As you may recall, last week Dennis Prager wrote a long and tedious column about how women just don’t give up the nookie to their spouses enough, and how everyone would be happier if only women would stop worrying about whether they liked sex, and start just having it as part of their marital duties, because — and I think I speak for everything — there’s nothing hotter than having sex with someone who is doing so with the same excitement and joy that one brings to filling the dishwasher.
Anyhoo, Prager left off by threatening to continue his insane rant. Many of us hoped that disaster could be avoided, but alas, Prager has now followed through, writing a follow-up that is, remarkably, even more pointless. I’m not sure even where to begin, other than to say that I think it will soon become clear why Prager’s wives divorced him.
After a brief reminder that Prager actually has written things before, he launches right into the “eight reasons for a woman not to allow not being in the mood for sex to determine whether she denies her husband sex.” They begin in truly awesome fashion:
1. If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex. When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur. But for most women, for myriad reasons — female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested — there is little comparable to a man’s “out of nowhere,” and seemingly constant, desire for sex.
Wow. Just…wow.
Dennis — can I call you Dennis? — many of us have been in relationships. With women. Go figure. And you know what? Those women were, you know, in the mood more than once a year. I know, it’s crazy, but it’s true — women like sex. They like it a lot. Not being a woman, I can’t say for sure whether they like sex as much as men, but it’s pretty close, and frankly, I don’t know why we’d waste time arguing when we all could use that time to have sex.
Now, if your wife wants to have sex with you once a season, that is a sign that there’s something wrong in your relationship. Indeed, it’s a sign she might not be sexually attracted to you — because unless your wife is one of the small percentage of asexual Americans, for whom sex is simply not appealing, it’s vanishingly unlikely that your wife has not desired sex in a weekly span. If she doesn’t desire it with you, then there are problems in your relationship — but not the sort of problems that can be solved by insisting that she should just have desireless sex.
Prager really could just stop here — it’s pretty axiomatic that anyone who thinks women have no sex drives to speak of doesn’t so much understand anything about the human race, but he continues on:
2. Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood?
Um…everything, Dennis. Everything. You think you don’t make decisions based on your emotions? Of course you do. You chose your job because you love to lecture and moralize — that’s an important decision, and one that clearly wasn’t made based on your actual talents.
Prager wants to make “mood” into something silly and frivolous. And sometimes, it is — I’ve had sex when I wasn’t “in the mood,” but wasn’t not in the mood either. I think everyone has. Nobody is rarin’ to go all the time, but sometimes, if your partner is interested, you decide to get interested, because even if you’re not that into it, you want your partner to be happy. If Prager had simply written that sentence and spared us the evolutionary psych bullcrap, he would have a point.
But there’s “not really into it” and “actively not desiring it,” and the fact is that those two moods are on a continuum. Emotions are not binary, discrete things, as anyone who has emotions can tell you. Should you occasionally indulge a partner when you’re not that excited, but you aren’t that opposed, either? Sure — and that holds whether we’re talking about sex or a trip to the local farmer’s market. But should you feel obligated to do something you really don’t want to do tonight? No — and again, that’s true of sex and farmer’s markets.
Of course, Prager manages to make this point more offensive:
What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man.
Because, as everyone knows, sex is to women as work is to men. It’s a duty. A responsibility. Moreover, it’s what men and women want. Men want sex, women want fat stacks of cash. Quid pro quo, ladies, quid pro quo.
What woman would love a man who was so governed by feelings and moods that he allowed them to determine whether he would do something as important as go to work? Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can — indeed, ought to — refuse sex because she is not in the mood? Why?
Because if I refuse to go to work, eventually I lose my house and die of starvation, whereas if my wife refuses to have sex with me, at worst she’s risking divorce. I’m glad we had this chat.
So what gives women the idea that they have the right not to want to have sex? The sixties, of course! The decade that keeps on giving (to conservatives) made women believe they actually have, I don’t know, bodily autonomy or some crap:
3. The baby boom generation elevated feelings to a status higher than codes of behavior. In determining how one ought to act, feelings, not some code higher than one’s feelings, became decisive: “No shoulds, no oughts.” In the case of sex, therefore, the only right time for a wife to have sex with her husband is when she feels like having it. She never “should” have it. But marriage and life are filled with “shoulds.”
