Sex Is Not Your Duty
on centering women's desire, men's entitlement to sex, and the power of true consent
Last week I discoursed with Amanda Montei on whether women are allowed to “opt out” of sex if they are married or in a committed partnership. We tried to tackle the question: What happens when one person wants to take a hiatus on sex for a while, potentially, even years? What does that do to their marital bond?
Of course this discussion assumes monogamy and sexual fidelity as something you owe to your partner. Montei correctly points out that there are other options outside of sexual monogamy and that more and more couples are exploring polyamory in all its different forms. (I’ll probably have an entire post on this sometime in the future because I am very interested in people who are shucking outdated norms and redefining what love looks like for them, instead of continuing to trod down the paths laid by patriarchy and puritanism).
But I want to get back to what makes it so difficult to desire when in the throes of early motherhood.
I recently read Esther Perel’s classic Mating in Captivity. In it, she talks about the “sense of freedom and autonomy needed for sexual pleasure,” which is missing in the life of a new mom, and in the life of a mom who is the primary caretaker of young children. Your life is no longer your own. You are a slave to the whims and demands of others. Your body is a vehicle, first sometimes for food when breastfeeding, but then also as transportation until a child can walk (and then for many years after until they are probably 5 and can no longer be picked up comfortably).
Your body is also a physical comfort for your child, a port, a home base, a touchpoint, so that if they get hurt, become upset, are overly tired, they come to you. I remember when my youngest was one, just beginning to walk but still very much a baby, she would sometimes toddle over to me, grab my leg and suck her thumb for a few moments, and then return to her exploring. It was like I was her battery recharger, and she would come to me intermittently to feel safe, secure, and then she could go back out into the world.
This takes a toll on your availability to others, namely your husband. We all have a finite amount of energy we can expend on others, and when you are a new mom, that energy is depleted by your children. And there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that.
Another issue at play in this conversation is that most men have not been taught to awaken desire in women. They have been socialized to expect women to be available to them, whether they “want it” or not. I don’t mean that most men feel comfortable raping women, but that men expect women will cater to their needs. Will acquiesce. Will just do it. Can be convinced.
Perel writes about this issue while discussing a couple who had mismatched desire: “He didn't want to engage in such contortions to elicit her desire. He wanted her to want him in his way.”
Men want women to desire the way they have been taught to desire, in other words, externally, and often spontaneously. Yet women do not have a surge of testosterone in the morning, waking up half ready to go before the day has even begun. Often they are the ones who responded to the nighttime wakings, thus any moment the children are not in need of them, they want to get an extra minute of sleep, not tend to their partner’s physical response to a cascade of hormones.
Dr. Emily Nagoski writes in Come As You Are that not all people experience “spontaneous desire.” Some people experience responsive desire. “Where spontaneous desire appears in anticipation of pleasure, responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure.” This is not defective. It is normal. But this means these people don’t crave sex out of the blue. They need “contexts that facilitate it.” But the world we live in looks down upon that kind of desire. There is this tenor of, if you were truly attracted to me, you would want me in this way. Then women are set up to fail, held up against a standard that was not made for them. (Nagoski also has an entire section of her book about how the “chasing dynamic” - i.e. a man wanting sex when a woman doesn’t - can exacerbate the problem).
(Vanessa Marin, author with her husband Xander of Sex Talks, has a great series on “The Worst Ways to Initiate” on their Instagram.)
I wonder if this issue is at play in the Slate podcast listener’s husband’s attempt to get her to engage with him on Spicer. While it was vulnerable of him to put himself out there by suggesting that as a way to tip-toe back into intimacy, did he check in with his wife regarding whether something like that revs her engines? Or does it turn her off? What does lead her to feeling good in her body or open to pleasure? Perel suggests that men “pay attention to cultivating her desire rather than monitoring it.” And women, but especially mothers, need help tuning in to pleasure. “Before she can open herself up to sex, she needs to expand the general domain of personal pleasure,” Perel writes. “Becoming more generous with herself.”
This is the world of the erotic, which is not sex focused, intercourse obsessed, but a general tenor of life that embraces pleasure of all kinds (not just sexual). But it gets expunged in our sex and orgasm focused world. No one cares whether you got a foot massage this week. No one is keeping track of hugs or cuddles. No, the only number that matters is orgasms (and only his, if we’re being honest).
But experiencing intimacy is so much more than sex. Intimacy is rubbing icy feet together under the covers to get warm, knowing which blanket is your spouse’s favorite to snuggle under on the couch, a glance of shock and solidarity as you catch your child’s vomit in your hands, rolling your eyes at in-law antics. These things provide closeness and bonding just as strong as grinding body parts. They may not release as much oxytocin as an orgasm, but they can make you feel good, connected, part of a team.
