Posted on 12/29/2008 11:11:17 PM PST by goldstategop
n Part I, I made the argument that any woman who is married to a good man and who wants a happy marriage ought to consent to at least some form of sexual relations as much as possible. (Men need to understand that intercourse should not necessarily be the goal of every sexual encounter.)
In Part II, I advance the argument that a wife should do so even when she is not in the mood for sexual relations. I am talking about mood, not about times of emotional distress or illness.
Why?
Here are eight reasons for a woman not to allow not being in the mood for sex to determine whether she denies her husband sex.
1. If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex. When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur. But for most women, for myriad reasons -- female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested -- there is little comparable to a man’s “out of nowhere,” and seemingly constant, desire for sex.
2. Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood?
What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man.
What woman would love a man who was so governed by feelings and moods that he allowed them to determine whether he would do something as important as go to work? Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can -- indeed, ought to -- refuse sex because she is not in the mood? Why?
This brings us to the next reasons.
3. The baby boom generation elevated feelings to a status higher than codes of behavior. In determining how one ought to act, feelings, not some code higher than one’s feelings, became decisive: “No shoulds, no oughts.” In the case of sex, therefore, the only right time for a wife to have sex with her husband is when she feels like having it. She never “should” have it. But marriage and life are filled with “shoulds.”
4. Thus, in the past generation we have witnessed the demise of the concept of obligation in personal relations. We have been nurtured in a culture of rights, not a culture of obligations. To many women, especially among the best educated, the notion that a woman owes her husband sex seems absurd, if not actually immoral. They have been taught that such a sense of obligation renders her “property.” Of course, the very fact that she can always say “no” -- and that this “no” must be honored -- renders the “property” argument absurd. A woman is not “property” when she feels she owes her husband conjugal relations. She is simply wise enough to recognize that marriages based on mutual obligations -- as opposed to rights alone and certainly as opposed to moods -- are likely to be the best marriages.
5. Partially in response to the historical denigration of women’s worth, since the 1960s, there has been an idealization of women and their feelings. So, if a husband is in the mood for sex and the wife is not, her feelings are deemed of greater significance -- because women’s feelings are of more importance than men’s. One proof is that even if the roles are reversed -- she is in the mood for sex and he is not -- our sympathies again go to the woman and her feelings.
6. Yet another outgrowth of ’60s thinking is the notion that it is “hypocritical” or wrong in some other way to act contrary to one’s feelings. One should always act, post-’60s theory teaches, consistent with one’s feelings. Therefore, many women believe that it would simply be wrong to have sex with their husband when they are not in the mood to. Of course, most women never regard it as hypocritical and rightly regard it as admirable when they meet their child’s or parent’s or friend’s needs when they are not in the mood to do so. They do what is right in those cases, rather than what their mood dictates. Why not apply this attitude to sex with one’s husband? Given how important it is to most husbands, isn’t the payoff -- a happier, more communicative, and loving husband and a happier home -- worth it?
7. Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex: It should always be mutually desired and equally satisfying or one should not engage in it. Therefore, if a couple engages in sexual relations when he wants it and she does not, the act is “dehumanizing” and “mechanical.” Now, ideally, every time a husband and wife have sex, they would equally desire it and equally enjoy it. But, given the different sexual natures of men and women, this cannot always be the case. If it is romance a woman seeks -- and she has every reason to seek it -- it would help her to realize how much more romantic her husband and her marriage are likely to be if he is not regularly denied sex, even of the non-romantic variety.
8. In the rest of life, not just in marital sex, it is almost always a poor idea to allow feelings or mood to determine one’s behavior. Far wiser is to use behavior to shape one’s feelings. Act happy no matter what your mood and you will feel happier. Act loving and you will feel more loving. Act religious, no matter how deep your religious doubts, and you will feel more religious. Act generous even if you have a selfish nature, and you will end with a more a generous nature. With regard to virtually anything in life that is good for us, if we wait until we are in the mood to do it, we will wait too long.
The best solution to the problem of a wife not being in the mood is so simple that many women, after thinking about it, react with profound regret that they had not thought of it earlier in their marriage. As one bright and attractive woman in her 50s ruefully said to me, “Had I known this while I was married, he would never have divorced me.”
That solution is for a wife who loves her husband -- if she doesn’t love him, mood is not the problem -- to be guided by her mind, not her mood, in deciding whether to deny her husband sex.
