Audible has an included-for-subscribers (a.k.a. “free”) 30-minute piece titled “Sexlessness” where you can listen in on a therapy session run by Esther Perel. This is part a series; see “Esther Perel Lets Us Listen In on Couples’ Secrets” (New Yorker).
The young-by-my-standards couple in this episode met on the Indian dating site Shaadi.com (my local Indian-American friends knew all about this), though they sound American-born. The wife is a physician and uninterested in sex with the husband except for procreation (trying to have a second kid at the time of the session). Otherwise the two adults seem to be compatible and they’re happy with their joint child. Worth listening if you’ve never been married and simply assumed that married people have sex with each other.
As an MIT undergraduate, I took a class led by Evsey Domar, an economics professor who told us assembled youngsters (juniors, seniors, beginning grad students) that romantic love was a bad deal because “you’re giving someone else monopoly power over your happiness.” He was also down on the idea of marriage because you put yourself into a situation where there is only one supplier of love, thus wreaking havoc with the Econ 101 supply and demand curves we’d studied a couple of years earlier. As a 17-year-old I didn’t appreciate that he might have been using “love” as a euphemism for “sex.”
Assuming that Domar was speaking elliptically, here’s an alternative formulation that I’ve heard: “Food and sex are both human needs, right? Would you sign a contract with a local restaurant that you’ll eat every meal there for the rest of your life, regardless of the quality of the meals, the hours of the restaurant, or even if the restaurant decides to close? If not, why would you agree to get married?”
Some recent female statements on married-with-kids life:
- “I don’t know anyone would get married,” physician-wife in suburban New Jersey, apparently happily married with kids 8 and 10
- “I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want to spend years voluntarily sharing his life with a woman,” business executive-wife in Texas, definitely happily married with 4 kids. She also has a comprehensive theory of marital happiness: “Women make demands of men for various reasons. If you meet too few demands, the woman leaves you. There are men who attempt to too many demands. The problem it’s that the goal line keeps moving further away. To meet every demand, you have to become totally emasculated and controlled by the wife and children. Then the wife learns to loathe you, and she leaves saying you aren’t the man she initially was attracted to. … my husband’s “line” of meeting just enough demands infuriates me. And infuriating women just enough seems to be the key to creating and sustaining sexual attraction. “
The corresponding male perspective?
- “We’re like two co-workers in a daycare center who occasionally have sex in a closet.”
Circling back to Esther Perel and her Audible series…. There is no way to know if her therapy is effective, but it is interesting to hear the discussion and maybe the entire series should be required listening for anyone contemplating marriage. The FAA makes a pilot learn about the causes of accidents before he or she can get a certificate. Maybe it would be good for engaged couples to study marriages that go in unexpected directions and this series is certainly an easy way to do that.
Related:
- Real World Divorce (when the lawyers take over from the therapists)
I’m never sure what to make of these posts. They’re not funny enough to be humorous, but they’re too dumb to be taken seriously. Troll-bait, I guess. The guy who is married and has kids and owns a home asks, Why get married? Why have kids? Why own a home? I dunno Phil, maybe you should start by asking yourself.
I wish that I had had a better understanding of female sexual desire when I was younger. Nobody explained it in my sex ed classes.
“two co-workers in a daycare center who occasionally have sex in a closet”
— bingo!
The restaurant analogy sounds like something Bill Burr would say. It’s an excellent one though.
Why get married? It makes no sense really. Maybe the whole thing should be scrapped. Since women seem to hate being around men so much lately, maybe it is best we revert to some thing akin to the assumed prehistoric hunter-gatherer scenario- e.g. “all-women” residential areas where women can have children and help each other raise them. The men could contribute their child support (minimum $8000/year after DNA test) but otherwise stay out of the way and let the women run these areas. Women and men could then meet outside the designated areas in safe spaces. Of course, this might lead to a significant number of men not getting any women, and some guys having many more. Maybe marriage was just a way to keep the peace but making sure a subset of men did not monopolize all the poontang? and also to maintain the poontang when it got old (they do live longer than us!)? who knows…
We are strange creatures, trapped between the animal world and some socially constructed rules that change every decade.
The only thing I know for certain about marriage is that the man should never apologize. And if he does apologize, make it brief and sincere and then act as if nothing has happened.
It’s sad but true, most women want to meet a nice guy, but then become bored rapidly with said nice guy. Particularly if nice guy is poor.
Years ago I dated for an extended length of time a girl who was an absolute “10” by most guy beauty standards. For some reason, I was never terribly attracted to her and did not treat her all that well, but she was relentless in her pursuit of me after we had became serious.
After finally calling it quits once and for all, I asked a mutual friend why this girl was so determined to stay in a relationship with me and I’ll never forget his reply: “Because you didn’t chase her around, fawn over her and or give a shit.”
Grumpy Cat : +10.
For a thoughtful discussion of this important topic (rather some random provocative anecdotes) read Perel’s book “Mating in Captivity”
https://www.amazon.com/Mating-Captivity-Unlocking-Erotic-Intelligence/dp/0060753641
Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond discusses human sexual behavior at length in “Why Is Sex Fun?” – why do humans have sex all the time, rather than just when the female is fertile, as in nearly all animal species? The most plausible answer, discussed at length in the book, is that human infants are unusually helpless, compared to infants of almost any other species. So having two parents to raise an infant is a huge survival advantage. Human sex is closely associated with pair-bonding (having sex with someone tends to bind you emotionally to them). Marriage is the institutionalization of pair-bonding: it supports sexual fidelity and parental responsibility.
Women are incapable of long term relationships. Throw in financial incentives to make false accusations and to divorce, and you have the mess you see in America today.
What does marriage give me? A companion with whom I can share pretty much anything. Shared values, goals, bank accounts, financial destiny. Kids who have two parents in a stable setting. Mutual commitment. And yes, once in a blue moon, the closet thing.