be more likely to contribute their genes to another generation if they sought different partners before too much time has past.

In short, it is entirely "natural" for both men and women to lose erotic interest in their long term partners, and for their libidos to be revived by new "prospects." Sexual novelty is valued by nature for its own sake, but happily for the human race and the survival of infants, women's libidos are more malleable and equivocal. If culture or circumstances make it necessary, a woman's natural tendency to lose interest in a familiar partner can be extended indefinitely, and her desire for sex can disappear entirely.

While on the face of it this bodes ill for happy monogamy, women's sexual flexibility also makes it possible for them to recover their erotic sensitivity even without changing partners.

Back to the Body

I was originally going to go straight into many specific ways to rev up a woman's sexual imagination, but then I remembered that in my own case, after I had extinguished my libido to ensure my fidelity, there was nothing left to "rev up." At my lowest point I had no sexual imagination whatsoever. I couldn't even think of the subject of sex without feeling impatient or anxious, so any attempt to force myself to deal with sexual matters or to "push" erotic material on me would have been distasteful, and probably would have only made things worse. Something else had to happen first. It wasn't just my mind that rejected sexual thoughts and feelings, my body was fundamentally tense and defensive.

I lived very much in my head at that period of my life. I had quit smoking and then put on even more weight with my pregnancies. My breasts lost some of their firmness and perk, my stomach pooched out, my muscles were flabby and even the smallest physical exertions hurt or tired me out. So I was embarrassed and disgusted with myself, and my body was not a potential source of pleasure but a problem, a nuisance, something I'd rather not have had to deal with. The biggest clue was that I didn't want to LOOK at it. I was at home with my little ones at the time and seldom took the trouble to put on makeup or style my hair or do anything that would cause me to stand in front of the mirror for any length of time. It was wash, brush, comb, turn away. I kept myself clean, and that was it. No perfume, no lotions, no fussing.

I was trying to disconnect from this useless, ugly part of my existence. I was sensible, see. I was mature. I wasn't interested in fripperies and frivolity. They weren't important. I had a good mind and I was a reliable, generally cheerful person, active in the community and nice to have around. My body wasn't me, it was just my carcase. I wanted to forget it.

So in order to get my libido back, I first needed to stop merely tolerating my physical self, I had to get back to liking it again. From my own experience and from what other women have told me, getting back into one's body is a slow and gradual process. Most of us have to sneak up on ourselves, so to speak, although I have heard stories in which a deliberate, frontal assault on the problem (most commonly exercise and weight loss) has worked for some women.

So, what can YOU do to help your wife out of her head and back into her body? Don't think sex, per se. Think senses. All of them, not just touch, but hearing, smell, taste, and sight, too. And think relaxation, which enhances the body's ability to appreciate sensory stimuli.

You should encourage your wife to pamper and beautify herself, even if she doesn't think it's necessary. A lot of women who are avoiding their physical selves will tend to think that doing anything to or for their numb, despised bodies is a waste of time and money. They'll tell their husbands that they'd rather get a present for the kids than indulge themselves in a pedicure or a new dress.

(Buying clothes is a particularly fraught exercise for a woman who's overweight. She will feel that she doesn't "deserve" anything new or attractive until she goes on a diet, or that she should make do with cheap and baggy stuff from Walmart until she's thin again. You might think encouraging her to buy decent clothes in her current size will "give her permission" to stay fat, but in fact wearing junk usually makes a woman hate her body even more, adding to her sense that she's a hopeless schlump, and it will be even less likely that she will try to lose weight.)

Professional massage is an ideal way to get a woman back in touch with her physical self, because it is intensive touch therapy and contributes hugely to overall physical relaxation, but some women might reject the concept because it means exposing the hated body to a stranger's gaze. If she'll permit it, you might offer to give her one yourself, but you need to undertake it as a bodily exercise for her and not as a prelude to sex. Sex might happen, of course, but try not to expect it. You may have to start with simple, brief kneading of, say, her neck or feet. And be warned: she may be paranoid about massages, thinking that you're going to want a quid pro quo, or that you have some other devious agenda.

Even routine hair appointments and manicures can help. Getting one's hair washed by other hands is a sensual experience all its own, and looking down and seeing unexpectedly pretty hands or feet can be exactly the kind of small personal thrill that women who are lost in their own heads need more of.

You might not be able to afford a day at the spa every couple of weeks, but the home spa concept can be a lot of fun. If she's strictly a quick shower person (and most people who are avoiding their own bodies are), wash out the tub and encourage her to take a hot or cool bath, preferably with bubbles or scented bath gel or epsom salts (great for relaxation), and maybe with a glass of wine or tea at hand. Fragrance in general is a good way to induce relaxation and sensory revival. Scented candles, flowery shampoos and, yes, even your aftershave or cologne will help create a pleasurable atmosphere (literally).

Music (especially if she plays or sings herself) can also contribute to getting your wife back in touch with her body, and dancing is really ideal if she can be encouraged to try it. Going to see art or films of particular kinds can also help, but it's a much more tricky proposition, since ugly imagery or aggressive sexual content might invoke an anxiety reaction rather than subtle encouragement. In any case, going out to a concert or dance or gallery opening will encourage her to doll herself up, and that might give you an opportunity to tell her YOU think she's beautiful in spite of the way she might feel about herself.

The question of food is another tricky area, but as "Tom Jones" demonstrated back in the Sixties, there is very little in the world that is more sensual than sharing an exquisite meal. If your wife is not overweight, she may be maintaining her figure with eating paranoia or a deliberate rejection of the sensual lure of taste, so any attempt to encourage her to enjoy food with you might make her even more tense. "Fat anxiety" is one surprisingly common reason women tune out their bodies' demands. It will be difficult for you to help her with that particular problem, but you do need to be aware of it as a possibility.

