Frumious B tipped me to this in comments. Dear Prudence, who often gets things so wrong, has a column up involving an unconsummated marriage. And I’m not even going to snark about her advice, since it’s pretty decent. But onto the letter:
Dear Prudence,
My wife and I married about three months ago and had dated for almost three and a half years before getting married. We both believe sex is for marriage only and abstained during our relationship. She is a virgin. I am not (I made my abstinence decision later in life). It was hard to keep my hands to myself while we dated, but I could do it partly because I knew marriage was on the horizon. Here’s the problem: We have still never had sex. For the first weeks of marriage, we did many things but not that. Since then, there’ve been scattered moments of intimacy with her that usually end with her getting frustrated that she isn’t as experienced in this area as I am, despite my best attempts to tell her how wonderful she is. The last such attempt was a few weeks ago. She says that she does not want to have sex no matter what I say. We did discuss this before marriage and I was under the impression that it would happen. In fact, she even thought it would happen during the honeymoon. Every time we tried, she freaked out and started to cry. I don’t know what to do. She refuses to see a counselor or a therapist. I’m almost to the point where I don’t even want to try to initiate anymore because I get so frustrated that nothing happens. I love her with all of my heart. I want to be able to share the kind of intimacy with her that sex brings and I don’t know what to do. I find myself getting angry and bitter any time I see anything on TV or anywhere about a couple having sex.—Frustrated Husband
Prudie consults a sex counselor with a Christian perspective who specializes in unconsummated marriages. Really. Said counselor suggests several things that might be wrong with the wife (and just the wife), such as vaginismus, trauma from sexual abuse or being raised by parents who share Carrie’s mother’s attitude toward “dirty pillows” and sex, or jealousy. Prudence suggests patience and support, which is all very well and good.
But I think we have a bigger problem here. A few, actually. First is the fetishization of virginity. The second is the fetishization of the virgin wedding night. The third is the husband’s sense of entitlement.
They’re all related, of course. The fetishization of virginity and the wedding night have created an intense, high-pressure situation where the wife probably feels that she’s failing her husband because she can’t “give” him this precious, precious thing that she’s been told all her life is the sum total of her value, and, having arrived in the wedding bed intact, belongs to him. And he’s feeling frustrated that she’s not giving him what he’s been conditioned to believe is his by right — since she arrived at that altar a virgin, her pussy belongs to him and she’s supposed to turn into a whore in the bedroom immediately.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been given a big song and dance about how special and wonderful and magical her first time with her husband would be, only to find out that it hurts. Given all this, no wonder she’s announced that she’s not interested in having sex with him at all.
I’m a big advocate of having sex when you want to and with whom you want to — and of not having sex when you don’t want to. But I do remain very, very skeptical of virginity pledges and saving oneself for marriage when one actually does want to have sex prior to marriage. Why? Because it’s arbitrary and bears no relationship to readiness for sex or desire to have sex — it all has to do with making sure that the husband gets sole ownership of the pussy and the uterus.
Clearly, these two kids could have benefited from having sex, or attempting to have sex, prior to getting married. The husband says they talked about sex, and by damn, she said she’d give it to him, she promised! But of course she promised — she knows that wives are supposed to have sex with their husbands. Again, though, the fetishization of the wedding night and the husband’s sense of entitlement have built up expectations much higher than they would have been had they just started sleeping together during their engagement, in a lower-pressure environment (assuming, of course, that she really wanted to — he already told us he did). And there’s nothing like performance anxiety to kill the mood.
I find it interesting, as well, that a Christian sex counselor would specialize in unconsummated marriages. That tells me that the problem lies with the expectations surrounding marriage in fundamentalist Christian circles, not necessarily with the couples themselves. Perhaps this counselor ought to think about heading some of these problems off at the pass and start doing some pre-marital sex counseling, though I suppose that would be discouraged on the grounds that the couple might go out and have sex before the wedding.
I was also mystified (and thoroughly amused) by the mention of Xian sex counselors that specialize in unconsummated marriages. How often does this happen?
I studied religion for years, but never had too much close contact with fundy xians. The more I learn about them, the more sorry I feel for them. They manage to take everything good and fun and exciting about living – and make it shameful, immoral or evil. It must really suck to spend your whole life worrying about what happens after it’s overwith.
Sounds more like she thinks he’s a “slut” and doesn’t want to soil herself with someone who’s already had sex. (Yet another unintended consequence of the fetishization of virginity.)
The whole situation sounds messy to me. I do feel bad for him, honestly — I’d be pretty upset if I married someone who wanted to wait for marriage, and then once we were married they still didn’t want to do it. I’d be upset if, in any situation, my partner didn’t want to have sex with me for months or years at a time.
Then again, he played into the “only sluts do it before marriage” virginity-fetishism, so I can’t make myself feel that bad.
Whenever I have thought about the kind of people for whom “saving oneself for marriage” is vitally important I get this terrible suspicion that they are the kind of people who, for whatever reason, don’t like sex … period. I mean anyone who could go that long without jumping out the window … [grin].
But seriously even if I were of that mind I would be hunted by the suspicion that “saving themselves for marriage” could be a convenient dodge to cover up the fact that they are turned off by sex. At least if he is Catholic he can get an annulment (which is weird when you think about it of all the reasons why one might terminate a marriage the Catholic Church considers non-consumation a free ticket to annulment).
I was so inundated with this “virgin fetish” when I was younger, that I ended up freaking out and doing it with practically the first guy I met in college.
Too much pressure can tear you apart.
I don’t give a damn about these two people. I expect that they would hang me for my own sexual conduct and feel smug about it. See/em> Handmaid’s Tale. Their whole culture and the politics it fosters are a danger to me and the people I care about, and I don’t feel sympathy when my enemies’ ideology causes them problems.
I don’t mean to suggest that this is true of all religious people, or even all Protestant Evangelicals; I certainly don’t think that Hugo Schwyzer has these problems, even though he embraces a very traditionalist view of sexuality. Rather, these are problems that I expect are endemic only to sex-negative, patriarchal, conservative religions. And sex-negative, patriarchal and conservative makes them the enemy.
I do think that the revelation to the general public that there are significant numbers of fundies too screwed up to have sex even within marriage is gold. That is a great weapon to undermine the rhetoric that abstinence is some sort of healthy choice rather than a religious mandate. This is also a great weapon to show that on issues of sexual “morality,” the fundamentalist conservatives are pushing a fringe ideology and not some return to modesty and common sense.
Please excuse the blown tag– the words between “see” and “very” were not meant to appear in italics.
I don’t think the guy is coming from a place of entitlement. He saw this girl for 3 1/2 years. Presumably, since he said they discussed sex and waiting for marriage, he assumed that they would have sex after the wedding. I’d think that a completely rational position. Most people expect to have sex after they’re married.
And I agree that the wife should see a counselor, but he said that she refuses, so making that suggestion isn’t going to help much.
I think this is make-or-break time for this marriage. Is this the dealbreaker for him? Sounds like it. A normal married life includes sex; if she won’t go with him to a counselor, then he should divorce her and get on with his own life.
I have to agree that you may be coming down a little to hard on this dude. It’s not like he’s forcing her to have sex, and I know I’d feel ambivalent about my marriage if it took an unexplained turn for the celibate.
And I don’t think these two would have necessarily benefitted from having sex before getting married. It’s long past wedding night jitters for them – there’s something major going on here besides your run-of-the-mill virgin fetishization thing. And even putting “virgin fetishization” aside, losing one’s virginity is a rite of passage that people in general feel somewhat ceremonial and sentimental about. I can understand and respect a person’s decision to reserve sex for marriage, even if it’s not something I was ever interested in.
I feel for these people. When I was with my first girlfriend (we were 16), we experienced a little of the same. I was a virgin, and whilst she had had an upbringing were sex there to be enjoyed, she had been raped a couple of years before by a boyfriend.
I didn’t know that the first times we tried, and was shocked when she told. She was more educated than me (her body had given her some feminist books about the female body when she hid puberty), and she (my girlfriend) talked about vaginism etc.
We still had fun though, just no penetration, but we went to the doctor for a pelvic exam, and he of course found nothing wrong.
I think it took somewhere between 3 months and half a year before we had intercourse with penetration. It wasn’t a big deal actually.
Now judge me how you like, but the guy doesn’t sound like a prick. He has needs just like anyone else, perhaps he is not handling it in the most perfect way, but it sounds like hes trying.
Two stories: I have a close friend who married at 19 and divorced at 26; the marriage was never consummated.They were crazy Reformed Presbyterians.
And because my sister lived with her fiance before they were married, her former best friend (and bridesmaid!) never spoke to her again after the wedding.
