This is one of the key issues here. (The others are concerns about the implicit moral relativism of many forms of therapy, and the fact that Ogged clearly hates mothers and the idea of motherhood.)
I understand where Ogged, SCMT and Tom are coming from in objecting to the moralization of sexual arousal. Who among us does not kind of sort of admire Yves Montand, who defended cheating on his wife with Marilyn Monroe by saying, "Hey, what are you going to do? It's Marilyn Monroe." (It sounds better in the original French.) And I also think that no one is under any kind of moral duty to find people who they don't find attractive attractive prior to marrying them.
But marriage does, I think, have the effect of moralizing arousal. Indeed, the pledge of monogamy usually tied up with marriage has no content unless that's true. That means that one of the duties of marriage is to work very hard to continue to find your spouse attractive. Obviously, there are limits to that. But the Woody Allen idea that the "heart wants what the heart wants" really can legitimately be criticized, even though, from a certain angle, it does seem to describe a biological reality.
That means that one of the duties of marriage is to work very hard to continue to find your spouse attractive. Obviously, there are limits to that. But the Woody Allen idea that the "heart wants what the heart wants" really can legitimately be criticized, even though, from a certain angle, it does seem to describe a biological reality.
You betcha. And I would say (well, am saying on the other thread) that dismissing such work as inevitably pointless or doomed to failure is false as a matter of fact.
That ain't the heart that wants what the heart wants. Marilyn Monroe has been covered already.
But Ogged, it seems as though your idea of mystery basically rules out any long-term sexually active relationship. (I mean, is it really going to take 215 farts?) That's just not healthy.
I thought about including discussion of marriage vows, but while I think they do obligate you to try to work on arousal, insofar as that's possible at the margins, they can't obligate what's not possible. So, they can obligate that you be physically affectionate, and that you not cheat even if someone else is arousing, but no marriage vow is going to make you hard.
Apparently, while each person is attracted to others for idiosyncratic reasons, everyone is not attracted to others for the same readily enumerable reasons.
I took the Woodman's use of the word "heart" to be a bit euphemistic, or at least self-deluding. I still think my wife is totally wrong about Stardust Memories, though. It totally holds up.
yeah, isn't it just a truism that the sex goes out of most long-term relationships?
Generalizing madly from friends, I don't know about most, but not the happy ones. The long term relationships I know about that have turned non-sexual are also otherwise unhappy -- the people who are still emotionally attached and still like each other still seem to be screwing.
Regarding yesterday's discussion, I don't think it was so much a command for men to find their partners sexy no matter what as that 'ew, a baby came out of where?' is a bad reason/excuse to stop finding someone sexy (and one that should be worked on, if necessary).
For the purposes of this discussion, are we taking 'sexy' to mean
This discussion of conjugal rights, like all discussions of anything, could be improved by a little Kant:
"25. The Rational Right of Marriage.
For, this natural employment--as a use of the sexual members of the other--is an enjoyment for which the one person is given up to the other. In this relation the human individual makes himself into a thing, which is contrary to the right of humanity in his own person. This, however, is only possible under the one condition, that as the one person is acquired by the other as a thing, that same person also equally acquires the other reciprocally, and thus regains and reestablishes the rational personality. The acquisition of a part of the human organism being, on account of its unity, at the same time the acquisition of the whole person, it follows that the surrender and acceptation of, or by, one sex in relation to the other, is not only permissible under the condition of marriage, but is further only really possible under that condition. But the personal right thus acquired is, at the same time, real in kind; and this characteristic of it is established by the fact that if one of the married persons run away or enter into the possession of another, the other is entitled, at any time, and incontestably, to bring such a one back to the former relation, as if that person were a thing."
That last bit is the key.
Man, did that guy understand human life or what? This passage was actually read out by my best man at my wedding.
Those were just examples, drawn from my personal store of reasons, b-dub.
Ok, so the reasons for sexual attraction are mysterious, but for its absence are plain as day? Why would you think that? Isn't it just as plausible that, just as when you're attracted to someone you find some reason on which to hang your attraction ("You praise the boy with a snub nose by calling him 'cute'; the hook-nose of another you say is 'kingly'; and the boy between those two is 'well proportioned'; the dark look 'manly'; and the white are 'children of gods'. And as for the 'honey-colored', do you suppose their very name is the work of anyone other than a lover who renders sallowness endearing and easily puts up with it if it accompanies the bloom of youth?"), which reason is the symptom, not the disease, when you're not attracted to someone you find some reason to explain that, even though the root cause is something else? (This is essentially LB's point from the other thread, minus some intentionality.)
Also Cala has a good point.
the people who are still emotionally attached and still like each other still seem to be screwing.
Maybe part of the reason for this truism is that most of the long-term older couples one is likely to know for most of one's life is family, and no one wants to hear about how Aunt Doris and Uncle Hymie still get it on regularly even though they're in their 70s.
Yeah, and actually I said this in the other thread. My point in enumerating trivial examples was just this: any reason is a sufficient reason. We might not like the reason, and we might think the person who gives it is a schmuck, but there's no doing anything about it.
But surely this is exactly the question -- how do we decide that something is a "bad reason/excuse" for not wanting to have sex with someone else? (I imagine in most of the cases that the article discusses it's not this stark -- it's really a question of not wanting to have sex with someone as much as you once did.) I mean, is the fact that your husband has gained 100 pounds since you married him and has a beer gut a bad reason not to want to have sex with him that much? To me it sounds pretty reasonable. But I'm not sure what the criteria are that we're using to decide what counts as a reasonable excuse.
What I do know is that the answer can't be a consequential one. In other words, the answer can't be (as, in an earlier thread, Timothy Burke seemed to suggest it should be): It's a good thing for a husband to be in the delivery room with his wife, therefore it's unacceptable for a man's libido to be affected by seeing a child's head emerge from his wife's vagina.
Or, I imagine, having children makes everyone so tired that it's not as easy to fit it in as it did when they were newlyweds/a new couple and had lots of time and energy. So I've heard.
Don't family counselors take it as a sign of a problem if one half of the couple doesn't want to have sex with the other half? Not just less frequent, too busy, too exhausted; but if one half of the couple finds the other half repulsive, something ain't right.
22: I think part of what makes it a bad reason/excuse is that first, it's just a biological thing that happens. It's nasty and gross, but so's a lot of life -- I think it would be a bad reason/excuse if a woman couldn't find her husband attractive because she saw him throw up when he had the flu and he might kiss her with that mouth, even though it's been six months since he had the flu and he always uses mouthwash.
Second, it seems that in the majority of cases, the pain and fear the woman has is going to outweigh the discomfort the man might have. She needs him there for support.
I mean, is the fact that your husband has gained 100 pounds since you married him and has a beer gut a bad reason not to want to have sex with him that much? To me it sounds pretty reasonable. But I'm not sure what the criteria are that we're using to decide what counts as a reasonable excuse.
Now, this is really the question we're discussing. I've been arguing generally about the controllability of libido, and I think I've been understood to have been making stronger claims than I meant to. Obviously, major physical changes are going to affect someone's physical attractiveness, and there isn't necessarily much one can do about that.
This specific issue though (again, excluding literal PTSD sufferers), where a man becomes less attracted to his wife not because of any change in her, but because he once saw her under circumstances that he found physically repulsive or symbolically unsexy -- I think that's a bad reason. It is possible that a man could sincerely be less attracted to his wife for such reasons, but I believe that that simply means that he is sincerely a shit-head. That one's emotional reactions are sincere does not mean that they are decent or acceptable. (And I've seen no indication that any substantial number of men do feel this way.)
It's nasty and gross, but so's a lot of life -- I think it would be a bad reason/excuse if a woman couldn't find her husband attractive because she saw him throw up when he had the flu and he might kiss her with that mouth, even though it's been six months since he had the flu and he always uses mouthwash.
I was hoping to get away from the birthing, as that seems to be clouding things.
Well, but that's what we all got pissed off about -- the implied "Don't ask for help through this difficult, frightening, and terribly important process, unless you're willing to risk being unfuckable. Remember, you're not attractive once the facade cracks." (Quotes invented, and uncharitable.) Talking about loss of attraction to a long-term partner is a different issue.
I don't get how people are so sure of these moral judgements. Why wouldn't it just be unfortunate? There seems to be a willingness to dictate just what is to be found attractive (or unattractive), and that seems seems downright totalitarian.
I don't get how people are so sure of these moral judgements.
It's not deduction from first principles, it's induction from people who behave similarly or who say similar things. Based on people I've known and how they react, anyone whose attraction to a serious partner was severely impacted by that sort of thing would, in fact, be a shithead (and most people don't hyphenate that, do they. My inner Zweibel is reemerging.)
I could conceive of a different world where decent people's attraction to a partner they loved was that fragile, but in my experience that's not how people react.
Actually, ogged, I think that we all think that there are reasonable reasons to be attracted (or unattracted) to someone and unreasonable ones. It's just that some of us have broader spectrums of what count as reasonable.
What I mean is that effectively LizardBreath and Cala are saying that men who find themselves less attracted to their wives after witnessing them give birth have libidos that are unacceptably screwed up, that they are, in a sense, hardwired wrong. It's no different, actually, from what just about all of us would say about pedophiles: it's unfortunate that these people are only attracted to children, but it's not just unfortunate -- it's actually reprehensible. Belle, et.al., are saying the same thing about the men in the NYT article.
Only to the extent that it is genuinely hardwiring, rather than self-indulgence. I'd be much less harsh if I thought that being 'hardwired wrong' was the explanation for most of whatever men feel this way (which, again, I see no reason to believe is particularly many. Mostly I just think the shrink is a twerp.).
I don't think the pedophiles analogy quite works, because what's really objectionable about pedophiles is what they do. In this case, people are being criticized for not-wanting, which seems to me very strange.
"I don't get how people are so sure of these moral judgements. Why wouldn't it just be unfortunate? There seems to be a willingness to dictate just what is to be found attractive (or unattractive), and that seems seems downright totalitarian."