On the other hand, if your wife does have problems with her weight, the idea should be to encourage her sensual enjoyment of excellent food and to reject junk. Many people who are disconnected from themselves sensually become dependent on the quick comfort of filling up, because it is the fastest and least complicated way of "silencing" their bodies, and they tend to actually shy away from tasting what they're eating.

Remember that above all you want her to RELAX, to tune into sensual reality, and enjoy all the pleasures her body can give her, outside the bedroom as well as in it. So in a way you DO want her to "let herself go." If you're constantly hovering and criticizing, demanding that she Control Herself in one way or another, you'll not only incur subconscious "rebellion," you might be encouraging self-hatred and the deadening of her physical self.

Comments in response to this post:

I feel compelled, somehow, to bare my soul to you and the world. I began reading your journal for fun. I thought it was funny. Now I feel it is sad. Sad, because it is true. My first wife quit having sex with me, and my current wife rarely does. My first wife and I had great sex, intense sex, kinky sex. We were passionate about our sex. We were young, and the real world crept in and destroyed our passion. There were bills to pay, and no money pay them. Resentment and anger overtook love. Perhaps I was foolish. I lost sight of what was important. I wanted stability. I was tired of struggling and I let her know it. I blamed her. I belittled her. I cheated. She cheated. Neither knew until we finally split up. I searched for and found a stable woman. Stable, though, came to mean boring to me. She suffers (not openly) because she knows in my heart I compare her sexually to my first wife. She knows, because I told her once, how interesting and fantastic sex was with the first. Stability has meant that all the bills get paid. The real world is our world. There is plenty of money. More than I wished for when I was young and impoverished (when I was dirt poor, a little seemed like a lot). Yet, our lives are inane and drab. She is a great mother and she loves me dearly. She doesn't voice her concerns -- not audibly anyhow. She does, however, when she sneaks a pack of marshmallow peeps or a half gallon of ice cream. She has put on an immense amount of weight since she had the first of our 2 children. She is not happy with herself. Her unhappiness is further compounded by the fact that she feels that I am not happy with her. Consequently, she is trapped in a cycle like you described so eloquently. She comforts herself in ways that are destructive and negatively impact her goals. Her weight increases. I have not revealed it here yet, but I have been aware of all this for some time. I have been biting my tongue about her weight. I have not been unkind when I have discovered the empty boxes of candy in the nightstand. I have tried to show her I love her. I have encouraged sex by gently prodding her; reminding her that I still find her sexy. I've told her that sex is important, not because I want to get off, but because it is the only time we have to share that allows us to recall how we fell in love. I miss getting off and red hot passion. I miss the intimacy more. There is hope. She looks at herself once and a while. I succeed every so often in making her feel good about herself. I read your blog and find some truth that opens my eyes or reaffirms my faith. I will continue to offer the gentle kiss. I will touch her in affectionate, but non-sexual manners. I will not expect sex every time we cuddle. I love her, and I will find ways to show her. Peace, Greg Greg • 5/5/03; 9:29:16 PM #

Julia, You had me on the edge of my seat. I could actually relate to much of what you wrote until now. "...after I had extinguished my libido to ensure my fidelity." What, in the hell is that?! Maybe I'm taking this quote out of context (there have been ten posts after all) but ya finally lost me here. N and I are childless so perhaps I can't empathize with a mother's dedication to her children's welfare. -- snip -- [I had quite a bit more written here but I've since deleted it. I just finished mowing the "back forty" something that hasn't happened since November so I'm hot and spent and I've had a couple and I'd rather me do the talking rather than the beers. So I'll pause for explanation if any is forthcoming.]:-) rich pure&simple• 5/5/03; 9:36:21 PM #

Just as I suspected. That came out sounding a lot harsher than was intended. Note to myself. Never mix beer with blog. Obviously, you don't owe me or anyone else any explanation for your own blog. My apologies. rich pure&simple • 5/6/03; 9:11:13 AM #

Greg: Sometimes this stuff is so heartbreaking. I think one thing I probably haven't emphasized enough is that some of these issues are simply Life As It Has To Be Lived, which is almost always disappointing in comparison to what we wanted from it, what we used to have, or what we could get away with when we were kids. I'm not saying anybody has to ever give up expecting more, wanting more or striving for more. Only the individual himself can know what he can't bear any longer, and what is worth the tradeoffs. But being able to acknowledge that there ARE tradeoffs, that there are limits to what we can do or hope for, that it's probably too late to have (or repeat) some longed-for experiences, that our partners are flawed and likely to stay that way ... all these realizations are more or less bearable to different people at different stages of their lives. But we all have to deal with those realities at some point. They'll always catch up, no matter how hard we try to deny or get away from them. It seems to me that you are making your peace with these facts of life with more grace than some people can muster. That said, I wouldn't give up on your wife just yet. I'd try to think of ways to break out of your glum routine or change your reactions and expectations. Ask her, "Is there something you've always wanted to do or try?" Sometimes getting away from The Way Things Are can provide you with an opportunity to talk seriously and lovingly about your mutual issues. She may have things she wants to tell you or things she wants to ask for, but she doesn't feel confident that you really want to hear it. A break from your normal routine can sometimes help to clear that kind of logjam. "...after I had extinguished my libido to ensure my fidelity." ya finally lost me here Thanks for pointing that out. I realize now I didn't make this clear enough in my previous posts on the subject. I sort of skipped it, I guess. I figure (now, in retrospect -- at the time it was a mystery) that some of my loss of libido was because I was so strongly attracted to sexual novelty that my subconscious shut me down completely, to ensure I wouldn't be tempted by other men after I got married. If I didn't ever feel sexy, there was zero chance that I'd go off the rails and fool around. And as I've noted, I was struggling so much with anger and resentment at the time that running away was a distinct possiblity. So (at least this is my theory) I had to tune sex out. Totally. The flame had to die. I stayed faithful, but it came at a price -- my ability to enjoy sex when I was "supposed" to. When the children came along, there was even more at stake, and more reason for my inner self to reject the temptations of erotic feelings. Julia Grey • 5/6/03; 9:45:16 AM #