The Christians I grew up with were very sad and unpleasant people.
I’m a bit at a loss reading this: why are you dissing HIM?
If he pressured her to have sex before the marriage–when she didn’t want to–then he wouldn’t be respecting her wishes. HER wishes. Hell, he’s not a virgin himself, so it seems a bit odd to imply he’s some sort of “marry a virgin only” nut. It’s more likely that he’s a “marry someone who is a strong believer in my religion” nut instead.
I mean, what’s up with this entirely unsupported claim you make:
??? Where does it say ANY of that in the prudie letter?
He’s feeling frustrated because she appears to be breaking her promise to have sex. And she won’t even go to counseling with him. I don’t think he’s “entitled” to have sex with her but he’s entitled not to be married to her, and not to be treated badly at the start of his marriage.
I find it oddly disturbing that you are trying to blame everyone else, but seem oddly unwilling to discuss the behavior of the woman involved. I mean, it’s therapy for chrissakes, not marital rape–and she won’t even GO. Methinks your sympathy is misplaced.
I do think the guy’s frustration is legitimate, but I see a little bit of entitlement in this line:
Nothing happens? Kissing is nothing? Cuddling is nothing? Sensual massage is nothing? Oral sex is nothing? There are ways other than penis-vagina intercourse to be intimate. I understand that the guy’s frustrated, but…..
You thought the advice was decent? I thought it was lousy. The woman might have a physical problem like vaginismus, but more likely it’s that she’s been told her whole life that sex is wrong and she is having a hard time switching over to a sex-is-right mentality. Yoffe quotes the counselor mentioning the woman may have been “raised with a punitive attitude toward [sex],” but it’s incomplete without a mention of why that might be giving her trouble now. Not to mention that too much stress about sex can bring on vaginismus, making the physical problem a symptom rather than the root cause. If she’s refusing to have sex at all or go see a counselor, it’s probably because she feels too much pressure. The whole “heroic” waiting thing turned me off, too.
I would have advised the letter writer to stop making intercourse the goal and start having non-sexual intimacy, gradually moving to first base and onward until eventually they do have intercourse.
Go read the fray. It’s appalling. There’s the commenter who says “that’s why you don’t marry virgins – they are freaks” and the guy who advocated rape.
The fraysters were really what made me think zuzu might be interested in this.
I personally can only figure to explain reactions like this to sex in a few ways, from my own personal experience, from my latest ex who had 485774 hang ups about sex, and any other friends of mine with the same problems:
a) being raped/molested, as I was. The last guy I was with couldn’t touch me for quite awhile without me going into a PTSD episode. It took me some time to become comfortable and *a lot* of patience on his part.
b) having issues with your body, which I have, which he did, which half my friends have. I wouldn’t let him look at my body for too long once I didn’t have clothes on or I’d freak out. Same with him and my friends’ who I’ve spoken to with body issues.
c) being raised in a cultish environment. This one was interesting. Mr. Ex was raised in an apocalyptic evangelical Christian family, and it had some pretty interesting effects on his sexuality.
Now, I’m sure there’s other things involved (I mean, there are people who are simply, and by choice, asexual)… but this is what I’ve seen and I can’t think of another situation off the top of my head that would make someone freak out about sex.
Anyway, this situation sucks for the both of them. He needs to really start asking questions, and continue to be as patient as he can… unless like another commenter said, this is a real deal-breaker and he seriously can’t live with it.
JMO!
Sailorman, I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that I’m absolving the woman from any role in the problem here. I’ve clearly stated that I think Prudence gave decent advice, but that I thought it was incomplete because it dealt only with the woman, not the man and not the set of expectations they brought with them into the marriage.
Furthermore, I get entitlement from stuff like this:
She’s “freaking out” and crying, and he’s getting angry and bitter about it? I should hope he’d be a little more concerned than angry.
Also, he really glosses over the discussions they had before marriage about sex and his expectations (“I was under the impression that it would happen,” “she thought it would happen on the honeymoon”), which tells me that they didn’t really discuss much of anything, but he feels angry and bitter that he’s not getting what he “got the impression” he was going to get as a reward for keeping his hands to himself before the wedding (“It was hard to keep my hands to myself while we dated, but I could do it partly because I knew marriage was on the horizon. “).
I also want to second what KnifeGhost said. People with virginity fetishes tend to be extremely PIV-centric. The letter-writer makes no mention of what his attempts at sex have consisted of, but it’s a good guess that it involves attempts to put Tab A in Slot B, and not much more.
Well, “decent” for Yoffe is a relative term. None of her advice was harmful, or hectoring, just incomplete.
I didn’t know that there was a word for this… but being raped made any sort of penetration hurt a lot (well, a lot compared to the fact that it NEVER hurt in the slightest for me). And I figured it might be psychological, but I didn’t know there was a word. Thanks, Fruminous B!
Oh, God, I finally got to them, after umpteen comments about spinach and vasectomies. Love the “bait & switch” people, and “she’s a user” people. I didn’t see the “freaks” or “rape her” guys, though. There’s only so much I can get to (and I hate those threaded kinds of comments).
I tend to ignore the letters at Salon and the fraysters.
I don’t see this in his letter. Where do you see it?
I don’t think wishing to have sex at least once every 3 months is an unreasonable expectation for any spouse to have. Wouldn’t you be upset if your significant other didn’t want to have sex with you?
Again, what part of his letter leads you to believe this is why he feels frustrated?
Why can’t RM read?
I’ve been sexually active for three years and I still have “OMG the Pope is WATCHING” moments that are total moodkillers. (I’m sure it’s a fetish somewhere, but you know, it doesn’t do jack for me.) Going from “sex is bad, unless you’re trying to have babies and you’re married” to “sex is swell” is quite a leap, and it … irks me that he’s not more understanding of that. Then again, it’s not like he got that particular memo, since he made the decision to abstain “later in life” — but still, how hard it is to understand that overcoming nearly a lifetime of associating sex with badness takes a while?
I just don’t see how you can spend 18-30 years actively avoiding sex and thinking it is wrong and then switch over and start enjoying it. It’s not like developing a taste for sushi, which you can just decide not to deal with if you try it and don’t like it. If you try sex and don’t like it, hetro marriage is probably not for you.
Sorry, Zuzu, I think you missed the boat on this one. I don’t think his “expectations” are out of line- although the way he says he was “under the impression” sex would happen after marriage is a little puzzling- didn’t they both agree they would want to have sex after marriage? Usually, married couples have sex- that doesn’t mean the husband owns his pussy. It’s an expression of love. And the answer is not as clear as, well, just have sex before marriage! We all bring a lot of assumptions and thoughts about sex from our upbringing. To say, all women should have sex before marriage is the same as to say all women should not have sex before marriage. All things are not good for all people. Everyone should have the right to decide and not be judged as crazy if they want to abstain before marriage. To hold up this extreme case as an example of what happens if you don’t have sex before marriage is like holidng up an impoverished unmarried teen mother of 3 as an example of what will happen if you have sex before marriage. See what I mean?
I don’t think wishing to have sex at least once every 3 months is an unreasonable expectation for any spouse to have.
It is in the first 3 months! It took me six months before I was comfortable enough with fingering, a year before I was happy having oral sex for the first time, and another four years until I was ready to try penetrative sex- lots of moving slowly through various stages of intimacy was what I needed to feel comfortable and confident in taking things further.
Now, I would imagine this women, who has been saving herself for her wedding night may never have seen another person naked, may never have masturbated, heck – she may never have even kissed before the wedding.
How fast did you go in your first physical relationship? Did you have sex the first night someone touched your genetials? The first night you kissed? And how fast would things have gone if your (more experienced) partner had got angry and upset that things weren’t moving faster.
I’m not saying that his expectation that he would have sex after marriage is out of line — just that his attitude betrays a sense of entitlement that reminds me a whole lot of the attitude, common among religious wingnuts (who are the ones who usually get all het up about being “pure” on your wedding day) that the virgin bride is a prize to be transferred from the possession of her father to the possession of her husband, who will then assert his right to sex with her.
However, wedding ring or not, he doesn’t have rights to her body.
But he’s getting frustrated and angry and bitter in the face of unsuccessful attempts at, presumably, PIV sex. Let’s also remember that he was only able to keep his hands to himself before the wedding because marriage — and therefore sex — was “on the horizon.” Things didn’t turn out the way he wanted and rather than being concerned that his wife is crying/freaking out, he’s angry and bitter that he’s not getting what he expected.
And, you know, there’s nothing stopping *him* from talking to a therapist or counselor, even if she won’t go.
