Sexual compatibility

In response to my advice to "Jim" I've received an e-mail from "Steve." I'm going to respond to Steve's e-mail one part at a time, because he makes several different points.

Ok here is a question...Why does it always have to be the man who initiates?

First of all Steve, it doesn't. And frankly it's pretty insulting to both men and women to use such stereotypes. It also doesn't help you in your own relationship at all....you are a unique individual, as is your wife. It's much more helpful to treat each other as unique individuals than to try to cram each other into stereotypes.

The wife and I have this issue. I am not afraid to admit..I don't get sex near as much as I would like.....I can also admit it is partially my fault.

The problem comes from trying to initiate and being told no so many times, that I eventually rationalize it like this.....I can either read a book/watch a movie or try and "fight" to get some loving.

Then after we have been told no we start to feel shunned and then that leads to marital problems. I.E. our wives begin to feel unloved because there is the undertone of animosity from us guys.

Men are absolutely NOT the only folks in this boat. I can't tell you how many women show up in the forums I post in wanting to know what's wrong with them because their husband won't even give them a hug let alone have sex with them....some of those women haven't had sex in YEARS, despite all possible efforts including outright begging. So, again, let's try to stay away from the stereotypes, they are often inaccurate and absolutely don't help anyone's unique situation.

No matter their gender, a rejected partner will always have trouble overcoming the rejection. It's natural to stop trying something that just gets us shot down. Unfortunately there's no way to get over that then to just get over it. You have to decide if it's worth the risk.

Yes I understand that love can be shown in other ways...snuggling, hugs, flowers, ect...but guys aren't really wired for all that mushy stuff. Yes we will do it on occasions, but for the most part the way we feel needed and loved and wanted is by how much our women "desire" us.

Again, the stereotypes don't help. Everyone feels more loved when they feel that their significant other desires them, it's not just a guy thing. And there absolutely are some guys who are "wired for all that mushy stuff," as well as millions of women who find all that stuff about as lust inducing as a blade of grass.

Unfortunately what I think a lot of people fail to understand is that everyone is different. The way I need you to act so that I feel loved is probably not the same as you would want me to act so that you feel loved. However, most of the time we show love the way we want it shown to us. So you feel loved and valued when your wife shows you that she desires you by having sex with you.....so to show her love you try to get into her pants.....but that's not how she wants to receive love, she'd much rather you watch the kids in the evening for a couple hours so she could take a bath, and because you never do that for you she doesn't feel loved even if you try to have sex with her every day.

The important thing to do is to talk to your significant other and find out what THEY need to feel loved, and then DO that thing. The flip side is accepting their love when they make the effort to give you love the way you want it....we'll get to that more in a bit.

And this bit about "we're not wired that way" is a cop out. If your wife isn't having sex with you 4 times a week then she isn't "wired" that way either, yet you expect her to put out don't you? It's about loving someone enough to do what THEY need in order to feel loved .

The other thing I wonder is...if we are so darn good in the sack...why don't the women in men's collective lives want it more often? I would think that proficiency in the bedroom would almost guarantee at least 3 to 4 times a week.

And you would be wrong. Look, I love a good cheesecake almost more than my husband (I'm just kidding sweetie), but that doesn't mean I crave it constantly. And it certainly doesn't mean I'm going to eat it every day, no matter how good this one or that one is.

Think about it....does a bad sexual encounter make you desire sex less in general? No? Then why would the opposite be true?

Everyone has a different level of libido. Every once in a while two people get together who's libidos match. But, as there are an infinite number of different levels of libido, that is pretty rare. If you happen to be the higher libido person in your relationship then you have to understand that your ability doesn't have anything to do with it. When my libido was really low it wasn't a matter of how good my husband was in bed....the thought just never entered my mind. It wasn't a need that existed in my body. I guess my hormones were out of whack or something.

But this idea that my libido is somehow linked to anyone else's ability in bed is really really mistaken. And it's time for people to stop doing that, linking a physical, hormonal or simply personality aspect of your significant other to your own ability. If it's truly a libido mismatch, then it's not about you. And if that's the case, then there is no reason for the animosity you talked about earlier.