Well, you know what I'm going to ask. Why didn't you consider an open relationship? Roy Kay • 5/6/03; 5:37:04 PM #

Roy, this is not the time and place for that discussion. But I'll try to address it later. Julia Grey • 5/7/03; 9:38:19 AM #

i loved the thing. where you said " In any case, going out to a concert or dance or gallery opening will encourage her to doll herself up, and that might give you an opportunity to tell her YOU think she's beautiful in spite of the way she might feel about herself. " edina • 8/6/04; 2:31:43 PM #

The Problem With Porn

The first thing that pops into many men's minds when they think about how to get their wives interested in having sex is porn, especially film or video porn, because all you have to do is sit there and enjoy the images. If a man could just get his wife to sit down for a few minutes of hot video skin action, surely she'd be turned on and want to hit the sack, right?

I've even heard of men who were so sure that getting their wives to see porn is going to be the magic bullet for their sex lives that they've tried to sneak porn tapes into the VCR or have gotten angry and sarcastic when their wives declined to watch the stuff. This is probably understandable given that the majority of men respond quickly and reliably to sex acts depicted on film, so it is hard to understand why many women don't.

Notice that I'm saying "many," because there are plenty of women who DO get a major charge out of porn of various varieties, but those women are not likely to be the sexually reluctant wives we're concerned about here. While it is not true that all people who enjoy sex also enjoy porn, you can be pretty sure that a person who enjoys porn is going to like having sex, too. So it seems that there is something interesting going on here. If the connections between enjoyment of porn and enjoyment of sex is causative, maybe it would be a good idea to get sexually bored wives to watch porn, even if it has to by by hook or by crook.

Yes, I'm kidding.

While I'm not going to claim that I am necessarily a "typical" woman, I think I do have some reactions that are fairly common, espeically in my own "Baby Boom" generation. So, remembering that none of this may apply in your situation, let me outline why film porn -- hard or soft core -- has never done much for me erotically.

My first problem with it is that it isn't realistic. (Yeah, yeah, I know that's kind of silly, since for a lot of people its unreality is part of the fun of it.) In hardcore the first unreality is the absurd situations (we can't dignify them as "plots"). I mean, "Hello Mr. Job Candidate, wanna fuck?" is sketch comedy, not erotic storytelling.

As a matter of fact it's the emphasis on the detached, almost disembodied mechanics and the closeups of naughty bits interacting (which could just as easily be rubber sex-ed visual aids) that turn me off the most in hardcore.

I do like movie sex that makes me feel like the people involved are really, REALISTICALLY enjoying themselves. But when I watch porn the silly details the camera thinks are important bug me too much. I keep thinking how stupid it all is. I keep laughing at all the idiocy and ugliness.

For example: WHAT is up with that constant rhythmic moaning the women do in porn movies? It's like their vocal chords are on some kind of digital loop. It actually sounds like they're bored with that unrelieved jackhammer of everlasting humping going on behind them, but (impatient sigh) they still have to follow the script. Which reads either "Make 62 perfectly symmetrical, robotic noises before faking steam-whistle orgasm" or "Yell 'harder!harder' twelve times before switching to 'deeper!deeper!' twelve times and then finish up with 'yes baby oh baby oh oh' -- but be careful to say these lines with NO EXPRESSION WHATSOEVER."

And here's the absolutely hysterical, stone dead mystery of hardcore: WHY does the guy take his dick out right when any normal man would want to push it way, way in, up to the hilt? Not to mention that money shots are disgusting. To me, anyway. Messy, mechanical, the very opposite of erotic. (And while I'm ranting, can I just say here that I hate the word "cum"? It conjures up pimple-faced, snaggle-toothed fourteen-year-olds furtively whacking off in the teacher's lounge after school hours. The word is 'come," people. The event and the stuff. "Cum" is the way Beavis spells it.)

You might think that it's odd that I don't appreciate money shots when I say the major aggravation of these movies for me is their fakeness. After all, when a penis is pumping it out on camera, that's undeniably the real thing, and nobody could deny that the guy is genuinely enjoying himself, right? Well, yeah, but it's the almost inhuman, unconnected "thingness" of the thing burping up fluids that's off-putting there. It's just...icky, okay? The disgust factor hits me big time, and it overwhelms my potential appreciation of the sexual content.

The fakery I'm talking about is really anything up on the screen, ugly OR pretty, that keeps me from entering or identifying with the scene. In that respect, sex scenes in mainstream movies and softcore make the opposite mistake: they beautify and idealize things too much.

Most of the sex in mainstream movies strikes me as trying too hard to fulfill commonplace fantasy formulas, so we get the shower scenes and the bangbang "up against the wall" scenes and the golden afternoons of overlapped dissolves. Yawwwn. And again the distraction factor kicks in, and I'm annoyed by the things they get "wrong" from my point of view, like the fact that movie women always come in fifteen seconds from a standing start, with their mouths all pretty and softly open in a big round "O," and their legs lying all relaxed and boneless. Few of them ever even come close to a straining sexual grimace or the tense, shaking muscles of my experience -- mostly, I suspect, because actresses don't want to look "ugly" on camera.

