Fri, 2010-10-15 10:44

Svutlana, in her trademark broken English, endorses an important point about intimacy in relationships: everyone’s entitled to a little bit of mental privacy. Answering a man who questions whether his long-term partner could be sincere when she says she has no sexual fantasies, she hits the nail on the head.

Svutlana be extreme sorry for say this, but you need for immediate get for fuck over need for extract fantasies from wife, Mr Fantasy. If wife say she no have fantasies, she no have fantasies. Even if wife have fantasies that she hide from you, you no have right for demand access for them and feel insult when she no comply with your wishes.

In Svutlana opinion, no matter how extreme faithful you be, there be limits for what you should expect from monogamy.

Source: Svutlana of Svutlandia

And just to be clear, I’m not saying this because I’m a privacy absolutist (I’m actually relatively sanguine about limits to privacy.) Instead it’s that I strongly subscribe to relationship therapist and theorist Esther Perel’s philosophy that while intimacy is obviously important in relationships too much intimacy begins to sabotage sexual desire.

There’s also the bit about how for many people, sharing or acting on fantasies can deaden them — even long-term cherished ones.

As to the question of fantasies Svutlana points out correctly that not everyone has them. She adds that women aren’t as likely as men to have repeated, strongly-themed fantasies, easily pinned down fantasies. (I’m not sure the gender declaration holds up but it’s certainly true that a lot of people’s fantasies are almost indefinably vague.)

She points out that her correspondent seems to want to know his partner’s fantasies not just because he’s hurt that she’s “withholding” but because he’s hoping there’s something in it for him.

You say for self, “But want me for find out what wife fantasy be so can increase her sexual pleasures!” and maybe this be true for some degrees, but you really want for see if maybe wife think up something excite you never think of before for get you off. And you also want for know everything about wife, include her most privates thoughts, for make you feel important and feed your ego.

And here’s where it gets cool: Svutlana says that instead of prying into your partner’s possible fantasies it might be more effective to suggest a range of broad fantasy scenarios that you’d enjoy trying and seeing whether any of your ideas work for them. She says that while fantasies can be hard to pin down most people have broad themes they respond to.

I’d just add that in addition to respecting each other’s boundaries, sharing your ideas is at least a good way to start a conversation. (Hint: if you feel vulnerable sharing your fantasies then… that might explain why they feel vulnerable about sharing theirs, right?) By risking your own vulnerability you create space where they might feel comfortable risking theirs.

Thu, 2008-11-13 09:11

Em and Lo of Daily Bedpost have a nice Q&A feature where they ask three different men, usually a single straight man, a single straight man, and a committed gay man, for their take on a question. Their take on the question “Do you think guys cheat more than women?” was pretty interesting.

The straight single respondent, “Max,” said men are just lousier than women. Also, succumbing the dominant women as the “no-sex” class ideology, he adds

A girl, on the other hand, is more likely to be satisfied with the attention and flirtation alone. She doesn’t NEED the physical confirmation to get an ego boost.

Read all about it here.

“Matt,” the straight married respondent, also bashes men, blaming what he sees as more cheating as a result of poor impulse control. He also says “variety is a more constant drive” for men. Also, without considering, say, this point by Audacia Ray he says (emphasis mine)

They would sleep with someone different every day—maybe even several times a day. I just don’t believe that would be appealing to most women over the long term. (I’m not talking about on occasion here, I mean different partners every day, for years. If you offered women the choice between that and a daily massage, they’d take the massage.)

And, getting closer to what I think the real answer might be, adds

This inherent desire for variety is a constantly suppressed impulse for pretty much every guy I know—even the ones who would never, ever stray.

Hmm… really? Wonder if anyone besides men has to spend time suppressing impulses?

Finally, though, “Terrence,” the gay committed man, brings up the most interesting points. (Emphasis also mine.)

Do men cheat more than women? My intuition is screaming yes. But I also think our perception of men as cheaters feeds their cheating behavior — which is another column entirely.

...

[I]f we’ve got to look at it in absolutes, then I believe yes, technically, men cheat more than women. But with life’s continuous chaos and change, I’d rather stick with a partner who may have some random shags here and there if he’s consistently emotionally monogamous with me.

Actually I’m with Terrence on the cheating question. Sure, men cheat at… rates only a little bit higher than the rates women cheat.

What’s the difference then? Why do men (at least Euro/Anglo men) get the label? I think Terence touches on that but doesn’t land square.

There are any number of kinds of intimate relationships where sex isn’t involved at all. Think lifelong platonic friendships, family ties, and partnerships in intensely competitive and/or adventurous environments. Conversely, sad to say, in many monogamous relationships the partners themselves can be quite distant from each other.

What (heterosexual) monogamy does have going for it is a guarantee that men’s family’s property will be inherited by the “right” person’s offspring. For most of the history of marriage, in virtually all history-leaving cultures, that’s been the biggest consideration behind virginity, abstinence, fidelity, and monogamy. (Compare the meanings of the words “adultery” and “adulterated” for instance.)

Anyway, in cultures where men and their families have tended to control economics, and where it matters to their families that offspring really is “theirs,” and where women have been kept completely economically and even legally dependent on men (even here their fathers “give them away” to their husbands at wedding, remember, a vestige of what used to be cold, hard, Common-Law legal truth) the deck has been substantially stacked against women who cheat (stoning, anyone?) and… stacked pretty flipping indifferently against men who do.