No man really wants the woman they love to be "just going through the motions"

Understand that it's not always "just going through the motions." If I'm not in the mood, then I'm not in the mood, and repeated attempts by my husband to get me in the mood just feel like harassment. I mean think about how you would feel if there was something your wife wanted to do that you just weren't up for, and she just kept asking over and over.

That doesn't mean that I'm necessarily against giving my husband a hand, if you know what I mean ;) He has to understand that while I may not be into it, I'm willing to do for him because I love him. Sometimes that's just the way it's going to be, because we aren't perfectly matched.

Should the woman seek out medical advice as to how to raise their libido?

Maybe. As I said everyone is different. For me, I knew something was wrong because my libido hadn't been that low before. But now I feel better than ever and my libido is still probably a bit lower than my husband's. Them's the breaks.

Let's even make it easier and say there are only 10 possible libido levels, 0 being never need it, and 10 being need it twice a day. So when you date someone you have a 1/10 chance of ending up with someone who matches up with you exactly. That's still a 90% chance that you won't match up and someone is going to be disappointed.

In reality it's 10,000 times worse than that.

What makes it worse still is that we all change with time. So right now you might be the higher libido partner, but one day that might change and your wife might be writing to me wanting to know why you don't want her anymore!

Are men and women forever doomed to be sexually incompatible?

People in general are doomed to have libido mismatches. That doesn't mean it can't work out or that we can't be happy, it just means that it's not always going to be the easiest thing in the world.

Why should the side that desires their partner constantly have to compromise?

Because the alternative is what you've already said you don't want, going through the motions. Or it's rape, and that certainly doesn't show any level of respect for someone you are supposed to love.

The key to any happy sexual relationship is open communication and understanding. If your wife's libido is lower than yours, then there's probably not much you can do about it unless she truly has a medical problem. More likely you two are just mismatched....and it's important for you to not treat each other as though it's someone's fault. And if she's willing to put out or help you out when she isn't in the mood, then it's important for you to not take that as an insult and understand that it's a gesture of love.

But most importantly stop with the stereotypes. They aren't helping you figure out your own marriage at all.

Thank you Steve for your questions and comments. Please feel free to contact me if you have some follow up you'd like me to post on your behalf.

Take care everyone,
Judi

Does she think I'm good enough?

OK, since nobody has written in to ask for advice, I have to get this thing started on my own.

I've mentioned that I participate in online discussion forums about relationships and sex. A few weeks ago I offered advice to a man who was concerned that he wasn't turning his wife on enough. Since I don't have his permission I won't copy his post here, but I'll try to give you a summary of his concerns.

Our poster, we'll call him Jim, hadn't had much sexual experience. His first marriage was to a woman who was quite frigid, but had had lots of sexual experience before their marriage, and the marriage ended because she decided to start having affairs with ex-boyfriends. She was his first and only sexual experience. During their marriage she would put out, but wasn't really into it, wouldn't tolerate foreplay, and really was just doing it as a "wifely duty" for Jim. All of this combined to give Jim quite a low opinion of his own sexual prowess.

Now he's married to his second wife and, although they do have sex and she appears to be into it and they enjoy a lot of foreplay and she tells him that everything is fine, he's concerned because she never seems to need him. He's read on forums of women who are sometimes quite aggressive toward their men, because they have a desperate need for them. He's worried that the fact that she's never grabbed him as soon as he walks in the door and dragged him off to the bedroom, that that means she's just not that into him.

Jim says she rarely initiates sex (although he admits that she will sometimes surprise him with lingerie, which I think is initiating), but never turns him down, and it seems that foreplay is often a fairly drawn out affair, sometimes meaning that a sexual encounter from start to finish lasts for hours (he mentions an hour of workup before actually getting down to business, and foreplay lasting 30-90 minutes before actual sex). He had gotten the impression from reading on forums that it was "normal" for a woman to at least occasionally be quite aggressive and have an uncontrollable desire to have sex with her man. He concludes that he wants to know that he really rocks her world, and he wants that to bring him confidence in his own abilities.

