Oh, really?
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.
bookmarked the book
Blame feminism for that one.
dsc has never heard of the family farm, the mom'n'pop store, the boarding house, the landlady, the milliner, the flower seller, the seamstress, the cleaning woman, the babysitter, the librarian, the teacher, the nurse, the weaver, the knitter, the cook, the hooked rug maker, the soap and candlemaker, the herbalist, the midwife.....
Oh, really?
“the family farm, the mom’n’pop store, the boarding house, the landlady, the milliner, the flower seller, the seamstress”
Congratulations. You are the winner of the “totally oblivious to the point” award for January.
I know it’s only the the 4th, but the odds of anyone outdoing you are microscopic.
“Oh, really?”
Wow, but then you turn around and outdo yourself in the very next note.
But don’t worry, you have no competition. None at all.
Gotta agree with you there. Sometimes the happily married are unconsciously contemptuous of those who haven't won the marriage lottery, thinking themselves 'way cool rather than thanking God for having blessed them with a good marriage.
Some folks get "blessed" the way Job was blessed.
I agree. The way he equates a woman's obligation to "put out" to a job, and making moral equivalence to the man's employment, just isn't convincing, objectively speaking. As an editor, I would have told him to find a better metaphor.
That is precisely the reason I used the word “almost”.
I assumed from that that he meant he expected oral sex or some other all-for-him interaction, because that's just my perception of him. Your mileage may vary of course.
Funny -- my take on that sentence was that he was trying to preach to men not to expect to get laid just because there is some kissing or touching before dinner, but in the meantime she did the dishes, the homework and the laundry and now is too pooped. I didn't infer that other meaning at all, strictly speaking about the writing.
He probably has had a lifetime of “social security sex”. You get a little each month but not enough to live on.
I think you hit this nail on the head. Some people just won't or can't get enjoyment out of life. In other cases, stuff happens -- trauma, or in some cases a growing dependence on alcohol that creeps up over the years -- that sucks the life out of a relationship as the decades pile up.
I think this is what Canticle of Deborah has been trying to say, and also RobRoy about his first marriage, even though it lasted 20 years -- not every relationship is within the power of one of the partners to "save", especially when the other spouse is hellbent on giving in to misery in some way.
Here's what NNDB has to say:
Wife: Janice Prager (m. 15-Jan-1981, div. 1986)
Son: David (b. 1983)
Wife: Francine Stone (m. 4-Sep-1988, div. 2005)
Daughter: Anya (stepdaughter)
Son: Aaron Henry Prager (adopted, b. Nov-1992)
I don’t think of a hug or kiss as a “sexual encounter.” I hug and kiss my children, parents, some friends (mainly the Hispanic ones, especially the elderly) in a socially appropriate way.
I did say my interpretation was colored by my overall impression of Mr. Prager, whom I’ve never liked, as a “personality” expressed in his writing. I don’t have the idea that Mr. Prager would think it acceptable that although a wife might be feeling positively about her husband at 5:30, after cooking, dishes, laundry, cleaning, dog threw up, kids flooded the bathroom, mother-in-law called, Girl Scouts crisis, a few false labor pains ... at 10:30 she’s “too tired.” His urges are her job, period.
As I said way back, words fail me as I attempt to convey how happy I am not to married to this guy.
>>...not every relationship is within the power of one of the partners to “save”, especially when the other spouse is hellbent on giving in to misery in some way. <<
Yup. You can only control your own attitude and actions. Your spouse has to control theirs. If one is hell bent on blaming the other for all their problems, they will eventually get out, one way or the other.
I ask any young people I see that are contemplating marriage (individually, not as a couple) if they remember their fiance ever apologizing for SPECIFIC wrongs. If not, they should RUN, not walk, from that relationship because when anything bad ever happens, no matter what, their spouse will probably blame them for it. That puts them in a no-win situation that they cannot get out of.
Twink, did you get to the Philadelphia Flower Show a couple of years ago when the theme was "Ireland"? One of the exhibits was "an Irish wake." There in the middle of all the gorgeous displays was a platform with wooden chair on it, a coffin on the wooden chair, a glass of liquor on the coffin, and of course a large bouquet of flowers. LOL!
And never forget it.
LOL!! Good one!
That is really an excellent, in-a-nutshell way to gauge the probable outcome. Great idea!
Excellent post. Thanks for pinging me.
The italicized paragraph really does hit the nail on the head.
Your comments to that bring it home.
LOL! That’s hilarious. Very fitting. :)
I didn’t get to see it, it’s been way too long since I’ve gone to the flower show (and just saw a commercial today for the car show, another event I haven’t been to in years). This was also the first year we didn’t watch the Mummers Parade (too busy prepping for our Rose Bowl Party, forgot all about it, and my oldest brother participates so we usually try to catch him and his club).
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