I think part of the willingness to be judgmental in this case is that not only is pregnancy a natural occurrence – unlike, perhaps, massive weight gain – but it's a natural occurrence that happens AS A RESULT OF SEX. Using the realities associated with pregnancy to pass judgment on the sexiness of one's wife just seems really cruel.
Here's an analogy. Certain sex acts can sometimes result in an unflattering view of one's partner, or leave unpleasant things on each other's bodies. Surely, we're entitled to pass moral judgment on people who pull back sexually from their partners based on that? I thought it was generally accepted that you're an asshole for not wanting to kiss your partner after certain acts. Or did I not get a memo?
No, not quite. There are two things that I think make the transition from unfortunate to shithead (again, excluding the really really traumatized): 1) not willing to do anything to fix the problem, like talk to a therapist if needed or 2) placing that theoretical discomfort (as it's not a majority of men who are so traumatized, and hell, one of the guys was complaining about having to learn about the placenta) ahead of the woman's very real needs and pain.
And, and I think LB agrees with me, most of my problem with the article was that it said that this is really the woman's problem; not something that the guy needs to work through or at least expect, but that the woman should never have even imposed on him because it might affect his libido.
I agree with #35, but my question is then, "Why did you marry a jerk?"
But maybe this whole conversation is hopelessly muddled, because we're really disagreeing about the extent to which you can will yourself along certain vectors. I suspect that, for people for whom sex is then end good, rather than an expression of other end goods, it's probably pretty hard to will themselves along that vector. So don't marry the guy who's looking for sex as the end good.
Actually, I think most people believe that wanting to have sex with children -- outside of whether you ever act on the desire -- is morally objectionable.
I really think the disagreement here is that you and I don't find it all outside the pale that a man might find his libido waning some after watching his wife give birth, while LizardBreath and Belle do. We think that having childbirth affect your libido is, as it were, reasonable -- in the way that having massive weight gain or baldness or whatever affect your libido counts as reasonable -- while they think it's a sign that the guy is screwed up.
I think a lot of the people in the comments were not criticizing these men for not wanting, but rather, for not getting over it. You can't help who you want, but presumably if you're at the stage of having a child with a woman you're planning that she be more than a cute face and a fuck -- she's supposed to be a life partner and all that. Hence the "sickness and health" bits in the marriage vows. If you're not ready to be there for her, hold her hand, help her out, through one of the major milestones of your lives together -- because you're afraid that you won't find her attractive afterwards -- then that's basically pretty childish and really, you ought to accept that criticism. Sure, maybe you'll be grossed out by the birthing process, and you can't help that. But seriously, get over it. If you can't help her out, then you're not ready for marriage or partnership or having kids -- you're just a kid yourself, and you ought to go back to first dates and holding doors open and being nervous.
In this case, people are being criticized for not-wanting, which seems to me very strange.
Go back a couple of decades to the second-wave women's movement, and picture a guy (I don't have a quote, but you know stuff like this was said) saying: "Well, certainly women can work if they want to, but that's not going to change the fact that men don't find successful women attractive -- even if they can get married, the marriges are going to end up sexless. There's nothing a man can do about it if what he finds appealing is a woman who will stay home and be there to support him."
This is a loaded example, but wouldn't you feel comfortable criticizing such a man for 'not-wanting'?
"Once again, I thought it was just uncontroversial that after a while, the sexual fires cool, and we settle into no less loving and affectionate but decidely less sex-fueled patterns."
I grant that it's an uncontroversial, popular wisdom, opinion. It's not been my personal experience at all, however.
Your own reasons for "a good reason to stop finding " someone sexy seem entirely subjective, as well.
I certainly do agree with your final clause of your final sentence, however.
Re 45: except that none of the men in the piece actually said or did anything like this. They had all been in delivery. It was the shrink who suggested that people take this into account when deciding whether the guy should be in delivery (actually, he suggested that the women take this into account, which was stupid and wrong).
To get back to the actual post, I think within some reasonable limits, LB's right that you can control whether you're attracted to another person. It's definitely true that if you preoccupy yourself with a defect, you'll take the wind out of your proverbial sails. (Even if it's your own defect; if all you can think about during sex is 'Is she noticing my gut?' you probably won't have a lot of fun.)
Re 46: sure, but that's something someone would say prior to the fact, without actual knowledge, to influence others. We're talking about something quite different here: something unexpected that happens after the fact.
Let me in response offer a reverse loaded example:
Imagine that men, not women, bore children, and that the child emerged from the head of the penis, the opening of which was massively distended by the experience. Is it really impossible for you to imagine that occasionally, a woman who witnessed this might find that her attraction to that particular penis ended up waning some?
ogged, surely. But unless you've had the good fortune to date wholly perfect people, there's surely been something about everyone you've dated that you've found less than sexy. You were probably still attracted to them; how did that work? I imagine by putting whatever the mildly unattractive thing out of your head.
52 - That's pretty hard to conceptualize, and hard to answer. Let's say that my partner was very sick for a bit, and ended up pretty much a mess, vomiting from the chemo, losing weight in places and bloating in others, and undergoing some pretty traumatic procedures. Would it be imaginable that I would feel less sexually attracted to him? Sure. But should I get over it? Of course. Can I learn to be attracted to him again? Unless I'm a sixteen year old kid who thought that being in love was gonna be roses and picnics forever, I'm pretty sure I can.
But Cala, this has nothing to do with perfection, but about those things that we find arousing and de-arousing. If a lover suddenly acquired some trait that I found de-arousing, I'm pretty sure that would be the end of sex for us.
52 has been answered. The problem isn't with the initial revulsion, it's rather with the failure to get over it and the idea that the bare possibility that you *might* suffer a decline in your libido (and that doesnt' seem to be the case for the majority of men here) is enough of a reason to bail on a woman who is having your baby and enduring a lot of pain and anxiety.
I would like to second ogged on 53. I have killed desire as of necessity, but never created it.
And I think "the heart wants what it wants" can be understood without equating "heart" with "penis." It is the emotional pulls that are hardest to withstand. Woody -- a fairly sensitive guy, perhaps excessively so -- is talking about the emotional pulls. They can lead, equally, to poor behavior.
My point is that on any individual who is not perfect, there's going to be some trait that's de-arousing, no?
Actually, I think I'd say no. Perfection and arousal, as text says, aren't so closely related. There seem to be pretty specific triggers for people in both directions, and they aren't necessarily present in any given encounter.
The problem isn't with the initial revulsion, it's rather with the failure to get over it and the idea that the bare possibility that you *might* suffer a decline in your libido (and that doesnt' seem to be the case for the majority of men here) is enough of a reason to bail on a woman who is having your baby and enduring a lot of pain and anxiety.
I didn't think we were discussing men who were leaving women just because they thought they may suffer a decline in libido after the birth. I thought the issue was men who found it difficult to see their wives as sexually appealing after watching them give birth. I know it's only a question of degrees, but I also think it's a little unfair to exaggerate the behavior in question that severely.
Cala beat me to it in 28, but I still have to say, ogged, you do realize that most women have some cellulite, don't you? Making that an absolute deal breaker makes it tough.
Yes, but I still have to think that there's a world of difference between not being in the delivery room during the birth and "bailing". Or do we automatically pass such judgement on any man who doesn't/can't be there? I'm seriously curious, I don't know where this particular zeitgeist is right now.
a mess, vomiting from the chemo, losing weight in places and bloating in others, and undergoing some pretty traumatic procedures
Assuming this is a temporary thing, I think everyone expects that you should be able to get over it. If you can't, as you say, you aren't willing to take the rough with the rest, and you shouldn't be married. But I suspect this is something the other party will have some information about before he marries you, so it shouldn't occur too frequently.
If this is a permanent state, and you are able to find the other person attractive because he continues to have the qualities you initially found attractive - funny, smart, kind, whatever - then that's fantastic, and you are precisely the sort of life companion we're all looking for.
If it's a permanent state, and you have willed yourself into finding emaciated men with vomit all over them sexy, then you've willed yourself into being a sick fuck. Which is not good.
So if one isn't in the delivery room during the birth itself, one can't be a supportive spouse? Are there any further caveats on what does or doesn't qualify as supportive behavior once in the room? I guess I'm just dismayed at how glib some of these condemnations seem to be.
If your partner wanted you to be in the delivery room with her, and you refused because you were freaked out about her potential unattractiveness while in delivery, yes, I'd say that was pretty much unsupportive. How is that glib?
Given the terms you've couched it in, by and large it's not. That said, I still don't think that "freaked out by her potential unattractiveness" is an accurate or fair description of what we're discussing. Reading the article, I didn't get the sense that the "unattractiveness" of the scene was what disturbed the husbands. I got the sense that it was the trauma and pain of the event, and the subsequent memories of it, that the men couldn't shake.
If it really is just that these guys can't deal with their wife's less-than-ideal aesthetic state, then I think they deserve whatever scorn LB, Cala & Co. can drum up. I honestly didn't get the sense that this was the issue. Maybe we're conflating two entirely different reactions here, and maybe I'm just giving these guys too much credit.
Carrying on from the other thread - In this day and age if you refuse to be in the delivery room for any reason other than death you are a "sexist asshole." No, it is not fair, but that is a fact of life.
Why?
Because some people have the quaint idea that we humans can control our feelings. That way we can moralize about the BAD feelings that we and others have . If you have bad feelings it is because you are a shithead.
That is also bull but it does bring comfort, especially to women who fear aging and losing the ability to sexually attract a man.
Yeah, I know this is harsh but we need to get down to what this is really about. It is about the ownership and control of feelings. We all have them, they are complex, and they influence our perception all the time.
You know what is really maddening about the original article? It made the wife responsible for the husband's feelings. Now if that isn't a recipe for disaster I don't know what is.
It prevents the idea that the husband is the one who should do something about it, assuming he wants to.
Presumably he loves his wife but at the same time loses sexual attraction. I assume he wants it back. He can't force it back but there are some behaviours he can do that might help it come back.
If he ignores or suppresses the loss or he moralizes that it makes him a bad person he is unlikely to regain the feeling.
