[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Mal–I didn’t think you were expecting that. I think there are other issues for you that are none of my business. I’m sorry I left you that impression that I thought you were like my husband.
[/QUOTE]
eleanor – you didn’t. We’re cool. 
Just to be clear, it’s not just my spouse I’m talking about, though - I’m discussing Beaucarnea’s ideas as they apply to pretty much every woman I’ve known.
[QUOTE=Priceguy]
Why aren’t we already having sex again? Oh, right. The Atlantic.
[/QUOTE]
If I ever get to make that European trip I’ve been planning, I’ll drop by for a visit, to stroke your hair, etc.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
If I’m ever free and we’re in the same time zone etc, I’ll buy you a drink.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll hold you both to that.
[QUOTE=Priceguy]
I’ll hold you both to that.
[/QUOTE]
Good.
I was re-reading, and somehow I missed SmartAleq’s post about communicators and love junkies the first time around. I found it pretty useful, though. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that sex is overrated, but the games that seem to be required to get into sexual relationships definitely are. And people will talk your ear off about they’re tired of the games, too, but when it comes down to it, most of them really aren’t; they’re still playing, the same as everyone else. Lately I want to sit on the sidelines with my book and not participate, but since I also want to be in a relationship with someone, that’s not an option. All I can do is look for someone whose rules are like mine.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Now sex was followed by “did you come? Did you come?” Over and over again.
[/QUOTE]
Oh my. Let me just pick this line out and emphasize that this question is a total mood killer (yes, the poist-coital mood). I’ve only ever answered it ‘Um, you were there’ and ‘I’ll let you know.’ If a guy isn’t in tune enough with you to know if you’ve had an orgasm, there’s a damn good chance he’s not in tune with you enough to give you an orgasm.
Wow…
Lots of very moving comments, and let me just be another chiming in to say that eleanorigby is getting a shafting, and not in the good way. Your husband is a dick. A selfish, self-absorbed misogynist asshole. And to quote Mr Dan Savage, the font of so much wisdom - DTMFA. So what if he does good things - charity starts at home. If I was you, I’d start planning my exit strategy. Yes, it’s hard and there are many complications, but lots of people go through things lots harder to find basic happiness which you don’t seem to be getting.
There I’ve said it, now feel free to ignore the advice of a random stranger on the internet if you don’t agree.
As for me, I’m somewhere in the middle between ‘want it all the time’ and ‘can’t be arsed’ but being a guy, it’s easier for me - men are microwaves, women are crock pots after all. But I will say this. My ex and I had mind-blowing sex. It was fantastic, it rocked the foundations of the house, we did it everywhere and in every way and sometimes multiple times a day. But pretty much every other aspect of our relationship was shockingly bad. So bad that I had therapy for months after (and during) the end of our relationship.
My current and I are nowhere near as exciting. We have sex 1-2 times per week, and it’s good and pretty satisfying for me (and I hope for her too - if my non-mind-reading view is right, she gets off well and truly about as often as I do). It’s not mind-blowing, it’s not ‘tear her clothes off’ whenever I see her, but it’s pretty good. But pretty much everything else we have is good and healthy and benefits both of us.
I miss the sex with my ex, but nothing else from that thoroughly doomed relationship. I cherish my current for reasons outside (and in) the bedroom. I wouldn’t go back to the ex for the mind-blowing sex and I wouldn’t dump my current because it’s not mind-blowing all the time, and I certainly don’t shop around outside for additional titillation (I am in fact male and do look, but look is as far as it gets :)). After all, if we can still have naked crazy monkey-sex once or twice a month, and ho-hum sex other times, I can live with that, especially as everything else is pretty darn good.
So for the OP, put me somewhere in the middle between “Meh…” and “Hell yes! Now would be good! And later too!” in my sex drive.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
I am not blameless in this quandry I find myself in, but I’ll be damned if I take all the heat for it-especially when people are dismissive and say, “you’re not doing it right” and stuff like that. There’s more-much more, but this is public forum, not a therapy session! 
