No Sex, Please; We're Parents
The real reason I'm turned off.
by Jeanne Sager
June 2, 2008
It's not that I don't want sex. I just want a few moments to remember it's my body to begin with. So I have to admit I blanched at the title of an April article in Time magazine — "Help for Sex-Starved Wives."
The author of The Sex Starved Wife: What to Do When He Loses Desire, Michele Weiner Davis, expounded on all the women who told her their husbands always seem to "have a headache."
Fair enough. But a read-through of the first chapter of her book had me clenching my hands into little fists.
"A woman is expected to have dips in her desire for sex and she can talk about it without her femininity or sanity being called into question," Weiner Davis says. "She can commiserate with her women friends about her annoyance with her husband's one-track mind and how she can't really hug him without his thinking sex is imminent. She can do this and be in really good company."
She fingers the media for making an issue out of men who are just too darn horny for their own good,
Why is crawling into bed after another day as a human jungle gym so hard?
overshadowing the desires of women who "are absolutely craving a loving, passionate, juicy, sexual relationship with [their] man."
If it were that simple, I could go to my girlfriends and moan about my husband.
But Jonathan isn't the problem. Not wanting sex isn't the problem. The problem is that, after a long day as a human jungle gym, I can hardly stomach the idea of going to first base.
"The person with the lower sex drive controls the sexual relationship, not out of a need to manipulate or control, but because they have veto power. If they're not in the mood, it doesn't happen," Weiner Davis told Time. "There's an unspoken agreement: the person with the lower desire expects his or her spouse to accept it, not complain about it, and also to be monogamous. In my years in working with couples, that's pretty much an unfair and unworkable arrangement."
Unfair? Okay, I feel guilty sometimes. But it's not unworkable. And it's temporary. In giving birth, I gave up the rights to my body on my time. Jillian has a claim on me right now, but she won't be climbing on me forever.
I've spoken with my doctor. He told me what the American Academy of Family Physicians says: "Up to seventy percent of couples have a problem with sex at some time. Most women sometimes have sex that doesn't feel good. This doesn't mean you have a sexual problem."
And really, who said anything about it not feeling good . . . once you get there. Once you round third base. But to get there would involve snuggling, possibly even nuzzling and . . . Aaaaach!
Article photo: Nikki McGuinnis / Mean Camp Photography
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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