Yep. This is the question I’m posing after almost 3 months of writing every week about getting down and dirty.
Truthfully, it’s not the only question about my life lately that causes me to space out, deep in thought, when I’m supposed to be paying attention to One’s description of her latest Dungeons and Dragons game. But one has to start somewhere.
Making love, or fucking? What do I want? What do I need? If I have one and not the other, am I missing something essential? And is there anything I can do about it, either way?
I suppose this post will be a little different from my others, with a heavier dose than usual of the feels. But I hope you’ll bear with me as I talk through my dilemma…no…crisis…eh…discontent, maybe. I don’t know what to label it.
But these questions have been niggling in the back of my mind (and for this particular topic, maybe tightening my chest a bit, if I’m really honest) for a few months now.
They must have really started up in earnest not long after I began my blog, because I had a text conversation with a friend from grad school Christmas 2021, and he asked me something that touched on this very issue. After reading through my first 3 or 4 blog entries, he asked me whether I define climax as the goal of sex, and if so, why, since a person “can have other important feelings and sensations without that.”
His questions came from his own personal experience of late, as right now he’s not in a monogamous relationship and having sex with different people yet feeling an acute desire for an intimacy that he’s not getting in those encounters. He points out that sex can be about more than just pleasure and can be about closeness and intimacy — romantic love, if you will — with another person. And I don’t disagree. But my emphasis has been female pleasure, and for good reason. At the time, this was my answer:
”Women have been having sex with their menfolk for millennia for reasons other than climax — for intimacy, affection, tenderness. And that can absolutely be the case in a relationship. But I believe we’re missing out on the benefits of regular orgasm bc we’ve bought too much into the fantasy of 'making love'. Ouch. That’s sounds cold and jaded. If anything we’ve more redefined 'sex' in our relationship to encompass a larger swath of sexual activities that HET folks always called 'foreplay' in the past.”
And I think that’s still my answer. I really do believe that there is not enough concern with the female orgasm, and our culture has portrayed the female climax unrealistically (as if we can get off easily with nothing but a pounding dick) and, ultimately, as second to the male orgasm (if it’s portrayed at all). And I also think that as a vulva-owner, I was culturally programmed to expect sex to fulfill my needs of intimacy (“making love”), while needs of pleasure are the prerogative of the penis-haver. Equal pleasure is not something I should expect, and certainly not demand. But I’m calling bullshit on this sham.
It makes me wonder who came up with this love making fantasy first. Was it penis-havers, because it got them off the hook of bringing their partner to climax? Or did vulva-owners come up with the notion at some point to justify having orgasm-less sex? As long as I’m feeling loved in the act of sex and an emotional need is met, then I‘m supposed to ignore the fact that a physiological need is not.
Granted, maybe not everyone was programmed this way. I happened to have grown up in a very conservative Christian household, and so my very vague, roundabout education on sex — which, of course, was only ever in the context of married sex — was shaped by this idea of sex as an intimate expression of love between husband and wife. The idea of pleasure tended to be avoided, probably in big part due to the ridiculous idea that if you talk about how good sex is, teens are more likely to go and have it. (Newsflash! They’re going to want to do it, whether you talk about it or not.) But I digress.
The reason why I generally see “making love” as a fantasy is that while the idea that a slow, sensual, intimate, tender sex sesh (which clearly should be missionary so that you can deep kiss while you’re making love) will bring both partners to climax (and obvs these climaxes will ideally happen at the same time in this scenario) is lovely, the reality is that it’s nigh impossible to get a vulva-owner off this way. So if I want love making with my partner, I’m more than likely making a decision to sacrifice my climax.
PM and I, very early in our marriage, came to the realization that the “making love” model was not practical when it came to my pleasure. And we’ve gotten very good over the years at doing it well in the shortest amount of time possible.
Part of the reason I started this blog in the first place was that I was so tired of the marriage blogs that focus on intimacy and love in sex rather than pleasure and, which more often than not, have a conservative Christian bent. In over 20 years of being married to the same person, sex takes on many different forms and purposes. And I’m finding that at this point in our marriage, I’m reclaiming a pleasure focus that is very easily given up by women (or dismissed altogether) after being together so long and having kids together.
And yet, for all the mind-bending fucking that PM and I have been up to, I still have a sense of loss that I can‘t easily dismiss.
Sex is generally portrayed in fiction as one of two extremes — porno “fucking” and romantic “love making.” So it leaves me asking where does reality fall in this sexual dichotomy that our culture has created? And to nurture feelings of love and intimacy with my partner, do we need to make love to one another and not just fuck?
When I asked PM what he thought about these extreme portrayals of sex, he said he sees everything as existing along a spectrum, and not as one or the other. Sure, I‘ll agree.
But to the question as to whether he feels there is any intimacy missing in our own physical relationship, if we’ve moved too far toward the ”fucking“ side of the scale, he answered, no. *sigh*
So I find I still don’t have answers, and, really, I‘m not even sure if I’m not just making up problems for myself that don’t really exist.
If, after 20 years, I’m still putting the Magic in his Marker and he’s still happy dining at the y, what is there to complain about? *another sigh* But as I said, I can’t simply ignore this nagging feeling of loss either.
Now if you’ve been following my blog, which seems to have become a weird cross between personal blog and sex blog, you already know how I generally feel about what PM and I have. I mean, I haven’t held back much of the smokin’ hot deets. And PM is definitely happy.
