Sex After Marriage

A blogger I’ve been following for quite a while, Stephanie Faris, is starting up a “group blog” thing. Each Thursday, everyone participating writes on the same topic and links up. Seems like a cool idea (i.e., it saves me the trouble of thinking up a topic), so why the heck not? This week’s topic:

Sex After Marriage

…specifically, this misconception among men that all women lose interest in sex after marriage.

I’ve always been confused by the idea that sex is this be-all end-all part of the relationship formula, and have long thought that people have put way too much store in its importance. After all, when push comes to shove, procreation is the only species-survival reason that sex must be had at all. On the other hand… we’ll let’s just say the tingles are something most people like to visit. And revisit. And again. And again. And….

OK, back to the blog. Sex after marriage.

Having never been married, I can’t speak at all from personal experience. However, as a writer I’m supposed to be this keen observer of the human condition. So…what have I observed? Well…nothing. Peeping Tomery is illegal. But from what I’ve heard people say, how they behave, and extentions with Public Displays of Affection I think all comes down to one thing: focus.

When your focus is on sex, you crave sex. When your focus is on life, sex soon gets overwhelmed by the noise.

The fact is, in terms of life management, women tend to have more to handle on a daily basis than men. Even in our “enlightened” American society, that is still often the case. Each gender has different expectations. Now, I’m not saying that one gender or another necessarily has greater stress, just that I’ve observed that women typically have more events in any given day requiring a bit of their focus than men do. (I’m eliminating the couch potatoes of both genders from this analysis.)

It also doesn’t help men that the ol’ tallywacker does, indeed, have a bit of a mind of its own at time. It’s focus-diverting powers are the stuff of stories and unexpected gifts from the stork. Not that men are the only ones with burning loins…just that the evidence of momentary ardor is more difficult to…erm…contain.

But getting back to those pesky observations…

The key to managing the focus issue, so far as I’ve seen, is one of partnership. Too many of the married people I observe are simply individuals who in some degree feel trapped by their circumstance. Whether it’s the contract, or the kids, or the mortgage, or the health plan, or whatever. The pair are more boarders in each others lives than they are true partners. They are going through the motions more than actually thriving.

But there is a happy subset of married that are partners. They are the ones who communicate and who honestly enjoy being around the other person. It’s not that their daily pressures are fewer in number or less severe than the previous less-than-giddy group, but that they’ve learned to walk in step with each other to deal with those focus-sappers.

And that’s really the key to just about any successful mating: buying into the system. It isn’t about the sex, it’s about the shared lives. Both people have to buy into the parameters. They both need to jump in with both feet, trying to make one really big splash instead of two smaller ones. Too often, people just want to dip a toe into the pool, or maybe even wade in a bit…but in the end one isn’t willing to dive as deeply as the other.

Wondering about sex after marriage is actually a dead-end course. The frequency matters not if both people involved are content with their situation. The warning sign is the dissatisfaction and feelings of disaffection that can ensue when a pair is unwilling to have a meeting of the minds on the issue. Marriage shouldn’t be work but it does need to be worked at.

It’s very cliched to say that it comes down to communication, but that is, indeed, what it comes down to. Mind-reading isn’t going to happen. Each person needs to talk and to listen. If the frequency in sex in your after-wedding, pre-divorce period isn’t to your liking, you need to consider what it is you aren’t saying and what you’ve stopped listening to.

Does this mean you are supposed to settle? I’m not even sure I know what that means: “To settle.” If you’re already thinking that you can do better than your current situation and you seriously think it’s an option…then sex after divorce is going to be the problem you need to be worrying about.