"1- Frequent and strong sexual desire and thoughts should be natural and normal for all people in long-term relationships.
Frequent and strong sexual desire and sexual thoughts are natural for normal for SOME PEOPLE in long-term relationships. These people are usually either men, or women who feel close, relaxed, and attractive, or who are in a new and exciting relationship. Note the lack of qualifiers after the subset “men.” Note all the qualifiers after the subset “women.” I am not saying women don’t want to have sex. However, all the recent research shows that sex drive in women tanks in monogamous relationships, unlike what was previously thought, which was that men grow tired of women after a while but women never get sexually bored by their partners. So basically, it is entirely normal and natural for your wife NOT to want to have sex with you, unfortunately."
"3- Women go into sex expecting and wanting the focus to be on their pleasure.
Au contraire, women generally do not want the primary focus of the sexual encounter to be on their pleasure. Instead, I hear female clients share frequent fantasies of being with men who are overpowered by lust and desire. In fact, the most common female sexual fantasy is rape. If a woman feels like her partner has the sole goal of giving her an orgasm, it is quite a lot of pressure and can make her feel self conscious and awkward. This does not mean that women do not want to enjoy sex; but, they have to feel that their partner is enjoying it at least primarily because he finds her so attractive sexually that he feels urgent desire for her. Women do not respond well to a man who is trying to use various “techniques” in order to be a better lover. This makes us feel like a sudoku puzzle you are trying to solve"
I agree with all the 'corrected points'. Her point of view on porn is probably right too - and it is something I have thought a lot about.
And the more porn men watch, the less likely they are to be satisfied with the physical appearance and sexual appetites and behaviors of their real life partner. See #7 above- did you ever see a porn movie where the woman didn’t get off from intercourse?
You could probably even expand this beyond porn to general social media. Constantly looking at photoshopped images could lead to a warped sense of what it actually attractive (not only in a mate, but also your own self image)
Her examples of what men think seem pretty reasonable.
Her reality seems to say that most women become frigid sexless *****es after marriage. Sad, but it does seem to mostly align with reality based on a sample size of 1.
"3- Women go into sex expecting and wanting the focus to be on their pleasure".
Everything I see on TAM focuses on "if you use the right techniques and she has great orgasms, she'll want more sex".
It seems like a very important point that women's main goal with sex often is to be the object of uncontrollable lust.
Women who are givers will have sex because they want to satisfy their husband.
Women who are takers will have sex only on their terms.
I also think that it is very important for a partner to convince their SO that sex is very important to them. You shouldn't just sit around waiting for her to be in the mood. When my wife gives me oral and I orgasm, my wife is thrilled. 5 years ago she rarely did this. She had no idea how important this was to me. It was my fault, I had failed to make it clear.
Here's the other side of the coin from her. In general I agree with her analysis. Except # 5. Sorry, I'm not interested in a relationship without oral and a fair dose of the other crazy (her word) things.
Is it in the wiring for the attraction to eventually fade or is it because more often than not at some point men start taking their wives for granted and stop doing all the things they need to do to drive attraction? I get all the other points about stress, exhaustion, body image issues, resentment ... but monogamy? It just seems like if the man is doing his job this shouldn't be an issue.
I believe that the idea is that it's just "in the wiring".
After all, women can take their husband for granted and stop doing all those things and the guy still wants to have sex with his wife (usually). It seems to be a gender difference. Men have more testosterone than women.
Of course, it always helps for the guy not to be a d!ck.
Being the object of uncontrollable lust, hmmm. That is a good point! I never viewed it as a ''goal'' of mine, but I find sex really satisfying with my fiance because he really shows his desire for me in obvious ways. He asks me a lot to wear just a bra and panties, when I'm making dinner, or something...and I'm like...ok, this is weird. lol He will just stand there and watch me cooking wearing that, and it's really a great feeling to have your SO lust over you like that. His desire for me, makes me desire him, if that makes sense. But, he's pretty hot, so the feeling is mutual. lol ^_^
"3- Women go into sex expecting and wanting the focus to be on their pleasure.
Au contraire, women generally do not want the primary focus of the sexual encounter to be on their pleasure. Instead, I hear female clients share frequent fantasies of being with men who are overpowered by lust and desire. In fact, the most common female sexual fantasy is rape. If a woman feels like her partner has the sole goal of giving her an orgasm, it is quite a lot of pressure and can make her feel self conscious and awkward. This does not mean that women do not want to enjoy sex; but, they have to feel that their partner is enjoying it at least primarily because he finds her so attractive sexually that he feels urgent desire for her. Women do not respond well to a man who is trying to use various “techniques” in order to be a better lover. This makes us feel like a sudoku puzzle you are trying to solve"
What they avoid is _being_responsible_. In their mind "being about her pleasure" makes her the focus and thus gives her responsibility for what is going on.
the "ripper" (and many weirder!) fantasies all have a central theme - lack of responsibililty for the action or the outcome. ie I can have my pleasure and owe no-one nor be expected to reach certain levels, thus my pleasure is ALL about ME.
I'm quite happy to have my pleasure be the focus of sex. Indeed, should he stop making efforts to give me pleasure that's precisely the moment when I'll lose interest in having sex with him.
Daily, weekly and possibly monthly reminders of how her idea of acceptable frequency is a sh1tshow would be too ****ish. But if the slide is relentless towards once a month if you are lucky a little ****ishness is required periodically to remind her it's actually a partnership.
