Sign up for a free recipe e-book →

Clarissa's Blog

Q&A about Marital Sex

Published by

Clarissa

on

This is a very fantastical scenario, to be honest. The overwhelming majority of divorces are initiated by women. Threatening to leave is a female thing. As for “threatening to cheat”, honestly, you aren’t serious. Where is all this happening? Turkey? “Have sex with me or I’ll cheat” is just not a thing anywhere where women in burqas aren’t chained to the bedpost. Also, cheat with whom? Imagine the process of convincing a strange woman to participate in this project. Unless the man is rich, I’m not seeing it.

The outlandishness of the scenario shows that there aren’t any serious objections to my post.

21 responses to “Q&A about Marital Sex”

  1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Clarissa, surely you jest! Many, probably most, men would reasonably conclude that no longer being seen as physically attractive would pretty much be the end of the marriage. Your vows must have been considerably different than ours ;-D

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      An actual physical attraction is extremely hard to turn off. That’s why battling exes who hate each other still cheat on their new partners with each other. That’s one of the most frequent types of infidelity. So if you are no longer seen as physically attractive, there was probably no real desire there from the start.

      Actual physical desire is pretty much forever, as unpleasant as it is for us as a society to recognize.

      Like

      Reply
      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        Yeah, the unrequited desire of so-called “Alpha Widows” would suggest that you are correct, and I know that love can be forever. My annoyance was that most of the women filing used excuses like: I am bored; I am no longer happy; we grew apart, etc, when it seemed more likely that financial difficulties had proven too difficult to face/handle. Sure, there was some virtual hatred, but far more disappointment, but there was more hatred in children in divorces, almost like refugees suffering PTSD.

        As terrible as they may seem, all those vows were developed over many generations for a reason ;-D

        Like

        Reply
      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        We had friends, growing up, who married each other *three times*. Divorce didn’t stick until the third one, I guess– and then only because she moved halfway across the country. It was always a great puzzlement to us. They were both people we liked. The drama, though…

        Like

        Reply
  2. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Has anyone visited the deadbedrooms subreddit? It’s fucking brutal.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadBedrooms/

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Nobody has asked how to have good sex if you are a man. I gave advice for women but for men it would be something different.

      Does nobody want to know?

      Like

      Reply
      1. Demotrash Avatar
        Demotrash

        I’m certainly curious to hear your opinion on it

        Like

        Reply
    2. xykademiqz Avatar
      xykademiqz

      There is this couples therapist I follow on Facebook, Samantha Rodman. She’s insightful and witty, and can be found at https://www.drpsychmom.com/ or elsewhere as Dr. Psych Mom. (There’s a podcast, a book, the whole shebang.)

      Anyway, she talks a lot about dead bedrooms (which I agree are horrible predicament).

      What she says is basically aligned with what Clarissa says:

      If you want to avoid a dead bedroom, 1) you should only marry people to whom you are genuinely physically attracted and with whom you are extremely sexually compatible and 2) if you value sex, do not marry a person who indicates they will be low libido later (there are signs of what that is even during the honeymooon stage). If sex is not mindblowing in the initial stages of the relationship, this is not a person with whom you will have a satisfying lifelong sex. Also, if you need couples counseling while dating, cut your losses and move on. Dating is for weeding out incompatible partners.

      A lot of people marry people they are lukewarm about because they think they will be good parents etc., but if you value sex, do not marry someone whom you can take or leave physically, or who feels that way (“meh”) about you.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        That’s exactly what I wanted to say about the deadbed syndrome. I’ll put my suggestions in a separate post but this is precisely it.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        I blame hormonal birth control for that one.

        Women have *no idea* who they’re even attracted to on that stuff. Do they even know what primal, physical attraction *feels like* when they’ve been doping with artificial pregnancy hormones since adolescence? I mean, I’ve never been on HBC, but I sure as heck wasn’t attracted to *anybody* while pregnant, ever. Imagine trying to find a husband in that bizarre altered state! It’d practically guarantee long-term feelings of “geez, is this all there is…?”

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply
        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          This is very true. The price of sexual liberation has been a wholesale liberation of the women from the pleasures of sex. We can have trillions of sex partners but a lot less in terms of actual enjoyment. It’s one of the paradoxes of modernity.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
        2. xykademiqz Avatar
          xykademiqz

          True! I remember one female comic’s segment about birth control, where she interacted with the audience, and one audience member said she broke up a six-year relationship when she went off birth control. Once off the pills, the guy smelled all wrong (which is likely an indicator they’re immunologically incompatible for creating healthy offspring).

          Btw, the shrink I mention above talks extensively about how a woman’s natural libido changes during the menstrual cycle, and she will have generally high libido in the first half and very high around ovulation. All that is flattened under hormonal birth control (HBC).

          Oh and another thing. A lot of parents will put their teenage girls on HBC at 16 or so, and the girls/young women sometimes stay on it for a decade or two. Now it turns out the early administration of HBC results in vaginal atrophy, vaginismus, and related severe issues with sexual function.

          We modern humans like to pretend we don’t have physiology and that we aren’t actually animals, always to our detriment.

          Liked by 2 people

          Reply
          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            If there’s any positive outcome over the whole “puberty blockers” debacle, it might be people *finally* asking the right questions about all the *other* hormonal medications we’ve been giving to children, and how those might be affecting development.

            Liked by 2 people

            Reply
            1. methylethyl Avatar
              methylethyl

              –I know more than a couple of girls who were put on HBC at 13, so I don’t think that’s at all unusual these days.

              Liked by 1 person

              Reply
          2. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Here’s the clip:

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply
  3. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    So am I.

    Insight, insight, insight.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Guys, I only know about hetero sex. Nobody’s expertise is all-enveloping. 🙂

      Like

      Reply
  4. el Avatar
    el

    \ I know more than a couple of girls who were put on HBC at 13,

    Allegedly to ease menstrual cramps? Because it shouldn’t be fear of pregnancy yet at this age.

    \ A lot of people marry people they are lukewarm about because they think they will be good parents etc., but if you value sex, do not marry someone whom you can take or leave physically

    I would reword it as “if you value emotional intimacy, do not marry someone whom you can take or leave physically.”

    Tried to date several such men in my life, but in romantic relationships there can be no true emotional connection w/o sexual attraction, at least for me. Thinking “I should marry this person I feel lukewarm about because of not meeting smb I can truly mutually fall in love with” is depressing.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      for menstrual cramps, for mood swings, for acne, for ‘irregular’ cycles (it’s normal to have irregular cycles at 13)… any excuse will do, as long as the parents will agree to it. But mostly it’s because gyns are on a social-engineering kick where they think they’re saving the world from the evils of teen pregnancy.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Instead of guiding the girls towards a more positive menstrual experience, older women just get them on hormonal meds. I’ve tried suggesting to people a couple of times that there are non-medicinal ways to deal with painful menstruation but they react like I murdered their baby. It’s become some sort of a pride point to have a mega painful menstrual experience that you refuse to do anything about except hormonal birth control. Mothers can’t teach their daughters because they never learned themselves. And nobody asks how this was handled before HBC. As if menstrual discomfort was invented 40 years ago.

        Like

        Reply
        1. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          I watched my sister go through the mega painful cramps, and my mother did not believe her. So when it happened to me… I just didn’t tell her. Nobody put me on the Pill, but I also didn’t get any help for it. I think I was twenty before my roommate introduced me to the concept of a heating pad.

          Like

          Reply

Leave a comment

A conservative literary critic and college professor

Recent posts