The higher priority you give it, the easier your entire relationship gets.

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However, I think that one person always wanting it on their terms is asking for trouble, as is refusing to deal with it.

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thanks.

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Hi Bob, sorry to come in to this thread so late, but we've just joined these boards and are feeling our way around before we pipe in too much.

That said, and as a couple who have seen our ups and downs for the better part of the last 19 years, we'd like to ask a couple of questions.

First, what exactly, do YOU do to help get the sexual feelings rolling in your wife? Do you still make her feel desired sexually beyond something to satisfy your need to get off? Do you compliment her on how beautiful she is to you in the morning? Do you still tell her you love her everyday? Send her goofy e-mails? Buy her flowers? Dress up and go out to dinner? Whisk her off to Vegas for an impromptu show and night in a nice hotel? Do you genuinely listen to her when she has something to say? Do you insist on taking the kids occasionally and make her an appointment at the local spa for a massage and/or mineral bath treatment? Have you ever explored tantric meditation together? Other than wanting to fuck MORE, have you given thought to making love LONGER?

Your comment on not being able to stay connected because you're not getting sex is telling and you have it completely wrong. Connection LEADS to sex, not vice versa.

A few years back, we experienced a drop in sexual frequency and disparity in desire. Rather than throw in the towel or having one of us simply turn to porn and be miserable jerking off or simply going about our separate business steaming underneath the surface, we decided to face the "elephant in the room" and face the prospect that we'd either solve the sexual problems or try separation (which may have led to divorce). Since we still loved each other intensely, the prospect of breaking up sufficiently shocked us into finally recommitting ourselves and DOING the necessary things to get back on track. Suddenly, vibrators, dildos, naughty books, lingerie, and yes - porn - were infiltrating our lives and we began to have FUN again. Nasty phonecalls became regular occurences and we continue to search together for exciting things to try and do to keep things hot and bothered. In fact, we got so into sex that we now own a sex shop in Los Angeles - LOL.

The point is, you CAN recapture the magic and you CAN improve sexual disparity issues if the BOTH of you are committed to making it work.

It's a two way street, Bob; we hope you realize this and we wish you all the luck in the world.

Edited by - Freddy and Eddy on 3/22/2007 11:51:27 AM

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Savage Love
March 14th, 2007 Email Print By Dan Savage

Longtime reader with a vanilla question: What to do about differing libidos? We're a straight couple together 20-plus years, and we've aged well. No weight gain, no radical changes in appearance. We are open and loving, and I am cognizant of her needs and feelings. Yesterday, I read an interview with Joan Sewell, author of I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, and handed it to my wife and observed that this is the new ideal: women laughing at their male partners and shrugging their shoulders about women's general lack of desire. My spouse can now point at this book and say, "You see, I'm normal, and so are all of my friends, ha ha ha, live with it…"

While I want sex daily, I get it maybe five to 20 times a year—and I am lucky compared to some straight married men! Where are the women you hear about who want sex constantly?

Not Giving Up

I haven't had a chance to read Ms. Sewell's book, NGU, but I devoured Sandra Tsing Loh's review of I'd Rather Eat Chocolate in the current Atlantic Monthly. (Loh's book reviews are worth the price of a subscription.) And I'm saddened to report that, according to Sewell and Loh, there's no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don't exist—never did.

All that yammering about women with voracious sexual appetites during Sex And The City's long reign of terror? A cruel hoax. A figment of the straight-male imagination, a Big Lie picked up on and promoted by self-serving female "sexperts" eager to tell straight men what they wanted to hear. Women have naturally lower sex drives, Sewell writes. It's a hormonal thing. Testosterone makes humans horny, men have lots more than women, so men are hornier—and all the Sex And The City repeats in the world aren't going to change that.

So if straight women don't want sex—or as much sex—what do they want? Chocolate, says Sewell, or a good book. Massive amounts of carbs, says Loh, who approvingly writes of a lesbian couple she knows. With no men around demanding sex, Loh's lesbian friends are livin' the dream: "Teri and Pat have had a special Monday-night ritual. They order an extra-large cheese pizza," writes Loh. While they wait for their pizza, "they settle in on the couch with large twin bags of Doritos. Each chip is dipped first in cream cheese and then in salsa. Cream cheese, salsa. Cream cheese, salsa… The Doritos are finished to the last crumb, and then, upon arrival, the pizza as well." (No dessert is mentioned—I imagine it's just one wafer-thin mint.) Teri and Pat are 50 pounds overweight and suffer from "lesbian bed death," but for them, pizza-and-Doritos night is "better than sex." Loh, who has a sex-starved husband at home, is green with envy.

So the jig is up, NGU. For a while, women with high libidos were normal, and women with low libidos were freakish. Now women with low libidos can hand their husbands Sewell's book and rip open a bag of Doritos.

But there's a silver lining, NGU. Back when women with low libidos were regarded as abnormal—way back at the beginning of the month—it was fashionable to blame the man in a woman's life for her lack of desire. For years, whenever I printed a letter from a guy who wasn't getting any, or wasn't getting much, mail would pour in from women insisting that he had to be doing something wrong.

