Scaramouche
Master Don Juan
Dear DJ's,
The following review is about a book from a Crusading Sex Therapist well known in Australia,this women adopts a very practical,at times clinical even academic approach....I believe it to be objective and without any Hype at all....Whats in it for you?...for me as for many older DJ's nothing much, but for some of the younger Guys it illustrates the importance of selecting a Woman whose Libido matches your own and the folly settling for less....Believe me within six months a womens true colours are revealed,and her genuine or feigned interest in Svx will be revealed...So read on,I welcome your comments.....
It's a truth universally acknowledged that a married man, in possession of a good libido, must be in want of some nooky. His wife, however, is either reading Pride and Prejudice or feigning sleep.
There is a wonderful scene in the movie annie hall in which the camera switches between Woody Allen in his psychiatrist's office and his lover, Diane Keaton, in hers. They are each asked how often they have sex.
"Hardly ever," Allen says plaintively. "Maybe three times a week." "Constantly," Keaton groans. "I'd say three times a week."
------------------------------------------------------------
Send Bettina Arndt your questions and comments
------------------------------------------------------------
That's the scene that everyone remembers even 30 years after the movie was released. It touches on a great truth about relationships - that after the first lusty years are over, most men want more sex than their female partners. Of course, it's not always the case. There are passionate women who never lose interest and some men who do. But if we walked through the streets of Australia asking who's not getting enough, there'd be ever so many more male hands than female hands waving in the air.
In 2006, the BBC reported: "A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship. Researchers from Germany found that, four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex." There's still a steady stream of such stories, news reports suggesting that women go off sex. All over the world, researchers are scurrying around to try to pin down the cause. Is it to do with hormones, or brain chemistry? Is it part of an evolutionary legacy? But there's no doubt it happens, and everyone knows it. It has entered our marital folklore and become an accepted part of our personal dynamics. Hang around a pub for long enough and you'll hear the jokes about the fallout, the sexually starved men.
From the time I started working as a sex therapist back in the early 1970s, people have been talking to me about their sex lives. What I hear about most is the business of negotiating the sex supply. How do couples deal with the strain of the man wishing and hoping while all she longs for is the bliss of uninterrupted sleep? It's a night-time drama being played out in bedrooms everywhere, the source of great tension and unhappiness.
But this drama is usually a silent movie, with couples rarely talking about the subtle negotiation that goes on between them. His calculations: "What if I ...? Will she then ...?" Her tactics: dropping her book as he appears at the bedroom door and feigning sleep; staying up late in the hope that he'll doze off. Tensions. Resentment. Guilt. And then there are the rare couples who magically maintain mutual lust for each other.
To find out how couples deal with all this, I set up a research project. Through radio interviews and magazine articles, I recruited 98 couples to spend six to nine months keeping diaries for me, writing about their daily negotiations over sex. They are couples of all ages, from 20-year-old students to people in their 70s who have been married for more than 40 years - young couples at the start of their relationships; pregnant women; couples caught up in the exhaustion of young families; women who want more sex than their husbands and women who'd live happily without it; older couples dealing with health issues like prostate surgery and arthritis. Some wrote every day for months - one man ended up providing over 70 pages of details of his love-life - while others provided only brief weekly summaries. As I expected, women rationing sex took centre stage.
Women know their loss of sexual drive is a huge issue in their relationships. Many wrote saying they can't bear what it is doing to their men. They understand their resentment but they feel they can't help it; they just rarely want sex any more. "I hate it that I don't have a sex drive like before. I would do anything ... well, almost anything," wrote Nadia, 41, from Sydney.
Listen to Judy. "If there's an OFF switch in the female body, mine was turned many years ago," wrote the 58-year-old from Bathurst, NSW, explaining that sex has been the single most divisive issue in her 27-year marriage. Her husband has a strong drive and used to want sex twice a day, but hers has always been low: "I'm actually quite inhibited, and generally find sex and everything that goes with it a big yawn. [It's] right up there with algebra, housework and trying on bras!" They have fought about sex for years and she's finally persuaded him to back off a little. Now they are down to having it a few times a week. "I'd still rather read a book," she said.
Judy knows how much it hurts him that she's not interested. "The hardest thing is that he knows I don't enjoy it. It drives him to distraction. There is always a tension there, though it's never actually stopped him doing it! ... When he finishes, he's always got a kind of 'pissed off' vibe, and, believe me, I totally understand, but gosh I wish I got the same kind of understanding for where I'm at." She added, sadly: "It seems most partnerships are terribly out of sync. How nice to be in harmony with desire. Does it exist?"