When did I say that? I made a different argument, which is that fetishizing being a virgin bride places immense, undue pressure on the couple trying to have a first sexual experience on their wedding night, and it also means that the couple is putting an arbitrary condition on the start of their sexual relationship that further increases the pressure. I said that for *this couple,* if the woman had felt ready for sex prior to getting married, having sex before the wedding might have been good for them. Without the wedding-night pressure, and all of the attendant cultural baggage that goes with being expected to turn from virgin into whore-in-the-bedroom once the ring was slipped on her finger, they might have been able to relax and have a satisfying experience. Now all they have is a lot of pressure, agony, fear and loathing — and to make matters worse, they’re now *expected* to be having sex, because they’re newlyweds.
I was also mystified (and thoroughly amused) by the mention of Xian sex counselors that specialize in unconsummated marriages. How often does this happen?
I dunno about Christian marriages, but I know that Jewish Orthodox communities often have rabbis who specialize in unconsummated marriages. It seems to be a problem whenever people are raised in total ignorance of sex and then expected – nay, pressured to perform on demand.
Sex, ladies and gentlemen, is (like much of human activity) is a learned behaviour.
I have a cousin whose fourth husband (yes, fourth) wanted to wait until marriage. On the wedding night, he told her that he was impotent and had no intention whatsoever of doing anything about it. Last I heard, they are still married, but my cousin spends him out of house and home and (at least as of a few years ago, I don’t know if it’s continuing) had an affair. Oy.
I’m of two minds on this. On one hand, he bought into the virginity thing, and this is part and parcel of that. On the other hand, if I waited for 3 years for a promise and when it came time to deliver the promiser reneged, I’d be pissed. If they had a good reason, I’d try to manage my anger—which I think this guy is doing—but I’d be pissed. He’s human.
No one has the right to demand sex from anyone else. The flip side of this is no one has the right to demand companionship from someone else. She won’t go to counseling? I’d tell him to leave her and just consider it a hard lesson learned.
Weird right. Can you convey that to all the wingnuts who judge me and say I’m going to hell? When they agree, I’ll agree to pretend that I don’t think people who fetishize virginity and create needless problems—like the above couple who will soon be divorcing, I’m sure—for themselves are just a tad nutty.
OT and self-indulgent, but I’ve been posting here almost a year, and I still get all proud when one of the Big Kids seconds me. What a fucking dork.
Rick said
(which is weird when you think about it of all the reasons why one might terminate a marriage the Catholic Church considers non-consumation a free ticket to annulment).
Actually it’s not weird at all if you know a little bit about catholics. They take “be fruitfull and multiply” very seriously.
oops, didn’t close the tag
I’m confused: The whole virgin-whore reference. What’s up with that? I realize that you don’t mean to imply that all women who have sex are whores so why assign that complex to the letter writer?
He is obviously young, quite possibly inexperienced, (relatively; he admits that he had sex prior to marriage, decidedly inarticulate, a bit insensitive and – I’ll agree to a certain extent- entitled. But how exactly does that translate to him wanting his wife to be a “whore,” in the bedroom? I didn’t get that from his letter.
What promise do you mean? You don’t think this religious virgin actually promised to fuck him, do you? She doesn’t sound like she’d even be able to say the word out loud. It sounds to me like he translated “I don’t want to have sex before marriage” into “I want to have lots of sex after marriage” in his head. That’s not an unreasonable translation, but she’s not bound by the promises he made to himself about her.
He says she “freaked out and started to cry” every time they got close to fucking, and after months of this, of her having what sounds like either panic attacks or phobic trauma responses, he’s only “almost” to the point of stopping his ‘initiations’ of sex. Not, he explains, because of her pain, trauma, and distress, but because of his own frustration. If that’s accurate, he sounds like a sadist. If it’s not accurate – well, he wrote the letter himself.
I like fucking as much as anybody. But if my advances were making my lover cry and freak out, I’d start trying to show that I “love [her] with all my heart” in some other way than physical seduction. I’d be more concerned about her emotional state than my own sexual needs, whether I wanted to stay in an abstinent marriage or not. That’s just basic decency.
And I’m just a stranger playing amateur psychiatrist, but I bet I know what’s going on with her. With the idea of marriage they’ve got, I bet she’s holding out because she thinks once she does it, she can never say no again. People who fetishize virginity almost always believe that only virgins have the right of refusal.
I can’t prove it. I don’t know for sure. But I bet that’s it. She’s got every reason to expect to hate sex. She can hold out as long as she’s a virgin, but if she does it once and doesn’t like it, what then? He’s her husband. She can’t say no after she says yes. She’ll be trapped.
Actually, I do believe that marriage, when it’s not open and completely monogamous, entitles both parties to expect sex from one another.
I don’t believe the guy expects his wife to turn into a whore the minute they exchange rings and I don’t see anywhere he being unreasonable. Frustrated, yes, and probably not having an easy time of dealing with it. But if the wife is refusing to ever have sex, knowing that it is an expectation of marriage (which I think is a fair assumption in hetero marriage), and she is refusing to go to counseling or do anything to improve the situation, what else should he do besides get divorced?
If you believe people should have sex when they want to, what happens when he wants to have sex? Should he seek sex outside of the marriage?
Isn’t anyone willing to entertain the idea that she finds his advances physically painful? The pro-abstinence literature I’ve read, along with fetishing virginity, over-emphasizes PIV sex and discourages masturbation, yet at the same time tries to sell the idea that if you wait, your first time will be effortlessly ecstatic. It’s entirely possible that she was shocked at the fact that sex when you have an intact hymen hurts, disappointed that sex wasn’t much fun, and is too ashamed to face a counselor because good Christian virgins are supposed to magically metamorphose into lusty harlots on their wedding nights, with no tutelage whatsoever.
foresmac, I suspect this couple has so much trouble talking about sex that the wife has not refused ever to have sex, she’s just freaking out when he touches her sexually, and he’s finding that hard to deal with (understandably).
I’m sure she never expected this to happen, just as he didn’t. But she’s grown up with a virginity fetish, in a community which doesn’t discuss sex as a wholesome, fun pursuit but only as a duty, and has absolutely no models for discussing sex with anyone, let alone a stranger (counselor). It’s sad all round.
If the situation were reversed, and he was the one withholding sex? Would you be so keen to suggest that she should seek sex outside marriage?
Minor additional threadjack: Lauren said she had a blog-crush on me once and it definitely made my week. =)
It’s not that simple. Look at what he said:
In fact, she even thought it would happen during the honeymoon
So, if he is to be believed, she entered the marriage intending to have sex.
This
She says that she does not want to have sex no matter what I say. We did discuss this before marriage and I was under the impression that it would happen.
is unclear as to whether he means that she says this on the particular occasions when he tries to have sex with her, or that she says this as a final position statement. It looks like the former, to me. But regardless, this is her position after his repeated “initiations” and attempts to get her to fuck him. This is not where she started. This is where she ended up. If it is fair to blame her for his sexual frustration, it is equally fair to blame him for turning her against the very thought of sex. She was willing – until he tried, and then it all seemed very different to her. I don’t know what happened, but something did.
And please. He is “not having an easy time of it.” She is completely miserable. Pity him if you like, but pity her more. She’s the one who has to deal with panicking and crying every time his frustration gets the better of him, not him.
Basically, whether marriage is a promise of sex or not, you can’t make a promise from a position of total ignorance. He knew entering the marriage that she had no experience of sex; there is absolutely no way he could have an exectation of her liking it. She didn’t know if she would, and he knew she didn’t know.
She probably fully intended to have sex during the honeymoon. He even says they tried, so she was making an effort. But come on, have any of you ever been in a relationship where your partner had a way bigger sex drive than you did and was always asking for sex and whined and whined and whined until you finally said “OK fine, go ahead!” DIdn’t that pretty much suck? Now imagine being in that situation with no prior sexual experience. Frankly, I’d lock my legs together at the knees, too. If this woman is refusing to have sex and refusing to go to counseling, it might be because she feels hounded, and this is the only way she can regain a semblance of control (over herself, that is). I think he needs to back off for a while and they both need to examine why they are reacting the way they are.
THANK YOU. Commenters are acting as if she’s doing it to spite him, as if she just has NO CONSIDERATION FOR HIS FEELINGS OMGZ.
I had really big issues with giving blowjobs. It had to do with being raped. Even thinking about touching a penis was enough to send me on the floor in a panic attack. My ex would give me oral sex, but I was unable to return the favor. He never minded, and never said anything, but I could tell he did wish I was able to do it.
I can’t even tell you how horrible and guilty I’d feel when I would go into a ptsd episode after attempting to give oral sex. I thought I was the worst person alive. But since I wasn’t pressured, it took me awhile but I was able to do it after a lot of tries and mental preparation and what have you.
