Recipe for a Perfect Marriage

[MJontheMend]

I was hijacking too much over on LQ's thread so I'm going to develop me theme on sexual empathy here.

A big part of my problem in my marriage was that I lacked empathy for the male tendency to rely heavily on the visual cortex for sexuality. There were two reasons for this. The first was simple ignorance of the science/physiology behind the tendency. The second was my inability to reconcile this tendency with the other male tendency to bond with and continue to sexually chase women almost seemingly regardless of their physical appearance. So, I would ask myself questions like "Why does HD guy X desperately want to have sex with his wife who weighs 300 lbs. and no longer has breasts and yet my H says the reason he doesn't want to have sex with me is that I am just moderately overweight and wear some not-so-attractive t-shirts?" The only answer I could come up with was HD guy X loves his wife and my H doesn't love me. Which wasn't a totally wrong way to regard the situation but it was definitely over-simplistic and focusing only on my H's half of the equation.

Anyway, I gained enough understanding of the whole visual cortex thing that I made the effort in my marriage, although uphill against fusion so it was difficult. Once I was dating it was much easier, obviously due to the lack of fusion, and I eventually became pretty much thoroughly objective about objectification. On our first date, NG and I had a light-hearted intellectual conversation about why I felt like a man had to have biceps and he felt like a woman had to have a strong waist to hip ratio in order for sexual attraction to occur. Setting this tone of at least objectivity on these kinds of matters is a good part of what led to the seriously hot sex we ended up having.

I feel like a lot of men on this BB are still in denial that the female "just sex" drive is mostly masochistic in nature. That is probably because boys/men are taught over and over again that the way to get a woman to have sex with you is to "pat the bunny." Actually, there is a lot of truth in that but you have to "spank the monkey" too. My current gripe is that even men who totally understand that you have to "spank the monkey" find it hard to empathize with this aspect of the female drive. For instance, I will give NG at least 4.5 stars on a scale of 5 for "monkey drive empathy" because we would have interactions that would be along the lines of him saying " You like it when I go deep, don't you?" and me replying "Yes.No" and then we'd both crack up. However, I am sad to report that my behavior was probably even too monkey for NG ( and if you guys knew what NG was semi-famous for you would know that I'm not at all likely to find anyone more wolf-like than him- sigh) So, I was thinking about the matter (some of BF's semi-cryptic comments were helpful in this regard) and I decided a few things were true. First, I sometimes act more monkey than I really am just because I can't or won't allow the bunny to be vulnerable. Second, I should gain more empathy for the male desire to see some other animals in play during sex or within a relationship because it is tied to a clear vulnerability to want to be wanted for more than the "wolf." Third, the more empathy I gain, the better able I will be to gain the empathy I desire through the miracle of differentiation. Ta Da!