Dumpster-Dancer

An Atheist of the “if it feels good do it” school, I cursed the prudish “Christian” control freaks who brainwashed the girl who was to become my wife. I hated them for making her think that her powerful sex drive was somehow shameful. After our marriage I cursed them for planting phobias in her head that made me look like a sexual predator in her eyes.

A constant refrain from her was “but don't you love me? All you care about is sex!” This from a lusty, responsive woman who was rubbing herself off against my thigh at 15 years old . . . before the brain washers really got their hooks into her head.

I recently blogged how, in her mid-30s, she finally went Borders Books for a #tantra book to learn how to meet my needs. I implied that she was only responding to my pressure and demands, trying to save our marriage. But that's not really true.

In fact, around that time we'd been arm twisted into attending a Christian couple's retreat. There the lusty pastor's wives and older women shared all sorts of naughty and nasty sexy ways that they kept their marriages fresh. Their candor and joy in their relationships started us on the path to sexual and relational connectedness that we've been on ever since. #church_helped

Now I see that it wasn't the Church that brainwashed her in the first place. As a Catholic teen she had been plenty affectionate, and unashamedly so. In fact, she was the one who planned, and initiated our first sex . . . before marriage.

It was our culture's notion of romance, not Church, that brainwashed her, and it was partly my fault.

We married on Saturday, honeymooned Sunday, then I flew from California to Virginia on Monday to begin a very tough US Marine Corps school. By the time she drove across the country with our few possessions and moved into the empty apartment I'd sub-let for us, I was out in the field. Alone, barely 20, and friendless with nothing but the giant Chesapeake Bay roaches to keep her company, she bought a #romance_novel to pass the time. Before the school ended she had a whole library of them.

From those books she learned what she thought a man would want of her. She learned to be coy and reserved, to never initiate. More important, they taught her to expect to be romanced by a man who wouldn't say much but would anticipate her needs and who would make her feel all those wonderful feelings before, very rarely, swooping her off to a romantic bedroom for a perfect, nose-to-nose, climax.

I wanted to please her and actually learned to do that stuff. But it naturally couldn't happen very often with me deployed, out training, or exhausted almost constantly.

On leave driving back across this broad nation, I saw her long, perfect, copper thighs under the filmy sun dress just inches from me. I could smell her. I longed to take her, right there on the road side and love her. We spent at least 50 hours in that car, on that drive. Me aching. She enticing. Repeatedly I initiated, only to be rebuffed. She just wasn't “in the mood.” Or “people might see.” Or “we need to get an early start.” Or “we've been driving all day and I'm tired.”

At the time I blamed her stodgy church upbringing. Now I realize. That cramped little car, full to the ceiling with our possessions, McDonald's detritus, and a perpetually moving Golden Retriever just did not feel very #romance_novel to her. No, of course she wasn't “in the mood” in the sense that the circumstances did not make her feel horny.

And the romance novels had taught her that she needed to be “in the mood.” By then we'd been married several years. That “in the mood” feeling tends to come less often as the years pass anyway.

Eventually I learned that there was one hormonal day on in her menstrual cycle when she would always be “in the mood.” So, thanks to the idiotic, #romance_novel notion of sex as a feelings based thing, we wound up with perfect romance novel, nose-to-nose to simultaneous orgasm sex exactly one day per month . . . when I wasn't deployed or working or whatever on that non-negotiable day. It also tended to be a messy and crampy day which really limited activity. And I hated life that way and blamed her church.

In retrospect, it was our cultural expectation of romantic sex rather marital bonding that made our first few decades tough. Things changed after the Church couple's retreat. While she still loves romantic stuff, the Church taught her to appreciate physical intimacy just as bonding. Sometimes we share a quick fuck just as a kiss. Sometimes we set aside a whole afternoon in bed. On those days, sometimes she winds up in the mood and cums sometimes we just touch and bond. It no longer matters. We're not running off hormones or cultural expectations. We consciously choose to love one another no matter what we're feeling. We try to make the flip side true too. This morning I felt stressed and just wanted to be left alone, but something was troubling her. I forced myself to make time to hear her. We sat. I listened (or tried to). Soon we were connected again. I think she feels better. I do.

The Catholic Church even published a most remarkable book and totally non-prudish book on the importance of sex as bonding. It is “The Theology of the Body,” by Pope John Paul.