Anyway, I’m just agreeing with and elaborating on sophonisba’s comment.
There’s a saying that the perfect wife is a lady in public, a maid in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.
Man. I hope this guy’s more supportive than he sounds in this letter, and that this woman gets to counseling. It’s one thing to choose to abstain, but it sounds like she has some real psychological issues with her sexuality, and it would be a real loss to her to shut down that aspect of herself involuntarily.
It sounds like he’s trying to be understanding. I think I’m more sympathetic to him than I would normally be, though, because I’m in something of the reverse situation. My male partner (I’m female) and I have been in a monogamous relationship for almost four years, and about seven months ago he was put on medication that basically gives him ED. We’re 23. I love him to death (or, at least, to frustratingly prolonged celebacy), but it suuuuuuuucks. For both of us.
I have the sneaking suspicion that trying to divine this guy’s particular issues and the nature of his marriage from a letter that looks about 300 words long is in the same ballpark of validity as Bill Frist telling us that Terry Schiavo wasn’t braindead or Charles Krauthammer psychoanalyzing Bill Clinton. But if we’re gonna put this guy’s writing under the close-reading microscope:
I don’t see how anybody can assume that the husband here is all about sex as PIV, no more no less. I make no claim about his being a *good* lover, or a kind one, or a considerate one (how could we know?!) but he writes that “For the first weeks of marriage, we did many things but not [have sex].” Presumably from the context he doesn’t mean “many things – such as go to the theater, take snorkeling lessons, and get really good at checkers.” So they spent several weeks doing sexual-but-not-PIV stuff. Maybe for him that meant pawing at her breasts with a half-bored expression and maybe it meant gleefully going down on her all day long. And the indication from his letter is that since then they haven’t even been doing the “many things” without it going wrong. Maybe he tried to move things along too fast, maybe he’s just really bad in bed, maybe she just can’t deal with it (physically? psychologically?), but I don’t know how you can draw a conclusion.
Similarly, and maybe I’m inclined to be generous because in the absence of more details I’m imagining myself in this guy’s position, I don’t think it’s fair to use his choice of the words angry and bitter as a description of his reaction to her behavior – he uses them to describe his reaction to televised depictions of sex. It’s obviously all connected but – since we’re all busily projecting – I can imagine that the situation in general makes him incredibly frustrated (obviously) and he doesn’t take it out on her and tries to be as understanding and concerned as he’s capable, but when confronted with reminders of how his relationship isn’t healthy he feels jealous, negative emotions. His internal state doesn’t necessarily equal the way he treats her, is what I’m trying to say, and I think it’s much harder to blame someone for their emotions than for the way they behave (not that his behavior has been outstanding; it’s just hard for me to tell what’s going on given how abrupt and choppy the letter is – but I’m clearly not interested in concision as a form of expression).
To me the simplest explanation is that they agreed they would have sex on marriage, the wife fully intended to do so, and then for whatever reason found herself incapable of actually doing it. She’s not remotely to blame, of course, but – he’s not entitled to sex, yes, of course, not in the way that he’s entitled to defend his life or own his property or be tried by an impartial jury. But under those standards he’s also not entitled to his wife’s love, or respect, or anything else that goes into a relationship. Yet most people have things they want out of a marriage or similar relationship – a lot of them are implicit (or so we hope!) and some need to be made explicit (don’t marry me if you want to have children; I can’t marry you unless you stop listening to the Greatful Dead). If their relationship isn’t fulfilling one of the prime expectations he had, and appears to have had reason to have, and if she’s not interested in trying to work through the issue, then I can’t see how the relationship lasts (unless they work out some other arrangement). Having been someone who jeopardized a relationship by being unwilling to try and work on my personal mental health issues, it’s hard for me to recommend to this man that he stick around if his wife isn’t willing to try.
Yes, I’m familiar with the expression and the whole Madonna-Whore complex. What I’m confused about is why this being applied to a man who, from what I can ascertain, may be insensitive and working from a sense of entitlement, but hasn’t illustrated a desire to have a “whore” in the bedroom. He wants to have sex with his wife. I’m missing the connection.
I’m uncertain about how, in this context, a woman who has or wants to have sex is a whore. Is the implication that all he wants is to have sex on demand?
No possible way. If they were having sex at first, he would not have said that they weren’t having sex.
Unless you think he only counts rupturing her hymen as “sex.” Even I didn’t suggest he was that kind of asshole.
I guess I feel empathy for both of them because I am in the middle of something similar (except totally different). I have been married for 15 years. Before marriage, and for the first few years, we had a relatively normal sex life. But for the last 8 years or so, it’s been almost nonexistent. We’re finally trying to face our problems (lots of them, not just sex), but every time he touches me I shake. I am scared. It’s horrible. And it’s horrible and frustrating for him, too. And the truth is, I don’t completely understand it. I am sure neither of them completely understand it. And I am sure that it is sad, and scary, and horrible for both of them in ways that they can’t even give words to.
I feel empathy for both of them, too.
Empathy for her: probably if she’s freaking and crying, sex probably hurts like hell. And by now, three months in, she’s probably freezing up even at a level of advances she was OK with before, because she sees that attempt at penetration on the horizon. And if she’s resisting counselling, it’s probably because, from her point of view, he’s coming across as pressuring, and wanting to send her off to the counsellor to get fixed, and probably also feels too painful for her to face right now.
Empathy for him, because, really, it sucks to have been looking forward to sex and now face, not just a long delay in consummating your marriage, but one in which things seem to be going backwards, where you’re not sure your wife is going to be willing to work on the problem at all, and where maybe that vow could turn into a vow of abstinence. This is, of course, assuming any “initiating” he’s still doing isn’t actually still trying to penetrate her while she cries and freaks – if he’s doing that, there’s no excuse for his behavior. And it’s also assuming he’s just feeling pissed off when he hears about other married people’s active sex lives (which is only human). In other words, it’s giving him enough benefit of the doubt to assume he’s trying to go slow by his lights, but that doesn’t translate into backing off enough for her not to feel pressured.
The business of the Fray people talking about “bait and switch” is, of course, crap.
Incidentally, if you Google “unconsummated marriage,” you can find rather a lot of pages on the problem. For example, this woman has a research paper on the subject and here’s another web page on the various factors (for both men and women) that can be involved.
Hey, that search also turned up an entire international journal on impotence research, and an NIH PubMed search which came up with 17 citations! There’s more out there on how to treat unconsummated marriages than I ever realized. One couple, with organic factors in both spouses, required 18 months of treatment and multiple surgeries, but finally managed to have pleasurable sex. For some reason, I’m having trouble copying that link. But here’s one for a marriage that finally got consummated after 22 years.
Okay- it is perfectly reasonable to expect to have sex with one’s spouse. This is not because you are entitled to have sex with your spouse, but because the shouldn’t have married you if they didn’t want to ever have sex with you.
That said, you should also love and care for the person you marry. The biggest problem I see here is not that he wants to have sex, it’s that he shows little interest in whether or not she wants to have sex. If he loved her as much as I think a person should love their spouse his first priority would be making sure that she come to a place where she gets to enjoy sex. As it stands he is most interested in making sure that she comes to a place where he gets to enjoy sex. This is rather selfish and not condusive to a good marriage.
Just thought that deserved repeating….and of course we don’t even know what the letter looked like pre-editing.
I am usually the queen of opportunistic extrapolation, but—much as I’d enjoy it—I still can’t see this fellow as a compelling symbol of the perils of conservative patriarchy. Prudie and her advice-column cohorts get plenty of letters that seem designed to bring public shame to their subjects and public vindication to their authors, and this writer just doesn’t seem to fit that mold.
Enh. I’d be a little chary about assuming that someone’s an asshole based on that particular linguistic archaism. Sure, it’s patriarchal and crappy, but it’s what I,at least, was taught in sex ed class — intercourse is ‘sex’, everything else is ‘sexual activity’. It never occurred to me to question that as an angry little feminist teen (I was a very prim, unFrenchkissed angry little teen, anyway), and the vocabulary change never really got through to me until the Feminist Blogosphere’s Advanced Patriarchy-Blaming classes.
Clinton used that linguistic loophole, the average person on the street probably thinks ‘intercourse’ when they hear ‘sex’ — I hesitate to brand with ‘asshole’ what may be just ‘unexamined’ or ‘ignorant’.
Foresmac: Actually, I do believe that marriage, when it’s not open and completely monogamous, entitles both parties to expect sex from one another.
Nobody is ever entitled to anybody else’s body.
Or I guess you wouldn’t mind if your wife tied you down and used some Caverject* to get her way with you when you weren’t up to having sex?