76 - what? Tripp, I didn't hear a lot of people calling men "sexist assholes" because they refused to be in the delivery room for any reason short of death. My reasoning, at least, is that they are assholes if they refuse to be in the delivery room because they feel that their fear trumps their partner's pain (barring a PTSD condition or summat), or because they're worried about seeing their wives in an unattractive light. I'm not sure I'd necessarily call these guys "sexist" -- more just monumentally insensitive, selfish, and a bunch of effin' babies.
What's fascinating about this is that the lack of attractiveness of the woman is what's considered the main problem. Women will all end up unattractive in the end - wrinkled, old, with dry vaginas and lots of moles. I was at a hot springs in Tecopa and saw a lot of this - the public springs were full of women in their 70s and no swim suits were allowed. Now I know what I have to look forward to and it is not sexy.
Men in long term relationships need to either make peace with the fact that their partner's bodies will change with time and learn to be attracted to something other than the perfect body that initially turned them on or need to make peace with the fact that they will have to stop having sex for the rest of their lives after their life partner falls out of the "attractive" range that's acceptable. The point of a long term monogamous relationship is to be true to one another. Sex is optional.
Men, you need to understand that you are not exactly paragons of attractiveness and glowing god like glory. In fact most of you are smelly, hairy and fart and burp a lot. You scratch yourselves and spit. You get overweight and don't care or do anything about it. Women get over it and have sex with you anyway. I'm sure that as you get old and wrinkly you will expect your life partner to continue to delight in you and your body - even the most attractive of you will end up old and flabby eventually. How would you feel if your partner came to you one day and said - "you know I just can't handle how old you are - I'm not attracted to you."?
You are correct. "Sexist asshole" was the term used in 1986 when my daughter was born. It is a dated term. "Effin' baby" seems to be the 2005 equivalent.
The big fear back then, by the doctors and the husbands, was that the husband may faint and then the doctors would be dealing with two medical situations instead of one. At the time the medical personnel adviced the couples that if the husband thought he might faint it might be best he if he left the room for the birth. I don't recall anyone saying "Get over it you effing baby."
Also I don't know any guy who was smart enough to predict he might lose sexual attraction to his wife by viewing the birth, so I don't know any husband having that fear.
I certainly have not said the man's feelings are the women's fault. The man's feelings are his own and it is up to him to choose what if anything he wants to do with them.
And you have my sympathies - I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to marry a man. Still, women, bless their hearts, seem to do it.
As far as aging goes, it has been my happy experience to find that as I age I seem to naturally find women my age attractive. I'm currently 48. I still find young women attractive, too, but the list for me has gotten larger.
I'm the guy who chastised ogged for saying a 70 year old women could not be attractive.
But I'll be honest enough to say there are certain things I have never found attractive and I don't think I can change that. And no, cellulute (or "Sunny Delight," the term my 4-year-old son invented) is not one of them. I'm okay with cellulite.
That is a nice fairy tale but the moral is false and can lead to great sorrow.
If, as is inevitable, one begins to notice the flaws in one's lover then that must mean one is no longer in love, correct? Because if one had true love the lover would always appear fair, clever, deft and debonair.
About the attractiveness point: Tripp's got a good point -- what we find attractive changes a bit as we age. Or maybe, more precisely, what counts as an automatically un-attractive trait changes. I think wrinkles are unattractive now, which is why I don't date older men; but I hope that by the time my boyfriend and I are wrinkly, that wrinkly won't be a turn-off.
But I'm rejecting this trait-by-trait analysis of attractiveness. Suppose my boyfriend has love handles. I don't find love handles attractive in the way that I find broad shoulder attractive, but the presence of such love handles doesn't mean I'm not attracted, on balance, to him.
It seems that a key distinction that has been danced around here but not stated explicitly (79 hinted at it) is the distinction between reasons for finding one's partner unsexy and for finding one's partner unattractive. I don't think you're necessarily a jerk if you point out that the inevitable physical changes which accompany the aging process are not the stuff of which sexiness is made. That said, physical sexiness is only one component of attractivenes, and I think that in the ideal long-term relationship, as physical sexiness decreases, the relative importance of physical sexiness as a component of attractiveness should decrease proportionally. In other words, by the time you're both in your 50s, it shouldn't matter that neither of you has the body of a 22-year-old, because (A) over the years you've found plenty of reasons to find each other attractive that are not purely physical, and (B) years of love and intimacy can make the body of one's partner seem beautiful and sexy even as one recognizes that he/she no longer posseses the same traits that made them seem sexy at the outset of the relationship. Fondness and intimacy can make even the wrinkles and flaws of one's partner can seem sexy; this does not mean that one would also find wrinkles and flaws in general to be sexy.
Long story short: If your sense of sexiness is limited purely to the physical, your prospects of happiness in a long-term relationship are not good.
If I'm whining that he doesn't look like he did when he was 28, sure. The moral judgment doesn't attach to the feeling, like you said upthread, but the resulting behavior.
Reading the article, I didn't get the sense that the "unattractiveness" of the scene was what disturbed the husbands. I got the sense that it was the trauma and pain of the event, and the subsequent memories of it, that the men couldn't shake.
You know, I think this sense is at the root of the disagreement. I've never heard of anyone losing the capacity to be sexually interested in a partner as a result of the trauma of seeing them injured or in pain, at a time after the partner is fully recovered. This seems like the kind of neurosis I would have been aware of if it were at all common. (The preceding is the weak point in my argument. Possibly there are lots of men who can't have sex with their wives after having seen them pulled out of the wreckage of cars -- if so, I'm just wrong.) If I'm right, though, the problem here (to the extent that it exists outside the mind of the shrink who wrote the article) can't be a simple empathetic reaction to the pain she was in -- it has to have something to do with childbirth specifically.
Too much empathy I could maybe sympathize with. Some kind of madonna/whore neurosis about not wanting to have sex with a woman you've seen giving birth? Not so much.
Well, okay, but then childbirth and empathy relating to it have absolutely nothing to do with it, and sympathizing with the men in the article for their trauma is misplaced. We're just talking about: "Doctor, the magic has gone out of my marriage."
Which is sad, and an issue for people it happens to, but not a sympathy-deserving trauma.
The empathy stuff was in response to Belle's point about how it feels to be the one being cut open. I did the second post so we could discuss the general issue without all the birth baggage, but that didn't really work.
I personally have known two women who have told me that after giving birth they no longer wanted to have sex with their partners. One because she blamed her husband for the pain of childbirth, and now associated sex inextricably with the idea of pregnancy and childbirth, the other because she (as far as I could understand her) felt her body now belonged to her child, and her husband now felt to her like an intruder. I don't know what happened to either of these women or their relationships, but are these feelings equivalent to those of the men in the NYT story?
The bothersome thing about the article was that it seemed to turn childbirth into an occasion for trivial self-consciousness -- "don't let him see you in curlers, without makeup, or pushing out a baby, or he'll dump you". This is the mentality that leads to eighth-month caesareans.
It makes me think about Heian Japan, where a man could have a long affair with a woman without ever seeing her face. On the other hand, when a Heian empress gave birth, the whole court (above a certain rank) had to be in the room with her (except the emperor), and fainting was probably frowned upon.
I personally have known two women who have told me that after giving birth they no longer wanted to have sex with their partners. One because she blamed her husband for the pain of childbirth, and now associated sex inextricably with the idea of pregnancy and childbirth, the other because she (as far as I could understand her) felt her body now belonged to her child, and her husband now felt to her like an intruder.
See, this would get me to say "Suck it up" as well. If that's really all that's going on, get therapy, work through it on your own, but get over it.
I also do marriage counseling for a small number of couples, and I find people will avoid the truth even in that context. People come in and say, "There's something wrong, I'm not attracted to my husband or wife anymore." How long have you been married, I ask.
"Ten years."
Right, you're not going to be attracted to them. That's just how it is. I'm sorry. Somebody told you differently.
I still don't understand your response to these situations, LB. Therapy isn't magic, and, once again, I don't think desire is something so easily rekindled. So their reaction is unfortunate for them and their husbands, but that's all one can say about it. So, again, the two points seem to be:
1) Is desire something volitional?
2) How much are non-volitional feelings rightly subject to moral condemnation?
LB's 46 seems true--in some large scale way, changes in the culture dictate changes in attraction. The 50s idea of beauty is different from the current one. And wider perceptions of what is normal or good influence individual opinions. It may be that they don't influence everyone to the same degree, and of course some parts of attraction come from within, but the explanation process within your own head changes with changing cultural norms. Something you blamed on your wife in the past, you might blame yourself for now, and that would change the alchemy of how you feel about her. Explanations are important.
Sure, explanations matter, but someone who's grown up in one context can't suddenly feel differently just because another context is possible or was extant at some time past. Obviously, going too far in either direction brings us to absurd conclusions: either that desire is completely morally neutral or that all desires are rightly subject to moral evaluation. I guess it's not surprising that the topic would be so contentious.
1) I think desire is non-volitional, but that doesn't mean what one desires can't be changed if you work at it. Therapy isn't magic, but learning to change one's expectations, for example, might go a long way to rekindling desire.
2) I'm not sure. If someone's raised in a racist household and has racist impulses as a result, we might not condemn him, but we'd probably insist that he make a good faith effort to change his behavior.
See, this is nuts. Blaming is volitional -- the pain of childbirth is not her husband's fault (barring special circumstances such as his punching out the anethesiologist), and she can stop blaming him. If your loss of desire is based on a lunatic resentment, surely cutting loose from the resentment should help. If we're talking about PTSD, I sympathize, and I don't know how treatable it is, but simply saying 'whaddaya gonna do?' is not the way to go.
her body now belonged to her child, and her husband now felt to her like an intruder.
This is, if anything, nutser, which means that I feel less comfortable saying get over it, but she should certainly try.
I'm going to generalize madly here, but most people enjoy sex -- for many people it's actually quite important to them. When you get married, you make an agreement that your partner isn't going elsewhere for sex. Under those circumstances, I think you have an obligation to do what is possible (which I realize isn't everything, but which is, I think, often something) to maintain or reestablish your interest in having and willingness to have sex with your partner, rather than simply dismissing changes in your level of interest as something you can't affect.