This has turned out to be a good thread about a sensitive topic. Good on us, Dopers!
[/QUOTE]
I am so sorry about your marriage. I really feel for you, and I hope so much that you get some happiness on this level in this life. I think you’ve been robbed, bigtime.
[QUOTE=SmartAleq]
It’s what happens after the rush wears off that’s important. In a recent thread about computer dating Stoid was taken to task for the confrontational tone of some of her dating ads–see, I totally get it. The faster the artificial rush of FIRST! TWUE! WUV! wears off the faster the building of the REAL relationship will begin–and when you get to a certain age it gets daunting to contemplate having to go through possibly years of gradual erosion before you finally get to meet the person you’re with for real.
Unfortunately, I’ve become increasingly aware that I’m in a minority and that most of the people I know or hear about seem to get stuck in mourning that first fabulous time, get resentful and blame the other person because it’s not magical any more and engage in all kinds of lovely witholding and avoidance behavior because the deep patterns of communication never got laid down properly. See, when you’re WEALLY IN WUV!!11! communication skills aren’t necessary because you just “get” each other (proves the luuuv, dont’cha know) and the exercises that improve communication are often seen as unromantic or too blunt or rude or unsexy because they require you to stop living as your romantic in love persona and be a person to the one you love. Warts, flaws, insecurities, kinks, idiocies and all.
The communicators learn to address wrongs and hurt feelings and heal them rather than letting them fester on ignored because such ugliness has no place in WomanceWand. These couples are the ones you see in their eighties who’ve been together a lifetime and still would rather be with each other than anyone else.
[/SIZE]
[/QUOTE]
So… how YOU doin’? 
To get back to the being attentive to men idea, I think part of that is from women possibly not knowing that men have all the same emotions and feelings and needs that women have. I’m not a stupid or poorly-informed person, but I didn’t realize that men are just like women emotionally until my husband and I happened on the subject in conversation years ago. You get the idea from just about everywhere that men are supposed to be tough and hard and never cry and not have any emotional needs, unlike women.
Another factor here could be that yes, women are caring and nurturing - to their children. To their friends. Not necessarily to their men.
[QUOTE=Stoid]
So… how YOU doin’?
[/QUOTE]
Femalely, I believe.
Is that still true then, in 2007? Do otherwise intelligent, educated people really believe that men don’t have emotions beyond anger and horniness?
[QUOTE=Telperien]
This would explain why my behavior towards boyfriends seems to surprise them. I am very physically affectionate, and I will tell my love that he’s handsome or beautiful. I guess this doesn’t happen often enough to men.
[/QUOTE]
It doesn’t happen often enough, indeed. It’s the verbal equivelnt of the affectionate touch I described earlier.
Curse this stereotype that men should be emotionless rocks, required to just suck it up through any crisis or lack. 
DTMFA? 
Explanation, please.
I do have an exit strategy, but things are not quite there yet. I need to graduate from grad school first.
This thread has taught me a lot. And thanks to all who showed support here for me. It was unexpected, but very touching to read. And the reality check helps a great deal, too. So, thanks.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
DTMFA? 
Explanation, please.
[/QUOTE]
Dump The Mother Fucker Already, I believe. Dan Savage is a god, highly recommend his podcasts.
[QUOTE=Cat Fight]
Dump The Mother Fucker Already, I believe. Dan Savage is a god, highly recommend his podcasts.
[/QUOTE]
Ah! I thought the last 3 were mother fucking asshole, but couldn’t figure out the DT… I’ll have to check Dan Savage out. Is he online at all (I don’t own an MP3).
I read through, maybe 90% of the posts in this thread, and I feel like I just posted this in the shorter thread about understanding the dating game, but I feel like I want to keep repeating it.
It’s been mentioned already in this thread, repeatedly… Why does it seem like so many people take an adversarial approach to a relationship? I know this is about “sex”, but I’ll get to that. Relationships are supposed to be synergistic. You may give up something you like, or have less time to do something you enjoyed alone, and your SO may too, but in the end what you GAIN from giving that thing up by being with your SO you MORE than make up for, you’re happier in the long run from what you get from the SO than you would be doing those things you gave up when you were single.