Then there are the scenes in which, say, the male partner studiously avoids kissing the woman's breasts (I'm sitting there thinking, "Her nudity contract probably prohibits mouths coming within 6 inches of her tits"), or when they get into all sorts of artistic but improbable poses (Sylvester Stallone doing his Mr. Olympia routine in the shower with Sharon Stone springs hilariously to mind), or when the nipples of the woman's huge artificial chest torpedos remain totally unaroused ... well, you get the picture.

All in all, movie sex offers me far too many opportunities to notice incongruous physical details, improbable positions and absurd scenarios, so I'm always off into MST3K mode inside my head, snarking and giggling and generally Not Getting Into It.

And yet there have been films and television series that have turned me on and inspired my erotic imagination.

I was interested in Rich's remark in the public comments on the Infamous Porn Post:

I've seen "studies" and resulting articles about the subject and the overriding conclusion is that women are turned on more by their own romantic imaginations than the blunt force "naughty bits" that you refer to. Women are much more attuned to what "might happen" - conceived in their own minds - than the "reality" created by the producer/director. How am I doing?

However, we clods have an appreciation of this nuance as well. I had a crush on Katherine Ross when I was a teenager. That scene in Butch Cassidy - you know the one I mean - was about the hottest thing I'd ever seen. And there wasn't even partial nudity in that.

Far be it from me to propose that all men are "clods" who have no appreciation of erotic nuance. I'd have to say that a huge percentage of the men I've met in my life have been more romantically excitable and sentimental than I am, up to and including what I can only call "starry-eyed." And many of the others who seemed to be frozen gladiators turned out to have hearts of molten gold under those icy breastplates. So of course men can get very turned on by "what might happen," too.

But many, perhaps most women must have room for their own imaginations to work when it comes to potential "turn-ons." In my own case, it was critical. I'm actually a bit embarrassed about the particular weakness that led to the first faint stirrings of my erotic renaissance, but here goes: I get schoolgirl crushes on movie stars. Or, more properly, I get crushes on the characters they play and ascribe those characteristics to the actor playing them.

(Aaaargh. That was hard to admit, especially since I did some acting in my misspent youth, and no one should know better than I do the differences between the actor and the role. I think I would rather have confessed the considerable flaws of my nondescript behind.)

This propensity began early. As was I entering puberty I conceived a grand passion for David McCallum, who played the swooningly mysterious Illya Kuryakin on the old Man From U.N.C.L.E. series in the Sixties (Robert Vaughan did nothing for me, N.O.T.H.I.N.G.). I would haunt the local drugstore to pounce on new movie magazines as soon as they arrived, in which I followed the outrageous and inexplicable spectacle of Jill Ireland abandoning My David for ... ugh! ... Charles Bronson (at that age I couldn't see the considerable charm Charlie's type would hold for me at later stages of my erotic development). But at least that betrayal meant my stoically tortured Illya David was FREE to marry any other woman he wanted -- and surely a more grateful one this time!

After I outgrew that silliness, though, movie stars receded from my sexual consciousness in favor of real live boys. Although I would get some thrills in movie theaters, and my fevered imagination was occasionally caught by one star or another, it never blossomed into the kind of obsessive interest I'd had in McCallum. (Some other things were going on during this period that I'll get to on Monday.) The ridiculous movie star "thing" didn't raise its curly little head again until after I'd put my libido into the freezer following my marriage.

The event that lit a low blue flame under my stone cold casserole (so to speak) was the miniseries Shogun, and the fictional swashbuckler "John Blackthorne," played with mesmerizing masculine intensity by Richard Chamberlain. Oooh, whatta man!

(Yes, yes, I'm fully aware of the irony. Chamberlain's memoir Shattered Love is due out in June.)

It was then that I realized my sex drive was not totally dead. There was still something there. Inspired by an imaginary character played by an unavailable man, of course, but there was obviously nothing wrong with my basic sexual machinery. Translating that tentative awakening to real desire in my marital bed was more of a challenge, because there were still Issues. A lot more had to happen between then and the real (and so far permanent) revival.

But while we're on this subject, I'd like to discuss some more of my Great Moments in Cinematic Eros because they might illuminate some common factors that get many women's imaginations moving. it's not that I believe all women react to these elements the same way I do, but this is a start (besides, I'm gettin' into this embarrassing confession thing. Have I discovered a new kink?).

One mainstream movie moment I recall very clearly to this day was an otherwise utterly forgettable film called The Final Cut, starring one of my perennial heart-throb hubbas, Sam Elliott, and the beautiful but not skinny-perfect Anne Ramsay.

He refused to sleep with her through the whole movie (he thought he was too old and burnt out for her or something, I don't really remember the reasons), and then after a tense and bloody bomb defusing scene (the perp had wired a kidnapped woman to be an inadvertent trigger for a bomb), Sam and Anne were heading down in the elevator together, filthy, sweaty, exhausted, and he said something funny to her in That Voice of his and they kisssssed, very hot, very hungry, very relieved, like real people would in that situation, sort of awkward, rushed and unpretty. My stomach did a backflip. Great stuff. Practically no actual skin, but a huge wallop of erotic freight.

Another powerful "no skin" erotic moment in the movies was the furtive, almost soundless sex between Rachel Weisz and Jude Law in Enemy at the Gates. the thing that got me about that one was the more-realistic-than-usual expressions and actions, and -- maybe most important -- the hurried secrecy of it.

In both situations there was more than sex going on. In "The Final Cut" there was a long, tense period of hope and anticipation preceding the consummation (for the audience it was complete with that first kiss), and in "Enemy at the Gates" it was the circumstances of the act (the threat of death, the potential witnesses, and so on). The scene in "Butch Cassidy" that turned Rich on so much has an atmosphere of aggression and threat. In fact, it's been my experience that movie or narrative sex that has no dramatic context carries little or no erotic charge.