Again, there’s “feels like having it” and “feels like having it.” Nobody — nobody — is saying that a relationship involves no compromise, ever. But compromise is a two-way street, and while it’s okay for partners to try to balance everyone’s needs — indeed, it’s requisite — it’s also important that partners take each other’s feelings into consideration. Again, I’d rather masturbate than have sex with someone who really didn’t want to, but was doing it out of pure obligation. And I really don’t understand people who feel differently.
4. Thus, in the past generation we have witnessed the demise of the concept of obligation in personal relations. We have been nurtured in a culture of rights, not a culture of obligations. To many women, especially among the best educated, the notion that a woman owes her husband sex seems absurd, if not actually immoral. They have been taught that such a sense of obligation renders her “property.” Of course, the very fact that she can always say “no” — and that this “no” must be honored — renders the “property” argument absurd. A woman is not “property” when she feels she owes her husband conjugal relations. She is simply wise enough to recognize that marriages based on mutual obligations — as opposed to rights alone and certainly as opposed to moods — are likely to be the best marriages.
A woman doesn’t owe her husband sex.
If things in a marriage are happening because they’re “owed,” then there’s been a breakdown in the relationship itself. Women in healthy relationships desire sex, as do men. There may be some variance as to how much, but that’s something to work through before getting married — which, might I note, is a strong argument for sex before marriage.
Prager notes that a woman can always say “no,” because even he won’t go so far as to advocate spousal rape, at least not overtly. But what he argues is that women can say no, but really shouldn’t, you know, ever. Sex should be an obligation, like mowing the lawn or balancing the checkbook — it’s not something you skip. That sex is qualitatively different than a chore never seems to have gotten through Prager’s skull. I can’t imagine why he’s divorced. Twice.
5. Partially in response to the historical denigration of women’s worth, since the 1960s, there has been an idealization of women and their feelings. So, if a husband is in the mood for sex and the wife is not, her feelings are deemed of greater significance — because women’s feelings are of more importance than men’s. One proof is that even if the roles are reversed — she is in the mood for sex and he is not — our sympathies again go to the woman and her feelings.
Okay, that’s just nonsensical. You know why women’s feelings tend to get more play? Because men are still told by Prager and his compadres that emotion is a silly thing that’s best stifled and ignored. Men are logical and rational, except when we are angry, but that’s totally okay. Oh, and men always want sex, because if you don’t, you’re either gay or a woman.
Women’s feelings come up more because the feminist movement recognized that feelings are not something to be ignored. Incidentally, feminism says that about men, too — men’s feelings are indeed valid. And if a mismatch in sexual compatibility leaves one partner feeling rejected, he or she has every right to that feeling — and every right to tell their partner of that feeling.
But of course, back in the first column, Prager said that men aren’t supposed to have to express their feelings, that women should just divine their knowledge of men from fat man skinny woman sitcoms and Dennis Prager columns, and that asking men to express their feelings is somehow wrong. Okay, fine. But if you don’t express your feelings, and your partner does, you can’t be surprised when your partner’s feelings get more discussion because — and this is important — your partner has no idea you feel that way.
In a healthy relationship, with open discussion, a partner can say, “you know, I really would like to have sex more often — I feel kind of rejected when you turn me down.” The other partner could respond to those feelings, both by reassuring and by talking about how to find a compromise that makes everyone happy. But that requires communication and honesty about emotions — something Prager says men should not be required to do. Because sex is important. Honesty and openness? Not so much.
6. Yet another outgrowth of ’60s thinking is the notion that it is “hypocritical” or wrong in some other way to act contrary to one’s feelings. One should always act, post-’60s theory teaches, consistent with one’s feelings. Therefore, many women believe that it would simply be wrong to have sex with their husband when they are not in the mood to. Of course, most women never regard it as hypocritical and rightly regard it as admirable when they meet their child’s or parent’s or friend’s needs when they are not in the mood to do so. They do what is right in those cases, rather than what their mood dictates. Why not apply this attitude to sex with one’s husband? Given how important it is to most husbands, isn’t the payoff — a happier, more communicative, and loving husband and a happier home — worth it?
You know, again and again, Prager shows that he really doesn’t understand sex, or love, or feelings, or the 1960s, or human beings. I really can’t even snark here.
7. Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex: It should always be mutually desired and equally satisfying or one should not engage in it. Therefore, if a couple engages in sexual relations when he wants it and she does not, the act is “dehumanizing” and “mechanical.” Now, ideally, every time a husband and wife have sex, they would equally desire it and equally enjoy it. But, given the different sexual natures of men and women, this cannot always be the case. If it is romance a woman seeks — and she has every reason to seek it — it would help her to realize how much more romantic her husband and her marriage are likely to be if he is not regularly denied sex, even of the non-romantic variety.
I’ll joint Prager up to this point — there’s a difference between Movie Sex and Real Sex, and it’s destructive. But not the way Prager thinks. In Movie Sex, both partners know everything about each other through psychic connections. Because they both read the script, they know exactly what to do to turn the other one on. Because they have stage hands, they have 10,000 candles burning around the sunken marble bathtub filled with rose petals in which they are expressing their softly-lit love for each other.
In real life, of course, sex is less scripted, and getting things right requires — I know, this is crazy — communication. Discussion. Talking about what works and what doesn’t. It can and should be good-natured discussion, but communication is going to need to happen.
And incidentally, being romantic? That’s something both partners should try if they want a good relationship. There’s nothing bad about showing your partner that you love them. And indeed, there’s nothing bad about doing that even if it doesn’t lead to sex.
All right, you ready for Prager’s big finish? Bring home the crazy:
8. In the rest of life, not just in marital sex, it is almost always a poor idea to allow feelings or mood to determine one’s behavior. Far wiser is to use behavior to shape one’s feelings. Act happy no matter what your mood and you will feel happier. Act loving and you will feel more loving. Act religious, no matter how deep your religious doubts, and you will feel more religious. Act generous even if you have a selfish nature, and you will end with a more a generous nature. With regard to virtually anything in life that is good for us, if we wait until we are in the mood to do it, we will wait too long.
Wow.
You know, if you “act happy,” that won’t make you happier. It’s true! Indeed, it may make you sadder, as you try to bottle up your feelings and show a façade that is at variance with what’s going on inside. If you “act religious,” that’s nice — but if there’s a God, I misdoubt that She would rather deal with an honest agnostic than someone who cloaks themselves in piety. If you “act generous,” you may feel more generous — but if you do so resentfully, you won’t feel more generous for long.
Indeed, there is something to be said for being honest with oneself about what one wants out of life, and how one feels — and acting that way.
The best solution to the problem of a wife not being in the mood is so simple that many women, after thinking about it, react with profound regret that they had not thought of it earlier in their marriage. As one bright and attractive woman in her 50s ruefully said to me, “Had I known this while I was married, he would never have divorced me.”
I don’t know if it’s true, but I do know this — if the bright, attractive woman’s husband never told her his feelings, she can’t be held responsible for being a mind-reader. If he never told her that he felt rejected, then she can’t be faulted for not knowing it. And indeed, we don’t know that he did feel rejected — we don’t know anything about this case, other than Prager’s neatly-plucked quote.
That solution is for a wife who loves her husband — if she doesn’t love him, mood is not the problem — to be guided by her mind, not her mood, in deciding whether to deny her husband sex.
Except a mood is part of the mind. We can’t separate the two. I know, “emotion” and “logic” are supposed to be separate things, but they aren’t. We all have one brain, and one brain only.
If her husband is a decent man — if he is not, nothing written here applies — a woman will be rewarded many times over outside the bedroom (and if her man is smart, inside the bedroom as well) with a happy, open, grateful, loving, and faithful husband. That is a prospect that should get any rational woman into the mood more often.
Because sex is not a desirable end for women, not really, but maybe they can use it as a carrot to get their guy to go to work and maybe watch the kids once a week.
Prager doesn’t understand women, not in the least — nor men, as far as I can tell. His columns might have some value for women who are unaware that humans are sexual creatures, but that value is more than swamped by their stubborn insistence that men will suffer silently, because that’s how men are.
Here’s an alternate solution: you need to be honest about your emotions. You need to be direct with your partners. You need to communicate your feelings. Those are your responsibilities. And they’re far more important than simply having sex whenever your partner wants it.
