We've done all this theorizing to get back to "common sense". Some of it sounds "mean", but its true.
IE: if you get together with the expectation that you will take care of each other and this includes the sexual portion... Once someone starts trying to barter the sexual portion or the other needs, there is a problem. If it goes on too long it is a deal breaker.
As a standard norm, I would agree. But there are many exceptions, and who is anybody to say it's wrong if both parties like it? It might sound "perverse" to some, but I heard of a couple where the wife was very attractive and would give her husband sex only if he regularly completed a long list of household chores. Strangely enough, he got turned on by her having this power over him.
In their case, you could say it was "barter" itself that was the spice.
It might sound "perverse" to some, but I heard of a couple where the wife was very attractive and would give her husband sex only if he regularly completed a long list of household chores. Strangely enough, he got turned on by her having this power over him.
In their case, you could say it was "barter" itself that was the spice.
Ssmguy,
There is something rather pathetic about this story - bartering sex for chores is emasculating and a downward spiral - implying that sex is some kind of "reward" for "good behaviour". Once that dynamic is created more and more chores become necessary for less and less sex... All this does is exacerbate the dysfunctionality of the HD and the LD.
Something that perplexes me about your sitch is why you stay with a woman that doesn't want to own or work on her own sexuality, even to make you happy and fulfilled.
The only reason I can think of is that you have children? So exactly how old are they now? And how long do you plan on staying? Until they're 10, 15, 20?
S&A
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated" - from The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
Which I take to mean that every man has within him a spirit of relentlessness and optimism. Its already there; he just has to cultivate it.
Yes, like I said, it may sound perverse to some. The story was told to me in a therapy context, with the point being that what is sometimes important is to get to a stage that works for the couple in the context of their needs and turn-ons, and that it was more typical of younger and untrained therapists to try to first "normalize" both couples to like what is standard and normal. Which they might find boring and ineffective.
Just like only a naive therapist would insist on "treating" a couple where both partners were happy with no sex. If healthy people all had the same "standard" desires and needs, healthy people would all be sexually interchangeable. Which is surely not the case.
My wife works hard to make me happy and fulfilled in many other ways. It's not just about sex, and not everybody's relationship entirely hinges on sex. And it doesn't have to be because of children alone.
I really do find it curious how this point keeps coming up, especially the conclusion "how could there be anything worth it in the marriage if there's no sex". And in the very same context where the same people would make the point that marriage is not just about sex. You really can't have it both ways.
DanceQueen came to the same conclusion. She emphatically proclaimed my marriage a sham, apparently entirely based on sexual issues.
So then people say, well, I must be happy with no sex. No. Not at all. So which is it? Well, isn't that about as dumb as insisting you must have been unhappy as a teenager when you didn't have a sexual partner? No? Does that mean you were happy without sex? No. Inconsistent? No!
As for "working on one's sexuality", it would seem to assume that any woman who "works on her sexuality" is guaranteed to succeed. Perhaps not any more than I could "work on my homosexuality and start liking men". Not likely.
And frankly, I'm at a point where I'm not really interested in someone who is having sex as a chore. I've kind of had my life fill of that already. I would love to be with a woman who was interested in having an orgasm, let alone actually succeeding in having one. Never experienced either.
And those expectations are kind of unfair to my wife. Which gets into issues we haven't been able to resolve between the two of us. But we've decided not to let that affect everything else.
As a standard norm, I would agree. But there are many exceptions, and who is anybody to say it's wrong if both parties like it? It might sound "perverse" to some, but I heard of a couple where the wife was very attractive and would give her husband sex only if he regularly completed a long list of household chores. Strangely enough, he got turned on by her having this power over him.
In their case, you could say it was "barter" itself that was the spice.
I wouldn't mind playing like this. Sounds like fun.
The part of your story which makes me think of your marriage is a sham is that you've stated there's no emotional intimacy. For myself (and, I think, most women) a marriage without emotional intimacy sounds ... pointless, empty, unendurable.
Besides, since your unvarying sex drive from teenage years to the present seems to be an identifying factor for you, which you return to over and over in your postings, it seems that the part of your life which you cannot share with your wife is more important to you than the (unstated) things which you do share.