Anyway, since the rules of monogamy were initially created to protect men’s interest in women as their property (“thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife… no his house nor cattle nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s!) you’d sort of expect to see two things: first, that men wouldn’t see much wrong with collecting a little extra “property,” or even that they’d judge each other’s status by how much “property” they could accumulate (unless, of course, they were married to that “property” in which case it would be “theft.”) And second that as the metaphorical, and sometimes real property even when women did cheat they’d have to be a lot more circumspect — the consequences, at least of being caught, (stoning, divorced, faced with raising children on their own) have tended to be way, way, way higher for them.

Anyway, I think all that adds up to explain why men have the greater reputation for cheating… and the statistically significant but not that much higher actual rate of cheating than women. A difference, by the way, that’s therefore more cultural and not nearly as “natural” as Matt and Max suggest. Take away those cultural different consequences, and throw in more legal and economic parity, and I’m pretty sure the statistical difference largely disappears, with men not feeling sex with multiple partners is a status builder, and women not seeing fewer partners as a survival mechanism.

I happen to think, by the way, that if we could get closer to real economic, social, and legal parity we’d wind up with Terence’s position: perhaps a little more sexual “cheating” (which might not even be considered cheating) but a lot more room for intimate and emotionally monogamous partnerships inside relationships.

Thu, 2007-08-30 11:43

One of too many consequences of the contemporary dominant male paradigm is the frame of reference that men “just naturally” want more sex than women, who (we falsely believe) constitute the “just naturally” disinterested “no-sex” class.

(Ever notice how often “just naturally” really means “taken for granted and consequently never examined?”)

So check out this startling question and response I found at WebMD’s Health and Sex column

She Wants More
Question: My husband and I are newlyweds and I can’t keep my hands off him. I initiate sex 85 percent of the time. He usually says “no” because he is tired. Am I being selfish because I want sex more often? Is it normal for the woman to be the initiator most of the time?

Answer: Psychotherapist Rachel Morris says the first question to ask yourself is whether there are any other times — apart from when you’re having sex — where he gives you his “entire, full, unadulterated attention.” “If the answer is no,” Morris says, “it may be that you’re confusing the desire to have sex with the desire to have him all to yourself — the reassurance that you’re still loved. Intimacy and sex aren’t necessarily the same things. So pushing him to have sex, when really what you want is intimacy, probably means that you’re getting neither.

Source: WebMD.com

Mmm, boy if I were a knee-jerk gender activist I’d just automatically chew the authors another butthole for implying that if a woman says she wants more sex than her partner does she really just wants intimacy.

Because the entire point of the “no-sex” class paradigm is that women have to want something else because they never really want to have sex. Instead, quoth the dominant paradigm, women must be manipulated, levered, seduced, enticed, compensated, or coerced into sex. Instead, quoth the dominant paradigm, women who don’t need to be coerced and instead are initiating sex are somehow cheating, consciously using their booty to extract some other advantage from their male partners… or (shades of the reply at WebMD!) they’re using sex unconsciously in an effort to be “popular” with the boy or boys.

So yeah, not exactly the worlds most progressive foundation for rendering advice, Docs.

But…

But…

But…

Reflexes notwithstanding I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. And here’s the deal.

Had the question been asked by a man the answer would have almost certainly fallen along the lines of

Mismatched sex drive is one of the most common problems with couples, says general practitioner Sarah Humphery. “It’s interesting you say that you don’t understand how getting more involved in the housework is going to help,” Humphery says. “She’s going to be less tired, she’s going to be preoccupied, she’s going to feel less like a sort of housewife — you’ve got to make her feel sexy.”

From a previous question in the same article.

In other words it would have been a variation on the same old inside-the-paradigm “just naturally” thing with the same old conflation of sex and housework. (Men should pull their weight. However advisors should not tie it to women’s sexual availability!)

Instead, though, it was a woman asking and so…

Instead of totally jerking their knees they actually put a little thought into the answer.

And to be honest while you could read their advice as a complete affirmation of the “no-sex” class paradigm I’m going to turn it the other way and suggest…

It’s good advice. Good for women, sure, but from a social-indoctrination standpoint even better advice for men!

I realized back when I was 19 that while I seriously enjoyed sex I was really getting something out of the fact that, back then anyway, if you had sex together you slept snuggled together afterwards as well.

Actual sexual urges, you may have noticed, can be handled handily with, um, our own hands. Snuggling, however, requires two people. Using sex, as I did, as a way to get that close physical contact with another human being, however, alienated me from sex.

And lemme tell ya, if Freud, if not 100% right, was still on to something when he said there are problems when we seek nonsexual outlets for our sexual urges, he neglected to mention it’s no better to seek sexual outlets for our non-sexual urges!

We’re all easily starved for intimacy, and while I’ll be the last person to knock the very distinct pleasures of sex, I want to always be the first to knock efforts to ask more of sex than it can deliver.

Anyway, given the author’s answer to the previous question I think they probably need to be given the benefit of the doubt, I’m still giving it. “Am I needing sex or some other form of physical intimacy” is always a good question to ask. Even if we never think to ask it of men.

Update: Since the above is a bit convoluted here’s a quick recap.

- The advice “if you think you’re not getting enough sex, check to make sure you’re really not using sex as a substitute for other needed forms of intimacy” is good advice. – The advice was offered to, figuratively, the first woman to express interest in more sex than her partner wants, whereas – Since it’s assumed that men are “just that way” they are almost never offered the aforementioned very good advice. (For instance that’s the first time I’ve heard anyone else suggest it.) – Yet the complaint is so common among men it’s beyond cliche.

Even bottom-ier line: the advice, while sound, nevertheless insults women’s sexual autonomy and men’s sensitivity since it’s offered only to a woman and not to myriad men in the exact same boat.