It is our culture’s obsession with sex as the measure of a relationship that makes us feel like we are failing when sex isn’t always the primary way a couple stays connected, especially during the season of early parenthood.
Meanwhile, our culture continues to prioritize men’s access to sex above all else. Take Viagra, a symbol of this idea that men are entitled to sex even if their bodies are trying to tell them otherwise. No such product exists for women because women’s turn on has never been the point. It is expected that women will continue having sex even if they don’t want it, even if it becomes painful. Their desire is an afterthought, ancillary, or even just a tool to get the man to orgasm (all that performative moaning whether or not it is an authentic expression of your pleasure).
Even as people posted support of the conversation I had with Montei, some comments still popped up expressing the idea that women should “put out and shut up.” Like, sure, not having sex doesn’t kill him, but does having sex kill you? Like having sex you do not want has no consequences. Like putting out doesn’t take anything from you.
This is only because women have learned to dissociate during sex they don’t want, to disconnect from their bodies. But in this world of #MeToo and Trump and legislatures expecting us to cede control of our bodies, we are no longer willing to do this. We are tired to sacrificing our bodies for other people’s purposes.
“Having a baby forced me to reckon with my relationship to my body, sex and my sexuality. Once my body wasn’t mine anymore (via pregnancy, then nursing, then just comfort) I started realizing that my body hadn’t been mine pretty much...ever. And I started questioning at what point that external messaging became my internal truth. When I work with women in group settings so much of the grief and anger and reclamation is around this exact topic. No one is owed our bodies. And sex should not be used as a tool to keep a relationship “working.” If that’s what it takes to keep a relationship going, then I question if the relationship is one that is meant to keep going at all. We need to really look at how our bodies and sex have become part of the codependency toolkit of not rocking the boat, of keeping others happy, of attempting to not be alone…to the deep detriment of ourselves…of our Souls.”—Vanessa Bennett
I don’t want people to assume that I am playing into the stereotype that women don’t like sex or crave sex or even want to be sexual beings. Every woman is different and some moms don’t experience the decrease in libido we are discussing. Many women enjoy sex once things get going (as Sister said in one episode of We Can Do Hard Things, “I’m often afterwards, like That was a good idea.”) But I do think women have not been taught to center our own experience and thus sometimes, in mid-life, we get a chance to course correct. To say, hold on, I’ve been having sex in a way that was for other people, not for me. I’d like to stop doing that.
That is what taking a sabbatical from sex is trying to accomplish. It allows women to feel ownership of their own bodies and sexuality. It gives them a chance to feel agency. And ultimately, it grants them access to true consent.
Which serves everyone.
FURTHER READING:
True Love Is Dead: Long Live True Love: Our binary understanding of gender & sexuality is changing - but what about love? Zooming Out. Joanna Schroeder. (She also wrote this powerful piece: In Defense of Burning Marriage to the Ground)
When it takes more than 2: Raising kids and doing untraditional/non-monogamy. Evil Witches. (The term “open above the waist” just got me in this interview. There are so many ways to do life!) (Also, did you know that Martha Beck is part of a throuple? So is Dr. Nicole LePera, author of How to Do the Work).
Ejaculate Responsibly. Gabrielle Blair.
Come As You Are. Dr. Emily Nagoski.
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. Esther Perel.
Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent and Control. Amanda Montei.
Sex is a need for the overwhelming majority of men. Emotional support / non-sexual acts of love are a need for the overwhelming majority of women. Both have a right to expect their partner in marriage to work to meet those needs. It will never be perfect on either side because we're all human. But ask yourself if you would be ok with your husband wanting to take break from performing non-sexual acts of love to you for months on end or even years. Probably not, right?
And yes, if he's not already giving you long hugs, acts of service, backrubs/foot massages, etc. then he's falling down on the job. By extension, if you're not giving him sex then you're falling down on the job. The question you have to ask yourself is which one of you is going to decide to give sacrificially, to be the first one to proactively try to meet the other's needs and kick-start a virtuous cycle of give-and-receive? He needs to ask himself the same thing.
I would also say that for a lot of men, sex is extremely unsatisfying if the woman doesn't have an orgasm as well. It's one of the most embarrassing things for a man when he can't bring his wife to orgasm and it leaves you feeling like all you've really done is masturbate using your wife's body. It makes the whole experience distasteful. For what it's worth.
The comments from angry men here are very triggering. They do not want to have a lively discourse. They want to rage women into acquiescence.