Prager seems to think that sex is owed in a relationship, but emotional honesty is not. That’s a recipe for disaster, no matter who is wanting sex and who is hiding their emotions. The fact is that a relationship only works as long as both partners can stay on the same page, and that can only happen if both partners are aware of where the other is. A relationship can handle disagreements about the amount of sex that should be had. A relationship can’t survive, however, if one or both partners is simply not showing enough interest in the relationship to take the time to express their feelings.
Then again, for some of us married fellas, Crazy Dennis is actually being generous with his “once a month” figure.
Sigh.
This guy is a nut. but your response isn’t really that great either. The problem is hidden in the middle of your post:
Er, do you know many people who have been married for a while? Do you know any of them who are exactly like they were before marriage? Do you notice that some of them have changed, occasionally in significant ways?
Some of those changes involve sexual desire. Or physical issues which lead to an effect on sex.
Only fools get married to someone with a previously known sexual incompatibility. But because people’s sexual preferences change over time, a huge number of marriages involve at least one partner who is sexually dissatisfied.
Or maybe more women than you realize feel that they should have sex even when they don’t feel like it, and over time grow more and more to feel that it is a chore? It’s an insidious pressure from many, many sources.
There are a lot of things my partner and I used to do all the time that we hardly ever get to do any more, a decade into our relationship and well into our parenting & professional lives. Sleep for 8 hours or more, go to a restaurant, go to live theater, go to punk shows, spend our vacations doing something other than visit our parents.
Sometimes sex falls prey to those same pressures. But the answer to that is the same as it is for everything else – look at what we have going on and figure out what we can de-prioritize to make space for what we miss. NOT put it on the chore list with cleaning the cat box and buying Cheerios, or say “well, we’ll just have more unsatisfying sex just to keep score.”
The problem of course is not the sex so much as the sex coupled with complete monogamy. Dan Savage is fond of saying that availability and monogamy should be linked: you can ask someone to be monogamous so long as you can satisfy her needs, but you cannot simultaneously refuse to provide for your partner’s needs and refuse to let her get what she needs elsewhere.
No spouse or partner can satisfy all of your needs, so you always get something outside the relationship be it ‘person to watch birds with,’ ‘person to discuss inlaws with,’ or ‘person to discuss Sartre with.’ We accept that it’s fine, even good, for someone to have a variety of interests and spend a lot of time with someone outside the relationship. Doing so allows us to be happy with what our partner has to offer.
In that respect, perhaps more of these unhappy people should just be having sexual affairs. If you can’t get the sex you want from your partner, get it somewhere else. It isn’t impossible; it works in Europe to some degree.
Sailorman: I think that’s a personal matter for every couple to decide. My spouse and I are not particularly committed to the concept of monogamy, so for us, it might be appropriate if one of us decided to bring up the concept of extramarital relations. But other people may want other solutions. I think it’s reductionist to suggest that going otuside the relationship is the only way to satisfy sexual desires that aren’t being met, and can’t morally be met by marital rape. There are other sensual activities that the couple can engage in that don’t involve forcing one partner to lie back and think of England, but can meet emotional and physical needs.
I come back to Jeff’s point about masturbation: we all ought to be capable of meeting our own physical needs. Every woman should have a vibrator; every man should have a Fleshlite. Everyone who is married should be getting their emotional need (to feel loved, prioritized and respected by an equal partner) met even if there is no sex. If the concern is about having the physical and emotional needs met simultaneously — which I think is the goal of marital sex, to be getting physical fulfillment with someone you love and who loves you — then an affair seems unlikely to do that. Unless it’s an affair that involves emotional commitment to a new partner, which is likely to break up the marriage.
Totally masturbation, with or without aids.
But also one partner masturbating while the other one is cuddling hir. Sensual massage. Things like that.
And see, what bugged me was the idea that if the man is a “decent man” (no definition–who judges this?) everything else in the relationship is up to her: all the blame if it goes wrong, all the credit if it goes right. What if you’re having sex every time he asks, but he still divorces you?
Well, you’re both right. Yes, acting happy — in the meaning of ‘act’ as a false front, a character to be played dishonestly — won’t make you happier. But it is often true that choosing do behave a certain way can nudge your emotions in that directions. Do this in a conscious fashion. Acting (as in, ‘behaving’ or ‘taking actions’) in ways that would normally mean you care about someone can make you more caring, even if you started out indifferent to that person or really disliked them.
