Sexual Mismatches
Mistress Matisse addresses the ancient question of what to do about emergent diversity of sexual tastes within marriage:
I can just lay out your options as I see them…
You can accept that your wife isn’t currently into this, stop asking, and not get this desire met.
You can accept that your wife isn’t currently into this, but ask her to go see a couple’s therapist with you to talk about your sex life.
You can accept that your wife isn’t currently into this and tell her that you’re going to get the need met elsewhere. (And deal with her response to that.)
You can accept that your wife isn’t currently into this and get the need met elsewhere without telling her about it.
Note that all these options begin with you accepting that your wife isn’t currently into this. I don’t know of any magic way of getting people to like what they don’t like, sexually. If I did, I would not be keeping it a secret. I’d write a book, sell a ton of copies, and be on Oprah, because mismatched sexual desires of all kinds are a huge issue in a society that claims to prize sexual monogamy.
I get reader letters too, and although I don’t tend to engage very much with the ones seeking advice the way Matisse sometimes does, I can confirm from my own mail that this sort of question is a big deal for a lot of people out there.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=2292
I also get a lot of questions regarding this topic. I constantly promote communication between you and your partner. A healthy sexual relationship depends on this. Always remember the brain is the largest sex organ in the human body.
I’m betting that if they are completely honest with themselves, most guys know of all of their own strong secret sexual desires by the time they are considering marriage. Full disclosure of them (prior to heading down the altar), would pretty much prevent this problem. I’m thinking that determining sexual compatability before entering into a lifetime contract is a wise move… If it’s already too late for that, purchasing some “study material” might give her some understanding (being as most people fear the unknown), which might persuade her to experiment. Hell, she might even get wet halfway into the first chapter and jump you… Easing someone into a new area incrementally may produce the desired results if one is patient enough, and clever enough to think empathetically, but the wise single gent shouldn’t bet the farm on changing his future partner after the knot is tied…
Well, there is one other thought here.. Often in the infatuation time, sex is very plentiful and even quite experimental.. As the ego boundaries snap back into place, experimentation can subside and certainly frequency as we can all attest.. So the key is to not get married til the infatuation phase is over and you see what your partner is REALLY like.. I remember when my partner once told me she would never turn me down.. I chuckled then and still do now and yes.. I get turned down regularly… I also don’t get all the alternative stuff I used to either.. :-)
This is often seen as a problem that men have with their wives, but it works the other way too – you know!
It seems to me that once the mismatch has become an issue, it is almost too late, because too many emotions come in to play, and the beliefs about what is right and wrong that go along with those emotions. In the sexual arena, these things are deeply-seated and very hard to change.
I think it goes back to the whole concept of marriage. How many couples start out by even telling each other what their expectations of the marriage might be. And how mature are they anyway to even have the experience and forsight to undertsand how they might change in the future.
I agree with Dr. Whiplash (how could I disagree with someone of such a name!) that ‘… the wise single gent shouldn’t bet the farm on changing his future partner after the knot is tied… ‘ But for ‘gent’, please read ‘person’ – thank you!
And as Drew says, the ego boundaries (Freud called it the Id) somehow snap back into place once the alter-ego has had it’s fling.
If there is a key to this dilemna, it is perhaps to do with satisfying the id whilst teasing the alter-ego; something like: ‘yes, you are right, this is wrong, and we shouldn’t do it, but let’s try it anyway and then maybe we will think it is alright after all.’ But start this ploy early.
After being married to the same woman for 40 years I can attest to two things: don’t expect to change your partner sexually, and; a good marriage can be built on many other things besides sex. After much counseling, at about year 30 I gave up on expecting oral stimulation from her and also declared that she would no longer get it from me: and she hasn’t. At the beginning of 2006 I consciously stopped trying to initiate sexual episodes with the result that in 2006 and 07 we had 3 “encounters” each year: so far this year: one. I know counseling should take place as this is very unsatisfying to me but the emotional explosiveness (mine for sure) of it is more than I am prepared to handle.