‘Use it or lose it’

Rhonda Perky’s guide to DIY

‘If women just fucking got over themselves… to [women like that] it is about men having needs that are lesser because they are physical rather than emotional and that sex is somehow an animal thing… a degrading thing, and that if you engage in sex you have somehow let the man “win” and all that other stuff that is so great about having good sex with your partner is lost.’ – The Desert Foxx

I am going to put it out there. I think women should take responsibility for maintaining their own libidos.

Not as some ‘feminists’ would argue, to kowtow to the whims and desires of men, but for themselves. To feel alive. To be more than a role-extension to the lives of those around them.

The death of a women’s libido is a well-documented phenomenon. Bettina Arndt’s The Sex Diaries details case after case of women whose libidos have withered and died, while their male counterparts shrivel in hopeful longing. Arndt goes on to argue that this is evolutionary and natural, that women are geared to lose their libidos. Unfair, but biologically unavoidable.

In ‘When difference of desire is sold as a deficiency’ (The Age, June 6, 2010), Leslie Cannold also writes, ‘While men tend to find their partners more desirable over time, women often need a new partner to rekindle desire.’

You may recall from my post, ('Married Sex: a Fairytale in Three Parts'), I suffered a massive loss of libido while I was in a long-term relationship. I was a text-book case, and would probably accept the theory that libido loss is unavoidable, except I have since managed to do just that. I have regained -- and successfully maintained -- my libido through two subsequent relationships.

I would instead argue that I contributed to the death of my own libido.

When I first met my then future husband, my hormones when crazy. I took it for granted that they would stay that way. They didn’t.

I can point to a long list of things which may have slowly poisoned it. Being in a long-term relationship was just one of them. I got sucked into living my life day by day. I did what I thought I was supposed to. I became a wife and a mother to my cats, and a faithful employee, and a daughter, and a sister, and there was never enough time or energy, or desire. I had secured a partner (*tick*). I could worry about him (and me), later.

First, I had to look after everything else.

During that time I didn’t even think about sex. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want sex with my partner. I didn’t want sex at all. I didn’t even want to masturbate. It became way too easy to surround myself with the bland unsexiness of routine and responsibility. It was what was accepted and even expected of me.

Besides, there was always tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the week after that. There was no urgency anymore.

There was also no stimulation.

This is where society – including women – has got it wrong. Men are stimulated constantly. It’s no wonder they can seem like walking Viagra-fuelled hard-ons. They are sold sex and more sex, while women are sold motherhood and washing detergent.

Looking back, I wonder if I would have felt differently if I had ready access to sexual stimulants in the same way as men (0). Because now that I have my desire back, I realise how precious it is. Something to be nurtured and maintained. I never want to feel that downstairs deadness again.

The Sex Diaries advocates women not waiting for the stimulation to come to them. Leslie Cannold agrees: ‘Sometimes, women won't want sex until they've started having it.’ I would advocate taking it one step further, and making use of third-party stimulation to get themselves there BEFORE their husbands / long-term partners make their clumsy advances (1).

For me this is where DIY comes into play. It’s all too easy for life to get in the way and for the sex part of your brain to be clogged with everything but, however it is possible to make it happen solo if you make the effort and take the time. And once you start you will start to want it, and then want it more and more, and yes, you may even want your partner again and not inwardly (or outwardly) groan when he pokes you in the back, saying, 'Hon...?'

And here I risk being slaughtered by my feminist peers again when I say, if you're having trouble finding the time or the mental energy, why not try using porn? It's quick and easy and direct (2).

First you have to get over the stigma. After all, you don't use porn for the articles, which means admitting to using porn = admitting to DIY. There is a public perception that many women do not use porn to masturbate (3).  There is only a growing perception (acceptance) that women masturbate at all. I don’t want try to guesstimate the accuracy of those perceptions, because I think masturbation, whether assisted by pornography or not, is still a taboo topic for many women, and therefore skews this perception. Hooray to Cosmo for all those G-spot and Clitoris specials that made women seeking self-pleasure more socially acceptable, but I think there is still a reluctance among women to admit, even to themselves, what sorts of things truly turn them on.

In ‘Even Better Than…?’ I alluded to some of the more ‘acceptable’ sources of stimulation available to women, and how this differs significantly from that which is available to men. I’m not convinced this difference is our natural inclination. Were we to climb The Magic Faraway Tree and step out into ‘Topsy-Turvy land’, we might see men fantasising about romantic leading ladies sweeping them off their feet, while women dream of anally penetrating hardcore male sex slaves. I suspect the difference in the materials available to us has more to do with the diet of acceptability on which we are raised than any innate difference in our sensibilities.