Ok, I think we're beyond arguing now, and just explaining our differences. I take these statements, particularly the second, nutser one, to be attempts to articulate complex feelings. Who the fuck knows why really these women don't want to have sex with their husbands--it just seems cruel to me to insist that they "work" at arriving at an articulation that we can all agree is reasonable or "rational." You don't want to have sex, you don't want to have sex. I think the most the husband can do here is to ask whether the wife believes it can be helped. If she says "no," then that's the end of it. They can each decide if the relationship is worth maintaining, but that's a subsequent consideration.
I've got nothing to add on this -- I thought we were all in the meadow, and then I turned and was alone.
But, since it worked for Chopper, I was wondering if I could get some good vibes for an interview I have tomorrow. It's for a clerkship in Miami. Which I would like.
So, you know, if anybody has any good will to spare, I could use it.
There are a lot of stories that our culture has to explain or give shape to what people do. People talk about uncontrollable passion but only insane people masterbate in public. If you are going to act on uncontrollable passion, you are going to have to pick a culturally appropriate script.
I don't think revulsion toward sex due to childbirth is a good idea for culturally appropriate script. For men or women.
You're giving up on marriage awfully easily. If you've agreed to be someone's monogamous life partner, for richer and poorer and all the rest, you really are entitled to an explanation when s/he decides not to have sex with you anymore. If it's cruel to ask, then ask more nicely.
I don't know that anyone is ever "entitled" to an explanation, but my main reservation would be that all explanations of emotional phenomena this complex are more or less fictions, and your own gut feeling is better than whatever you force your estranged partner to say.
I'm starting to wonder how much positions on this question track with the prior discussion of "an authentic life." Wolfson should now come in and explain that while he believes LB's position to be correct, he can't shake the suspicion that ogged is actually right.
I've really enjoyed this discussion. So, Ogged, even though you haven't written a single true word throughout its whole duration, I appreciate what you've been trying to do here. Also, should Volokh succeed in converting me to homosexuality, I really don't think I should marry you (assuming it's legal then). My self-esteem requires someone much less fickle.
I don't think it's true that desire is without any volitional component. I once willed myself to find an ugly (and I don't use the word lightly) boy attractive because I was enamored of his mind, and it worked. I looked for attractive features, etc., and an initial minor repulsion gave way to attraction. But it took active mental effort.
In any case, desire is in no small part conditioned and learned, and I don't think there's anything wrong with critizing the values that inform someone's desire any more than criticizing other behaviors and beliefs that arise from learning and conditioning (e.g. racism). I think that failing to find you wife attractive after three childbirths "because now you know too much" exhibits some pretty sucky values about love and sex. I think the analogy, somewhere upthread or in another thread, to finding your wife unattractive once she started working is right on point. Another example is that Victorian literary critic or some such thing who had always seen idealized depictions of women and was appalled his wedding night when he discovered his wife had body hair and never touched a woman again (if I have the details wrong, take it as a hypothetical). We may understand what his revulsion came from, but before the days of Nair and Venus and Braun Silk-Epil, shouldn't he have gotten over it? Isn't he a little bit of a wimp for not being able to?
I think evidence for a volitional component to desire comes from the fact that you see ugly people happily smooching other ugly people, people of whom, if you are attractive, you might think "Oh, I could never be attracted to that troll." But in fact, the unattractive, with circumscribed options, often prove themselves more open-minded than the attractive.
Tia, that's well put, though I'm afraid it might be too late in the game to reframe things. The reaction of that patients and the reaction of the shrink have been thoroughly conflated, and anger at the shrink has been also directed at the patients, even though their reactions were very different. The patients were ashamed and embarrassed by their own reactions (reactions they had after they fulfilled their obligation as husbands-in-delivery), while the shrink went off on stupid points about the need for women to consider well before they ask this of their husbands, and social awareness and what not. What really annoyed me about Belle's post was that she was mocking the husbands, and I don't think they deserve that at all. So while it may be true, as you say, that there's nothing "wrong with critizing the values that inform someone's desire any more than criticizing other behaviors and beliefs that arise from learning and conditioning," and I'm happy to have that discussion, and the discussion of just how much those things ought to be open to criticism, it would be nice if it started from some point other than "what a bunch of pussies."
Except that, Tia, on the volitional thing, as I think I said above in one of these interminable threads, it's not "nearness to the ideal" that people find attractive, but some crazy random thing, so finding someone "ugly" sexy isn't necessarily proof of a volitional component in desire.
And, I'd grant that objects of desire are very much contingent and influenced by many factors, but that doesn't mean that any individual is able to control what he or she desires.
re: 120. In my case I actively willed myself into it, and that is evidence. I was like oof, here's a suitable partner for me (I was wrong about that, but that's another story), and boy is he ugly. I made a conscious effort to train myself to see him differently. It was both difficult and successful.
re: 119
It may be that I'm too late to understand all the foundations of the dispute, but I guess my point is that not just the shrink, but the "I know her too well" guy, embarrassed though he may be, is in fact deserving of criticism, even for having the reaction, because his values about what's sexy are bad. There are different ways to react to that in different fora; if I were his therapist I certainly wouldn't tell him he was a pussy and be done with him; in a blog, well, I don't know. I guess if I were blogging about the article, I would say something more like "Isn't it sad that the poor blighter's conditioning has brought his marriage to such a pass. There is something wrong with the way he feels."
I'm happy to have that discussion, and the discussion of just how much those things ought to be open to criticism, it would be nice if it started from some point other than "what a bunch of pussies."
When the subject matter is a bunch of pussies, where else do you start?
The mockery of the husbands may have been cruel, and I'd have been easier on an identified person, or on someone I knew, but isn't there some value in pointing out, as Belle did, that their feelings are not good ones to wallow in, and they should be encouraged to (a) not feel that way, insofar as it is within their power and (b) not express those feelings publicly, where they're going to hurt people? (and ogged, to the extent that your guess that 'this really isn't about childbirth' is true, then the mockery of men who say it is, is both appropriate and deserved. If you're losing desire for your wife for some other reason, it is inexcusable to put it off on her for wanting you with her in the delivery room.)
But at this point the horse is long dead, so I should stop talking about it.
Let's hope it was a hurri-can. I got out on one of the last flights leaving Miami, and was almost stuck there for the weekend. Which wouldn't have been half-bad, except for the hurricane.
concur, except for the part about farting.
Seriously, ogged: farting is funny, and funny is sexy.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:00 AM
And after you've heard sommeone fart for the 215th time, sexy just isn't in the cards.
But doesn't that pretty much rule out sexual attraction in any relationship lasting longer than (215 x days between farts) days?
Posted by Matt | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:22 AM
215 x day between audible farts.
Plus, the number of days before you feel comfortable farting in front of your partner.
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:25 AM
It does seem to, doesn't it?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:25 AM
Right, as Sam K says, 215 farts should be many many years.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:25 AM
This is one of the key issues here. (The others are concerns about the implicit moral relativism of many forms of therapy, and the fact that Ogged clearly hates mothers and the idea of motherhood.)
I understand where Ogged, SCMT and Tom are coming from in objecting to the moralization of sexual arousal. Who among us does not kind of sort of admire Yves Montand, who defended cheating on his wife with Marilyn Monroe by saying, "Hey, what are you going to do? It's Marilyn Monroe." (It sounds better in the original French.) And I also think that no one is under any kind of moral duty to find people who they don't find attractive attractive prior to marrying them.
But marriage does, I think, have the effect of moralizing arousal. Indeed, the pledge of monogamy usually tied up with marriage has no content unless that's true. That means that one of the duties of marriage is to work very hard to continue to find your spouse attractive. Obviously, there are limits to that. But the Woody Allen idea that the "heart wants what the heart wants" really can legitimately be criticized, even though, from a certain angle, it does seem to describe a biological reality.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:30 AM
That means that one of the duties of marriage is to work very hard to continue to find your spouse attractive. Obviously, there are limits to that. But the Woody Allen idea that the "heart wants what the heart wants" really can legitimately be criticized, even though, from a certain angle, it does seem to describe a biological reality.
You betcha. And I would say (well, am saying on the other thread) that dismissing such work as inevitably pointless or doomed to failure is false as a matter of fact.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:34 AM
That ain't the heart that wants what the heart wants. Marilyn Monroe has been covered already.
But Ogged, it seems as though your idea of mystery basically rules out any long-term sexually active relationship. (I mean, is it really going to take 215 farts?) That's just not healthy.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:36 AM
I thought about including discussion of marriage vows, but while I think they do obligate you to try to work on arousal, insofar as that's possible at the margins, they can't obligate what's not possible. So, they can obligate that you be physically affectionate, and that you not cheat even if someone else is arousing, but no marriage vow is going to make you hard.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:36 AM
Apparently, while each person is attracted to others for idiosyncratic reasons, everyone is not attracted to others for the same readily enumerable reasons.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:39 AM
Those were just examples, drawn from my personal store of reasons, b-dub.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:40 AM
Matt,
I took the Woodman's use of the word "heart" to be a bit euphemistic, or at least self-deluding. I still think my wife is totally wrong about Stardust Memories, though. It totally holds up.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:41 AM
it seems as though your idea of mystery basically rules out any long-term sexually active relationship
I don't think we need to get into mystery, but yeah, isn't it just a truism that the sex goes out of most long-term relationships?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:43 AM
Surely the implicit dictum is not that you have a moral duty to find your partner sexy but that you shouldn't expect much sympathy if you don't?
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:44 AM
yeah, isn't it just a truism that the sex goes out of most long-term relationships?
Generalizing madly from friends, I don't know about most, but not the happy ones. The long term relationships I know about that have turned non-sexual are also otherwise unhappy -- the people who are still emotionally attached and still like each other still seem to be screwing.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:49 AM
Regarding yesterday's discussion, I don't think it was so much a command for men to find their partners sexy no matter what as that 'ew, a baby came out of where?' is a bad reason/excuse to stop finding someone sexy (and one that should be worked on, if necessary).
