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An authentic problem in traditional relationships

Mon, 2007-12-10 10:08 — figleaf

So… when I was growing up an (in retrospect) awful lot of sex-related non-fiction literature brooded endlessly about “how to tell if she’s had an orgasm.” Or, perhaps more accurately, “how to tell if she’s faking it.”

It was generally recognized that you couldn’t just ask because of course your partner’s going to lie to you. Because, if nothing else, everyone in an economically inefficient culture that effectively forced women to prostitute themselves to those who the law permitted to “earn a living wage,” recognized that honesty simply wasn’t in the subordinate party’s best interest. And consequently even a genuinely good lover could never be sure.

One can only imagine how much of the literary and experiential searches for “authenticity” during the 20th Century’s second half was driven by the nagging uncertainty about men’s partner’s insincerity and/or condescension.

Pondering this it’s difficult to imagine why, exactly, traditionalists believe, or ever believed, we were better off with that.

Sat, 2007-12-15 08:14 — 1801 (not verified) #permalink

I still remember the first time a boy actually did ask me. We were in my parents car, he was fingering me, I think I was 17. He asked me if I had come yet and I laughed and said I wasn’t going to. I hope it wasn’t a mean laugh – I’m sure he meant well. But at that point in my sexual development I was just too uptight to let anyone else make me that vulnerable. I don’t think it even occurred to me to lie.

As I’ve gotten more experienced I still haven’t learned how to lie about it but I think I can understand the temptation and I don’t think it has much to do with being subordinate. It goes like this:

Orgasms are fun.
Watching and hearing your partner orgasm is fun.
Knowing that your partner is enjoying watching and hearing you have an orgasm is fun.

We try not to take it to meta levels beyond that because it would just get too confusing. But, anyway, the point of sex is to have fun and make sure your partner has fun, right? So if you think acting like you’re enjoying things will make them enjoy things more you do it.

Of course this can get into negative patterns if the orgasm-faking partner ends up encouraging her partner to do things physically that she doesn’t actually like… but if it’s just “well normally I’d enjoy that but I’m too tired just now” I can see the temptation. I still think it’s wrong and I wouldn’t do it but…

[“But, anyway, the point of sex is to have fun and make sure your partner has fun, right?” Right, but for a lot of us (me included) it sometimes seems a lot more like it’s going to the Department of Licensing or court or something where it’s really important to get it all right and not to look like you’re there being frivolous. :-) Which imight actually be fine for specific kinds of BDSM role-playing… but not for the majority of ways to do about it. Thanks, Plymouth. —fl]

Sat, 2007-12-15 11:36 — 1801 (not verified) #permalink

Lack of trust, mistrust or inability to trust your partner, is a mentality left over from “traditional” relationships that MRA cling to like super glue. It seems to the be fundamental aspect of all of their interactions with women.

Adultery also seems like a fundamental aspect of “traditional” marriage. If you marry for money, social status or stability, then you are probably going to end up not liking the person who you live with. Hence, you start looking somewhere else for the elements that are missing in the marriage, sexual or emotional.

It seems to me that “traditional” relationships breed mistrust.

[Heck yes! And remember that cheating would go both all ways. Fine if your model family is the Medicis and Borgias. Not so much otherwise. Thanks, Christina. —fl]

Sun, 2007-12-16 10:01 — 1801 (not verified) #permalink

Yes, I had in mind when I wrote the comment that adultery goes both ways. I am living in Mexico and taking a gender studies class here. We just had a class on adultery in the colonial era. It was fascinating.

Women were punished more strictly under the law. A husband or a father could kill his wife/daughter if he caught her in the act as long as he killed her partner as well. A man would just go to jail for adultery. A woman could be sent to jail also; I wanted to point out the difference in maximum punishment. However, adultery was rampant and just as common among women as it was among men. Among the aristocratic class it was even acceptable/expected for a time.

[Right. Because an awful lot of marriages were seen literally as biological contracts between pre-corporate family-based political or economic entities. And when I say literally I mean exactly that — at various points in European history parents would order their offspring to divorce when a deal went bad and/or when a better one was arranged with a different family! Which, incidentally, reinforced my interpretation of adultery as a prohibition on “adulterating” family lines with children from unsanctioned connections. Because what you did on your own time had nothing to do with family business the only social prohibition (as opposed to personal/jealousy/ego prohibitions) was on “bastardy.” So, um, tradition. Whee. Not so much fun. Thanks, Christina. —fl]

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