Delayed gratification is the easiest way to escalate sexual tension in an extended narrative. This is a truth that Glenn Gordon Caron exploited in Moonlighting and Chris Carter made ultimately cheap and tiresome in The X-Files (proving that you can't thwart the audience's desires forever).

Did I mention I used to have erotic dreams about David Duchovny?

blush

Email

I spent some time answering mail today, and wanted to share some of this interesting letter I got from one of my readers. Since it took me to task for one aspect of how I've covered the Boredom subject, I think the issues it raises need to be addressed before I go on.

I really like your blog. It's interesting, and offers a great perspective. However your article on boredom seems to be kind of two things.

a) It's not "helpful" like your other articles on how to deal with this very common and specific intimacy issue.

b) It seems like a rationalization for taking back women power and making them like men -- ie: women can sleep around and are meant to be all "macho" also, except as women. Women are meant to have multiple partners and this is biologically built into them.

Which is fine. And biologically this maybe the case. But it ignores the much more profound levels of human existance -- such as the spiritual and emotional and intellectual -- and makes no attempt to reconcile them.

I would have prefered to have seem what you have done to sort of combat this kind of stuff.

I didn't mean the evolutionary discussion to justify sleeping around or women being "macho" (heaven forfend). I only meant the biological material to help explain WHY women get bored (in addition to the more basic "familiarity breeds contempt" concept).

I've heard from more than one person now that my writing about these evolutionary ideas is somehow "dangerous" to people who won't use the information responsibly, but I don't think that's a good reason to avoid these concepts, especially when I'm writing about marital fidelity and relationship issues.

For human beings there are no "excuses" in biology. None. If you are a sentient, mature adult, blaming any exploitative, impulsive, selfish or inhumane behavior on some supposedly uncontrollable trick of your hypothalamus is the equivalent of Flip Wilson yelling, "The Debbil Made Me Do It!" (And here come de judge.)

But there is a necessity to understand the ways in which biology challenges those "more profound levels of human existence" my correspondent spoke of. Forewarned is forearmed, after all. If we are aware that our animal natures will demand things that our spiritual, emotional and intellectual natures abhor, we might be able to get better, more realistic ideas of how to deal with our importunate lizard brains.

This culture feeds us fairy tales. It tells us that "normal" men and women who love each other can live in thoughtless sexual bliss Happily Ever After, because if we're healthy and our relationship is Meant To Be, we'll want sex with each other at least three times a week until we're 93 (with six weeks off after the birth of each child). This is fantasy, of course, and most people recognize it as such when it is stated in such stark terms. Yet still, somehow, people have internalized this romantic Movie Marriage as the standard against which they measure themselves. If they don't fulfill that ideal, they're sure it's The End.

Understanding that women might be biologically tuned to seek different partners in a serially monogamous fashion tells us a couple of very important things: women who become sexually bored with their long-term partners are not suffering from some kind of character flaw, and if a woman loses interest in sex it doesn't mean that she's with the wrong guy or that the marriage is over. Knowing these things might enhance her ability to cope with the situation.

At the same time, knowing that most women will get sexually bored with ANY man after a while will help husbands understand that there's not necessarily anything permanently wrong with their marriages when their wives lose interest in sex with them, and, maybe more importantly, that if they attempt to solve their problem by seeking out a new partner, she is likely to end up bored, too.

I mean it's easy for men to cheat and say that they are built this way, that they need some outside excitement.

I don't know about you, but if any man ever said this to me, I'd tell him I'm "built" to consider him an idiot. I can't help it, it's genetic. I have this adult brain, see, and it just, well, works.

Personally, in my relationships, because I feel that the focus of the relationship is not just in the biological (and the biological perspective is one you appear to take, minimizing the psychological one), but rather in higher elements of human experience, I've found that the things which advance the relationship and stave off bordem is the mutual encouragement and exploration of each other. Spiritually and psychologically. In fact, I've often considered that "flirtatious" physical aspect to be really just one layer. And after a while not such an interesting one, because it's so fleeting, and disappears. If one man is flirting with you today, then he'll be flirting with someone tomorrow and you'll be history in his mind. Milan Kundera once said that when a man lets go of an infatuation of one woman, a galaxy of others come into view.

If you stay there for long enough, at that level, especially as you get older, you just starve.

Finally you need someone who is commited to your life project of being you, and you to them.

I agree that commitment to each other's efforts to be the people they were meant to be is crucial. Partnerships of that kind should be one of our lives' highest aspirations. But I think it's a little bit beyond my purview to try to outline or advise on the subject of being committed. After all, you either are or you aren't.

I feel sorry for people who can't genuinely commit to supporting each other in that way, but I don't think it's something that I can realistically address.

Material Reading

In the early 80s my teenaged stepchildren returned to live with their mother, so my husband and I finally lived alone together for the first time since we were married. One source of stress on our marriage was relieved (although I immediately replaced it by going back to school for more graduate work). And then I discovered romance novels.

Now wait, don't laugh....

Well, okay, I know you can't stop now, but try to get hold of yourself in the next few minutes, willya? I'll wait.

Now then.

Yes, it's escapist, formulaic, pulp literature, on a par with James Bond and Westerns and cat mysteries all that stuff. But, you know, let's be frank. Most romances have SEX in them. Not only that, they have LOVE in them. But best of all for our purposes, they have women LOVING SEX in them.

The great thing about reading is that it is not an entirely passive activity. The reader has to get the action from the page into her mind, and along the way she is likely to automatically add her own delicious details and skip lightly over the stuff she isn't crazy about. The heroine's voice is never going to remind a reader of her mother's, and the reader isn't going to notice that the hero has a funny mole right beside his knee.

