Interesting exploration of the Madonna/Whore syndrome on Kayten’s Divorce Chronicles. Interesting responses in comments to her post as well. She wrote to answer why she sees herself fitting more on the whore side of the Madonna/whore division which she first talked about in her preceding post (see that here.

First of all I’d have gone along with the men who commented and said “no way” to most of what she said. A lot of us either dismiss the division as a myth as out of hand or else dispute it as archaic and irrelevant.

However, the warnings GoodGirlBadPlace related in her comment reminded me of an email from a friend who’s very long-term partner (after years of wheedling) angrily called her a whore (not in a good way) when she (finally) agreed that his fantasy of a three-way with another man excited her as much as it did him. His fantasy, mind you, and then he called her a whore for liking his fantasy!

So yes, there are definitely still guys with Madonna-whore problems, no doubt about it. The good news, as one can see from the rest of us guy’s comments, is that not everyone feels that way. (I wouldn’t feel that way either.)

I’ve had previous long-term partners who had very rich sex lives both in fantasy and reality. I want to be loved very much, no doubt about it, and I’d become very defensive if I began feeling displaced altogether. Otherwise if she sometimes wished to do what I sometimes wish I could do then more power to her.

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Speaking of Madonna/whore syndromes, and why I don’t feel that way, I ought to
mention how my very first relationship ended. My first partner was ardently,
passionately, even fanatically pro-monogamy. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were topping the charts back then and she got apoplectic every time she heard the line If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with on the radio, which back then was about every 15 minutes.

Several years into our relationship she went on a retreat. She called me right after she returned, crying her eyes out, saying she was sorry, saying she’d screwed up everything. Turns out there’d been this guy at the retreat. (Ok) And slept with him. (Yikes, ouch, but ok) And regretted it. (Better than ok.) And she loved me so much. (Even better, plus very reassuring.) And even though she didn’t want to and she was very unhappy about it she was leaving me for him anyway because she believed if she didn’t it meant she wasn’t monogamous and she couldn’t tolerate the idea.

That’s when I started crying too, and to be perfectly honest I didn’t really stop crying for more than a year. I didn’t care then, and I wouldn’t care now, if my partner slept with someone else as long as she still loved me and didn’t leave me for them.

In this case the monogamy/Madonna thing was her decision. It was her idea that meeting expectations about some kind of false idealized virtue was better than being fallible, maybe, but also lusty and alive and entirely human. If she’d come back she’s the one who would have thought herself a whore (hate that word by the way) not me.

With decades of perspective I can see we probably wouldn’t have been able to stay together much longer anyway, but the world is brimminig with better reasons, and better ways, to break up than the one she picked.