For the purposes of this discussion, are we taking 'sexy' to mean
'attractive' or 'want to have sex with' or what?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:51 AM
I meant "want to have sex with, and not in some abstract way."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:54 AM
This discussion of conjugal rights, like all discussions of anything, could be improved by a little Kant:
"25. The Rational Right of Marriage.
For, this natural employment--as a use of the sexual members of the other--is an enjoyment for which the one person is given up to the other. In this relation the human individual makes himself into a thing, which is contrary to the right of humanity in his own person. This, however, is only possible under the one condition, that as the one person is acquired by the other as a thing, that same person also equally acquires the other reciprocally, and thus regains and reestablishes the rational personality. The acquisition of a part of the human organism being, on account of its unity, at the same time the acquisition of the whole person, it follows that the surrender and acceptation of, or by, one sex in relation to the other, is not only permissible under the condition of marriage, but is further only really possible under that condition. But the personal right thus acquired is, at the same time, real in kind; and this characteristic of it is established by the fact that if one of the married persons run away or enter into the possession of another, the other is entitled, at any time, and incontestably, to bring such a one back to the former relation, as if that person were a thing."
That last bit is the key.
Man, did that guy understand human life or what? This passage was actually read out by my best man at my wedding.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:55 AM
Those were just examples, drawn from my personal store of reasons, b-dub.
Ok, so the reasons for sexual attraction are mysterious, but for its absence are plain as day? Why would you think that? Isn't it just as plausible that, just as when you're attracted to someone you find some reason on which to hang your attraction ("You praise the boy with a snub nose by calling him 'cute'; the hook-nose of another you say is 'kingly'; and the boy between those two is 'well proportioned'; the dark look 'manly'; and the white are 'children of gods'. And as for the 'honey-colored', do you suppose their very name is the work of anyone other than a lover who renders sallowness endearing and easily puts up with it if it accompanies the bloom of youth?"), which reason is the symptom, not the disease, when you're not attracted to someone you find some reason to explain that, even though the root cause is something else? (This is essentially LB's point from the other thread, minus some intentionality.)
Also Cala has a good point.
the people who are still emotionally attached and still like each other still seem to be screwing.
Maybe part of the reason for this truism is that most of the long-term older couples one is likely to know for most of one's life is family, and no one wants to hear about how Aunt Doris and Uncle Hymie still get it on regularly even though they're in their 70s.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 9:57 AM
I read my wife's copy of the Critique of Pure Reason all the way through parturition and now I retch at the thought of her Kant.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:00 AM
even though the root cause is something else?
Yeah, and actually I said this in the other thread. My point in enumerating trivial examples was just this: any reason is a sufficient reason. We might not like the reason, and we might think the person who gives it is a schmuck, but there's no doing anything about it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:01 AM
But surely this is exactly the question -- how do we decide that something is a "bad reason/excuse" for not wanting to have sex with someone else? (I imagine in most of the cases that the article discusses it's not this stark -- it's really a question of not wanting to have sex with someone as much as you once did.) I mean, is the fact that your husband has gained 100 pounds since you married him and has a beer gut a bad reason not to want to have sex with him that much? To me it sounds pretty reasonable. But I'm not sure what the criteria are that we're using to decide what counts as a reasonable excuse.
What I do know is that the answer can't be a consequential one. In other words, the answer can't be (as, in an earlier thread, Timothy Burke seemed to suggest it should be): It's a good thing for a husband to be in the delivery room with his wife, therefore it's unacceptable for a man's libido to be affected by seeing a child's head emerge from his wife's vagina.
Posted by J. Cornell | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:04 AM
Or, I imagine, having children makes everyone so tired that it's not as easy to fit it in as it did when they were newlyweds/a new couple and had lots of time and energy. So I've heard.
Don't family counselors take it as a sign of a problem if one half of the couple doesn't want to have sex with the other half? Not just less frequent, too busy, too exhausted; but if one half of the couple finds the other half repulsive, something ain't right.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:05 AM
Ben:
How can you lessen the intentionality? Isn't that what we're talking about?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:05 AM
SCMT, I mean I have taken out part of what LB said about intentionality.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:10 AM
22: I think part of what makes it a bad reason/excuse is that first, it's just a biological thing that happens. It's nasty and gross, but so's a lot of life -- I think it would be a bad reason/excuse if a woman couldn't find her husband attractive because she saw him throw up when he had the flu and he might kiss her with that mouth, even though it's been six months since he had the flu and he always uses mouthwash.
Second, it seems that in the majority of cases, the pain and fear the woman has is going to outweigh the discomfort the man might have. She needs him there for support.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:13 AM
Or, I imagine, having children makes everyone so tired that it's not as easy to fit it in
Must...resist...low hanging fruit...
But yes, fatigue is the main factor lowering the panky rate following children.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:15 AM
and ogged, really... cellulite as a deal breaker? Olympic athletes can have cellulite. So can skinny actresses.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:15 AM
I mean, is the fact that your husband has gained 100 pounds since you married him and has a beer gut a bad reason not to want to have sex with him that much? To me it sounds pretty reasonable. But I'm not sure what the criteria are that we're using to decide what counts as a reasonable excuse.
Now, this is really the question we're discussing. I've been arguing generally about the controllability of libido, and I think I've been understood to have been making stronger claims than I meant to. Obviously, major physical changes are going to affect someone's physical attractiveness, and there isn't necessarily much one can do about that.
This specific issue though (again, excluding literal PTSD sufferers), where a man becomes less attracted to his wife not because of any change in her, but because he once saw her under circumstances that he found physically repulsive or symbolically unsexy -- I think that's a bad reason. It is possible that a man could sincerely be less attracted to his wife for such reasons, but I believe that that simply means that he is sincerely a shit-head. That one's emotional reactions are sincere does not mean that they are decent or acceptable. (And I've seen no indication that any substantial number of men do feel this way.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:16 AM
I was hoping to get away from the birthing, as that seems to be clouding things.
cellulite as a deal breaker?
Just an example, I'm not in a position to break deals at the moment.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:16 AM
It's nasty and gross, but so's a lot of life -- I think it would be a bad reason/excuse if a woman couldn't find her husband attractive because she saw him throw up when he had the flu and he might kiss her with that mouth, even though it's been six months since he had the flu and he always uses mouthwash.
Exactly. In this case, she'd be the shit-head.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:17 AM
I was hoping to get away from the birthing, as that seems to be clouding things.
Well, but that's what we all got pissed off about -- the implied "Don't ask for help through this difficult, frightening, and terribly important process, unless you're willing to risk being unfuckable. Remember, you're not attractive once the facade cracks." (Quotes invented, and uncharitable.) Talking about loss of attraction to a long-term partner is a different issue.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:20 AM
In this case, she'd be the shit-head.
I don't get how people are so sure of these moral judgements. Why wouldn't it just be unfortunate? There seems to be a willingness to dictate just what is to be found attractive (or unattractive), and that seems seems downright totalitarian.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:21 AM
I see that my 33 is a less articulate version of J's 22.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:24 AM
I don't get how people are so sure of these moral judgements.
It's not deduction from first principles, it's induction from people who behave similarly or who say similar things. Based on people I've known and how they react, anyone whose attraction to a serious partner was severely impacted by that sort of thing would, in fact, be a shithead (and most people don't hyphenate that, do they. My inner Zweibel is reemerging.)
I could conceive of a different world where decent people's attraction to a partner they loved was that fragile, but in my experience that's not how people react.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:27 AM
Actually, ogged, I think that we all think that there are reasonable reasons to be attracted (or unattracted) to someone and unreasonable ones. It's just that some of us have broader spectrums of what count as reasonable.
What I mean is that effectively LizardBreath and Cala are saying that men who find themselves less attracted to their wives after witnessing them give birth have libidos that are unacceptably screwed up, that they are, in a sense, hardwired wrong. It's no different, actually, from what just about all of us would say about pedophiles: it's unfortunate that these people are only attracted to children, but it's not just unfortunate -- it's actually reprehensible. Belle, et.al., are saying the same thing about the men in the NYT article.
Posted by J. Cornell | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:28 AM
Needless to say, I think Belle, et.al., are wrong about the men in the NYT article.
Posted by J. Cornell | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:30 AM
they are, in a sense, hardwired wrong.
Only to the extent that it is genuinely hardwiring, rather than self-indulgence. I'd be much less harsh if I thought that being 'hardwired wrong' was the explanation for most of whatever men feel this way (which, again, I see no reason to believe is particularly many. Mostly I just think the shrink is a twerp.).
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:32 AM
I don't think the pedophiles analogy quite works, because what's really objectionable about pedophiles is what they do. In this case, people are being criticized for not-wanting, which seems to me very strange.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:32 AM
Ogged wrote:
"I don't get how people are so sure of these moral judgements. Why wouldn't it just be unfortunate? There seems to be a willingness to dictate just what is to be found attractive (or unattractive), and that seems seems downright totalitarian."
I think part of the willingness to be judgmental in this case is that not only is pregnancy a natural occurrence – unlike, perhaps, massive weight gain – but it's a natural occurrence that happens AS A RESULT OF SEX. Using the realities associated with pregnancy to pass judgment on the sexiness of one's wife just seems really cruel.
Here's an analogy. Certain sex acts can sometimes result in an unflattering view of one's partner, or leave unpleasant things on each other's bodies. Surely, we're entitled to pass moral judgment on people who pull back sexually from their partners based on that? I thought it was generally accepted that you're an asshole for not wanting to kiss your partner after certain acts. Or did I not get a memo?
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:37 AM
isn't it just a truism that the sex goes out of most long-term relationships?
Aaww, ogged, that's so sad. Here's something to help you with ex-to-be (next ex?).
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:37 AM
No, not quite. There are two things that I think make the transition from unfortunate to shithead (again, excluding the really really traumatized): 1) not willing to do anything to fix the problem, like talk to a therapist if needed or 2) placing that theoretical discomfort (as it's not a majority of men who are so traumatized, and hell, one of the guys was complaining about having to learn about the placenta) ahead of the woman's very real needs and pain.
