Posted on 12/23/2008 12:09:15 AM PST by goldstategop
Given our preoccupation with politics and economics, it is easy to forget that for most of us micro issues still play a greater role in our lives. So here are some thoughts that, as heretical as they might sound, have been found extremely helpful, sometimes even marriage-saving, from listeners to my radio show, which features a male-female hour every week.
The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is not in the mood and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.
There are marriages with the opposite problem -- a wife who is frustrated and hurt because her husband is rarely in the mood. But, as important and as destructive as that problem is, it has different causes and different solutions, and is therefore not addressed here. What is addressed is the far more common problem of He wants, she doesn't want.
It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.
First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wifes refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.
This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.
When first told this about men, women generally react in one or more of five ways:
1. You have to be kidding. That certainly isn't my way of knowing if he loves me. There have to be deeper ways than sex for me to show my husband that I love him.
2. If this is true, men really are animals.
3. Not my man. He knows I love him by the kind and loving way I treat him.
4. You have it backwards. If he truly loved me, he wouldnt expect sex when I'm not in the mood.
5. I know this and that's why I rarely say no to sex.
Lets deal with each of these responses.
1. You have to be kidding.
The most common female reaction to hearing about men's sexual nature is incredulity, often followed by denial. These are entirely understandable reactions given how profoundly different -- and how seemingly more primitive -- men's sexual nature is compared to women's.
Incredulity is certainly the reaction most women have when first being told that a man knows he is loved when his wife gives him her body. The idea that the man she is married to, let alone a man whose intelligence she respects, will to any serious extent measure her love of him by such a carnal yardstick strikes many women as absurd and even objectionable.
But the question that should matter to a woman who loves her man is not whether this proposition speaks poorly or well of male nature. It is whether it is true. And it is true beyond anything she can imagine. A woman who often deprives her husband of her body is guaranteed to injure him and to injure the marriage -- no matter what her female friends say, no matter what a sympathetic therapist says, and no matter what her man says. (Very few men will confess to the amount of hurt and eventual anger they experience when repeatedly denied sex).
Of course, there are times when a man must simply refrain from initiating sex out of concern for his wife's physical or emotional condition. And then there are men for whom sex rarely has anything to do with making love or whose frequency of demands are excessive. (What excessive means ought to be determined by the couple before the refusals begin, or continue.) But the fact remains: Your man knows you love him by your willingness to give him your body.
2. If this is true, men really are animals.
Correct. Compared to most women's sexual nature, men's sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature. Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual natures desire for variety for the rest of his life. To ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman. If he is too moral to ever do that, he will match your sexual withdrawal with emotional and other forms of withdrawal.
3. Not my man.
Many women will argue, understandably, My husband knows I love him. He doesn't need me to have sex with him to know that. And this is especially so when Im too tired or just don't want sex. Anyway, my man only enjoys sex with me when I'm into it, too.
The importance of mutual kindness to a marriage is impossible to overstate. But while necessary, it is not sufficient. Women can understand this by applying the same rule to men. Most women will readily acknowledge that it is certainly not enough for a man to be kind to her. If it were, women would rarely reject kind men as husband material. But as much as a woman wants a kind man, she wants more than that. If a man is, let us say, lacking in ambition or just doesn't want to work hard, few women will love him no matter how kind he is. In fact, most women would happily give up some kindness for hard work and ambition. A kind man with little ambition is not masculine, therefore not desirable to most women.
Likewise, a kind woman who is not sexual with her husband is not feminine. She is a kind roommate.
Furthermore, a woman who denies the man she loves sex is not kind.
4. You have it backward.
Every rational and decent man knows there are times when he should not initiate sex. In a marriage of good communication, a man would either know when those times are or his wife would tell him (and she needs to -- women should not expect men to read their minds. He is her man, not her mother.)
But, to repeat the key point, rejection of sex should happen infrequently. And it should almost never be dependent on mood -- see Part II next week.
5. I know this and that's why I rarely say no to my husband.
This is a wise woman. She knows a sexually fulfilled husband is a happy husband. (At the same time, men need to recognize that complete sexual fulfillment is unattainable in this world.) And because a happy husband loves his wife more, this cycle of love produces a happy home.
In Part II, I will explain in detail why mood should play little or no role in a woman's determining whether she has sex with her husband.
I conclude Part I with this clarification: Everything written here applies under two conditions: 1. The woman is married to a good man. 2. She wants him to be a happy husband. If either condition is not present, nothing written here matters. But if you are a woman who loves your husband, what is written here can be the most important thing you will read concerning your marriage. Because chances are the man you love won't tell you.
exactly.