For instance, The Desert Foxx and I spent an afternoon perusing Good Loving, Great Sex, by Dr Rosie King (‘Australia’s leading sex expert’), which discusses libido enhancers and suppressors. Following an extensive survey, Dr King came up with a shortlist of what turns men on versus what does it for women, and conversely, what turns each of them off (4). To our surprise, Foxx and I found we related more to the guys’ list than the girls’. Rather than conclude we were more ‘male’ than ‘female’ in our thinking, we wondered at the voracity of the survey results, which seemed VERY clichéd, and VERY 1953. It was almost as though when presented with a list of checkboxes, women gravitated to the socially acceptable and familiar, rather than the stuff that would actually get them ‘percolating in the nether regions’ (-- Mr ‘Longrod’ McHugen Dong).

It occurred to me there was no ‘control group’ in this experiment. No group of participants divorced from societal pressures to tick particular boxes.

Similarly, The Sex Diaries examines the libido of women throughout the lifecycle of a relationship. It does not consider a woman’s libido on its own; in one sense, in its natural habitat. It wasn’t when I entered a new relationship that I rediscovered my libido; it was in the privacy of my bed-made-for-one.

But this lack is reflective of our society. What is the norm and what is considered ‘acceptable’ is pervasive, and creates a loop in which we are trapped and in which we trap ourselves. Foxx and I are quite unabashed with each other when discussing sex, and this was reflected in our survey results, but not everyone is like us.

I would go on to argue that these societal expectations are reflected in the masturbatory marketplace.
Perhaps if there was a wider acceptance and acknowledgement of women needing secondary stimulation, the porn market might shift to more women-friendly material (5), which may in turn make it more appealing to women entering the market, and we may find a rekindling of our libidos by the increased presence of external stimulation (6). We might end up as horny as (if not more so) than men.

Yes, life gets in the way of desire, and this is rubbish, but when I hear women describe sex as a chore, something their partners demand of them, and that they (grudgingly) mete out, I am horrified. I want to scream, ‘Don’t you want to enjoy sex for yourselves? Don’t you want to feel alive?’

Because you can. You simply have to want to enough.


--RP


(0) Whether or not I maintained my desire for my partner is another thing entirely. We had all kinds of issues. But while we weren’t having sex, we weren’t communicating either. Domestic-bliss 101 we could share. True intimacy eluded us.

(1) A word to the wise, men: nagging at a woman for sex / complaining about not getting sex / not making an effort to entice your woman to want sex are sure-fire ways of ensuring you do not get sex. Try wooing your woman as you once did to get into her knickers in the first place. You succeeded then, you will probably succeed again now. Just because you’ve worked through the bases once, doesn’t mean you get to ‘skip to the end’ every time. Try working the bases again. You might be surprised.
 
(2) Remember, it’s geared towards men.
 
(3) I once bought an FHM over the counter, only to have the man who served me say, ‘Um, there are some Woman’s Days out the back… I can go and grab one for you…’
 
(4) A list which pretty much described my marriage.
 
(5) What a good friend describes as ‘Couples’ porn, rather than ‘Single Guy’ porn.
 
(6) The shift in the type of porn that is produced may also go some way to helping reduce men’s difficulty in relating to women from over-exposure to hardcore material where ‘consumers are catapulted into a world of cruel and brutal sex acts designed to dehumanise women,’ ('Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men,' Gail Dines, The Age, October 14, 2010).

Married Sex – A fairytale in three parts

***Warning – this post may ruin your best friend threesome fantasy***

Once upon a time, long term couples were encouraged to ‘share everything’, from a strand of spaghetti to the grizzly details of the monthly cycle. The idea was that this constant sharing, this living in each others’ pockets, was supposed to bring you closer together. And it does. You’ll be best-friend close.

The problem is, you don’t tend to want to shag your best mate.

Worse, your living arrangement most closely resembles that of a sibling. Again, not someone you want to shag.

Enter the world of Married Sex.

Not only does sexing your partner start to seem about as appealing as humping a manky dish cloth, you may find you’re not into sex at all.

This is what happened to me.

At the time I blamed the pill, not realising I was living with a constant libido suppressant called a husband. All I knew was that over time sex had stopped being something I couldn’t get enough of, and started becoming a chore - something I did out of a vague sense of obligation that would have to wait until after I’d finished the ironing and scrubbing the floor.

To be fair, my husband had also stopped beating down the door to rip my knickers off. So I decided (with some relief) that he didn’t really want it either.

During this time (which I consider some freakish aberration), not only did I rarely crave sex, not even to DIY, the thought of shagging my partner was a turn-off. In fact I used to dread it.

The most satisfying sex we had during the long drought was on the rare occasions when my sleeping brain decided it had been long enough, thank you very much, and I would wake from a raunchy dream, desperate for a shag. In the dark, still half-asleep, I could jump my husband and not notice I was shagging him.