And, and I think LB agrees with me, most of my problem with the article was that it said that this is really the woman's problem; not something that the guy needs to work through or at least expect, but that the woman should never have even imposed on him because it might affect his libido.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:38 AM
I agree with #35, but my question is then, "Why did you marry a jerk?"
But maybe this whole conversation is hopelessly muddled, because we're really disagreeing about the extent to which you can will yourself along certain vectors. I suspect that, for people for whom sex is then end good, rather than an expression of other end goods, it's probably pretty hard to will themselves along that vector. So don't marry the guy who's looking for sex as the end good.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:39 AM
Actually, I think most people believe that wanting to have sex with children -- outside of whether you ever act on the desire -- is morally objectionable.
I really think the disagreement here is that you and I don't find it all outside the pale that a man might find his libido waning some after watching his wife give birth, while LizardBreath and Belle do. We think that having childbirth affect your libido is, as it were, reasonable -- in the way that having massive weight gain or baldness or whatever affect your libido counts as reasonable -- while they think it's a sign that the guy is screwed up.
Posted by J. Cornell | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:39 AM
I think a lot of the people in the comments were not criticizing these men for not wanting, but rather, for not getting over it. You can't help who you want, but presumably if you're at the stage of having a child with a woman you're planning that she be more than a cute face and a fuck -- she's supposed to be a life partner and all that. Hence the "sickness and health" bits in the marriage vows. If you're not ready to be there for her, hold her hand, help her out, through one of the major milestones of your lives together -- because you're afraid that you won't find her attractive afterwards -- then that's basically pretty childish and really, you ought to accept that criticism. Sure, maybe you'll be grossed out by the birthing process, and you can't help that. But seriously, get over it. If you can't help her out, then you're not ready for marriage or partnership or having kids -- you're just a kid yourself, and you ought to go back to first dates and holding doors open and being nervous.
"You" being an unspecific form of address, here.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:40 AM
In this case, people are being criticized for not-wanting, which seems to me very strange.
Go back a couple of decades to the second-wave women's movement, and picture a guy (I don't have a quote, but you know stuff like this was said) saying: "Well, certainly women can work if they want to, but that's not going to change the fact that men don't find successful women attractive -- even if they can get married, the marriges are going to end up sexless. There's nothing a man can do about it if what he finds appealing is a woman who will stay home and be there to support him."
This is a loaded example, but wouldn't you feel comfortable criticizing such a man for 'not-wanting'?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:40 AM
45 by me.
Posted by m | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:41 AM
"Once again, I thought it was just uncontroversial that after a while, the sexual fires cool, and we settle into no less loving and affectionate but decidely less sex-fueled patterns."
I grant that it's an uncontroversial, popular wisdom, opinion. It's not been my personal experience at all, however.
Your own reasons for "a good reason to stop finding " someone sexy seem entirely subjective, as well.
I certainly do agree with your final clause of your final sentence, however.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:44 AM
Re 45: except that none of the men in the piece actually said or did anything like this. They had all been in delivery. It was the shrink who suggested that people take this into account when deciding whether the guy should be in delivery (actually, he suggested that the women take this into account, which was stupid and wrong).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:45 AM
To get back to the actual post, I think within some reasonable limits, LB's right that you can control whether you're attracted to another person. It's definitely true that if you preoccupy yourself with a defect, you'll take the wind out of your proverbial sails. (Even if it's your own defect; if all you can think about during sex is 'Is she noticing my gut?' you probably won't have a lot of fun.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:45 AM
Re 46: sure, but that's something someone would say prior to the fact, without actual knowledge, to influence others. We're talking about something quite different here: something unexpected that happens after the fact.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:47 AM
Let me in response offer a reverse loaded example:
Imagine that men, not women, bore children, and that the child emerged from the head of the penis, the opening of which was massively distended by the experience. Is it really impossible for you to imagine that occasionally, a woman who witnessed this might find that her attraction to that particular penis ended up waning some?
Posted by J. Cornell | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:47 AM
Cala, I'd say that it's much easier to de-arouse with negative thoughts than to arouse with positive ones.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:48 AM
ogged, surely. But unless you've had the good fortune to date wholly perfect people, there's surely been something about everyone you've dated that you've found less than sexy. You were probably still attracted to them; how did that work? I imagine by putting whatever the mildly unattractive thing out of your head.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 10:59 AM
52 - That's pretty hard to conceptualize, and hard to answer. Let's say that my partner was very sick for a bit, and ended up pretty much a mess, vomiting from the chemo, losing weight in places and bloating in others, and undergoing some pretty traumatic procedures. Would it be imaginable that I would feel less sexually attracted to him? Sure. But should I get over it? Of course. Can I learn to be attracted to him again? Unless I'm a sixteen year old kid who thought that being in love was gonna be roses and picnics forever, I'm pretty sure I can.
Posted by m | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:00 AM
But Cala, this has nothing to do with perfection, but about those things that we find arousing and de-arousing. If a lover suddenly acquired some trait that I found de-arousing, I'm pretty sure that would be the end of sex for us.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:03 AM
52 has been answered. The problem isn't with the initial revulsion, it's rather with the failure to get over it and the idea that the bare possibility that you *might* suffer a decline in your libido (and that doesnt' seem to be the case for the majority of men here) is enough of a reason to bail on a woman who is having your baby and enduring a lot of pain and anxiety.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:04 AM
I would like to second ogged on 53. I have killed desire as of necessity, but never created it.
And I think "the heart wants what it wants" can be understood without equating "heart" with "penis." It is the emotional pulls that are hardest to withstand. Woody -- a fairly sensitive guy, perhaps excessively so -- is talking about the emotional pulls. They can lead, equally, to poor behavior.
neither here nor there, I suppose.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:05 AM
My point is that on any individual who is not perfect, there's going to be some trait that's de-arousing, no?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:06 AM
the unattractive parts of an attractive whole are the most compelling parts, Cala. They are what we miss.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:07 AM
My point is that on any individual who is not perfect, there's going to be some trait that's de-arousing, no?
Actually, I think I'd say no. Perfection and arousal, as text says, aren't so closely related. There seem to be pretty specific triggers for people in both directions, and they aren't necessarily present in any given encounter.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:10 AM
The problem isn't with the initial revulsion, it's rather with the failure to get over it and the idea that the bare possibility that you *might* suffer a decline in your libido (and that doesnt' seem to be the case for the majority of men here) is enough of a reason to bail on a woman who is having your baby and enduring a lot of pain and anxiety.
I didn't think we were discussing men who were leaving women just because they thought they may suffer a decline in libido after the birth. I thought the issue was men who found it difficult to see their wives as sexually appealing after watching them give birth. I know it's only a question of degrees, but I also think it's a little unfair to exaggerate the behavior in question that severely.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:12 AM
Cala beat me to it in 28, but I still have to say, ogged, you do realize that most women have some cellulite, don't you? Making that an absolute deal breaker makes it tough.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:12 AM
The article suggested that men might be well advised to avoid the traumatic experience for fear of suffering such a decline.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:14 AM
BG, I think I answered the cellulite thing in 30.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:15 AM
I'm lost here. Is all we're wondering if there are some traits that if one were to develop them, would make one unattractive?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:16 AM
Yes, but I still have to think that there's a world of difference between not being in the delivery room during the birth and "bailing". Or do we automatically pass such judgement on any man who doesn't/can't be there? I'm seriously curious, I don't know where this particular zeitgeist is right now.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:17 AM
62: I meant bail as hanging out in the waiting room, as in bailing on being supportive out of a fear that you might not be able to get turned on.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:17 AM
67 to 64
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:18 AM
a mess, vomiting from the chemo, losing weight in places and bloating in others, and undergoing some pretty traumatic procedures
Assuming this is a temporary thing, I think everyone expects that you should be able to get over it. If you can't, as you say, you aren't willing to take the rough with the rest, and you shouldn't be married. But I suspect this is something the other party will have some information about before he marries you, so it shouldn't occur too frequently.
If this is a permanent state, and you are able to find the other person attractive because he continues to have the qualities you initially found attractive - funny, smart, kind, whatever - then that's fantastic, and you are precisely the sort of life companion we're all looking for.
If it's a permanent state, and you have willed yourself into finding emaciated men with vomit all over them sexy, then you've willed yourself into being a sick fuck. Which is not good.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:20 AM
So if one isn't in the delivery room during the birth itself, one can't be a supportive spouse? Are there any further caveats on what does or doesn't qualify as supportive behavior once in the room? I guess I'm just dismayed at how glib some of these condemnations seem to be.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:20 AM
71 -
If your partner wanted you to be in the delivery room with her, and you refused because you were freaked out about her potential unattractiveness while in delivery, yes, I'd say that was pretty much unsupportive. How is that glib?
Posted by m | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:27 AM
Given the terms you've couched it in, by and large it's not. That said, I still don't think that "freaked out by her potential unattractiveness" is an accurate or fair description of what we're discussing. Reading the article, I didn't get the sense that the "unattractiveness" of the scene was what disturbed the husbands. I got the sense that it was the trauma and pain of the event, and the subsequent memories of it, that the men couldn't shake.
If it really is just that these guys can't deal with their wife's less-than-ideal aesthetic state, then I think they deserve whatever scorn LB, Cala & Co. can drum up. I honestly didn't get the sense that this was the issue. Maybe we're conflating two entirely different reactions here, and maybe I'm just giving these guys too much credit.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:35 AM
Man, could I have used "get the sense" one more time in that post? Ugh.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:36 AM
I read it the same way, Tarrou.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 11:39 AM
Carrying on from the other thread - In this day and age if you refuse to be in the delivery room for any reason other than death you are a "sexist asshole." No, it is not fair, but that is a fact of life.
Why?
Because some people have the quaint idea that we humans can control our feelings. That way we can moralize about the BAD feelings that we and others have . If you have bad feelings it is because you are a shithead.
That is also bull but it does bring comfort, especially to women who fear aging and losing the ability to sexually attract a man.
Yeah, I know this is harsh but we need to get down to what this is really about. It is about the ownership and control of feelings. We all have them, they are complex, and they influence our perception all the time.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:10 PM
You know what is really maddening about the original article? It made the wife responsible for the husband's feelings. Now if that isn't a recipe for disaster I don't know what is.
