Because You’re Doing It Wrong You Dunderhead!
I just stumbled over a fascinating series of blog essays entitled “Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You.” If this is a topic of interest to you, as it was to me during a six-and-a-half-year doomed relationship, you’ll want to set aside a couple of hours and read through the whole series.
G’wan, do that now, before I poison it for you with my opinion.
Back already? Gosh you read fast.
Anyway, it’s a very thoughtful series, clearly written by a woman with a level head, an introspective disposition, and a lot of good will. Her observations are useful and interesting and I wish I’d had a chance to read them before my girlfriend, who I loved quite a lot but who had serious sexual issues, got rid of me and picked another man not to have sex with.
That was supposed to be funny.
Moving rapidly along. So I’m reading this excellent series of essays, nodding and agreeing and going “Hmm, that explains a lot” and generally getting myself edified, when suddenly it struck me. There’s a unifying theme to the whole essay series, and it’s this: “Your wife won’t have sex with you because you’re doing something wrong or failing to do something right.”
Yup, it’s all about you, buster.
And I suppose, in a weird definitional way, that has to be true. If getting it right as a man is defined as doing whatever it takes to get laid by your chosen woman, then by definition if she’s not willing to be intimate you need to get your act together.
Still, I’m concerned by the way this approach utterly disposes of the concept of an intimate partnership between two responsible adult humans. If it’s never about the woman, if there’s never any concept that by cleaving unto a partnership relationship she undertook some responsibility for maintaining the intimate part of the relationship, then there’s no partnership. There’s just another pea hen watching from the sidelines, waiting to see whether any of those strutting peacocks ever manage to wave their tail feathers just the right way to make her tingle.
Maybe that’s the way the world is. But I was raised to afford women a bit more humanity than that. I’m concerned that this essay series dehumanizes women by, effectively, absolving them from any responsibility for intimacy.
Go read the essays. If nothing else, you’ll learn to be a better peacock.
2012 Link Update: The original Salon.com link went 404 in 2009. I’ve replaced it with an archives.org version. The author also moved much of her Salon material to an archive blog, possibly with some curatorial changes: Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=364
Thanks for putting your finger on what was wrong with the piece. Most of what she says is spot on, but there’s something about the underlying tone o fthe whole thing, and you nailed it. If it’s truly a partnership, whoever is put off by something has a responsibility to discuss it, or find subtle ways to change it.
I found her article totally unhelpful to me. I was a full partner in raising our child (diapers, baby-sitting, all of it) I did – and do – take full part in household chores (I do dishes, I do laundry, I clean the bathroom, I do all the grocery shopping). I was unable to find anything in her article that related to me. My wife has said she’s simply not interested in sex, happier without it. She will still “allow” me to have sex with her, but without enthusiasm and absolutely no initiative. We’ve talked about it, and her response is basically she no longer has any interest, and doesn’t feel the need to do anything about it. She says she’s sad that it makes me unhappy, but not enough to make it any different.
I’m sure there are many men to whom her comments apply, but as for me, I found no help at all.
Note to Brian:
My ex-wife had a whole set of conditions that had to be met before she would “allow” me to have sex with her. Usually, meeting them didn’t even really get me any closer to the goal. Come to find out she was lesbian. …just sayin’…
Brian’s story shows a good reason for a married man to find fulfillment with a prostitute or mistress. If he’s tried everything to get his wife to have sex with him – and it sounds like he has – then he is entitled to look elsewhere.
[…] ErosBlog has a long history of interest in the phenomenon of the unhappily sexless marriage. Does anybody else but me remember all the way back to 2003 when Julia Grey wrote a long series for Salon called Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You”? […]
I spent so much time and effort trying to please my wife sexually, that when the relationship was finally dissolved, I found that my “skills” had developed so well, that I was pretty much able to give ANY woman a climax, no matter how “orgasm challenged” she claimed to be.
I had developed an extensive set of various “skills” that proved to be pretty much “fail-proof”. After finding that most women couldn’t wait to return to the bedroom, I came to the conclusion that the problem was with my ex, not with me. I’d say that’s one way of solving the question. If all of your partners shy away from having sex, maybe you should look in the mirror. If however it’s extremely rare that your partners aren’t well pleased, then it’s probably not you. Sometimes she has a history of childhood sexual abuse, and it’s a lot more common than you might think.