I think the article may be right on average but there is so much variation that it doesn't provide a good guide for how to behave in any particular relationship.
Its very sad if its true that most women loose interest in sex in long term otherwise happy relationships. We of course can't tell from posts here because almost by definition women who post in a "sex" thread are interested in sex.
More thoughts on the monogamy topic, much of this drawing from what I have experienced in my marriage over the past few years -
There seems to be a spiraling effect that can be both upward and downward. Wife gets exhausted from kids, stress etc, her desire starts to drift, husband gets frustrated with decreasing frequency and quality of sex, his behavior deteriorates and he blames it all on the wife for never being interested instead of taking responsibility for downward trend and on it goes until the strains of sexlessness have seeped into the rest of the marriage. Is this monogamy killing desire or husband's behavior killing desire? Or are they implied to be one in the same? In the best cases, the wife finds a way to put her sex drive into sleep mode - doling out just enough to keep him at bay - while the husband turns to porn to relieve the tension and the marriage remains in tact, albeit lacking romance and passion. In the worst cases it leads to affairs and divorce.
In cases where the wife is high desire to begin with, the husband never gets frustrated so his behavior doesn't deteriorate and the upward spiral self perpetuates. This is the very lucky minority who many of us envy.
The biggest challenge that I have faced - and believe many others face as well - is figuring out how to stop the downward spiral before it's too late. In my opinion whether right or wrong - the husband must take the lead in order for this to happen. The hardest and most important first step is to recognize where your behavior has deteriorated in a way that has a desire killing effect on your wife. This can take many months to really figure out but when the husband gets his act together, attraction and desire can come back and monogamy may not prove to be the insurmountable desire killer in women it is often suggested to be.
The biggest challenge that I have faced - and believe many others face as well - is figuring out how to stop the downward spiral before it's too late. In my opinion whether right or wrong - the husband must take the lead in order for this to happen. The hardest and most important first step is to recognize where your behavior has deteriorated in a way that has a desire killing effect on your wife.
So, then, the lady can have sex or not as she sees fit, but the guy has to be the selfless rock of stability and love?
That is unrealistic, as least over more than the short term. Disappointment and resentment are just as real for men as for women. Both have to meet their partner's needs consistently or it falls apart.
Here is another observation I had. I have always been higher drive (or I prefer to say a healthy drive). Over the past few months or so, for a variety of reasons, my drive tanked. I didn't find my W less attractive, there weren't any sudden marital issues, etc... However, with my drive down I had little interest/motivation to initiate sex. I wouldn't reject my W if she initiated and I still enjoyed sex. I think you just can't downplay how important drive is. The easy answer is to just simply dismiss it and push the blame on someone else (i.e. my SO must be doing something wrong, not meeting my needs, etc...). I believe though this is what the author is trying to state, if the "norm" is for women to have decreased drive as a LTR progresses, then this itself could provide a major roadblock in terms of sex (without factoring in if there are any other issues within the relationship).
As @Buddy400 stated, knowing if this is common (i.e. normal), then we'll at least know that it's likely to happen and take steps to address it.
I think it's normal to lose sexual desire in a long term relationship. I think women desire novelty much more than men. We change our hair style and color, we change wardrobes, we change the color schemes in our homes, we redecorate, get bored with cooking or the typical home menu... men could live every day contentedly with the same outfit and never get bored, or even notice. My own H is absolutely a creature of habit and follows his methods for every days tasks to the letter. I think this is why men are perplexed and women are frustrated. We are bored! Same old same old same old...
I also think women tend to put the responsibility for the sex life on men, rightly or wrongly.
I think we underestimate just how important a positive self image is for women wrt their sex drive. If we suffer from serious body image problems, the LAST thing we want is to get naked! I used to have this problem pretty severely, along with other issues. Vainity is a curse because we care about how we look and if what we see disgusts us we won't want to share it. Learning to be positive about our body is absolutely worth the effort! And it does take effort!
LOL, this one is my favorite myth:
10- After the baby, most women get their sex drive back reasonably quickly.
If by reasonably quickly, you mean, after the last baby is 5 years old and sleeps through the night. And also if by that point they’ve gotten back to working out, eating right, sleeping well, and feeling good about who they are as a person and not just as a mommy. In that case, yes, pretty quickly.
The funny thing is, young couples seem to be immune. I've got a much younger buddy who is in the infatuation / planning on marriage stage - absolutely immune to any reality of marriage talk. Oh no, not MY girl :surprise:
I read the entire article. My thoughts are that it is just more data/opinion toward proving that, as a woman, my sexuality is not "normal" or "average".
Maybe my mother's system was flooded with excess testosterone during my in utero brain development, maybe because I was raised in a sex-positive/body-positive family environment ... who knows why?
Very timely for me. No, I am not married, but am dating a lady who wants an LTR. It's been three months and practically zero enthusiasm for sex or even signs that she's looking forward to it.
So, this confirms my sense that if she is not attracted to me now, it is pretty much downhill from here. Uh, Bye Felicia.
Ah, I see what you're saying now. I understood the initial post as that they hadn't yet consumated, and she didn't show any signs of looking forward to doing so eventually. But I see your perspective and agree that further info might be helpful.
ETA: and given our different interpretations, holding back would have different definitions in each scenario.
Wow, an eye opener but after 17+ years of marriage, I completely agree.
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Talk About Marriage
4.9M posts
105.3K members
Since 2007
A forum community dedicated to married life between you and your spouse. Come join the discussion about love, romance, health, behavior, conflict resolution, care, and more!