It prevents the idea that the husband is the one who should do something about it, assuming he wants to.
Presumably he loves his wife but at the same time loses sexual attraction. I assume he wants it back. He can't force it back but there are some behaviours he can do that might help it come back.
If he ignores or suppresses the loss or he moralizes that it makes him a bad person he is unlikely to regain the feeling.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:20 PM
76 - what? Tripp, I didn't hear a lot of people calling men "sexist assholes" because they refused to be in the delivery room for any reason short of death. My reasoning, at least, is that they are assholes if they refuse to be in the delivery room because they feel that their fear trumps their partner's pain (barring a PTSD condition or summat), or because they're worried about seeing their wives in an unattractive light. I'm not sure I'd necessarily call these guys "sexist" -- more just monumentally insensitive, selfish, and a bunch of effin' babies.
The doctor was pretty sexist though.
Posted by m | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:27 PM
What's fascinating about this is that the lack of attractiveness of the woman is what's considered the main problem. Women will all end up unattractive in the end - wrinkled, old, with dry vaginas and lots of moles. I was at a hot springs in Tecopa and saw a lot of this - the public springs were full of women in their 70s and no swim suits were allowed. Now I know what I have to look forward to and it is not sexy.
Men in long term relationships need to either make peace with the fact that their partner's bodies will change with time and learn to be attracted to something other than the perfect body that initially turned them on or need to make peace with the fact that they will have to stop having sex for the rest of their lives after their life partner falls out of the "attractive" range that's acceptable. The point of a long term monogamous relationship is to be true to one another. Sex is optional.
Men, you need to understand that you are not exactly paragons of attractiveness and glowing god like glory. In fact most of you are smelly, hairy and fart and burp a lot. You scratch yourselves and spit. You get overweight and don't care or do anything about it. Women get over it and have sex with you anyway. I'm sure that as you get old and wrinkly you will expect your life partner to continue to delight in you and your body - even the most attractive of you will end up old and flabby eventually. How would you feel if your partner came to you one day and said - "you know I just can't handle how old you are - I'm not attracted to you."?
I guess I'm in the grow up and get over it camp.
Posted by Hof | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:36 PM
m,
You are correct. "Sexist asshole" was the term used in 1986 when my daughter was born. It is a dated term. "Effin' baby" seems to be the 2005 equivalent.
The big fear back then, by the doctors and the husbands, was that the husband may faint and then the doctors would be dealing with two medical situations instead of one. At the time the medical personnel adviced the couples that if the husband thought he might faint it might be best he if he left the room for the birth. I don't recall anyone saying "Get over it you effing baby."
Also I don't know any guy who was smart enough to predict he might lose sexual attraction to his wife by viewing the birth, so I don't know any husband having that fear.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:51 PM
"heart wants what the heart wants", but most people can avoid fucking the step-kids.
I think Hof is right. People grow old. No use whinning about it.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:51 PM
Hof,
I certainly have not said the man's feelings are the women's fault. The man's feelings are his own and it is up to him to choose what if anything he wants to do with them.
And you have my sympathies - I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to marry a man. Still, women, bless their hearts, seem to do it.
As far as aging goes, it has been my happy experience to find that as I age I seem to naturally find women my age attractive. I'm currently 48. I still find young women attractive, too, but the list for me has gotten larger.
I'm the guy who chastised ogged for saying a 70 year old women could not be attractive.
But I'll be honest enough to say there are certain things I have never found attractive and I don't think I can change that. And no, cellulute (or "Sunny Delight," the term my 4-year-old son invented) is not one of them. I'm okay with cellulite.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 12:59 PM
The fairy tale that's been stuck in my head all day, "Ricky of the Tuft" .
The moral:
Here's a fairy tale for you,
Which is just as good as true.
What we love is always fair,
Clever, deft, and debonair.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:00 PM
Also relevant
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:07 PM
Cala,
That is a nice fairy tale but the moral is false and can lead to great sorrow.
If, as is inevitable, one begins to notice the flaws in one's lover then that must mean one is no longer in love, correct? Because if one had true love the lover would always appear fair, clever, deft and debonair.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:17 PM
About the attractiveness point: Tripp's got a good point -- what we find attractive changes a bit as we age. Or maybe, more precisely, what counts as an automatically un-attractive trait changes. I think wrinkles are unattractive now, which is why I don't date older men; but I hope that by the time my boyfriend and I are wrinkly, that wrinkly won't be a turn-off.
But I'm rejecting this trait-by-trait analysis of attractiveness. Suppose my boyfriend has love handles. I don't find love handles attractive in the way that I find broad shoulder attractive, but the presence of such love handles doesn't mean I'm not attracted, on balance, to him.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:21 PM
I think the moral is meant to show that being in love allows us to downplay flaws, even as we recognize them objectively as flaws.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:23 PM
It seems that a key distinction that has been danced around here but not stated explicitly (79 hinted at it) is the distinction between reasons for finding one's partner unsexy and for finding one's partner unattractive. I don't think you're necessarily a jerk if you point out that the inevitable physical changes which accompany the aging process are not the stuff of which sexiness is made. That said, physical sexiness is only one component of attractivenes, and I think that in the ideal long-term relationship, as physical sexiness decreases, the relative importance of physical sexiness as a component of attractiveness should decrease proportionally. In other words, by the time you're both in your 50s, it shouldn't matter that neither of you has the body of a 22-year-old, because (A) over the years you've found plenty of reasons to find each other attractive that are not purely physical, and (B) years of love and intimacy can make the body of one's partner seem beautiful and sexy even as one recognizes that he/she no longer posseses the same traits that made them seem sexy at the outset of the relationship. Fondness and intimacy can make even the wrinkles and flaws of one's partner can seem sexy; this does not mean that one would also find wrinkles and flaws in general to be sexy.
Long story short: If your sense of sexiness is limited purely to the physical, your prospects of happiness in a long-term relationship are not good.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:39 PM
The problem with composing long comments is that short, to-the-point comments like 87 and 88 can beat you to the point.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:41 PM
D'oh! In 89 I meant 86 and 87, not 87 and 88.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:44 PM
Cala,
but I hope that by the time my boyfriend and I are wrinkly, that wrinkly won't be a turn-off.
If it is can we write articles about you and make moral judgements about your bad feelings?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:53 PM
If I'm whining that he doesn't look like he did when he was 28, sure. The moral judgment doesn't attach to the feeling, like you said upthread, but the resulting behavior.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 1:55 PM
Cala,
The moral judgment doesn't attach to the feeling,
Exactly. So there is nothing wrong with a guy who is not attracted to fat girls and keeps it to himself.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 2:37 PM
Reading the article, I didn't get the sense that the "unattractiveness" of the scene was what disturbed the husbands. I got the sense that it was the trauma and pain of the event, and the subsequent memories of it, that the men couldn't shake.
You know, I think this sense is at the root of the disagreement. I've never heard of anyone losing the capacity to be sexually interested in a partner as a result of the trauma of seeing them injured or in pain, at a time after the partner is fully recovered. This seems like the kind of neurosis I would have been aware of if it were at all common. (The preceding is the weak point in my argument. Possibly there are lots of men who can't have sex with their wives after having seen them pulled out of the wreckage of cars -- if so, I'm just wrong.) If I'm right, though, the problem here (to the extent that it exists outside the mind of the shrink who wrote the article) can't be a simple empathetic reaction to the pain she was in -- it has to have something to do with childbirth specifically.
Too much empathy I could maybe sympathize with. Some kind of madonna/whore neurosis about not wanting to have sex with a woman you've seen giving birth? Not so much.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:15 PM
Once again, my guess is that childbirth is an excuse (probably even a subconcious one) for a waning of desire that was already underway.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:19 PM
Well, okay, but then childbirth and empathy relating to it have absolutely nothing to do with it, and sympathizing with the men in the article for their trauma is misplaced. We're just talking about: "Doctor, the magic has gone out of my marriage."
Which is sad, and an issue for people it happens to, but not a sympathy-deserving trauma.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:36 PM
The empathy stuff was in response to Belle's point about how it feels to be the one being cut open. I did the second post so we could discuss the general issue without all the birth baggage, but that didn't really work.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:39 PM
I personally have known two women who have told me that after giving birth they no longer wanted to have sex with their partners. One because she blamed her husband for the pain of childbirth, and now associated sex inextricably with the idea of pregnancy and childbirth, the other because she (as far as I could understand her) felt her body now belonged to her child, and her husband now felt to her like an intruder. I don't know what happened to either of these women or their relationships, but are these feelings equivalent to those of the men in the NYT story?
The bothersome thing about the article was that it seemed to turn childbirth into an occasion for trivial self-consciousness -- "don't let him see you in curlers, without makeup, or pushing out a baby, or he'll dump you". This is the mentality that leads to eighth-month caesareans.
It makes me think about Heian Japan, where a man could have a long affair with a woman without ever seeing her face. On the other hand, when a Heian empress gave birth, the whole court (above a certain rank) had to be in the room with her (except the emperor), and fainting was probably frowned upon.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:48 PM
I personally have known two women who have told me that after giving birth they no longer wanted to have sex with their partners. One because she blamed her husband for the pain of childbirth, and now associated sex inextricably with the idea of pregnancy and childbirth, the other because she (as far as I could understand her) felt her body now belonged to her child, and her husband now felt to her like an intruder.
See, this would get me to say "Suck it up" as well. If that's really all that's going on, get therapy, work through it on your own, but get over it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:56 PM
Re 95
That is what Ablow used to think.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:57 PM
From his website:
I also do marriage counseling for a small number of couples, and I find people will avoid the truth even in that context. People come in and say, "There's something wrong, I'm not attracted to my husband or wife anymore." How long have you been married, I ask.
"Ten years."
Right, you're not going to be attracted to them. That's just how it is. I'm sorry. Somebody told you differently.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 3:58 PM
I still don't understand your response to these situations, LB. Therapy isn't magic, and, once again, I don't think desire is something so easily rekindled. So their reaction is unfortunate for them and their husbands, but that's all one can say about it. So, again, the two points seem to be:
1) Is desire something volitional?