If her husband is a decent man -- if he is not, nothing written here applies -- a woman will be rewarded many times over outside the bedroom (and if her man is smart, inside the bedroom as well) with a happy, open, grateful, loving, and faithful husband. That is a prospect that should get any rational woman into the mood more often.
Yes indeed.
We also have been bride and groom for 36 years. I found out long ago that if I wanted to be treated like a king I had to treat the lady like a queen. I open the door for her, am patient when she is clothes shopping, etc. She on the other hand makes certain that I am a success both at home and at work.
Wow! Love is grand!
Well, yes - in both of these articles I got the impression he is collecting a set of generic partial truths to put a band-aid over a bad personal experience he has had. Point 5) in his article is certainly valid, and could be the subject of a lengthy article in itself.
An attitude of unconditional love solves all of these problems.
However, a typical American relationship these days is a carefully negotiated but unspoken contract between two egos who each immediately feel they are getting the worse end of the deal...and feel deceived and betrayed because they never would have agreed to enter the relationship at all unless they were sure it was a "win" for them. ;)
Prager is speaking to those betrayed egos on the male side. Most of popular culture today speaks solely to the betrayed egos on the female side, so Prager's article seems "reactionary" or "juvenile" to many women, who instantly sense the wrongness of what he is not quite saying but probably can't see the complimentary opposite wrongness in some of their own beliefs - wrongness that men, in turn, have no trouble instinctively sensing. Thus we have these argumentative threads on Free Republic that never get to any resolution.
As long as both sides are stuck in the ego, there is no way to get beyond this rather petty battlefield.
LOL. Exactly.
:-)
Oh puhLEEZE!
Now there’s a smart man!
Most women get that guys need it- a lot. But very few men understand the 'art' of turning on a woman. And laugh all you want, it is an art- yet an oh so simple one. Whoever said, 'you make love to a woman's mind', is for the most part, correct. I've always said, 'if you romance the lady, you get to f- the slut'. Its crude, but 100% true.
Prager is so clearly one sided that until he presents BOTH sides, this is nothing but biology-rationalized chest thumping.
Your dismissive response also tells the rest of us more than you know about you.
LOL
The point is not "women must be an always ready orifice". The point is "a wife should take initiative to keep her husband happy" and vice-versa.
How compromising 100% to the man’s wishes and 0% to the woman’s is mastery over mood escapes me: the woman is completely denying her moods while the man is completely indulging his.
And how that doesn’t breed resentment—by which the woman must completely fake her moods and enjoyment or else the man is making love to someone who isn’t feeling that way at all—is beyond me.
Sounds to me like Dennis’s first wife wasn’t attracted to him sexually and he’s trying to get back at her through this paean to the ever-available, fakingly-appreciative sex server that is his second wife.
This article makes me grateful to be single. I’m not hating on men, I’m just saying I don’t miss that part of it... having sex when you are not in the mood is a very yucky feeling, at least for me. It’ s not just a minor hassle. It’s a ... “prostituting myself out” feeling. (shudder)
LOL
I actually have pretty much agreed with these two articles. Does that make me an unusual woman? I don’t know about that, but I have a very happy, solid marriage.
I found a men’s cologne that works wonders for her desire. It smells like $100 bills.
LOL
With regard to virtually anything in life that is good for us, if we wait until we are in the mood to do it, we will wait too long.
thats just pretty dang basic, eh ???
So what is a woman to do when her husband ignores her all day every day, but wants sex on demand?
Germaine Greer, is that you?
“No it doesn’t.”
That is one of the noxious feminist tenets that have made feminism such an effective attack on the family.
“You and certain other male posters just don’t want to hear about sex from a woman’s point of view.”
Oh, road apples. The woman’s point of view has been elevated to the only valid point of view, and the man’s view denegrated as “chauvenism,” “sexism,” or in your term, “objectification.”
“It just doesn’t matter to you. And for that matter, most women don’t matter to you either.”
What’s the matter, there, Germain? Not much luck controlling men through sexual blackmail?
“That is the problem with the GOP and why they have such problems attracting and promoting women.”
The problem is that women have been seduced by the glamor of evil. The evil of promiscuity, of contraception, of abortion, of the power of sexual blackmail...and the GOP doesn’t need such women until they get their heads on straight.
“Women are completely objectified.”
Another one of those feminist buzz-words that serves as a stick to bash men with but has no real meaning.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.