Inspired by the aside on turning down one’s wife when she wants sex in this thread and by a couple of recent conversations I’ve had.
I of course always knew back in the pre-sex days in high school that it was ok to turn a guy down, that he would still want to go out with me (or if he didn’t then he was a jerk). But somewhere along the way I got the idea that AFTER doing it, turning the guy down (aside from an occasional “headache”) was a Bad Thing and that he would move on to greener pastures.
It took conversations with my boyfriend and then with another guy friend to convince me that it’s ok not to be horny as often as the average guy is and that it’s even ok to say no sometimes! The consensus seemed to be that knowing there’s going to be sex sometimes, on a semi-regular basis, over the next lotsa years is better than doing it every day but with one partner not into it and maybe becoming resentful.
It sounds silly even to me now, but I really thought that guys wouldn’t be happy unless the girl wanted to do it as often as he did. Am I the only one who thinks/thought this or are there others out there who think that you’ve got to do it All The Time once you’ve done it or the guy won’t be happy?
I had this big long post, but it was too much. Basically - why on earth would you think you can’t say no? And that he can’t, too? And that his sex drive is always higher? Not true. And that your sex drive should be 100 % compatible?
This seems absurd to me. Of course you can say “no” to sex as often as you want, and you should.* The only time you should be concerned about it, I would think, is if your relative appetites for sex are very significantly different (One partner wants it once a month, the other five times a day) – that’s going to cause trouble at some point. But unless your relationship is built totally upon sex, as lonmg as your reklative appetites are similar you ought to be able to say that you don’t want it whenever you wish.
*Lord knows, most women had no problem saying “no” to me. But I whine.
Footnote: Even after twelve years of marriage, I can’t imagine me saying “no” to sex from my wife. But that’s in part because life with MilliCal reduces the number of potential situations.
It does seem obvious NOW, but there do seem to be a lot of messages out there that girls should be horny as much as guys or there’s something wrong with you.
Anyway. I always heard it the other way - tons of guys complaining about their woman never being in the mood. “Lie back and think of England.” One of my goals on this Earth is to dispel the image that women don’t like sex.
Most guys I talk to just assume their wives have less interest in sex…I tend to think if you’r ecoming back with that, you’re
either asking too much
or not doing a good job
or, possibly, she really doesn’t like it.
But if you’re not, you’re not. Everyone’s sex drive is different. And if it’s not OK to say “no” in your relationship, then it should be. Compromise!
Nobody’s going to be “happy” about being turned down for sex, but why on earth would you ever have sex when you didn’t want to? There are some things that have always baffled me about the whole man/woman sex equation. One, maybe it’s just a difference in perspective between genders, but in my experience, there often seems to be a double-standard where it’s considered appropriately assertive for a woman to say no to her husband, but a man who turns down his wife is thought to be a jerk. I also think either gender should take no as an answer, and not whine, plead or cajole, or have a tantrum like a baby. Two, I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of having sex when you didn’t feel like it, just to make the other person happy. I think women probably tend to do this more than men. But personally, I don’t WANT to have sex with someone who’s only doing it as a favor to me, and isn’t getting any enjoyment out of it. That’s just icky; you might as well just get an inflatable doll. I’m sure you could fake it, and fool me into believing you’re enjoying it, but that just seems degrading to both of us.
well depending on the hotness of the woman i was with at the time, if she was smoking hot, you bet i want her to do it as many times as I want to bcuz she’ll probably dump me sooner or later and I want to know I maximized my booty opportunities while I had the chance w/ that, you know, so I don’t feel left out in lockerroom talk.
if you were a nice girl/decent looking, good head on your shoulders, a healthy amount of sex was good enough for me, mainly bcuz i didn’t want to be the one to turn you into a sex maniac from the relative church girl that you were. That would weigh on my conscience as there are other ways I could change your life for the worse (Og knows dating me was a circus!)
if you were marginally good looking it probably didn’t go past a couple rolls in the hay and then me running for the hills denying your existence.