You come very close to advocating marital rape. If monogamous marriage doesn’t bring sexual satisfaction, get a divorce or masturbate.
*Viagra requires arousal, Caverject doesn’t.
It’s clear that she promised sex. In fact, her entire virginity was based around the premise that sex was for marriage. Let’s drop the silliness that a person’s expectation that marriage is a sexual relationship is somehow out of control. That’s pretty much in the definition. In fact, if you don’t want sex in a marriage, you are an absolute, irredeemable asshole if you do not state this up front so your betrothed can avoid the divorce.
That said, it’s clear she’s traumatized. And it would indeed be nice if he could calm down and support her, and we don’t know that he’s not. But she won’t see a counselor?
My point stands. No one is entitled to fuck you. But you are not entitled to their companionship. He has the expectation of sex; she wants an asexual relationship. They’re not compatible and she won’t see a counselor to get them to a compatible stage. DTMFA.
Yes, I have had that, and it did suck. But it sucks much, much worse to be the other partner. To love someone with all your heart and other nearby organs, and to desperately want this intimacy, this closeness, and to have them continually reject you, showing no interest whatsoever. To have to beg and plead and cajole just to get a perfunctory cuddle.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel sorry for this woman. I don’t know exactly what her problem is but the tears and panic suggests it’s somewhat deepseated and psychological. The thing is, she is making no effort whatsoever to resolve this problem – she is refusing to see a fucking therapist about it. I don’t see why he should stay with somebody who has a problem and isn’t trying to do anything about it.
Yes, I have had that, and it did suck. But it sucks much, much worse to be the other partner. To love someone with all your heart and other nearby organs, and to desperately want this intimacy, this closeness, and to have them continually reject you, showing no interest whatsoever. To have to beg and plead and cajole just to get a perfunctory cuddle.
Hmm, my experience is actually the exact opposite. Accomodating someone else’s sexual advances more than I really wanted to has sucked much, much worse than having my own rebuffed. I have a feeling that whatever he’s going through, what she’s going through (with all the tears and panic) is even worse.
That said, a whole lifetime of being faithful to someone who has rejected all his advances with tears and panic isn’t a prospect he should be expected to look forward to eagerly. I think he should make another plea for counselling, but this time clearly propose counselling together and a desire to work on his side of the problem as well as hers. And in the meantime back off altogether on the initiating sex.
If at that point she’s still unwilling to join him in counselling, he gets to decide whether these are conditions under which he’s actually willing to stay married, or not.
I probably should have made it clearer that I was thinking that they should see a couples counsellor together – the problem belongs to both of them.
I find this whole thing very interesting, as I have been in an “unconsumated” relationship for three years myself. My situation is different in that we are both (probably) older than the letter writer, both much more experienced (I LOVE sex and have been enjoying it since the 80s; he’s divorced with three children), and (to my knowledge) do not have any religious-based sexual hangups.
However.
When we started dating, he presented himself as an extremely sexually motivated person. We dated for three months before our first attempt at sex – um, yeah, it didn’t happen. I assumed that as time went on, it would improve – it didn’t. To be clear – he is a very affectionate person, and there is no lack of physical closeness. We engage in other forms of sex, but there has never been any intercourse (this is NOT a case of physiological erectile dysfunction – it’s definitely emotional/mental).
Like the wife, my partner refuses to go to therapy. And to be honest, there are times when I feel entitled, bitter, and angry – not only because there are times when I really miss intercourse, but because he is so unwilling to address his issues (which could account for the writers feelings of anger as well). As for our future, well, I don’t know – at some point, it will probably become a deal-breaker.
IMHO, I think the wife’s “freaking out and crying” indicates that she has had some sort of sexual trauma. If this is the case, then the husband needs to keep encouraging her to seek therapy, not only for his benefit, but most importantly, for her to start healing.
On a side note, I think it’s interesting that no one (I don’t think) has questioned her sexual orientation. It is certainly not uncommon for the same religious zealots who insist on virginity to also villify homosexuality – perhaps this woman is gay, loves her husband but finds that she is not sexually attracted to him, and has no idea what to do about it now that she has married him (and is afraid that she will have to deal with her orientation, on top of everything else, in therapy).
I’m not saying it doesn’t suck to be him. It surely does. What I saying is that her current refusal to have sex and to see a therapist probably stem from feeling hounded rather than asexuality. Maybe he only trys to have sex every couple weeks, and most of us wouldn’t think of that as hounding. The important question is whether SHE feels hounded. If being asked to go to a therapist has become part of having sex for her, no wonder she won’t go.
Interesting that most of the comments here and at Amanda’s place are discussing the wife’s problems. Very few people have pointed out that both parties are in this. Why is so much of the advice centered around what she should do? Let’s have a little more discussion of his role in the problem and solution. I’m going to say again that I think he should back off, and if he won’t, then she should DTMFA and find someone more understanding.
“Accomodating someone else’s sexual advances more than I really wanted to has sucked much, much worse than having my own rebuffed.”
Which situation is “worse” seems to be to be strictly POV. If you have a high sex drive, being rebuffed is going to be much worse then fending off unwanted sex. If your sex drive it low fending off unwanted sex will seem so much worse then simply being rejected. I would suggest that his is an example of personal experience bias. They are both bad, but what you find to be the worse of the two is the inkblot test to your sexual proclivities.
Probably because most of us think that the husband has acted reasonably, while the wife’s refusal to seek counselling seems problematic.
I think she’ll have a great deal of trouble finding someone more understanding if being more understanding requires abstaining from sex.
Or because people are more CONCERNED about the wife and want to help her out than the husband.
I do agree that he ought to back off if his attempts to initiate are cause that much distress in his wife, and that repeated attempts to initiate sex just compound the problem.
It looks like the woman’s issues with sex have their roots in her experiences prior to marrying her husband, and there’s really only so much that he can do about that. Yes, he should be be understanding, respect her boundaries and do all that he can to help her in as supportive a fashion as possible. That said, it’s ultimately her responsibility to deal with her issues – if she so desires – and if she will not or cannot once this man reasonably attempts to support her in that endeavor, then he’s within his rights to decide that this marriage is no longer worth maintaining. When that point is reached is between him and his wife.
I use to actually be a Christian fundie so I may know what is going on here. I don’t know if this pertains to this couple, but in a lot of fundie circles the whole family has a say in who you get to marry…especially your father. It could be that everyone thought that this couple was meant to be together after much prayer and discussion. Maybe the woman wasn’t even sexually attracted to the guy, but felt like she would be a bad daughter to suggest that she didn’t want to marry him when her parents seemsed so keen on the idea. She could also be under the impression that sexual attraction isn’t important in a good Christian marriage (after all lust is carnal), just the desire to be a good and reproductive housewife. Now that they are actually married and alone together, she wants nothing to so with him but feels terrible about it because she thinks she is being a bad wife when she refuses his advances.
Of course this could certainly not be the case with this particular couple, but I can definitely see something like this happening in the whole no dating allowed, courtship and bethrothal culture. And yes, they are that weird!
I don’t think it’s terribly clear which of them has a “problem” without actually hearing from the wife. Funny how couples have VASTLY differnt takes on the same facts. I was in a super bad marriage and thought my libido had gone dead. My husband complained, I was sorry but it’s not like I could order another one from Sears. Then I had some situations where my husband said no to me. He still asserted I had a problem and convinced me to go to therapy. My problem turned out to be that I found his treatment of me in general to be intolerable. Of course HE would not go anywhere near couples therapy, because after all, it was MY problem, right? Once we were divorced, suprise suprise, my libido showed up again. And in marriage number 2, no problems beyond getting over stress and exhaustion caused by work and life sometimes. The guy sounds like is not the manipulative jerk I was married to who was basically projecting his problems on to me, but I’d like to hear her perspective before we decide who has a problem.
It doesn’t help this discussion that I’m re-reading Madame Bovary right now… but dream operator has a good point. A woman raised in an authoritarian environment and who goes along with the plans others have made for her is what this sounds like.
Therese: one “expects” sex and is “entitled” to sex in a marriage to the same degree that one “expects” and it “entitled” to love, respect, fidelity, etc.
None of those can/should be forced. But they are reasonable expectations which are related to marriage. You are making the word “expectation” sound like marital rape, which is not what is being referred to.
So, no: If your husband didn’t want sex after marriage you shouldn’t drug him and rape him. But you SHOULD be entitled to be upset about it without condemnation, because he should generally have sex with you as part of marriage. (yes, I know there are exceptions) That entitlement also means you could complain to others about your husband’s lack of interest without being accused of wanting to rape him.
Frumious: Sometimes sexual relationships are mutually diysfunctional. Sometimes it’s the guys fault. Sometimes–as here–there’s a pretty good indication that he is acting in an objectively reasonable fashion, and she is the one with the issues/problems. So it’s perfectly reasonable to focus on her.