I called them the "if only" letters: If only she didn't have to do all the housework, she would want to have sex. If only he would talk with her about her day, she would want to have sex. If only she weren't so exhausted from taking care of the kids, she would want to have sex. If only he didn't ask for sex, she would want to have sex. Well now, thanks to Sewell, straight guys everywhere know that it doesn't matter how much housework you do, or how sincerely interested you are in her day, or how much of the child care you take on: She still won't want to fuck you. So leave the dishes in the sink, grab a beer, and go play a video game, guys. Your "if only" nightmares are over.

Sewell's book is also going to restore straight men's dignity. I was recently shown a new sex-toy collection for straight couples, a basket of erotic goodies—"lotions and potions!"—clearly designed for women who would rather eat chocolate. Edible strawberry lubricant, vanilla body powder, chocolate genital sprinkles. Lotions and potions? Try frosting.

And, my God, chocolate sprinkles for your cock? How humiliating is that? It's the sex-toy equivalent of "porn for couples," a.k.a. "the porn straight men watch when straight women are watching them watch porn," and it's every dick-shriveling inch as unerotic. Here's the message these tins of frosting send to men: She would put your dick in her mouth if only it tasted less like cock and more like cupcakes.

No more, guys—toss the lotions and potions. It's time to let your dicks be dicks again.

One thing that hasn't changed in the wake of Sewell's book is my advice to women with low libidos: You can have strict monogamy or you can have a low libido, ladies, but you can't have both. If monogamy is a priority, you're gonna have to put out, i.e., regular vaginal intercourse and the occasional tide-him-over handjob and/or blowjob, cheerfully given. If all you wanna do is sit there and eat chocolate, you're gonna have to turn a blind eye to lap-dances and mistresses and happy endings and the return of trade, i.e., gay guys giving NSA head to straight guys.

And while low-libido women everywhere will point to Sewell's book to justify their disregard for their husbands' needs, just as NGU fears, Sewell herself is following my advice: "Because Sewell loves her husband and knows that he, like her, craves physical contact," writes Loh, "they eventually worked out a contract both can live with. It involves handjobs, lubejobs, and—when she doesn't feel like being touched—her dressing up… and letting him watch… so he can finish himself off by himself."

Oh, and guys? You need to accept those tide-you-over blowjobs and handjobs just as cheerfully as she gives them. The one thing besides hormones that contributes to female reluctance to consent to sex is the expectation, on the part of the male, that consent always means vaginal intercourse—except when it means anal intercourse. If your hole were getting pounded every time you said yes to sex, guys, you would say yes less often. So broaden your definition of sex to include handjobs, blowjobs, lubejobs, and masturbation in her presence or on her person—these things count, guys, they're not consolation prizes—and you'll get laid a lot more.

And finally, a word about a book I have read: In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins tears the intelligent-design idjits into a million little pieces. I feel bad about piling on—almost. Hey, intelligent-design idjits? If God really wants us to have heterosexual sex only, and then only within the bounds of holy matrimony, and if adultery offends Him so much—it's a stoning offense, right up there with gay sex—how come He designed men and women to be sexually incompatible?

Well, I should say that He designed straight men and straight women to be sexually incompatible. Lesbian couples, with their bags of Doritos, and gay couples, with our mutually insatiable sexual appetites, seem pretty intelligently designed. Thank you, Jesus!

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And shit, we have so much porn in our shop right now, you might as well come by and take a bunch of it home (for the usual charge of nothing).

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But I did say something nice about you guys in this thread.

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BSD here.

Married 23 years, nobody's strayed (yet), nobody happy.

Saw a lot that looks very familiar in your two posts. Been swimming in those waters for quite awhile now. (Not assessing blame, there's enough to go around.)

Your contribution is interesting and appreciated.

BSD

Edited by - BSD on 3/23/2007 4:04:39 AM

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Hey Bob, Sinclair's Joy Of Erotic Massage DVD is pretty nice. If I remember rightly the lovely lady in this film massages her partner into a very obvious and sweet state of bliss. I liked it.

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The massage thing can be tricky if you know you're dealing with a slightly reluctant lover I think. You don't want to go in there like you're trading a massage for sex ( or you might...)sometimes I think that's why some couples stop touching or being affectionate, the reluctant one fears that every touch is an attempt at sex which it may or may not be. It's almost like you have to throw in a random hug or sexy smooch and then leave the room (or the house) until the idea of being a little more touchy/sexy without it necessarily leading to anything more starts to become a pattern.

My other slightly unformed theory is people should just say yes, say yes to sex. All the time. Yes. Then do it, have sex, make love, fuck - get used to how nice it can be, train your body to enjoy, stop thinking and start feeling. Use the energy that normally goes on the negotiating and the chase to better use - fucking. Oh it could be so simple. The chaser stops panicking about getting enough, the chased stops feeling pressured and pursued and learns that being desired is actually a very nice state to be in. Everyone feels more loved, hurts are soothed, resentment dissipates - world peace is achieved -- just by saying yes.

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And hey Loraine, you knew it was only a matter of time before we finally made our way over.

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