The Me Too movement has
certainly empowered women to speak up about unwanted sexual behaviour.
Typically, in the patriarchal paradigm that was the incubator for the Me Too
movement, women felt disempowered by men who held a position of power over them
in some way and used this power to subjugate women sexually, whether through
sexualised language or sexual acts. Through the movement, women are finding
their voice to speak out against such situations.
From my observations, many
movements to reform societal values often seem to swing to the opposite extreme
before finding their true value. Perhaps societal values and habits can
sometimes be so entrenched that a shock is required for people to wake up and
listen. Where extreme measures are required, there is bound to be
collateral damage. In the example of the
feminist journey, many men felt considerably bruised, battered and hated before
the true value of equality became the focus of that movement.
So the question I began to
ponder was - what effect has the Me Too movement had on committed intimate
heterosexual relationships or, as I will refer to them, unions?
"I have the right to
say 'no'", the empowered woman claims. "If I don't feel like sex, I
don't have to feel obliged!"
While lots of loving men may endorse the above statements as fundamentally
correct, how are the claims in those statements affecting the sex life of a
committed partnership? In my experience, some men are frankly feeling
disenfranchised as their female partners pull away from the sexual relationship
because they "don't feel like it". And those same female partners are
feeling a little bewildered as they honour their feelings, engage with and
claim their rights and consequently alienate their male partners.
Imagine a woman (tired,
low libido, headache) who has recently engaged her right to say 'no' with her
husband in bed. Being respectful, he desists from his advances, and perhaps
still spoons her to sleep. However, when this happens repeatedly, he finds
himself beginning to feel:
- a little resentful (he is experiencing a thwarted desire);
- unloved (sex makes him feel loved);
- less willing to cuddle her (after all, physical contact with her just leads
to his arousal and thus frustration);
and... he doesn't want her to feel pressured.
Stuck between a rock and a
hard place, his needs are not being met.
Back to the woman: her
husband begins to show her less physical affection as a result of her refusing
sex repeatedly. She thinks he is being petty, gets annoyed and in turn, shows
him less physical affection, perhaps less verbal affection too. Emotionally and
physically, he pulls even further away from her. Her needs are not being met.
You can see the downwards spiral beginning to take shape, snowballing from her
original 'no'. You can imagine the conversation further down that spiral:
"... but sex is part of the union contract!", he claims.
"Tell me when, where and how I ever agreed to that!", she
retorts.
The union itself is coming into question.
Michele Weiner-Davis, in
her TED talk “The Sex-Starved Marriage”, outlines for us four stages of sex: desire,
arousal, orgasm and satiation. Her research-based claim is that often, the
first two actually occur the other way around - arousal often occurs before
desire is experienced. This idea runs
contrary to our common contemporary belief in the ‘romantic novel’ kind of
love, where burning desire fuels intense arousal which leads to incredible
orgasm and utter satiation. Actually,
the idea that various actions have the potential to arouse (or kill) desire is
a more realistic and observable way of looking at these initial stages of sex.
So what constitutes an
action that will arouse desire?
According to John Gottman, we feel loved in various ways, categorised
under these five headings:
·
words of affirmation
·
quality time
·
acts of service
·
receiving gifts
·
physical touch
Gottman encourages us to
utilise each language, becoming aware of our own preferred language (and
ensuring that our partner knows in detail what they can do to speak it in a way
we understand and welcome) and also becoming aware of our partner’s preferred
language (and how we can speak it so that they will feel loved). By doing so, we take actions that at least
help our partner to feel loved and perhaps even arouse their desire.
It is also important to note
that sexual ‘desire’ (in the way we are referring to it) is only present in two
forms of love – eros and ludus. Seven types of love were originally
identified by the classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.
The following are simple
descriptions:
philautia - self-love (can be
healthy or unhealthy)
agape
- universal/altruistic love
ludus
- playful, uncommitted love
eros - romantic /sexual love
philia
- trusted friendship kind of love
pragma
- practical, dutiful love
storge
- parent/child love, often asymmetrical
What would happen in our
unions if we practiced actions that are characteristic of the other forms of
love? In times of illness, we may have
to rely on storge as we care for our partner with the love a parent would
show a sick child; in times where one partner unintentionally causes hurt,
healthy philautia is helpful for us to retain our personal sense of
wellbeing; agape allows us to recognise our common humanity and forgive
our partner when they hurt us in such a way; when lust has waned, hopefully we
have forged philia to fall back on; and through the difficulties of
everyday living, perhaps we can simply utilise pragma to keep our union
together.
What does all this mean
for our united couple? Either party,
caught in the downwards spiral of resentment, anger, distance and division
resulting from the repeated, empowered ‘no’ to sexual invitation, can lose the
feeling of desire for each other. That
then just adds to the distress of the spiral and contributes to the questioning
of the union. By practicing actions corresponding to the different forms of
love in whatever love language our partner prefers, my hope is that we will
find eros
naturally falling into place.