We're talking about apples and oranges here. The couple SSMGuy is citing likely consist of a dominant and a submissive. There are many submissives whose fetish includes being ordered to do completely non-sexual things--household cleaning, chores, cooking . . . There's a blogger named Holly at http://pervocracy.blogspot.com who just yesterday posted her "BDSM Checklist," and discussed some of her ambivalence about that kind of submission. She's submissive, and she likes being told what to do, being forced to do it, and even enjoys the kind of chore-doing stuff being discussed here. However, she's not married--she's "playing" with boyfriends, friends, and sometimes strangers. She also discussed the question of when this crosses the line from her having her fetish fulfilled to her serving as some guy's free maid service.
Either way, if you're not the kind of submissive who has the very specific fetish that allows you to take sexual pleasure in scrubbing someone's floor for him/her, then I don't think it's very controversial to say that it's a bad idea to barter for sex with your wife. Apples and oranges again. And it gets worse when, as is often the case, one spouse is trying to barter for sex without telling the other (the "hidden bargains" or "unspoken deals" that Glover describes in No More Mr. Nice Guy, where the husband might do anything from going to a bad movie to washing his wife's car or the dishes, but then expect her to reciprocate in some way, often sexually. It seems like he's doing something nice, but he didn't do it to be nice, and since he didn't actually make a bargain with his wife, she won't feel obligated to "keep the bargain" or even find out that she was supposed to do something. It's self-defeating.)
We're talking about apples and oranges here. The couple SSMGuy is citing likely consist of a dominant and a submissive. There are many submissives whose fetish includes being ordered to do completely non-sexual things--household cleaning, chores, cooking . . . There's a blogger named Holly at http://pervocracy.blogspot.com who just yesterday posted her "BDSM Checklist," and discussed some of her ambivalence about that kind of submission. She's submissive, and she likes being told what to do, being forced to do it, and even enjoys the kind of chore-doing stuff being discussed here. However, she's not married--she's "playing" with boyfriends, friends, and sometimes strangers. She also discussed the question of when this crosses the line from her having her fetish fulfilled to her serving as some guy's free maid service.
Either way, if you're not the kind of submissive who has the very specific fetish that allows you to take sexual pleasure in scrubbing someone's floor for him/her, then I don't think it's very controversial to say that it's a bad idea to barter for sex with your wife. Apples and oranges again. And it gets worse when, as is often the case, one spouse is trying to barter for sex without telling the other (the "hidden bargains" or "unspoken deals" that Glover describes in No More Mr. Nice Guy, where the husband might do anything from going to a bad movie to washing his wife's car or the dishes, but then expect her to reciprocate in some way, often sexually. It seems like he's doing something nice, but he didn't do it to be nice, and since he didn't actually make a bargain with his wife, she won't feel obligated to "keep the bargain" or even find out that she was supposed to do something. It's self-defeating.)
Many of us who help our friends and wives out... We don't do it in order to get things. I believe we believe were in a reciprocal relationship, IE: theres not just a taker on the other end of things.
So its not like I'm going to help pay bills, help out with chores and expect that to be equal to equivilent amounts of sex. However I'm not going to do all of this and not notice that this person almost does nothing for me in return, or what they do do, they make it painful.
The basic premise that we can come back to, is most men and women for that matter did not get married to be celebate. We also did not get married to be "emotionally single".
The part of your story which makes me think of your marriage is a sham is that you've stated there's no emotional intimacy. For myself (and, I think, most women) a marriage without emotional intimacy sounds ... pointless, empty, unendurable.
Not sure what I wrote before, but I'd say what's lacking is the emotional intimacy around sex. My wife is fine in all the other emotional ways. Kind of like a sister or good friend. And friends are not pointless, empty or unendurable.
Quote:
Besides, since your unvarying sex drive from teenage years to the present seems to be an identifying factor for you, which you return to over and over in your postings, it seems that the part of your life which you cannot share with your wife is more important to you than the (unstated) things which you do share.
I'm here to discuss my issues, not all the things that are working well. I'd hate to go through 10 pages of happy details just to get to a paragraph of sexual issues so as to give a "proper balance" of my life. If I returned to my unvarying sex drive with my wife and everyone else in my life in the proportion I do here in my postings, nobody would want to have anything to do with me, especially my wife!
So, you're right in the sense that on this forum it is the identifying factor for me.