Prager’s “you will feel happier” is too strong. Your “it won’t make you happier” is too weak. If you’re sad (and not clinically depressed), then choosing different actions and framing things with different words can help improve your attitude. Words and deeds have power, even over the person who uses them.
Well, SEXual =/ SENsual, so if someone is looking for sexual stuff then cuddling isn’t it. Neither is solo masturbation, necessarily: fun, but different than partnered stuff.
It is my anecdotal experience, borne out by a variety of conversations with other people I know, that partners who are unwilling to have sex are also generally unwilling to be engaged in someone else’s sexual act. Largely that makes sense: irrespective of what sex your partner is, it’s probably less stressful and time consuming to give them a quickie handjob* than it is to give them a sensual massage. Folks who don’t want to do one don’t want to do the other.
Being male and straight I primarily hear about this from other het males, and I can say with high accuracy that “no sex” means “no sex-related stuff” in the vast majority of cases. It’s not as if the “no sex thanks” wives are giving the OK to stock up on Fleshlights and DVD porn, and/or to lie next to them in bed and masturbate. The few women I have talked to (some straight, some not) report similar stuff.
*I don’t understand why this solution isn’t more often suggested, other than by Jocelyn Elders. Sure, you may not want to have sex. But if you can give a 5 minute shoulder massage with a smile even if you don’t want to (and how many hundreds of those have we given over our lives?) then you can massage elsewhere with a smile. And if you can’t give a couple of 5 minute shoulder massages every week to keep your partner’s engine running smoothly (and you get yours, as well) then perhaps it’s time to find a new partner.
The women you have talked to who say they want sex less frequently than their husbands do, have told you that they forbid their husbands to masturbate? Are they hyper-religious or something? (Not to mention living in a fantasy world if they think their husbands actually comply.) I frankly find this implausible: women know that men masturbate, and especially that they masturbate when they’re not having partnered sex. Other than a Victorian morality issue with onanism, what’s wrong with masturbation when the partner doesn’t want to have sex?
Jocelyn Elders is (in)famous for recommending masturbation as a way to reduce teen/premarital sex. When did she start promoting handjobs?
No. the husbands who I have talked to who want sex much more often than they are able to have sex with their wives, have found that their wives do not approve of porn, sex aids, and masturbation. They can do it, but it’s in the closet, and that’s by no means an acceptable substitute.
Heh. I have one hyper religious friend, and it’s even worse for him. In fact, he’s pretty much screwed (figuratively only, of course).
I thought Jocelyn also promoted MUTUAL masturbation (i.e. handjobs) though I could be incorrect on that.
Disapproval of pornography that uses live actors (as opposed to written erotica or anime) seems reasonable: some people consider the pornography industry to be exploitative and abusive toward women, or are uncomfortable with the depictions of sex (again, frequently violent toward women) in mainstream porn. What’s the wives’ problem with the Fleshlite or one’s right hand?
One proof is that even if the roles are reversed — she is in the mood for sex and he is not — our sympathies again go to the woman and her feelings.
Oh my goddess, is he ever wrong about that. Women get the message CONSTANTLY (from women’s magazines and so forth — has Prager ever picked one of those up, you know, just for research?) that if their male partner doesn’t get a rock-solid boner every time she touches him on the shoulder, that it’s because he finds her unspeakably ugly, revoltingly fat, and stupefyingly boring, and that he’s obviously getting some on the side, probably with the babysitter or one of his daughter’s college classmates. There’s no such thing as a guy having a low sex drive, erectile dysfunction (nobody really takes Viagra or Cialis, right?), or libido-cutting illness (he’s 60 years old, doesn’t he even know any men who have had prostate cancer?). I cannot tell you how much that cultural meme has fucked me up over the years, and it’s BULLSHIT.
What’s the wives’ problem with the Fleshlite or one’s right hand?
I’m curious about this too — I have yet to meet a woman (or man) surprised that their partner occasionally masturbates. Indeed, most are pleased that on nights when they’re not in the mood, their partner has a reasonable option.
You never met my ex. It actually angered her. Oh, those were some fun times. But she was all about control, so it’s not really all that surprising. In fact, she may have a lot in common to talk about with Prager. It may be made a tad more difficult by the fact that she’s a woman, but I feel certain that there is something there.