Oh yes, it exists. "I have no recollection of ever being refused sex," wrote Rob, a man from Perth, married for more than 44 years. He explained that his wife Jenny's enjoyment of lovemaking has always been as fulfilling as his, and describes it as an integral part of their loving relationship.
From the time that I first started talking about sex on television and radio, the couples who really love sex have reached out to me. I remember buying a ticket at an airport when a 50-ish saleswoman looked left and right, leaned over to me and whispered, "Isn't sex wonderful!" I have long known about the lusty couples who spend a remarkable amount of their lives between the sheets. They are the lucky ones. They are rare and sadly outnumbered by the men and women who struggle, day after day, with the corrosive effect on their relationship of women's low libidos.
With my sex diaries, it was the men's stories that really set me back on my heels. It is so rare that men talk openly about such personal issues, but the diaries gave them permission to let loose. Every day I received page after page of eloquent, often immensely sad diary material, as men grasped the opportunity to talk about what quickly emerged as a mighty emotional issue for them. Men might tell jokes about sexually deprived husbands, but talk to them privately and they aren't laughing. Many feel duped, disappointed, in despair at finding themselves spending their lives begging for sex from their loved partners. They are stunned to find their needs so totally ignored. It often poured out in a howl of rage and disappointment.
Andrew from Queanbeyan, NSW, is 41 years old, has been married for six years to Lorraine, and has two girls aged four and two. The couple started off having sex every day, sometimes twice a day, but sex has been on the decline ever since. Now Andrew is lucky to have sex once every five to six months. He's a very upset man: "I am totally at a loss as to what to do. I do love her and I think she loves me but I cannot live like a monk. I am at breaking point ... What makes women think that halfway through the game they can change the rules to suit themselves and expect the male to take it? ... i just do not get it!!!!!!!"
Bettina Arndt - Edited extract from The Sex Diaries: Why Women Go Off Sex and Other Bedroom Battles by Bettina Arndt, published by Melbourne University Press on March 2 (rrp $34.95). Names have been changed throughout.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/03/03/1235842367573.html
The following review is about a book from a Crusading Sex Therapist well known in Australia,this women adopts a very practical,at times clinical even academic approach....I believe it to be objective and without any Hype at all....Whats in it for you?...for me as for many older DJ's nothing much, but for some of the younger Guys it illustrates the importance of selecting a Woman whose Libido matches your own and the folly settling for less....Believe me within six months a womens true colours are revealed,and her genuine or feigned interest in Svx will be revealed...So read on,I welcome your comments.....
It's a truth universally acknowledged that a married man, in possession of a good libido, must be in want of some nooky. His wife, however, is either reading Pride and Prejudice or feigning sleep.
There is a wonderful scene in the movie annie hall in which the camera switches between Woody Allen in his psychiatrist's office and his lover, Diane Keaton, in hers. They are each asked how often they have sex.
"Hardly ever," Allen says plaintively. "Maybe three times a week." "Constantly," Keaton groans. "I'd say three times a week."
------------------------------------------------------------
Send Bettina Arndt your questions and comments
------------------------------------------------------------
That's the scene that everyone remembers even 30 years after the movie was released. It touches on a great truth about relationships - that after the first lusty years are over, most men want more sex than their female partners. Of course, it's not always the case. There are passionate women who never lose interest and some men who do. But if we walked through the streets of Australia asking who's not getting enough, there'd be ever so many more male hands than female hands waving in the air.
In 2006, the BBC reported: "A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship. Researchers from Germany found that, four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex." There's still a steady stream of such stories, news reports suggesting that women go off sex. All over the world, researchers are scurrying around to try to pin down the cause. Is it to do with hormones, or brain chemistry? Is it part of an evolutionary legacy? But there's no doubt it happens, and everyone knows it. It has entered our marital folklore and become an accepted part of our personal dynamics. Hang around a pub for long enough and you'll hear the jokes about the fallout, the sexually starved men.
From the time I started working as a sex therapist back in the early 1970s, people have been talking to me about their sex lives. What I hear about most is the business of negotiating the sex supply. How do couples deal with the strain of the man wishing and hoping while all she longs for is the bliss of uninterrupted sleep? It's a night-time drama being played out in bedrooms everywhere, the source of great tension and unhappiness.
