SUPER MARITAL SEX: COURTING SEXUAL PROBLEMS
We just learned to do it that way. He stimulated me through my slacks. Now, it takes rough and long stimulation for me to come. I just got used to it that way.
WIFE
An important part of learning about the sexual problems brought to my clinic was to have the couples describe their typical premarital sexual pattern. It became clear that the large majority of their problems originated during the bonding phase of their relationship.
Typically, the sexual interaction was male-instigated and female-dictated. Men sought out the sexual encounter, and women determined when and if sex took place. This pattern seemed to be a type of obligatory date dance that was not reflective of individual preferences. There was little verbal communication during the sex of courtship, and the women reported rare or inconsistent orgasmic experience. The men reported problems with ejaculatory control and sometimes erective problems due to drinking or feelings of pressure to perform. Sex during courtship was intense and exciting, but characterized by the same type of sexual problems reported in marriage.
I did not find that men or women selected future marital partners on the basis of sexual prowess. In fact, both men and women reported that sex with someone they did not marry was better than with the person they finally chose. It seems that people marry for a system, not just a person, that they are actually marrying not only a person but accepting how they themselves are with that particular person. Good sex is never enough.
Couples fell into bad habits, rushing sex, using it for negotiation, feeling guilty, trying to sneak to have sex at all, and sometimes cheating on a partner for sex while staying with the courting partner for a relationship. Since all of this was in the past, it is impossible to verify, but two patterns emerged in the interviews.
Men tended to remember focusing on performance, on giving their partners orgasm, or “their best time ever.” All the same, however, the men reported feeling somehow incomplete, wanting more. “I did it an awful lot, and sometimes pretty awful. I could do it with three different women at three different times in the same evening. It just lost something. Finally I just felt that it was becoming like a good-night kiss, only this was good-night intercourse.” This report by one of the husbands was typical and was a forewarning of the “doing to or for” instead of “with” orientation that can take place in marriage. Remember, “to” and “for” are not systems words. “With” is the key word in a lasting super sex system.
Women reported a tendency to “negotiate” sex in courtship. They felt they somehow were in charge of sex, allowing it to take place in exchange for evidence of true feelings of caring or commitment. “It’s not that I didn’t love sex. I really think I wanted to have it more than most of the men I went out with. They seemed to do it out of a sense of duty, expectation, sort of the automatic next step or last step to a date. I just got so used to worrying about ‘after’ that I lost sight of the ‘now.’ ” So reported one wife as she looked back on her courtship.
“It just seemed that things changed after we had sex,” this woman continued. “Most of the men would act different, like they sort of owed me something and that frightened them. I always thought that sex in marriage would be so much more free, without the game-playing. It didn’t work out that way. You still get a lot of help getting your clothes off, but not so much getting them back on again.”
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