Today is our 20th anniversary, and reading this thread makes all the more grateful for the man I’m with.
He knows how to make me forget about the laundry.
Happy anniversary! Ours is next February.
No, I get that point.
But lots of women make themselves heroes in how much they can juggle, how full they can make their plates —ensuring that their mind is constantly elsewhere. That sounds like ‘not being in the mood’.
I think the point is that women don’t understand men as well as they think, and frequently they don’t want to even be bothered to understand. Frustration on either side is unacceptable. I think we can agree on that.
Well - like all analogies, it has it’s flaws.
A husband is not a “buddy” - agreed.
I’m only trying to illustrate that for women there is more of a mind-body connection that needs to engage which is less prevalent for the men.
” I wonder if making love with the husband is even ON many wives’ “list,” and if so, where on that it list it is placed in priority. If it isn’t on the list, the chance of getting it “done” is pretty low.”
True.
And I said in a previous post - I don’t disagree with the entire article.
I only disagree with the part where he seems to discount the women’s mood as a factor.
“Very few wives have to wonder if their husband would like to have sex on a particular day”
I’ve heard some women make that complaint.
” Failing to make time for him, knowing that it is important, is no different than telling him he just doesn’t matter.”
I’m not saying women are blameless.
This is a two way street.
What I’m arguing with is this notion that women should drop everything and “take one for the team”
Where is the romance in that?
Both people need to be attentive to each other.
Both people need to be concerned with their partner’s needs and what it takes to get them to respond.
“But lots of women make themselves heroes in how much they can juggle, how full they can make their plates”
generalize much?
that wasn’t what I was trying to do at all.
Prager is right on the money. Marriage is a union that includes the physical aspect and he is absolutely right about its significance.
I’ve seen what happens when wives no longer believe it’s an important part.
Frankly, it’s appalling to hear a married friend tell you he didn’t get married to become a monk.
It either gets rectified or it leads to divorce. And too many women think they “can have it all” and ignore the role of wife to husband.
Frankly, how that happens is astounding to me. Thus I am the last of the unmarried guys and less naive now from others’ experience.
It also seems to be part of an American sense of entitlement not seen in other places.
“I think the point is that women don’t understand men as well as they think, and frequently they don’t want to even be bothered to understand. Frustration on either side is unacceptable. I think we can agree on that.”
And the point female freeps are making is that men don’t understand women as well as they think.
So we’re all in the same boat I guess.
thank you!
Heck - our husbands have to be good if they’re going to get us to forget about the pain of labor and delivery thingy.
The common statement is that getting married kills a woman's sex drive (according the men who complain). It's not that we're not always in the mood, but being grabbed at like bread dough and expected to get all hot and bothered by it just isn't going to work. Just like before the marriage, women still like the attentiveness. The hair stroking, the sweetness, a kiss for no reason. Things that were done before getting married and often forgotten, but it's not deemed as necessary anymore. It might work wonders for both if couples remembered how things were when the first fell in love and kept working on that.
Because women do have high sex drives. It just works differently. (i.e., a man might get in the mood over any physical sensation. women tend to go more by the senses of sound, smell, and touch. which is why a sexy voice, cologne, or those cheesy love songs often work)
Nonsense. It is your married male friends who appear to consider themselves entittled. If you have ANY talent in the sack, and you marry the right woman, she will WANT to make love most of the time. Prager needs a female anatomy lesson and maybe he would get more from Mrs. Prager.
I think I agree with every point you have made. I might quibble about “taking one for the team” only in this regard: Sometimes you may be invited to a party that you don’t want to attend. If you stop by “just to make an appearance” (or, as Raymond on the TV show says, “bring a ‘gift’”) you might decide that the party is pretty fun after all.
The most important part, though, as you noted, is that it IS a two way street.
LOL! I have had times when my husband would complain that he was deprived, yet we were doing more than the average.
Anesthesia, as we’ve discussed in the past.
My husband is very good, and getting better with age, as long as he remembers to take his vitamins.
“It either gets rectified or it leads to divorce. And too many women think they “can have it all” and ignore the role of wife to husband.”
I wouldn’t agree that fits the definition of “having it all.”
Most women I know like sex.
” Sometimes you may be invited to a party that you don’t want to attend. If you stop by “just to make an appearance” (or, as Raymond on the TV show says, “bring a ‘gift’”) you might decide that the party is pretty fun after all.”
agreed.
And I can think of times where that has worked both ways over the years.
LOL! I am betting the lack of mood is 90% of the time just being too dog tired. Especially when one has been used as a jungle gym for children all day.
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