Sex and Love in Union

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.

BY JEANETTE JONES