In literature a kind of veil -- partly created by the writer and partly created by the reader -- can interpose itself between the reader and the kind of details that in a movie can distract more than they involve the viewer. This is especially true of the euphemistic kind of sex (aka "purple prose") for which early romance novels were so laughably notorious. The participatory and abstraction characteristics of literature make it particularly valuable for women who are attempting to recover their libidos.

Another good aspect of romance novel sex as opposed to downright porn, filmed or written, is that it is ordinarily surrounded by enhancing events and circumstances that up the participatory ante for the reader. The sex scenes in most romance novels comprise very minor percentages of the actual text. A 350-page book might have 15 pages that describe sexual incidents, but those incidents will be surrounded by descriptions of unusual settings and romantic ambiance, emotional excitement, anticipation, foreplay and post-coital tenderness. In other words, some of the classic ingredients for getting and keeping a reluctant woman "in the mood."

A couple of academic studies have indicated that the general public's impression that the majority of romance readers are pitiful, uneducated, sex-starved spinsters (who can't get themselves laid for love or money) is just plain wrong. The romance novel industry couldn't be raking in over $1 billion+ a year under those circumstances. There just aren't that many losers out there.

As a matter of fact, married women with hefty household incomes are the majority of romance consumers, and two categories are surprisingly well-represented in the reader population: middle class stay-at-home mothers and professionals in demanding, high-paying jobs. From my own experience in both of these situations, the one thing they both have in common is their stress levels. Engaging, non-complicated erotic escapism is precisely what many tense, distracted, "disembodied" women in these situations need. It's therapy.

And it often works, at least on the sexual front. Studies show that married women who read romance novels have as much as two times more sex with their husbands, regardless of whether the books they read have explicit or minimal erotic content. And there are other aspects of romance novels that soothe the savage breasts of emotionally over-extended or circumstantially pressured women.

Jennifer Crusie, Ph. D., points out that romance fiction is "politically incorrect" to both sides of the spectrum, left and right, and it also challenges the 20th century critical establishment.

Yes, a lot of the writing in romance fiction is abysmal, but so is a lot of the writing in mystery, SF, and literary fiction, and only the romance gets condemned as an entire genre.

But ... any time anything is condemned wholeheartedly, it's because it challenges the deeply held beliefs of those attacking it. ... In fact, romance fiction has something in it to irritate anyone with rigid ideas of how life and literature should work and--most important--how women should act. It was then I realized why I loved romance fiction: it was not only entertaining and empowering, it seriously annoyed a lot of stuffed shirts. ...

As anyone with a lit degree knows, the last time any author got away with a critically acclaimed happy ending was the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, Modernism--the school of thought that declared life was real, life was earnest, life was hopeless and so was literature--had taken over literary fiction completely. ... Modernism has convinced us that suffering and losing is more valuable than suffering and winning. Romance fiction says that this isn't necessarily so.

Crusie believes that the "fairy tales" of current romance fiction provide correctives to the mythologies the culture has promoted to women in the past. In her most famous essay, Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women she writes:

The literary tradition I was familiar with hailed female characters like Hester Prynne as great feminist heroines. You remember Hester, a woman who, after grasping at happiness and sexual fulfillment, realizes the error of her ways and spends the last sixty years of her life celibate and serving others so that when the townspeople who have reviled her gather round her deathbed, they say, "The Scarlet A? It stands for Able."

[Insert disgusted eye-rolling here.]

So what? you say. Those are just stories for kids. Well, they're that and a lot more. Folklorist Max Luthi says that fairy tales are "unreal but not untrue" because they deal with the greatest themes in literature and life, and much of genre fiction, grounded in myth, legend, and tale, retells those primal stories for adults. Fairy tales, Luthi says, promise the reader a just universe, and so do the genres. Mystery fiction promises a morally just universe, and speculative fiction promises an intellectually just universe, but romance fiction trumps all of these because it makes the greatest promise of all. It says that if you truly open yourself to other people, if you do the hardest thing of all which is to make yourself vulnerable and reach out for love and connection and everything that makes life as a human being worth living, you will be rewarded; it promises, in short, an emotionally just universe.

So it's not just the sexual content, per se, that makes the imaginative landscape of romance novels so potentially valuable to a woman who is seeking to return to her fullest physical and emotional self. The relaxing escapist fantasies in these books are not just erotic, they're often intellectual, political and cultural as well.

Although I very seldom read them anymore, I inhaled dozens of romances in the early 80s. I read them as most women do, fully aware of their basic absurdity but still engaged by their deeper meanings and effects. So during that period of our life things got a little better for my husband and me on the sex front, because at least the plumbing got some regular blood flow. But there was still a basic disconnect between the physical arousal the books created in me and the prospect of sex with my husband. I was marginally more interested in sex in general, but not necessarily sex with him.

You see the problem. I was only halfway back.

More Email

I had to share this email from female reader "L."

I like all your categories and find that I am living your former life with regards to several of them; most notably the one about boredom and that loss of single girl power. I feel like I bloomed late and faded early--and here I am, in the kitchen, mostly, struggling.

I'm working to rectify the problem of marital sexual boredom--well, actually, I'm waiting for you to tell me how to rectify it. Romance novels you say? I'm a little dubious. I think I might just prefer the straight porn.

However, that's not what I'm writing to you about. I think you should have another category called "comfy pants". I'm serious. I've noticed that when I used to wear jeans I wanted sex a lot more often. Even after I'd been together with my boyfriend for four or five years--he's now my husband--if I had jeans on while driving, by the time I got there, no foreplay was required. The jeans were never especially tight, but they had that seam, and that little lump where the seams overlap, right there, pressing on my clitoral area as a constant reminder of the fun to be had.