Experts now realise that the previously advocated ‘closeness’ and total entanglement of each others’ lives is the worst possible thing you can do if you want to avoid this deadening drought I call Married Sex. They concede that by the time your husband has seen you in your pink fluffy slippers with mascara blubbing down your face and once you’ve experienced his regular AGBs (1), when you have no privacy left, no un-mutual friends, and no me-only time, your desire for one another doesn’t just start to wane, it plummets.

Add to this the scientific theory that evolution is working against us, playing out its war on our libidos using the very chemicals that make us want to shag in the first place. Scientists argue that the cycle of romance, sex and love, by its very nature, is geared to lead every long term couple toward parenthood and virtual abstinence.

The cycle goes something like this:

• Romance produces the chemicals that lead to sex
• Sex produces the chemicals that lead to love
• Love suppresses the chemicals that lead to romance

which traps us into a life of monogamy through ritual emasculation (testosterone being the chemical suppressed by ‘love’). With the desire for sex depleted, we are much less likely to stray, and much more likely to feel the ‘love’ bonds that will encourage us to stay and raise offspring (2). The problem is that over time this has an inevitable impact on a couples’ desire for each other.

And this is just one of the ‘chemical’ theories of sex and love involving libido enhancers and suppressants.
For me, the contraceptive pill turned my body into one giant sex no-go zone. Like many women my age, I live with the ongoing pain of endometriosis, and so had been prescribed a high-dose pill. The hormones stopped my periods and so stopped the pain, but then stopped me feeling altogether. Without hormonal drivers, I had almost no drive at all. Not just for sex, but for anything. It was like wearing a pair of giant granny pants, the kind that suck in your gut only to have the excess ooze out everywhere else. All the while you’re there struggling to breathe. In the end I decided I could live with the pain in order to feel again, and stopped taking it.

BAM!

Like a teenage boy hitting puberty my hormones went into overdrive. I had energy to burn, and as the first full moon approached, I was climbing the walls. Just about every man who walked past was a potential shag. I lost count of the poor unsuspecting guys I imagined dragging into the loo for some unbridled bouncing-off-the-walls passion. The cruel irony was that my husband was away at the time, and so for the first time in years I locked myself indoors and masturbated like crazy.

Eventually my husband arrived home. But then the weirdest thing happened. I didn’t want to shag him. It was like I’d been given a dose of instant libido suppressant.

It scared the shit out of me.

It was a while before I had a hormonal peak as extreme as the first, but I did notice the ups and downs of my cycle after that, and I was never quite sure who I might be tempted to crack on to. At one point I felt I ought to wear a public safety waning: CAUTION: FULL MOON APPROACHING, just to prevent any embarrassing misadventures while ‘on heat’.

Having rediscovered the joys of DIY, for the next little while, it was all that kept me sane. I certainly got no pleasure from my unshaven, unwashed, bad-breathed husband sprawling himself on the marital bed in his ‘come get it’ pose. And when we did do it, it was a far cry from the lets-do-it-in-every-room passion of the early days.

‘He’d moved into the wrong part of my brain,’ she said.

I could understand this sort of change occurring in couples who have children, who end up taking on the asexual role of parents, but that wasn’t true for either of us. The moment she said it, though, I knew she was right. My husband had slipped into the ‘brother’ part of my brain.

Not twelve months later, we separated. With hindsight I’m not the least bit surprised.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if our relationship had come with a warning: DON'T TAKE YOUR MUTUAL ATTRACTION FOR GRANTED. What steps could we have taken to focus less on the ‘smoochie poochie’ part and more on the 'red hot rampant sex' part? The idea that you might need to work at keeping on wanting sex seemed absurd at the time.

Since then I’ve read theory after theory on the pitfalls of long term relationships and how to counter hormonal inhibitors such as illness and the pill. Advice ranges from the basics of maintaining separate lives, to forcing yourself to shag, even when you’d rather spend the evening repeatedly sticking a fork in your eye. Others advocate watching porn (3) or even having an affair. These theories all come with warnings, of course (4).

After my divorce I managed to sustain a relationship for two years. In that time we maintained very separate lives and shagged ourselves silly. We also weren't particularly close, and never quite made it to the point where our lives became entangled.

Who's to say the two are related? I was in a difficult place, and we were two very different people. As for my husband, we probably just outgrew each other and ultimately liked different things in bed.

What I can be sure of is that I'll never have Married Sex again. I’ll do whatever it takes. Read endless volumes of self-help books, research sex-partiesparties, anything. Because good sex is part of what makes you feel alive. And I’m a long, long way from dead.

---

(1) After grog bog
(2) I suspect this is why some people run a mile after sex, as though they know in the moments after orgasm they are most vulnerable to a 'bonding attack'
(3) Or True Blood, if that works better for you
(4) Apparently affairs can also lead to a relationship’s demise...