Here is my response to Jim:

Some people just aren't like a walking porn movie. I've never grabbed my husband as he walked in the door and dragged him off to another room for a quickie. There have been periods of months where I never initiated. We went through some periods where my libido was so low that if he didn't initiate we wouldn't have had sex for more than 2 years. And there have been times when my initiating consisted only of snuggling extra close to him when we went to bed.

None of that has anything to do with my husband's skill as a lover and everything to do with me, my hormones, and my emotional issues. I've never experienced uncontrollable lust, and frankly would find it pretty frightening if I did. I could never be the kind of woman you seem to want your wife to be, and if my husband was so insecure that he needed me to be like that to reassure him of his abilities, I'd promptly find him the name and phone number of a good therapist so that he could work out his own insecurity issues.

Everybody is different.....and over the years even the same person will be different.....I'm very different now from what I was when my husband and I first got together over 10 years ago. Even from one week to the next I'm different....I have days where I might get very aggressive, and other days when I wouldn't feel comfortable even gently suggesting sex.

I think the most important thing for you to understand is that your wife is an individual person, and "normal" doesn't mean anything. She is who she is, not who I am, not who lots of women on the internet are, she's just herself. Therefore it doesn't do you any good to go looking for what's normal, the only thing that will benefit your marriage is for you to get to know your wife better and accept her for who she is. Because face it, if she's not sexually aggressive, then it doesn't matter if every single other woman in the world is...if she isn't that is all that matters.

Jim thanked me for my response and said that I definitely gave him some things to think about, that my comments helped him to understand that there is a much broader range of "normal" when it comes to womens' desires than he had previously thought.

I hope Jim is able to find some confidence within himself, and is able to stop comparing his wife to "a bunch of women on the internet" and treat her as the beautifully unique person she is.

Until next time, keep on lovin' each other!
Judi

Welcome!

Hey everyone! Welcome to Judi's Relationship Advice column!

Let me first tell you how this place came to be:

For years now I've been involved in a number of online discussion forums pertaining to relationships and sex. I've thoroughly enjoyed discussing relationships and offering advice to those who come seeking it. So an advice column is something I've always been interested in.

Recently I had the opportunity to offer advice to two different real life friends. Both times I was told, by the friends and by my wonderful husband, that I should consider writing a column.

So I figured what the hell? And here I am.

Let me give you a bit of an introduction to my take on life in general:

I believe we all make our own happiness. You can't make me happy, I can't make you happy. Similarly, if we are miserable it is of our own doing.

"Wait," you say, "what do you mean we can't make each other happy or miserable, of course we can!"

No, we really can't....not without permission. Nobody can make me miserable unless I LET them. Nobody can help me be happy unless I LET them.

Also, it's much easier for someone else to influence my happiness if I already feel that way anyway. If I'm happy with myself, then it becomes infinitely easier for my husband to add to that happiness....conversely it would be quite difficult for him to make me truly miserable, unless I choose to let him.

The best part about this philosophy of mine? We all have the power WITHIN OURSELVES to find happiness.

But this means choosing to have people in our lives that promote that happiness, and not allowing others to bring us down.

And that's where relationships come into play. So let me introduce you to my philosophy on relationships:

Whatever happens between consenting adults is their own damn business. If you and your partner are happy bed hopping every weekend, so be it. If you are only happy in a strictly monogamous relationship where nobody has sexual relations with anyone but you (not even with themselves) that's fine too. If you want to be with someone who goes mountain biking and rock climbing with you every weekend, that's great. If you just want to sit on the couch all weekend, that's great too. Whatever you want, you can have.

But for goodness sake, please find someone else who shares those values with you.

You can't change other people. Period. They can change themselves if THEY want to, but no amount of wanting them to or begging them to will make a lick of difference if they don't want to.

So, it's absolutely vital to choose people to share your life with who are on the same page as you.

This also means it's vital to communicate about what page you are actually on.

We can all have happy relationships if we choose the people in our lives wisely and communicate openly with those people.

So there you have it, a taste of my view of the world. Now, it wouldn't be a very good advice column without someone seeking advice, would it? So please, ask away!

Take care my darlings!

Judi