Now the years have gone by a bit, I'm 37, I've had a baby and I find myself dressing for comfort and movement, so all the time I'm running around in yoga pants, leggings of some sort, or pants with a little stretch to them. I feel comfortable alright, and fairly sexless.

Every once in a while I put on a pair of jeans and am instantly reminded "Hey, that's right, there you are." Unless I want to be sexually aroused and distracted by my arousal all day, I have to change back into comfy pants. Keeping myself sexually aroused would be good for my husband, I suppose, but then I have to count on his being in the mood. If he's not, there's masturbation, but if I do it once in a day, I could be at it six times a day, to the detriment of the housekeeping. This leads to domestic conflict and a rotten sex life. Such a conundrum.

So, I see that the wearing of the jeans must be timed just right. Husbands could encourage their wives to wear jeans more often, particularly before driving.

Although. . .I don't really want to admit this theory to my own husband, because I don't want him to think that my desire for him is as mechanical as all that, you know. Besides, it isn't the ONLY thing that makes me want to have sex with him, but pure physical need for relief is a biggie.

I enjoy your blog very much and think it will help save my marriage from some sad years--if I pay attention. Getting my husband to pay attention is another matter. Sometimes I do think there needs to be the corresponding blog: Why Your Husband Won't Have Sex With You.

Please don't divulge my identity if you use any of these comments. I live in a small town. Everyone would be constantly checking to see what sort of pants I was wearing.

Ha!

All I can say is, I wish it had ever been that easy for me. Put on different pair of pants and bingo, instant turn-on?

I just never had a pair of jeans hit me in the right spot, I guess.

New Venues, New Circumstances

When I was participating in an online conversation regarding this subject some years ago, one of the men told a sad story about how uninterested his wife was in sex, and how she was so totally unresponsive to him on every level that she never even touched him. They moved through their lives as cool almost-strangers, he said.

Then he related an incident that I thought was very interesting. He and his wife were putting in a new bathtub, a large whirlpool "garden" style tub, and while the two of them were standing together one day watching the workers hook up the plumbing, his wife turned to him and said something like, "When we get that put in I'd like for us to take a bath together, with champagne and candles and all, like in the movies."

Wow, I thought, elated. Breakthrough!

But no. Contrary to my first idea that he was about to tell us that a minor miracle had occurred, he had apparently introduced the incident into our conversation as some weird illustration of how hopeless his situation was. He dismissed his wife's remark as "unreal," as typical of how she would sometimes raise his hopes for a moment, but then wouldn't follow through. "I knew she didn't really mean it," the guy said. He didn't plan to take her up on the idea.

What was his wife telling him? That she was interested in recreating a movie scene, maybe something that had stirred her sleeping libido for a moment. That she wanted to share a different, romantic kind of experience with him, in an unusual sort of place. That she was longing for a particular kind of romantic moment. In short, she wanted to fulfill a fantasy. It must have taken a lot for her to reveal that to him, given their constrained physical relationship up to that point. It seemed to me that she took a huge emotional chance. But he rejected the hint.

I don't really know why, to tell you the truth. Could it possibly be that he wasn't interested in the kind of sexual relationship she was seeking, one that would require him to behave in unfamiliar ways or do things he'd consider silly or stupid? Did he have the same hesitations many women do when contemplating offering sex to their husbands, that once he started down a particular road or agreed to certain behaviors or activities, he wouldn't be able to keep up with the enhanced expectations, wouldn't be able to call a halt or slow things down if they got to be too difficult?

I don't know, but if nothing else this little story demonstrates that even the chilliest wife might have erotic possibilities, possibilities that could be evoked with a change of location, approach or circumstances.

Over and over again I've heard that getting out of the house and away from kids, parents, and routine stresses helps enormously to relax and reawaken both men and women to the possibilities of their relationship. I've already talked about the fact that for many women a clean, attractive hotel room can be a turn-on, not only because of the sense of privacy but because their surroundings are not as likely to remind them of what they are Supposed To Be Doing Instead. Second honeymoons can sometimes work unheard-of wonders, but even a weekend at a local bed & breakfast could remind you of what you enjoy about each other.

But be careful. If you set up a surprise 4 day cruise but make it too clear (by leering and joking and hinting around and generally carrying on like a lug) that you're expecting her to thank you with lots of sex; if you assume you're owed some kind of transactional quid pro quo, you may do yourself more harm than good. Think: no pressure, no expectations, no "gratitude," just relaxation, new places, different days.

But, as the Brits say, if you can't actually get away, sometimes a change is as good as a rest. Do you always approach your wife for sex at the same time of day, or in exactly the same way? For example, my husband and I discovered that we enjoy morning sex. I'm rested and relaxed at that hour of the day, he's got a ready rock, and away we go (we did find that we needed those Altoids, though).

It might be counterintuitive, but some women enjoy being awakened with a snuggle-up in the middle of the night. Be brave. Try it. Be gentle, but persist a bit even if she makes a murmur at first. You -- and she -- might be surprised at the difference it makes to start out sleepy and in the dark.

I'll talk in more detail later about specific sexual techniques and enhancements you might want to try out if you get a chance, but for now you'll have to think and pay attention to your wife to try to discern where the chinks in her boredom might open. Certainly if she gives you an overt hint like bathtub lady gave her husband, you'll be lucky, and of course you should jump on it with all the suavity you can muster. But sometimes the things you come up with on your own can offer their own special thrill, because you took the time and made the effort to use YOUR imagination and brain power.

You also have to avoid getting into a brand new rut with these new ideas. Just because a new place, approach or strategy is successful doesn't mean it's always going to work exactly the way it did the first time. In fact, the most common complaint I hear from women is that men have a tendency to find a winning sexual formula and then never vary it, ending up driving it into the ground. "They're lazy!" one woman wrote to me. "They don't want to have to work too hard," by which she meant no so much physical muscle work as mental work or attention. (This is true of women, too, of course, but men tend not to get as fatally bored as fast with the same-old-same-old, as long as they get a predictable sexual payoff.)

