A highly rated comment: "Same old suggestions. Here's the real deal: if you are in a sexless marriage, and you are unhappy, and you've tried to fix it but nothing changes, GET OUT. I stayed, and now I'm old, but I'm still bitter that I have lived without touch, without intimacy."
I can't tell if that's a man or a woman, but many of the comments criticize the article for taking the woman's perspective. The article does begin with a woman telling her (non)story: “It’s not that I don’t want to... It’s just that there’s so many things to do besides have sex with my partner, who I do hypothetically find attractive and theoretically want to have sex with. It feels pretty — at times — hopeless, our sex life.”
Theoretically want to have sex with... I thought that was pretty funny. Especially on second read. The first time I saw it, I felt uncomfortable that this woman was identified by name: "Melissa Petro is a 40-year-old writer who lives in New York with her husband of four years and two children."
Key word: "writer." I was just saying yesterday: "Writing is an invasion of your own privacy and the privacy of others, but the writer is always deciding where and how far to invade."
ADDED: I wonder how old that "old, but... still bitter" person is and whether she/he has "tried to fix it."
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4 comments:
Temujin writes:
"I think so many people today are just so tired with so many things to do or things they think they have to do that the person right in front of them is the one who gets only the time that's left. And that time that's left, in today's America, seems to be 'sharing' an hour or two or three in front of the TV watching Netflix or Prime or something. I've talked to a lot of people over the years and this thing keeps coming up. "What show are you bingeing these days?" Interestingly, those watching Netflix or a current movie or a 'hot' TV show will see a lot of spontaneous desire. They will see spontaneous desire played out all over the screen in front of them (and quite a bit of responsive desire). They choose their shows to binge on knowing that there will be some spontaneous desire included- some shows offering much more and, hence, managing multiple seasons.
"The viewing of spontaneous desire has replaced the live version for many. I hear people talk and joke about it. I read about it. I have visions of our entire country looking at their TVs, bingeing away, watching actors show desire for other actors, then looking across at their spouses or partners or carefully selected housemates and wondering if they can find that same spontaneous desire as they just watched. And would that make it spontaneous or something else? Then remembering when they were younger and had spontaneous desire except that I also read that younger people are having less sex than ever and wondering what the hell is happening to us? Even better- another phenomenon of modern America is to binge separately now. We go through our busy days, doing what we do, going home, eating dinner, then off to separate rooms to watch something separately (because of different tastes) and then we end up watching actors on different shows displaying spontaneous desire for each other while we- in real life with our real life partners- sit in separate rooms wondering what that's like. We're so freakin' modern in America today we've managed to create separate watch lists that keep us in different parts of the house at the end of a long day.
"Anyway. In our house we try to remember that we're still alive, still healthy, still vibrant. The good thing for us is that neither of us finds very much that we like on Netflix or Prime. Mostly shitty movies or shows. And a lot of them. So that is not a standing obstacle for us. That said, we're at our kids house this week and they are busy professionals with two young kids. Young kids. We're the visiting grandparents jumping in to help for a few days. And after a long day yesterday, our grandson was knocking at our bedroom door at 5 am today. I just snuck off to read some blogs and saw this post on Althouse. I'm sitting wondering how the parents, our kids, have the time to remember spontaneous desire when their days are so freaking full of work and their own kids.
"This is the part where I look at what I wrote and decide if I want to hit 'send'. I'm offering up opinions and privacy here. And as the writer, I am always deciding where and how far to invade. Even when it comes to my own life."
Alex writes:
""It’s just that there’s so many things to do besides have sex with my partner..." This is horrifying. As a single man who is almost 40, I'm utterly mystified by both sexes in this regard. Do that thing he likes in bed! He's not going to judge you for it. Dress up and take her out for a night of drinks and dancing! You know it's a sure bet and not the uncertainty that comes with actually dating someone new. And, ultimately, why wouldn't a person want to see their partner happy? The health of your marriage should come before everything else.
"Depriving a partner of intimacy is abuse, plain and simple. Human beings are not meant to be solitary creatures, and require human contact and interaction in order to be mentally stable, and supreme among this is intimacy. Women like her will spend years treating sex as an afterthought, and then suddenly discover at 42 that her husband is leaving her for another woman and never understand why. "
wmmw writes:
"For some (perhaps many) people who perform an analysis of consequences
of removing oneself from situations such as this, by far the worst
consequence turns out to be growing old alone. For some (perhaps many),
this also turns out to be the most likely consequence of removing
oneself from said situation. Which is why they stay."
Michael writes:
"Women's desire evaporates when their first child is born and comes back like clockwork when their youngest child turns 5. While there are certainly exceptions to this, I've never seen one. You can see it in studies, you can see it in articles written by self absorbed women, I saw it in my marriage and a close friends marriage... What you never see is anybody connecting this to biology. It is universally put down to bad husbanding or stress. The woman in the article has 2 children under 5. We live under a politically correct conspiracy to pretend that humans are not mammals."
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