The bias seems so strong here that people are apparently thinking up every possible excuse not to blame the woman (“he’s pressuring her!” “It’s his fault!” “He wants anal sex hourly!” “She was pressured into marriage!”).
But you know, when a problem really IS mostly one person’s fault, about 50% of the time that happens (in a het relationship) it’s gonna be the woman, and it should be OK to acknowledge that even on a feminist blog.. I’m not saying that the reality of the situation isn’t more complicated. But if we’re going to play the guessing game, why is it always about him being a brutish dominating no-foreplay bad-lover stereotype? I mean, it’s pretty silly. Hey, I know: Maybe she’s a controlling dominating passive-agressive personality who is secretly taking great pleasure in depriving him of sex, while gleefully masturbating in private when he’s not around! That’s just about as obvious from the letter. WHich is to say, not at all.
bmc90s comment seems reasonable: we don’t know. OK, if we don’t know, we should either not talk about it (booooring!) ;) or talk about what we DO know without inserting our own guesses into the already-limited data.
Sailorman, I still maintain that nobody is ever entitled to sex with anybody else. Marriage notwithstanding. Foresmac thought differently, and I say that’s the reasoning behind rape.
I gotta say: Nonsense. Expecting that there will be sex – not sex whenever he wants, necessarily, but SOME kind of sex – in a marriage is not showing “entitlement”. It is an entirely reasonable expectation. And expecting that your spouse (regardless of gender, of course) will be content with a celibate existence is NOT a reasonable expectation unless such a thing was previously agreed to.
I’m not saying this woman is evil or inconsiderate, or anything of the sort; she could just be dealing with unfortunate conditioning or whatnot. But if she isn’t willing to acknowledge that her refusal to have any kind of sex is a problem, and make some sincere effort to resolve the issue with him one way or another, then the marriage just isn’t going to work. He should leave, painful though it might be.
Therese, do you think anyone is ever entitled to anything from someone they are married to?
I think that after being denied sex from my wife for that long, I’d be awfully frustrated. I’d probably be able to recognize that it wasn’t any hostility on her part, and that she was hurting too, and do everything in my power to keep a cool head about it, try to understand her, and be supportive … but I’d still be fuming inside. I’m sure he sounds more supportive when he talks to her than he does when venting about it and begging for help anonymously on the Internet.
Well, I would have thought that when someone’s actions make you panic and cry, expecting that they’ll immediately cease and not repeat those actions until invited is an equally reasonable expectation. Clearly, opinions differ.
In addition, if you interpret the letter as some have (“we did many things but not that”), they already were having sex; certainly some form of sexual activity. Just not sex that involved the God-approved womanly orifice. Apparently, that doesn’t count. People who share that interpretation are saying that there’s not just a reasonable expectation of sex, there’s a reasonable expectation of a very particular kind of penetrative sex. Perhaps particular sexual positions are required as well, to satisfy their exacting marriage requirements; who knows?
sophonisba -
I made no statement about that whatsoever. OK, so you maintain he shouldn’t push the issue, and wait until she’s ready. What happens, then, if she’s never ready? There’s no reason given here to believe she considers this a problem. Is he a scoundrel for not wanting to live the rest of his life celibate?
I’m not sure I buy that interpretation, although it might be correct. Even assuming it is, I still have to ask: is it unreasonable to get her to consider why she might have such a big issue with PIV sex?
You know…
if two people have been dating for three years, and one party did not want to have sex at all during that time and kept saying no, I don’t think any of the commenters here would’ve seen a problem with this.
So… what changes when you’ve been married for three months? They’ve signed some document and had a fancy ceremony and now sex is in a way ‘expected’ from both parties?
What is the difference?
Dunno.
But apparently Jill, Ivy, Sara, sean, Sailorman, MissPinkKate, Amanda Marcotte, Nobitron, foresmac, Wren, Quarterican, Glynda, Lynn Gazis-Sax, Starfoxy, Lizard, Cecily, Fernmonkey, Jessica, and jt can’t read either.
Or we’re just not buying your spin of this letter.
Then he divorces her.
I’m saying he’s showing entitlement because he keeps trying to initiate sex and being frustrated that he’s not getting any even though their previous attempts to have sex have left her panicking and crying. Moreover, neither he, nor Prudence, nor the counselor Prudence consulted have done much to examine his role in all this (aside from Prudence’s counseling patience). That’s entitlement — he’s entitled to think that the problem is solely on her end and that she’s the one who needs to be fixed. She obviously does have a problem, but what kind of advice counselor or sex counselor doesn’t tell the guy to get his own ass into counseling to talk about his own issues and expectations and to talk about what he’s doing that might be freaking her out?
She’s a Wife now, and she’s expected to put out.
RM, I wrote that because in the comments just prior to yours, I had answered the very questions you asked. So I concluded that you hadn’t bothered to read them.
Well, duh. :-P But since a lot of people here think that sex is ‘expected’ in a married relationship and I’m pretty sure most of them aren’t wingnut or something, I’m trying to figure out the justification here.
All I know is that I’m glad I decided to never get legally married. :)
OK, I’ll bite: Yes.
There is no agreement in dating. The contract is the difference. And no, the marriage contract does not by default entitle a spouse to X sex acts per week, or whatever. I don’t think anyone surrenders a right to their body by getting married.
However … most marriage vows incorporate vows to (1) show concern for each other’s needs and (2) be sexually faithful. If the man’s account is to be believed, this woman is not only refusing to have sex with her husband, but refusing to even consider it a problem that she doesn’t want to have sex with him. In that way, IMO, she is showing indifference to his needs, and not being true to the spirit of the marriage vows.
It is quite reasonable to get them both to consider that. He is the one who has such a big issue with it that he’s writing to advice columnists about it, after all.
But as has already been said, most couples don’t go from zero contact to full-on PIV intercourse in a single night. Especially if they’re naive or inexperienced, they go from kissing to making out to petting and so on, over a course of months or longer. Why should this couple be different? Their wedding night was the equivalent of a first date for a normal couple, physically, and with a normal couple, you don’t get surprised when somebody isn’t ready to put out on the very first evening. Right?
Whoa. Seriously? It looked to me like she was incredibly upset and disturbed. She has a big problem with the sexual activity in the marriage, hence the crying and freaking out. She’d probably describe the problem very differently from the way her husband did , but that’s not the same thing as not seeing it.
*jots down reason 374386745 to not get a marriage certificate ever…*
Although I still don’t consider that a good enough explanation.
Well, yeah, obviously she has a problem with the sex … but she doesn’t seem to have a problem with the potential lack of it. It’s her refusal to seek counseling or talk with him about why she’s so terrified of sex that makes it sound to me like she doesn’t take it seriously, and that there wouldn’t be any problem if he would just stop seeking sex with her altogether.
Again, I’m not making her out to be a freak or a monster. She’s almost certainly not intending to show hostility towards her husband. But I think she is showing a lack of concern for him by not wanting to directly confront this issue.
(All of this assumes his account can be reasonably trusted, of course … which we kinda have to, since it’s all we have.)
Of course! She’s fucking terrified! Of! Sex!
Wouldn’t you be perfectly happy to avoid something that scared the shit out of you?
Since I’m assuming you’ve NEVER had a problem like this about sex, have been raped, or whatever her issue may be, I don’t think you’d have any idea what she might be feeling or thinking, or just how your thought process is when you have an issue like this.
Word up, zuzu. You summed this up well. :)
Why should we have to trust his account?
Don’t you remember those two columns from the Daily Mail from a married couple that painted entirely different pictures of the marriage? He was convinced he was a Love God who controlled his strong, independent wife through orgasms, and she was insecure and self-loathing and unsatisfied?
Probably, yes. But if it was making my spouse absolutely miserable, I’d concede I couldn’t just make it go away, and do what I could to resolve the issue.
Is she willing to do that? I don’t think it sounds like she is.
Well, aren’t you just fucking perfect?
If you’ve never BEEN in this boat… how can you say that you would know what you would be doing about it?
And have you noticed that she’s absolutely miserable herself, and her husband’s response is to continue to initiate the very thing that’s making her miserable and writing to an advice columnist (instead of seeking help from a qualified therapist)? Is that a very serious response?
What brought that on? That was uncalled for, frankly.
No, I haven’t been in this boat. I will admit that I do bristle at some of what’s said here, because I’m in a relationship with someone I love, but whom has less interest in sex than I do, and though I love her very much, it’s very frustrating at times. My situation isn’t quite like this guy’s (I’m not married, and it sounds like she has other issues), but perhaps because of this, I can have some sympathy for his frustration.