But this drama is usually a silent movie, with couples rarely talking about the subtle negotiation that goes on between them. His calculations: "What if I ...? Will she then ...?" Her tactics: dropping her book as he appears at the bedroom door and feigning sleep; staying up late in the hope that he'll doze off. Tensions. Resentment. Guilt. And then there are the rare couples who magically maintain mutual lust for each other.
To find out how couples deal with all this, I set up a research project. Through radio interviews and magazine articles, I recruited 98 couples to spend six to nine months keeping diaries for me, writing about their daily negotiations over sex. They are couples of all ages, from 20-year-old students to people in their 70s who have been married for more than 40 years - young couples at the start of their relationships; pregnant women; couples caught up in the exhaustion of young families; women who want more sex than their husbands and women who'd live happily without it; older couples dealing with health issues like prostate surgery and arthritis. Some wrote every day for months - one man ended up providing over 70 pages of details of his love-life - while others provided only brief weekly summaries. As I expected, women rationing sex took centre stage.
Women know their loss of sexual drive is a huge issue in their relationships. Many wrote saying they can't bear what it is doing to their men. They understand their resentment but they feel they can't help it; they just rarely want sex any more. "I hate it that I don't have a sex drive like before. I would do anything ... well, almost anything," wrote Nadia, 41, from Sydney.
Listen to Judy. "If there's an OFF switch in the female body, mine was turned many years ago," wrote the 58-year-old from Bathurst, NSW, explaining that sex has been the single most divisive issue in her 27-year marriage. Her husband has a strong drive and used to want sex twice a day, but hers has always been low: "I'm actually quite inhibited, and generally find sex and everything that goes with it a big yawn. [It's] right up there with algebra, housework and trying on bras!" They have fought about sex for years and she's finally persuaded him to back off a little. Now they are down to having it a few times a week. "I'd still rather read a book," she said.
Judy knows how much it hurts him that she's not interested. "The hardest thing is that he knows I don't enjoy it. It drives him to distraction. There is always a tension there, though it's never actually stopped him doing it! ... When he finishes, he's always got a kind of 'pissed off' vibe, and, believe me, I totally understand, but gosh I wish I got the same kind of understanding for where I'm at." She added, sadly: "It seems most partnerships are terribly out of sync. How nice to be in harmony with desire. Does it exist?"
Oh yes, it exists. "I have no recollection of ever being refused sex," wrote Rob, a man from Perth, married for more than 44 years. He explained that his wife Jenny's enjoyment of lovemaking has always been as fulfilling as his, and describes it as an integral part of their loving relationship.
From the time that I first started talking about sex on television and radio, the couples who really love sex have reached out to me. I remember buying a ticket at an airport when a 50-ish saleswoman looked left and right, leaned over to me and whispered, "Isn't sex wonderful!" I have long known about the lusty couples who spend a remarkable amount of their lives between the sheets. They are the lucky ones. They are rare and sadly outnumbered by the men and women who struggle, day after day, with the corrosive effect on their relationship of women's low libidos.
With my sex diaries, it was the men's stories that really set me back on my heels. It is so rare that men talk openly about such personal issues, but the diaries gave them permission to let loose. Every day I received page after page of eloquent, often immensely sad diary material, as men grasped the opportunity to talk about what quickly emerged as a mighty emotional issue for them. Men might tell jokes about sexually deprived husbands, but talk to them privately and they aren't laughing. Many feel duped, disappointed, in despair at finding themselves spending their lives begging for sex from their loved partners. They are stunned to find their needs so totally ignored. It often poured out in a howl of rage and disappointment.
Andrew from Queanbeyan, NSW, is 41 years old, has been married for six years to Lorraine, and has two girls aged four and two. The couple started off having sex every day, sometimes twice a day, but sex has been on the decline ever since. Now Andrew is lucky to have sex once every five to six months. He's a very upset man: "I am totally at a loss as to what to do. I do love her and I think she loves me but I cannot live like a monk. I am at breaking point ... What makes women think that halfway through the game they can change the rules to suit themselves and expect the male to take it? ... i just do not get it!!!!!!!"
Bettina Arndt - Edited extract from The Sex Diaries: Why Women Go Off Sex and Other Bedroom Battles by Bettina Arndt, published by Melbourne University Press on March 2 (rrp $34.95). Names have been changed throughout.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/03/03/1235842367573.html