2) How much are non-volitional feelings rightly subject to moral condemnation?
Apparently, people differ on these issues.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:03 PM
LB's 46 seems true--in some large scale way, changes in the culture dictate changes in attraction. The 50s idea of beauty is different from the current one. And wider perceptions of what is normal or good influence individual opinions. It may be that they don't influence everyone to the same degree, and of course some parts of attraction come from within, but the explanation process within your own head changes with changing cultural norms. Something you blamed on your wife in the past, you might blame yourself for now, and that would change the alchemy of how you feel about her. Explanations are important.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:07 PM
Sure, explanations matter, but someone who's grown up in one context can't suddenly feel differently just because another context is possible or was extant at some time past. Obviously, going too far in either direction brings us to absurd conclusions: either that desire is completely morally neutral or that all desires are rightly subject to moral evaluation. I guess it's not surprising that the topic would be so contentious.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:12 PM
1) I think desire is non-volitional, but that doesn't mean what one desires can't be changed if you work at it. Therapy isn't magic, but learning to change one's expectations, for example, might go a long way to rekindling desire.
2) I'm not sure. If someone's raised in a racist household and has racist impulses as a result, we might not condemn him, but we'd probably insist that he make a good faith effort to change his behavior.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:13 PM
blamed her husband for the pain of childbirth
See, this is nuts. Blaming is volitional -- the pain of childbirth is not her husband's fault (barring special circumstances such as his punching out the anethesiologist), and she can stop blaming him. If your loss of desire is based on a lunatic resentment, surely cutting loose from the resentment should help. If we're talking about PTSD, I sympathize, and I don't know how treatable it is, but simply saying 'whaddaya gonna do?' is not the way to go.
her body now belonged to her child, and her husband now felt to her like an intruder.
This is, if anything, nutser, which means that I feel less comfortable saying get over it, but she should certainly try.
I'm going to generalize madly here, but most people enjoy sex -- for many people it's actually quite important to them. When you get married, you make an agreement that your partner isn't going elsewhere for sex. Under those circumstances, I think you have an obligation to do what is possible (which I realize isn't everything, but which is, I think, often something) to maintain or reestablish your interest in having and willingness to have sex with your partner, rather than simply dismissing changes in your level of interest as something you can't affect.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:16 PM
Ok, I think we're beyond arguing now, and just explaining our differences. I take these statements, particularly the second, nutser one, to be attempts to articulate complex feelings. Who the fuck knows why really these women don't want to have sex with their husbands--it just seems cruel to me to insist that they "work" at arriving at an articulation that we can all agree is reasonable or "rational." You don't want to have sex, you don't want to have sex. I think the most the husband can do here is to ask whether the wife believes it can be helped. If she says "no," then that's the end of it. They can each decide if the relationship is worth maintaining, but that's a subsequent consideration.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:22 PM
I've got nothing to add on this -- I thought we were all in the meadow, and then I turned and was alone.
But, since it worked for Chopper, I was wondering if I could get some good vibes for an interview I have tomorrow. It's for a clerkship in Miami. Which I would like.
So, you know, if anybody has any good will to spare, I could use it.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:24 PM
Go, text! Miami bound! Woot woot!
(Anytime.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:25 PM
Good will, dancing among the hibiscus with butterfiles in the meadow, barefoot, so as to improve our running ability, to you.
Good luck!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:27 PM
LizardBreath is right in 106.
There are a lot of stories that our culture has to explain or give shape to what people do. People talk about uncontrollable passion but only insane people masterbate in public. If you are going to act on uncontrollable passion, you are going to have to pick a culturally appropriate script.
I don't think revulsion toward sex due to childbirth is a good idea for culturally appropriate script. For men or women.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:27 PM
thanks guys -- off to catch a flight.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:34 PM
107 -
You're giving up on marriage awfully easily. If you've agreed to be someone's monogamous life partner, for richer and poorer and all the rest, you really are entitled to an explanation when s/he decides not to have sex with you anymore. If it's cruel to ask, then ask more nicely.
Posted by m | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:41 PM
I don't know that anyone is ever "entitled" to an explanation, but my main reservation would be that all explanations of emotional phenomena this complex are more or less fictions, and your own gut feeling is better than whatever you force your estranged partner to say.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:44 PM
I'm starting to wonder how much positions on this question track with the prior discussion of "an authentic life." Wolfson should now come in and explain that while he believes LB's position to be correct, he can't shake the suspicion that ogged is actually right.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 4:51 PM
I've really enjoyed this discussion. So, Ogged, even though you haven't written a single true word throughout its whole duration, I appreciate what you've been trying to do here. Also, should Volokh succeed in converting me to homosexuality, I really don't think I should marry you (assuming it's legal then). My self-esteem requires someone much less fickle.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:00 PM
I don't think it's true that desire is without any volitional component. I once willed myself to find an ugly (and I don't use the word lightly) boy attractive because I was enamored of his mind, and it worked. I looked for attractive features, etc., and an initial minor repulsion gave way to attraction. But it took active mental effort.
In any case, desire is in no small part conditioned and learned, and I don't think there's anything wrong with critizing the values that inform someone's desire any more than criticizing other behaviors and beliefs that arise from learning and conditioning (e.g. racism). I think that failing to find you wife attractive after three childbirths "because now you know too much" exhibits some pretty sucky values about love and sex. I think the analogy, somewhere upthread or in another thread, to finding your wife unattractive once she started working is right on point. Another example is that Victorian literary critic or some such thing who had always seen idealized depictions of women and was appalled his wedding night when he discovered his wife had body hair and never touched a woman again (if I have the details wrong, take it as a hypothetical). We may understand what his revulsion came from, but before the days of Nair and Venus and Braun Silk-Epil, shouldn't he have gotten over it? Isn't he a little bit of a wimp for not being able to?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:03 PM
And another thing!
I think evidence for a volitional component to desire comes from the fact that you see ugly people happily smooching other ugly people, people of whom, if you are attractive, you might think "Oh, I could never be attracted to that troll." But in fact, the unattractive, with circumscribed options, often prove themselves more open-minded than the attractive.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:14 PM
Tia, that's well put, though I'm afraid it might be too late in the game to reframe things. The reaction of that patients and the reaction of the shrink have been thoroughly conflated, and anger at the shrink has been also directed at the patients, even though their reactions were very different. The patients were ashamed and embarrassed by their own reactions (reactions they had after they fulfilled their obligation as husbands-in-delivery), while the shrink went off on stupid points about the need for women to consider well before they ask this of their husbands, and social awareness and what not. What really annoyed me about Belle's post was that she was mocking the husbands, and I don't think they deserve that at all. So while it may be true, as you say, that there's nothing "wrong with critizing the values that inform someone's desire any more than criticizing other behaviors and beliefs that arise from learning and conditioning," and I'm happy to have that discussion, and the discussion of just how much those things ought to be open to criticism, it would be nice if it started from some point other than "what a bunch of pussies."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:15 PM
Except that, Tia, on the volitional thing, as I think I said above in one of these interminable threads, it's not "nearness to the ideal" that people find attractive, but some crazy random thing, so finding someone "ugly" sexy isn't necessarily proof of a volitional component in desire.
And, I'd grant that objects of desire are very much contingent and influenced by many factors, but that doesn't mean that any individual is able to control what he or she desires.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:18 PM
"The point of a long term monogamous relationship is to be true to one another. "
And here I thought people were able to choose their own points of their relationship. But apparently there's only one, and it's universal.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:19 PM
re: 120. In my case I actively willed myself into it, and that is evidence. I was like oof, here's a suitable partner for me (I was wrong about that, but that's another story), and boy is he ugly. I made a conscious effort to train myself to see him differently. It was both difficult and successful.
re: 119
It may be that I'm too late to understand all the foundations of the dispute, but I guess my point is that not just the shrink, but the "I know her too well" guy, embarrassed though he may be, is in fact deserving of criticism, even for having the reaction, because his values about what's sexy are bad. There are different ways to react to that in different fora; if I were his therapist I certainly wouldn't tell him he was a pussy and be done with him; in a blog, well, I don't know. I guess if I were blogging about the article, I would say something more like "Isn't it sad that the poor blighter's conditioning has brought his marriage to such a pass. There is something wrong with the way he feels."
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 08-24-05 5:33 PM
I'm happy to have that discussion, and the discussion of just how much those things ought to be open to criticism, it would be nice if it started from some point other than "what a bunch of pussies."
When the subject matter is a bunch of pussies, where else do you start?
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 6:01 AM
Go, text!
The mockery of the husbands may have been cruel, and I'd have been easier on an identified person, or on someone I knew, but isn't there some value in pointing out, as Belle did, that their feelings are not good ones to wallow in, and they should be encouraged to (a) not feel that way, insofar as it is within their power and (b) not express those feelings publicly, where they're going to hurt people? (and ogged, to the extent that your guess that 'this really isn't about childbirth' is true, then the mockery of men who say it is, is both appropriate and deserved. If you're losing desire for your wife for some other reason, it is inexcusable to put it off on her for wanting you with her in the delivery room.)
But at this point the horse is long dead, so I should stop talking about it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 7:52 AM
Ever since I saw my horse push out that foal, I haven't been able to have sex with her. Is something wrong with me?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 8:04 AM
Nah, it just means you need to find something taller to stand on.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 8:14 AM
Sure is, apo, but I'm not sure how your taste in barbecue applies to this conversation.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 8:14 AM
Armsmasher is thrashed!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 8:16 AM
Late to the game, but vibes are being sent Miami way. Isn't there a hurrican going on down there?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 8:46 AM
That is just the sound of the fury of our vibes!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 9:19 AM
Late to the game, but vibes are being sent Miami way. Isn't there a hurrican going on down there?
Let's turn that hurri-can't into a hurrican!
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 08-25-05 9:20 AM
Let's hope it was a hurri-can. I got out on one of the last flights leaving Miami, and was almost stuck there for the weekend. Which wouldn't have been half-bad, except for the hurricane.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-26-05 8:51 AM