Why then am I questioning our sex life, if we‘re both largely satisfied?
I mean, sure, I could be losing my mind. But I’d rather believe that I’m just trying to process the changes that have happened over the last 15+ months since PM and I started on this new chapter in our sexual history together. Because it feels like it’s been a pretty dramatic shift.
What PM and I have now is intense. And amazing. And thrilling. And I don’t want to be ungrateful for what I have. I mean, I know I don’t want to just go back to what we had before — great sex, but too few and too far between. Right now, it feels like we’re horny teenagers again, and we can’t keep our hands off each other.
It‘s smokin’ hot around here, to be sure.
But I’m realizing that I‘ve accumulated a lot of feelings over the months of our daily sessions playing doctor. Lots of good ones, sure. The positive vibes I‘m feeling about our steamy sitch are what largely prompted me to start this blog in the first place. But there are others that are less happy. Or, in the very least, I’m feeling some ambivalence about it all.
I started a draft of this post a few weeks ago, but just this week PM and I watched the most recent Ali Wong comedy special ("Don Wong") on Netflix. And something she said struck me. Well, basically everything she said struck me. It was like she was reading my friggin’ mind. It was so awesome. And hilarious. And maybe a little disturbing to hear my thoughts spoken out loud so precisely.
If you’re unfamiliar with her and her stand-up comedy, Ali Wong is a 39 year old American comedian, actress, and writer, married for 8 years with two children, and while she’s been doing comedy for almost 20 years, she only really started getting recognition maybe 10 years ago. She has numerous comedy specials on Netflix that you can check out, if you're interested. I’m going to talk more next week about why I think she has absolutely nailed it in her newest special and has voiced the frustration of a generation of women. But more on that next time.
What I found particularly relevant for this blog post in Ali Wong’s special was her bit about what she needs from a sexual partner in order to get off. She sets it up by talking about how hard it is for a woman to come. How so many friggin’ things need to line up for it to happen, that it has to be some sort of design flaw.
And for me this became especially true after I had kids. It’s an absolute nightmare that I can’t orgasm if I have cold feet. What the hell is that?! It can be so difficult to block out all the distracting crap that’s going on inside and outside of my head.
From there she went on about how she needs her partner to basically transform into a different person while they‘re having sex. She wants him to start all slow and tender and then to end all “rapey,” as she puts it (consensually, of course). And I started wondering if this is part of my problem. I want it all.
I relate to her description of what she wants from her partner during sex almost 100%. I want to be romanced and wooed and massaged and kissed breathless and caressed all over and held and eaten out like I’m a goddess and he’s worshipping at my throne. But at the very end, like the last few minutes, I want to be manhandled with fingers digging into my hips and thighs. I want biting and bruises and dirty talk (and I mean, filthy, graphic stuff). I want to be dicked down so hard that I’m reduced to a primitive series of grunts and shrieks. Basically, I want my normally considerate and unflappable husband to lose control and snap and revert to an earlier primitive, caveman version of himself, where he hits me over the head with his club, drags me back to his cave and takes what he wants. With my permission, of course.
And I realize how confusing this desire would be for a partner to understand, or in the very least, how hard it would be to pull off. I want my cake and to eat it, too. And PM needs to work his way from one end of the spectrum to the other in a single session to tick all my boxes. Sorry, babe.
I realize what I want is a contradiction, and it's hard to imagine them existing in the same space. But it’s what I want. Is this why I feel the need to choose between the extremes of making love and fucking? Because I really do want both. Yes, they’re at two different ends of a spectrum. But at this point in my life, I want both. And yes, sometimes I want them at the same time.
Esther Perel’s famous book Mating in Captivity asks whether love and lust can coexist with the same person within a longterm partnership like marriage. And spoiler alert: she thinks they can. But when she talks about the nature of sex in a longterm relationship, she looks at it in terms of the tension between what she calls the erotic and the domestic, or in simpler terms, between desire and love. Both represent real human needs — the former, reflecting our need for novelty, excitement, and even risk, while the latter represents our need for stability, predictability, and security. The modern challenge in achieving and maintaining a passionate marriage is managing the paradox between our need for security and our need for adventure.
I should note that I have only just now started on Perel's book –– PM recommended it to me when I talked to him about what I was writing. And I think you will definitely be hearing more about it in the future. But for now, for those interested in hearing a little more about Perel’s book Mating in Captivity, see this TED talk.
And I think in my attempt to verbalize my feelings of unease, I’ve perhaps inadvertently stumbled upon this tension between opposing needs Perel talks about that makes for a passionate relationship with one’s spouse. (And I believe Ali Wong has, as well.) And I want it all.
Am I happy just fucking and getting fucked by my husband, or is there something missing? Am I lamenting the loss of something real, or is the idea of making love just a myth? I’m not sure I’m much closer to an answer at this point. But I do think it’s more complicated than a simple one or the other.
And maybe there is no real dilemma for PM and I after all. Perhaps we’re just working out what it means for us to exist as a couple in that space between the erotic and the domestic, between having stability in a relationship and yet still fulfilling our need for excitement. Perhaps I should just sit back and enjoy the ride (heh heh heh *wink*).
Until next time, stay kinky 😉
And if you like what you’ve just read, please consider showing me some love by buying me a coffee to fuel my next post. 🥰
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