Family Forum / Marriage / Marriage / December 2006

We both did our part to sink the boat, but yee-haw, for 17 years,
it was a heck of an "E" ticket ride (if anyone recalls that).  But it
also was a former lifetime ago and the passage of time fogs one's
memory.   <sigh>

<shrug>  Vegetarian (not that anything's wrong with that).
Just one of those people who never quite found their niche.
 =R=

16 years, I mentioned, of a bad no-erotica marriage.  You know, I'm not
going to use your word (porn) any more.  You'd have to define it.  You
seem to know a lot more about it and its causal effects on things than
I do, that's for sure.  Which is interesting, because I do pay
attention to life.

I have never noticed any "positive results" for porn.  In my second
marriage, the sex is and has been great with or without porn.  It makes
no difference.  Sometimes it enhances, sometimes it seems beside the
point.  If one's sex life is varied, imaginative, whole, marvelous and
loving, all manner of stories, pictures, etc., fit into it.  How do you
feel about nude paintings in the Baroque period?  Or velvet paintings
of half naked Hawaiian girls?

We have many different levels of sensual stimulus in our home.  For
example, I find rock and roll music sexually stimulating on occasion.
I also like techno and jazz.  I might want to dance around to any of
that.  I might dance in a sensual manner - but you're okay with this,
so far, right?  We both respond erotically to attractive people
attractively dressed in attractive settings behaving in a romantic
manner - whether it's beachside in Maui or on television - although
TV's effect is a shallow reflection of the real beach.

The mere sight of sunburst Gibson guitar makes my head turn.  Recent
studies show once again that women are turned on by a wider variety of
visual stimulus than men appear to be - although if you read the
studies, you'll see that they all begin with showing both men and women
naked pictures of men and women.  Men don't respond to naked pictures
of men unless they're gay.  Women don't respond to naked pictures of
men per se, either (some do, but not as many as there are men who
respond to naked women).  Women are aroused by the sight of naked
women, even if they are not bisexual, but women are also aroused by
non-visual cues and by many other visual cues.  Couples would vary in
this regard, and of course if one scenario is arousing to one person -
but an actual turnoff to the other, that's a problem, no matter what it
is.

I think you're onto something here.  But what you are probably
referring to is that most marriages fail or dry up over two issues: sex
or money.  For some reason, people expect sex in marriage.  Many do.
For a lot of reasons, people's drives vary - and people somehow think
eroticism and sexuality will magically maintain themselves over time.

I find the problem begins much earlier - and it has to do with the kind
of man (or woman) you're talking about.  A man who is not particularly
aroused by the woman he marries, to begin with, but who tries hard to
see his bride as one of the luscious, beautiful young women he sees in
male-oriented erotica, is already in trouble.  Men who discuss their
wives as if the actual anatomy (size of breasts, etc.) is the main
stimulus for sex are a poor risk for marriage, in my view.  Men on
other boards I'm on who are trying to give their wives breast implants,
for example, are not good husband-material (from MY point of view).  I
don't know what women who marry those men are thinking - as I don't
know any, personally.  Do you?

Further, a man who thinks sex is all about mechanical stimulation of
his penis (because that's how he grew up experiencing his sexuality)
and has few or no erotic images in his mind is not, in my view, the
greatest lover material (again, these are suppositions, I have only had
two opportunities to test this hypothesis, and so far, I'm correct -
but that's not much of a sample, is it?)   A man who never
auto-generated his own mental erotica is peculiar, but it seems to me a
step in the right direction that such a man would at least borrow
erotic images from the culture around him - whacking off with nothing
in one's head (whether by oneself or with another person) is just
plain....yucko.   Yet, I'm told, it's done all the time.

You may be trying to get at a different aspect of this, Larry - as your
posts are usually very insightful.  I think if either partner is
actively disassociating during sex, that's trouble.  In other words, if
the porn is actually the focus during sex (either due to watching it
during sex or playing it in one's mind during sex), that's bad news for
the couple.  People can actively disassociate during sex without ever
seeing porn - and notice, I'm very comfortable using the word "porn"
for the same set of images used in this way.  Disassociation is
something we do to protect ourselves, usually from trauma.  Sex
shouldn't be disassociative, in my view.  Both people should be
mentally present.  Many people - both men and women - are attuned
enough to this that they'd prefer not to have sex if the only partner
available was mentally off in another world, in a trance state not
involving their partner.  However, some people just plain don't care -
or know any different.  Some need help getting to any other type of
sexuality, for a variety of reasons.  "Porn" can be a cover-up for this
kind of disassociation, but that could only be in the subset of people
who are disassociating, by definition.  Tai and I are describing
situations in which the opposite is occurring - sex makes me feel
alive, more aware, more inside my ownself, more connected to *him* than
any other activity - and neither of us defines "sex" as the time spent
in the bedroom, at all.  It's way broader than that.

Christopher Lasch wrote about this topic from a sociological point of
view - he writes that "porn" is defined by its spectator nature,
whereas "erotica" is active.  He thinks football is porn.  He thinks
many men watch football, do not play football, do not feel inspired to
get in shape or play sports by watching football, and watch football to
project their own aggressive feelings onto the play.  They feel excited
by the game, but not because they themselves are doing anything - it's
all a fantasy enacted by other people.  Mostly or entirely men.  After
the game, the man is elated if his team wins - and some men find that
fantasy triumph is also sexually stimulating.  When I was a younger
wife, we all knew that Sunday evening was going to be "sex expectation"
time for all the husbands in our little group - except one guy
(secretly the rest of us envied that woman, whose husband seemed so
much more mature to us!)   In my case, my X wanted post-football sex
regardless of whether his team won or lost, my actual feelings or
presence were subsumed into his viewpoint about whether he needed
celebratory sex or consolation sex.  Sigh.  It was the same awful sex,
to me, either way.  I was aware that I was complaining about it (along
with the other wives), but I really had no clue how awful it was.

Regards,
A.

We've been married for over 25 years, living together 27 in a couple of
weeks. Our first brush with porn was on our honeymoon and we've used it
intermittently occasionally in some form or other over the years.

I'd say our occasional use is even more enjoyable now after years of
experiementing with pleasing each other and getting to know our specific
interests. Were you using porn as an enhancement or to replace something
missing in your sexual intimacy? That is, were you already enjoying each
other very much?

Well, at least you've modified your stance to "sometimes porn can be bad for
a marriage"!  I can agree with that but I think you may be missing the point
that porn used in a distancing and negative way is more of a symptom of an
ailing marriage than the catalyst itself. The problem is more likely to lie
in how one or both of the spouses is seeing the other and their relationship
in the first place.

Tai

MOST things, actually, IMO.