Am I not showing sympathy for her insecurities and issues? I’d like to – but I don’t know what they are, and from what I read here it sounds like this guy doesn’t either, because she won’t talk about it, beyond saying she’s happy to never have sex. Is it really healthy and A-OK for her to just refuse to look at this conflict at all?
zuzu:
Well, you don’t, I suppose. But I have little else to go on here. We can’t talk to her, and though it may be colored by his own biases, his account seems believable enough. If it isn’t true, then my views may not apply to it. Whatever.
I think this very neatly sums up why many of us disagree with your take on this.
We read
and see a man who is struggling to understand and deal with the fact that the woman he loves (and I assume loves him too) has obvious issues with sex.
You see a man who is
He said she refused to see a therapist. He could see one, but I don’t think all the issues are on his side here.
Raging Moderate hit it nicely there. Thanks.
(And with that, I really have to go get some work done … maybe be back later … phew.)
Dude. He does something. In his words, she freaks out and cries in response to it. So he does it again. So she freaks out and cries again, surprise surprise. “Every time,” he says. So he does it again. Who does that? Who has to fucking struggle to understand that if something you do makes your beloved weep, you stop doing that?
The first time he tried, he had no way of knowing she’d react that way. But every time after that, he did know. And you know what? Anyone who’d keep doing it, knowing that, has a hell of a lot of issues of his own. Worse ones.
.
And can we stop assuming that “sex” is synonymous with “physical intimacy of any kind,” please? I’d bet money that she sees–or, at least, used to see–cuddling and kissing as very different from intercourse.
Ah, boy. This particular issue seems like a Rorschach test; everyone finds their own personal peeves in it. I specifically said that I don’t think this woman is intentionally being insensitive to her husband. But what she’s doing is hurting him and their relationship, and indicative of deeper issues on her part that need to be addressed. If this, in fact, is a product of abuse or conditioning or whatnot, isn’t it about time now that she talked with him about it? He doesn’t seem to know about any of that. All he knows is that his wife is treating him like he’s poisonous.
And yes, he shouldn’t be repeatedly pushing for sex that she clearly doesn’t want on her, which is almost certainly unhelpful. But she also needs to admit that her complete lack of desire for sex with him is a problem – one that she should be willing to actively confront by going to counseling with him.
Rereading the actual letter again it looks as if some people are misreading the circumstances.
From this I’m reading the story as: They tried to have sex on the honeymoon but she freaked out and started crying. Since then they’ve done ‘many things’ but things have slowed down to the point where any sexual contact is rare, up to the present where ‘the last attempt was a few weeks ago’. The guy seems to be backing off but if his wife won’t address the problem, and she seems to be actively against sex, regardless of any discussion or reassurance, there doesn’t seem much more he can do in this situation.
Oh, mostly how you’re acting like this woman is this bitch who just DOESN’T CAAAAAARE ABOUT HER HUSBAND’S NEEEEEDS OMG!!!!!!!
And then the righteousness really got me.
So, I’m going to put myself on the line here and say I can get where this woman is coming from. I was raised in a very, very fundy Southern Baptist Church and it did more damage to me than I can articulate. One of the first casualties was my sex life. For the longest time, I could not, absolutely could not, have sex. Period. And I didn’t know why. Like the woman in this letter, I’d end up sobbing and shaking and just completely, utterly terrified. Not because I didn’t love my partner, not because I didn’t desire him, not because I didn’t want to have sex with him, but because something deep inside me was broken by all the crap I’d been taught.
Yes, she needs to seek out counseling. But she can’t do that at this point. I couldn’t see a counselor until I was well into my 20s because I’d been taught (even though I rejected the belief, it still held on) that counseling was for people who were weak or crazy. It was very stigmatized. It took me months to make my first appointment after I decided to go and I almost didn’t go to the first appointment, I was so scared. Whatever this woman is dealing with, whether it’s some secret abuse or just the fallout of a lifetime of conditioning to Not Have Sex Ever, it’s going to be very difficult for her to admit to herself, much less anyone else. To expect her to be able to in three short months? Some people can, some people can’t. She seems to be the sort that can’t. That doesn’t mean she won’t ever, but frankly, having a husband who is clearly frustrated at a lack of sex isn’t helping.
Stop for a moment and think — is marriage only about sex? Because this one seems to be. And no, I’m not saying her husband is wrong to be frustrated. Hell, no, I’d be frustrated too. But it’s only been three months. Three months in a lifetime committment. What happened to being willing to work things out? To taking the time it takes to make things better? Surely he married her for more than sex. I mean, they dated for years without sex, so clearly there’s more to his attraction to her.
It is entirely possible to overcome this sort of religion-induced fear, but only if the person you’re with is willing to stop and really get how traumatic it is. Because you feel broken. You feel like the worst person in the world. You feel like a failure, that you can’t give the person you love what they need and want from you. And the more you feel like that, the more you withdraw and the harder everything becomes.
But since a lot of people here think that sex is ‘expected’ in a married relationship and I’m pretty sure most of them aren’t wingnut or something, I’m trying to figure out the justification here.
The fact that marriage includes a promise not to sleep with anyone else for as long as you both shall live (the “forsaking all others” and “till death do us part” parts of the traditional vows).
Whereas the guy who “expects” sex from me on a date is darn well welcome to go elsewhere (so long as he lets me in on that decision) if he’s not happy with my pace. And in fact please should do so, if his alternative is prude-shaming me and pressuring me beyond what I’m comfortable doing.
That said, huge caveats are in order to the business of “expecting” sex in a married relationship, of course, some of which have already been mentioned by various people in this thread. The wedding band doesn’t magically make it easy to go from not doing much of anything sexual to having intercourse, in a single night, doesn’t mean the person wanting more sex is inherently more in the right, doesn’t mean you get to expect sex X times per Y time period, doesn’t mean it’s OK to keep pushing if the other person is panicking and crying, and may in some cases (which most people getting married hope not to hit) not mean that you ever get any sex at all. It certainly doesn’t mean it’s any easier to be in her shoes, just that it’s that scarier to be in his than it would be if they were just dating.
Well, it seems to be this way:
If he cannot handle the lack of sex, and she isn’t able to seek counseling at the moment… well… maybe they should separate for the time being. I know he loves her and she loves him and all, but umm… this is quite the stalemate.
She has issues, yes, but from his letter it sounds like he only cares about her issues insofar as they are keeping him from having the sex he wants. No, it is not unreasonable for a husband to want to sleep with his wife. It is unreasonable for the biggest problem you have with your wife having a panic-stricken emotional breakdown to be the fact that it means you aren’t getting any. This guy sounds like he’d be just fine with it if she grit her teeth and let him get on with it. He should want her to seek counselling so she can be happy, well-adjusted, and able to enjoy her sexuality.
Let’s be clear here: He has a problem with her refusal to have sex with him. He’s seeking advice from an advice columnist. He doesn’t know what to do.
He has a problem that needs resolving, regardless of whether his wife is too traumatized at the moment to attend counseling. He does not have to wait until she’s ready to attend counseling to get help for himself. Counseling might actually help the situation with his wife, if the counselor smacks him upside the head and tells him to stop doing the very thing that’s making her freak out and cry, and if he stops doing the very thing that’s making her freak out and cry, she might feel less hounded when he asks her to go to counseling.
RM, I just don’t know how you’re seeing the “I love her” part and not seeing the “we did this thing that made her freak out and cry, and I did it again, and she freaked out and cried, and every time I try to do this thing, she freaks out and cries, and I’m starting to get so frustrated I don’t want to initiate this thing that makes her freak out and cry” part.
And jt, I just don’t know what to say to you anymore. I suggest you read Zan’s comment very, very carefully.
Zan nailed it. Personally, I think “see a counselor” is a cop out answer, but a counselor that specializes in this thing may be the best option here. Recalling my first year of marriage, I was still a bit terrified of discussing uncomfortable topics or topics where there was going to be a humdinger of an argument. It may be too difficult for them to work out their problems on their own.
They need to talk about what they want out of the marriage right away, and if they can’t do it by themselves, they need an expert that can get them discussing the right questions. We don’t know what the woman’s issue really is. Zen is probably right that the fundies have messed this poor woman’s head up to the point she has sexophobia, but maybe she broke her vow with some other guy – popped her hymen – and thinks her husband will find out she’s not a virgin when they have sex. We don’t know.
If he loves her enough to hang with her, however long it takes (which may be never), and can handle the truth (starting with how he’s not entitled to anything) that’s what he’s going to have to do to make the marriage work. If he’s not, he needs to be honest with himself and her that the marriage is not going to work and he will eventually cheat on her or take out his pent up frustration out on her in another way and it is going to be an unhappy union.