If you were ugly, i was too drunk to know.
so as you can see, this equation sums up the correct amount of horniness one should have as a girl:
Based on my experience, I’d have to say no, it’s not ok to say no to sex if you’re a guy.
In the eight years I’ve been with my wife, I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard “I’m too tired” “I have to get up early the next day” “Im not feeling well” or just simply said “how about tomorrow?” (followed by the same response the next day). I’ve grumped and grumbled, but pretty much put up with it.
The one time she’s said she was in the mood and I wasn’t, the very first thing out of her mouth was “are you cheating on me?”
If it’s not okay to say ‘no’ to sex, then there’s something severely wrong with your relationship.
Just this evening, Mr. Indigo turned me down for sex. I won’t lie, I was upset, especially because we haven’t had sex much at all in the last couple of weeks, due to the shifts I’m working and the fact that I threw my back out last week. But I also recognised the fact that after his first week back at work in nearly a year, and having to travel two hours each way to get to and from work, he’s completely and utterly rooted.
I say ‘not tonight’ when I need to, he says the same when he needs to. It’s better to put it off, and have a wank, than to plead and cajole and bully your partner into unwilling sex. All that’s going to happen is your partner is going to resent you for pushing them into something they don’t really want to do, and it’s going to breed bad feeling and possibly do a lot of long-term damage.
We’re certainly not having as much sex as either of us would like, but at least we know that when we are having it, it’s because both of us want it and not because one has pressured the other into having to do it.
(Besides, tomorrow’s Saturday, neither of us have anything much to do. So tomorrow, that boner is mine. He he he)
Yeah, that’s the double-standard I was talking about. Why is it when a man turns down sex, it’s assumed there must be another reason than he’s not in the mood at that moment?
I think everyone should be able to say ‘no’ to sex whenever they want and not be required to provide justification (though it may be more polite to do so). I also think that, in principle, everyone should be able to ask for sex whenever they want (bearing in mind that there are better times to ask than others).
The tricky part is that a request for or refusal of sex is typically freighted with a lot of extra meaning. A refusal can seem like a personal rejection or a sign of some reservation about the person asking. A request can seem like an overstepping of boundaries, agressive, something that you’d feel bad about refusing. I think a lot of times we are in relationships where we don’t trust the other person to say no or conversely that we don’t trust the other person to not be hurt when we say no.
I just went through something like this and it sucked that she couldn’t say no (and all I was asking was if we could make-out, no sex). I almost didn’t ask her, I stopped before I actually asked the question, but she told me it was OK to ask so I did. The next evening when I talk with her she says she is afraid we may have lost our friendship (we had only been friends prior to this, but we had both admitted to having feelings for each other) and that she kissed me because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
Now I don’t trust her to say no to me if she wanted to and it’s even bled over into other relationships. I’m afraid people just do things to be nice and I can’t trust them to be honest about their feelings. I don’t entirely believe that, it’s just a niggling worry in the back of my mind.
This is why it should be OK to say no to a request for sex (or other intimate activities) and also why it should be OK to ask (never assuming the answer will be yes). I just messed up a good friendship by asking someone who couldn’t say no, at least in that particular situation (and I should have realized that).
Some of the comments here seem to point to the problem that I think I was subconsciously trying to avoid. The men who have been turend down regularly sound slightly bitter or at least disappointed. I always wanted to be the “cool,” sexy girlfriend who didn’t turn her guy down. I didn’t want him to be disappointed that we weren’t doing it all the freakin’ time.
I think it is exactly this feeling of not wanting to let the guy down that made me think I shouldn’t say no.
Some of the comments here seem to point to the problem that I think I was subconsciously trying to avoid. The men who have been turend down regularly sound slightly bitter or at least disappointed. I always wanted to be the “cool,” sexy girlfriend who didn’t turn her guy down. I didn’t want him to be disappointed that we weren’t doing it all the freakin’ time.
I think it is exactly this feeling of not wanting to let the guy down that made me think I shouldn’t say no.