My favorite bit from this Prager piece:
I was totally unaware that those dirty hippies were so violent. It’s news to me that if I hate somebody beyond any hate that I’ve ever felt that the hippies say that I should torture and kill them so that I am acting, to use Prager’s bad grammar, consistent with my feelings.
Or it could just be that Prager is a moron or a liar, I suppose.
@ Meowser: check out these gems from Prager’s first article on “When a Woman Isn’t in the Mood”:
I’d be willing to bet good money that the “different causes” for men’s lack of interest have to do with the woman not keeping up her part of the bargain by being sweet and attractive at all times. (Seems likely given Prager’s general attitude in this article.)
And here we go with some quality dismissive squeamishness. I’m smelling hysteria all over Prager’s article, here in the form of not being willing to imagine or contemplate that women actively desire sex, and can in fact view sex as an expression of love. (Would probably surprise him to learn about those of us who have sex for the sake of, er, having sex!)
Fair enough, but this seems like a separate issue even if both problems are occurring within the same partnership.
(Between Prager and the comments threads over at feministe etc., I’m getting mighty sick of these horribly unsexy comparisons, but:) Say I were trying to eat healthier, and needed to draw some boundaries around my willpower with my partner’s help. I could refuse to cook unhealthy meals for my partner. I could refuse to go out to eat unhealthy meals with my partner. I could insist that my partner not keep unhealthy food in the house. I could insist that my partner not eat unhealthy food at all. I could insist that my partner adopt the black-coffee-and-grapefruit diet for as long as I wanted to stay on it myself.
These are all different levels of imposition, and dominance in the relationship. And it seems to me that they represent different ideas about what you are and are not owed–different levels of inequality. If one partner refuses to have sex unless both people are in the mood, then they’re drawing a line down the middle. I don’t think that’s true of people who insist that their partners avoid sexual pleasure altogether.
It’s one of the many, many annoying things about the Prager series. Like Amp was saying about pretending happiness in order to feel it: I’m not Prager, so I won’t speak for the rest of the planet, but I have a lot of trouble feeling horny in the face of a sexual obligation. Quite the opposite! Having sex when I disliked to would not only fail to increase my partnered desire, but cut it down. It would be starved by stress and resentment.
But per Prager, a woman’s desires are defined by lack especially when they are strongest. Like the bible-thumpers who claim that we have freedom of but not freedom from religion, he argues that her sensual and romantic needs have sweet-fuck-all to do with real sexuality, since they cannot be tied to her guy’s (putative) need to get his rocks off full stop. Her desire for a sex life she can enjoy is damaging to the sex life of the partnership; his is its foundation.
piny, please…like preying mantis, permit me to quote you…with the minor changes that will allow the comment to get through…over at Townhall.
he argues that her sensual and romantic needs have sweet-fuck-all to do with real sexuality, since they cannot be tied to her guy’s (putative) need to get his rocks off full stop. Her desire for a sex life she can enjoy is damaging to the sex life of the partnership; his is its foundation.
Perfect!
Sure, feel free. Thanks.
Jake Squid,
Exactly — the fact that your ex wanted to control you to that extent is a sign of something larger that’s wrong in the relationship. Prager doesn’t perceive that marital sex can be something of a canary in the mineshaft: it provides signals of the overall health of the relationship. He says that refusals to have sex with your husband will make the husband *think* you don’t love him, but Prager doesn’t contemplate the possibility that a lack of desire, failure of communication, etc. might be telling us about problems in the marriage as a whole. He isolates them as being purely sex problems, ones that of course are cured by the wife’s willingness to fake desire and make uneducated guesses at her husband’s thoughts.
Being currently in an utterly sexless marriage, I can’t say I’m surprised at his nasty little rant.
I don’t agree, but I understand. Let me tell you, after the sting of rejection happens every minute until it becomes less of a sting and more of a wound that just won’t heal over… yeah, your mind starts to go to pretty damned dark places.
I had no idea that hippies were so responsible for the decline of female acquiescence to sex.
It almost makes you wish they hadn’t been so uptight, and had advocated concepts like “free love” or used slogans like “Make love, not war.”
Ah well. Only in a parallel universe where women like sex…. Although conservatives would probably have a hard time there, as well. (I’m imagining Prager, describing the role of birth control in such a universe… “If the cows can give milk wherever they want, without consequence, how do we keep them coming back to the farmer’s cold hands?”)
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