More ideas: Go to a drive-in movie, to the ice rink or bowling alley, to a high school basketball or football game, on a picnic or to some other cheap "teen date" venue that you otherwise wouldn't consider particularly worthwhile. Just the silliness of it all will relax you both.

Some couples find that role playing and other "games" work. The trickiest part of this idea is bringing up the concept in the first place. But sometimes the stuff you can't actually talk about out loud can be broached in writing. Yes, write your wife a note. A love letter of sorts. The easiest way to exchange deep or dangerous thoughts these days is by email.

Here's one idea: tell her you'd like to start up a an internet friendship with her, just for fun, where you both pretend to be strangers to each other, even playing completely new roles in life. You can be a fantastically rich sailboat entrepreneur and she can be a jet set fashion model. It may sound ridiculous or like something your wife would never go along with in a million years, but it really can't hurt to try. The "internet romance" game has been amazingly entertaining and fun for many couples. Again you have the participatory factor of imagination working for you.

One thing I have to say, though: DO NOT do this as some kind of secret scam on her, trying to seduce her as someone else. That's entrapment, a violation of trust, a kind of rape. Trust me, it will destroy you both.

In the end, several things have to happen for The Boredom Problem to be overcome: a woman has to realize that she is still a sensual creature with erotic possibilities, the couple has to make an effort to reshape their relationship or escape their psychological routine, and they both have to learn to trust their relationship and each other.

I've talked about the power of imaginative stimulus to help a woman recover her sensual awareness and re-tune her sexual feelings. Reshaping the relationship is a more complex problem, but as I mentioned last time, one way to give the process a kick start is by taking a break from your ordinary, stressful, distracting life: a hotel room weekend, a cruise, a second honeymoon.

One of my readers suggested camping, saying that the challenges and pleasures of living outdoors were so completely different from "real life" that it was like living as someone else for a couple of days, and the experiences of nature are usually anything but routine. (If your relationship's main challenge seems to be simmering anger rather than boredom, however, the minor discomforts, disagreements and organizational errors of the typical a camping trip might not be conducive to relaxation.)

But other kinds of change-ups are also useful. One idea might be to find new things to do together, so that you can have some kind of shared and UNPREDICTABLE amusement that is of value to you both, as a couple. Ideally, the mutual enjoyment will have a large sensual component. So things like swimming, choirs, art lessons, dancing, gardening (or garden tours), spa days, golfing, and so on are all possibilities.

Cooking is fun. You don't have to become effete foodies, but you could set off one night a week when you work together to make something unusual that requires cooperation with each other and handling, smelling, seeing and tasting different foodstuffs.

You could go to a rock concert or jazz club or country music extravaganza together, or even to a karaoke bar -- if the sound of pop music being murdered doesn't completely shrivel you, that is. You might want to look into the fantasy re-enactment thing. Renaissance Faires and Civil War "battles" offer a lot of scope for unusual interactions, new clothing, imaginative relationships and other boredom-busters. TALK about it. That's why God invented email, right?

One thing I can't entirely recommend, although it was suggested by a couple of readers, is pot. Yes, it's relaxing, it's mind-altering, it's sensually enhancing. It can help. I'm not anti-drug in principle. But there is also a danger for women who are having problems feeling sexual. Drugs can actually turn into another way to disconnect themselves from sex, because it becomes too easy to see the sexual activity as a function of the weed and not of their "real" selves. Believing that sexual feelings can only be "artificially" induced by using a drug is not a good concept for either of you to entertain.

For others, especially those who REALLY enjoy sex under the influence, the pleasure-drug association is so strong that the drug becomes a fetish. As with any other fetish object or process, sex without it becomes less interesting. The erotic response is habituated to certain chemical conditions and linked to the high, and in time nothing else is quite "good enough."

I don't want to overstate the danger, but we have to recognize that it does happen. You're trying to AVOID the establishment of routines and conditioned responses, so it doesn't make sense to potentially set one up. (Many of these same cautions would apply to alcohol and other drugs, as well.) On the other hand, a little mindbop now and then isn't going to hurt anybody, as long as you're fully aware of the potential pitfalls.

Ultimately, however, we have to return to the concept of trust or commitment, which is the point at which a relationship becomes deep enough that sex between you is no longer a matter of keeping score, of how much you are getting or not getting, how many sacrifices you've made, how ungrateful she is, who owes what to whom, how disappointing she is, what you're not going to put up with anymore, why you are going to walk out that door and never come back if she does that infuriating thing ONE MORE TIME....

Well, you see the problem. It comes back to that idea I talked about last week, that genuine commitment is the missing ingredient at the bottom of it all. If you're both willing to genuinely stick it out and TRY, almost anything can work. If one or the other or both of you are already fed up to the teeth and you're only resentfully considering some mechanical efforts -- perhaps so you can say "I really tried!" -- I can't help you. You have to be honest with yourself.

 

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BASIC BLOG:
Introduction | Disgust | Discomfort | Distraction | Insecurity | Anger | Fat Wars | Misunderstanding | Boredom | Infidelity | Technique | Motherhood | Aging and Depression | Bad Company | Childhood Abuse and Sexual Fears | Counseling | When to Split | Being the Hero of Your Own Life

OTHER STORIES:
Why Does She Masturbate? | Lying and Power | Do Women Prefer Bad Boys? | Fiona's Story | How A Nice Guy Becomes A Dickhead | Ten Ways To Be A Lover | How It All Goes Wrong | Medicalizing Desire | Paul's Dilemma | Who Am I? | Should I Ask Or Just Go For It?