The only problem here is they are seeing a Christian counselor, who may have the same hangups the couple (presumably) has, though the (female) minister that counseled us before our wedding was a pretty amazing psychologist. Most of my friends (whether Christian or no) had to go through pre-marriage counseling if they wanted to be married in a church. It’s a real crapshoot – some got pretty closed minded people in “liberal” churches and some found a gem among fundies. I hope this couple finds the latter.
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Rockit, I read that completely differently from you. What I get from it is that they started off doing many things, but that’s been petering out because everytime they do anything he presses for PIV and she’s not comfortable with it. I don’t read it as him backing off, I read it as him saying okay I’m done with many things, I’m pushing this everytime I get a chance no matter how you feel about it.
Bingo. I don’t see him saying my wife is frightened and crying and I love her and want to help her for her. I see, yeah she’s crying and that’s stopping me from having sex. How can I stop the crying only because I want to have sex.
Also, as far as her refusing to get help, she seems to have some intimacy issues. I really doubt that after being unwillingly corralled into a room with a stranger she’s going to open up to her and have all of her problems magically fixed in the two sessions her insurance will pay for. Counseling isn’t necessarily going to help until she feels comfortable enough to seek it out.
Yeah, the fact that insurance pretty much isn’t going to pay for any kind of marital or sex therapy is a limitation. Some of the Christian counselors might be otherwise subsidized, but variable in what they actually know (it’s not clear to me whether they’re being referred to a normally credentialled marriage counselor who might be more acceptable to them due to being Christian, or someone with an unknown background and training who happens to share their faith). And sometimes it’s possible to get insurance for a somewhat greater number of sessions of marriage counselling if one of you actually has a DSM-IV diagnosis (you get it covered as therapy sessions for the person with the diagnosis).
Otherwise, they would need to be prepared to pay. As far as I know, nobody subsidizes sex therapy at all, but marriage counselling can sometimes be found on a sliding scale basis.
I agree that it would probably help for the guy to get counselling himself even without his wife.
It’s fascinating how people read this letter and come up with wildly different opinions. You’ve got the “he’s dissappointed for not having a whore in the bedroom” crowd, and over at Pandagon you’ve got Amanda and several others claiming that the wife is abusing her husband.
I guess it just shows how our own personal experiences can cloud the way we percieve things.
I read only the first 20 answers and they went all pretty much either it is her or his fault and either he is an asshole and has a virginity fetish or she has to give it to him because they are married.
From the information given all this is BS.
What if the guy sucks in bed and is so frustrated that he starts to poke her right away. He says he is inexperienced.
What if she really doesn’t like sex. Some people are this way.
Most likely it is a combination of factors and as the grandparent had correctly pointed out the main reason probabely lies within that religious virginity fetish and all the pressure sourrounding it.
To find out what actually is wrong they will have to reveal very private stuff and should do so with the help of a counselor and maybe only to each other.
The difference bewteen dating and marriage is that when you’re dating, you are able to end the relationship at any minute, with few consequences. That’s what “dating” is: you may feel sad, your partner may feel sad, but by its nature it is a transitory state and you can end it at will.
That’s why it’s considered much more OK to refuse to compromise when you’re dating. If your partner doesn’t like what you do (or if you don’t like what your partner does) it’s easy to walk. No sex? Check. Lots of sex? Check. You can get–and enforce–what you want without a whole lot of compromise.
Marriage is ostensibly permanent. That’s what makes it different from dating. Marriage by its permanence contains an inherent promise to compromise: to attempt, at times, to prioritize “staying together” over “doing what you want.”
So a more interesting way to phrase your question could be: “if two parties were dating and were planning to have sex in three years, and when the time came, one party decided they didn’t want to have sex at all, would it seem at all odd for the other party to be upset and break up with him/her?”
Marriage it at the least a lot more legally binding and difficult to terminate than dating. And for these folks, it is quite likely a holy covenant and promise overseen by God, with all the inherent spiritual requirements. That means it’s a different viewpoint than dating.
On the “He keeps pushing” thing: Merely because someone gets upset about something is not a reason not to want it, or even not to try it, or ask for it. Otherwise one member of the relationship can easily control the marriage. While there may be a specific area where avoiding making your spouse unhappy is a good idea, it’s not fair to say generally that anything which makes your spouse cry is 1) your fault, and 2) something you should not do.
Here, let’s use a NON-SEX example for a moment: If I started to cry and get upset every time my wife asked me to clean or do childcare, would anyone seriously suggest that she stop asking me? That she alter her behavior to take all the load? That she work around it?
Of course not. People would realize that her need/desire to have a participatory husband was a need to balance against my need/desire not to be upset. The fact that I get to use the words “upset” and “cry” doesn’t mean I’m right.
Same here. His wife has as much ability to divorce as he does though neither of them seem to want that, at least not from the letter. The crying problem can be stopped by either party–he could live celibate, or she could agree to talk about it and/or go to counseling. (everything from the letter, including its mere existence, suggests that he would be willing to delay trying sex if she was willing to address the issue in the mean time). So enough of the “he’s a meanie who’s making her cry!!!” stuff. It’s in her control as much as his.
Yeah, I noticed that myself. I think Amanda’s great, but she seemed to be reading all kinds of things into this guy’s letter that weren’t there, like the wife attacking and scapegoating the guy as dirty for wanting to have sex or holding his life hostage for years, or whatever. I don’t see any of that in the letter. I’m sure I’m reading into it too, but it’s not based on personal experience, I’m only in high school and don’t really relate all that much to either partner. :)
Look, the wife seems to be a person who’s scared and lonely and has a lot issues here. What good does it do to conceptualize her as some kind of dilettante who’s willfully slacking and refusing to contribute her fair share of laundry to the marriage? Bottom line, what he’s doing isn’t working. This is a difficult and sensitive issue, and if he’s not willing to be patient about it fine, but if he wants the situation to change, making demands on this model you’re proposing is ridiculous. It’s like, would you rather be right or would you rather help your wife who’s troubled and help your marriage in teh process.
I say he should leave. Break it off completely. If she desires him to stay enough she’ll work on her problems. Otherwise he should walk and never look back. Not abuse her and not ask anything more of her. Let all the choices be hers give her all the space she needs which is absolute. Non consumation is grounds for anulment.
That way she gets her space and he gets a chance not to be seen as a monster for wanting to be intimate with his wife. He won’t be able to win in this situation. The longer he is there the worse it will get. As he said less and less from him is upsetting her more and more. Pretty soon she’ll be crying from his body warmth in the bed.
Um, we’re talking three months here? A refusal to see a counsellor which, for all we know, may be only of a few weeks duration (he doesn’t say how long ago he actually broached the suggestion of counselling, or how he phrased it)? Separation may well in fact be where this marriage is headed, but isn’t it a wee bit premature to say he should leave this instant?
Solid birth control would be a really good idea, though, if they ever do in the near future get to the point where they actually consummate the marriage. I hope their religious beliefs don’t include any strictures against that. Because this does not look like a marriage that’s ready for a pregnancy.
Is it really that hard to think that maybe the “did it again” part indicates that they (as in the two of them) both agreed to do it again, and she freaked out, again. There is nothing that indicates that he forced her to do anything.
And before the bandwagon comes in with their accusations of “I bet you never–”, I was raped and molested repeatedly as a child. So I have issues. I tried forcing myself to have sex with my boyfriend; I freaked out. A couple of weeks later, I tried again, and yet again I freaked out.
It might be the same for his wife. She might have tried to push herself to have sex, and the crying and panic attacks were the end result. And if that is the case, then she is in the wrong, because she is not only hurting her husband (if every time I tried to have sex with someone I loved they started crying, I would think I was doing something horribly wrong and feel guilty), but she is damaging herself by trying to put herself through something that she is not ready for.
Everyone has issues, but just because you have issues does not mean you get to toy around with a person on puppet strings. Which is what she is doing, even though it is most likely unintentional.
If she can not handle having sex then she needs to be honest to her husband about it. People can become very insecure and frustrated when it comes to things like this. I should know. I refused to tell my boyfriend anything about it. I knew he wanted sex, but I refused to end it with him, knowing that I would never be able to give him what he wanted. The end result was him threatening to rape me. (And I know my boyfriend had no right to threaten to rape me; but I should have avoided a situation that was slowly becoming worse. I believe that both parties in a relationship must take responsibility; because I refuse to have people thinking “Oh she’s just a woman, what could she have possibly done against the big strong man?” )
I am not saying that this is her fault. In the words of my mother, “They need to either shit or get off the pot”. There is no use for them staying in a relationship where both will be unsatisfied.