Now, I view sex as an integral component of a relationship. Or more accurately, matching sex lives are an integral component of a relationship. Physical intimacy, whether due to hardwiring or deeply ingrained social mores, is incredibly representative of the compatibility of the relationship as a whole. Sex is one of the most primal representations of our personality, and as such, a disconnect at the sexual level is indicative of a HUGE gap in the more veneered social life, or even just home personal life. That’s not to say everybody needs to find somebody who they want to have a lot of sex with, it’s that everybody needs to find somebody who they are intimately comfortable with.
Breaking up a relationship because “the sex is bad” usually means there’s a whole lot of other things that are wrong, or will go wrong, namely, the lack of personal intimacy… and personal intimacy is the whole reason people should be getting in to relationships in the first place, without it, it’s, as has also been said in this thread, a financial arrangement. So really, IMO, sex (or at least satisfaction with the level of intimacy) is a crucial indicator of the success of a relationship, if it’s not there, you have no business being in that relationship.
[QUOTE=Beaucarnea]
Sorry we stole the thread from you, AtomickTom, but please check in long enough to let some of us know if you feel less strongly as you did before, or more strongly that sex and the pursuit of is an exercise in compromising/losing your own personality in order to seal the deal.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry I haven’t been attentive to the post (damn that job, and the boss who monitors my internet use).
My thinking, when I initiated the post, was that there is this undercurrent of sex in so much of our culture, and I felt it was overdone. Sex is the hook used to sell products, compose songs, interest us in films…it appears everywhere, and I felt that life offered so much more. In short, I felt that, as good as sex is, it just isn’t as good as we make it out to be.
I also discovered (way back on page 1) that my own medications may be “tainting” this perception.
Moreover, this post has taught me that sex is closely tied to emotions like love and caring, which I don’t think are overrated. If anything, it has increased my respect for the personal intimacy of personal sexual encounters, even if I continue to disdain the commercial sexualization of our culture.
As for me, I am lucky right now to be in a good relationship with a (older!) woman who is amazing in bed, but who I mainly enjoy for her intelligence and her wit.
[QUOTE=Priceguy]
<snip>Is that still true then, in 2007? Do otherwise intelligent, educated people really believe that men don’t have emotions beyond anger and horniness?
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately, I think it is. The stereotypes/misinformation/subtle and not-so-subtle pressures persist for men to act and be thought of as emotionless, or if not emotionless, at least not as emotionally complicated as women.
(Don’t forget hunger - men are allowed to feel that, too. )
Atomicktom, you make a perfectly valid point about using sex to sell everything, and sex being treated like the be-all end-all of existence. It’s sort of the same thing as the Hollywood ideal of love - most people won’t have Hollywood love in their lives, and some people will do themselves a disservice by not settling for anything less (i.e. the real love that they could have). Maybe people do themselves a disservice by expecting sex to be something other than what it actually is in their lives.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Ah! I thought the last 3 were mother fucking asshole, but couldn’t figure out the DT… I’ll have to check Dan Savage out. Is he online at all (I don’t own an MP3).
[/QUOTE]
Yup - might not be totally safe for work as the illustrations are sometimes a bit graphic…
But it’s a great read.
I’ll say.
:eek:
Atomick–I’m sorry I hijacked your thread. I agree with you that we hype sex in this culture–to sex’s detriment. IMO, we have commodified sex and lost an important aspect of it: intimacy. Intimacy is not the be all and end of all of sex, but according to pop culture, intimacy doesn’t exist, period. That’s a shame.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
(Don’t forget hunger - men are allowed to feel that, too. )
[/QUOTE]
Oh that’s all right then. To be fair, horny and hungry combined probably constitute over 50% of my emotional minutes anyway. Angry has taken a back seat as I’ve gotten older, though.