Is it common for women who are in healthy, active, normal sexual relationships to not want to have their partner touch their "private parts", such as their breasts and vulva? I'm of course, speaking of activities during petting, foreplay, or sex. I'm not talking about the "unwanted" and inconsiderate groping by the horny husband when the wife is in the middle of making dinner and the pot is boiling over and smoke is coming out of the oven.
For a while, my wife had me convinced that it was just a "personal preference" to not ever be touched in those areas. Yet, in contrast, I could never imagine NOT being delighted by being touched in any of my private areas, as long as it wasn't done in public in an embarrassing way. But I assumed that our stark contrast was more of a typical male-female difference. But it did puzzle me when I read women's magazine articles about improving your love life, which recommended more foreplay and stimulation. It confused me. Did women want to be touched in those places or not?
And this was the case with my wife even when we first met and she was totally OK with intercourse and otherwise didn't seem to show even a hint of having any kinds of problems with sex. Or perhaps it was my lack of experience that I didn't realize her prohibition against touching of her private parts was anything unusual?
Obviously, the golden rule has been of no use in trying to understand how my wife feels about sex. If anything, a helpful rule might be the opposite -- if there's anything about sex I feel one way about, it's almost guaranteed my wife is going to feel the opposite way about it.
