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Sex and the Middle-aged Married Couple


Not long ago I was reading article after article on women my age who thought sex with their partner was something to be devotedly avoided. They were simply not interested in physical intimacy. Explanations abounded. Low libido. Exhaustion. Emotionally empty relationships. But the bottom line was that many of these women seemed okay with the idea that they weren’t having much or any sex. Some of them even felt that this was the way marriages went after a time. Every time I read one of these pieces in the paper or magazine, I would ask my husband, “Who the hell are these people? Do I know women like this? Do I have friends, relatives or acquaintances with marriages like this? Underneath contented exteriors are there lifeless relationships swirling all about us?” And then yesterday, I ran across a review of a new book by Bob and Susan Berkowitz about middle-aged married men who would also rather not have sex to the point where they weren’t. Of course, that explains how women are getting away with not having sex. Their husbands are not interested either. They are impotent from all manner of medication: anti-depressants and Rogaine to name just two. Or they are angry with their wives for all manner of things and are with-holding sex – though I am wondering if their wives notice. And, of course, they are too busy with all manner of Internet porn (honestly, you should see some of the google searches that bring people here of all places -the ultimate in yuckiness) to bother with their fat wives. Yes, one of the top three reasons men shun their wives sexually is that they have gotten fat (the women, although I see a great number of men who should spend more time minding their own BMI’s). I could gloat and feel vindicated about my weight pieces from last week, but it would be a hollow victory given the overall orgasm drought. It almost makes climate change a less pressing priority.

 

When I read about the lack of sex in marriage these days, I am tempted to write about my own experiences. Why not? I hint about them enough. But I won’t. It’s just not my life alone. (And sometimes my step-daughter reads this blog and she would need a mind’s eye scoop after.) I will say that I have found marriage more sexually satisfying than my long ago single girl days. You remember those free-wheeling 1980’s? But there is nothing that compares with intimate sex. Making love should be more than a euphemism. It is the kind you can only have with someone who knows the real you. Can make you laugh. Finish your thoughts. Have in-depth conversations that range from the grocery list to string theory. In a single sitting. How can you truly let go with someone who hasn’t folded your underwear, endured the smell of your farts or understands that even though you can’t say the word “clitoris”, you definitely want him to give it his full attention?

 

According the Berkowitz’s, somewhere between 6 months and 3 years, sex goes bye-bye. It has to, according to them. But why? And what do they mean that sex “goes”? Does that mean it slows down? Becomes less frequent? Goes on a long holiday? Gets really bad? My personal opinion is that too many people buy into the notion that sex is spontaneous. A gesture. A glance. Ignition to blast off. People put more thought into where they are going to eat out, and what movie they should see than to what will go on in their bedroom (or on the sofa, maybe the kitchen counter, or in the shower).

 

Mr. Berkowitz remarks as well that most people spend only 3% of their time thinking about sex. I am going to assume that this includes people who are not having any. I wonder, how this can be measured? The Berkowitz’s apparently interviewed a multitude of therapists and surveyed 4000 couples who weren’t having sex. Kind of a skewed demographic, I think. I spend way more than 3% of my time having impure thoughts, middle-aged as I am. And withholding old farts hunched over their computers gawking at women who are much less likely to have sex with them than their wives are probably devoting more than 3% of their brain cells to the subject as well. What an irony that in a country that is sex obsessed, those legally and morally sanctioned to have sex – in accordance with Holy American Family Values as preached at us – aren’t getting any.

At the Hockey Game


Is it game? Or match? Or maybe meet? I have no idea. It was Fan Appreciation Night at Rexall Place, which is where the Edmonton Oilers play their home games. It is games, I think. We did not see them. We watched a WHL junior game. The Oil Kings versus the Rebels, who are from Red Deer. Both teams are just about dead last in their division and when we left, after the second period (it’s period, right?) because Katy was getting tired and it was late, the Oil Kings were winning 4 to 1. That’s goals. I do know that. But not much more.

 

My husband, Rob, has played hockey nearly all his life, and my late husband, Will, was nearly as interested in hockey as he was in NFL football, but even with their combined instruction so far – I still can’t make heads or tails of the game. Why is some body slamming against the wall (or is it boards?) okay and other times it elicits a time-out (that’s a penalty and you sit in a box for it)? I don’t know and neither does anyone else because when I ask, I get the “it all depends” speech, which leaves me as unenlightened as ever. 

 

Katy thoroughly enjoyed herself. She got to have popcorn and a Coke. She is almost never allowed pop (it’s pop up here not soda) and that in itself is noteworthy. There was plenty of extraneous activity to keep even the marginally interested spectator engaged. Things like the usual t-shirt giveaway every 10 minutes or so, and some blond toothy twenty-something who kept popping up on the big screen above the ice to yammer at the crowd about prizes and giveaways and contests whenever eager young people in the employ of the arena were not hurling things at the spectators. I asked Rob if he recognized the young man. Was he a local celebrity? TV or radio? Only to be reminded by my husband that we don’t watch TV. Right. Hard to keep up on the local talking heads when you listen to XM exclusively and read the newspaper to find things out about the world – mostly beyond Alberta because if you only watched the local TV stations for news, you might wonder if the rest of the world had been destroyed in some geological disaster or nuclear accident that we didn’t hear about here because, well, it didn’t happen in Alberta.

 

Unlike the last hockey….thing….I attended with Will about eight or nine years ago this one flew by, but mainly because I was sitting next to Katy. She had many questions about the goings on. Most of them I couldn’t answer with any degree of accuracy, but she appeared to be fine with that. She was very concerned about the officials’ safety and well being.  Probably something to do with their decided lack of protective gear. She also seemed a bit worried about the players who jumped over the wall onto the ice instead of using the door.  She wondered about the coaches and decided that she didn’t want to be a hockey player herself because I mistakenly referred to the intermissions between periods, as “time-outs” and she didn’t like to be timed out.

 

As we were leaving, I became aware that my boots were glued to the floor by some congealed liquid. Pop, no doubt but aside from this, the arena was remarkably clean. Even the washroom. If you know me, you know that I have an aversion to public washrooms due to their general state of disgustingness. The washrooms at Rexall Place have that worn out look that much of Canada’s public areas do but it was clean. There was even a washroom attendant to mop up the sink area which, if you watch Oprah at all, you know is just a cesspool of germs that makes sitting on the toilet seat about the cleanest thing a person can do in a washroom.

 

Katy acquired an Oil Kings flag in the gift shop on the way out and wheedled unsuccessfully for a jersey (I would have liked a t-shirt myself), and we emerged from the arena to find it was still snowing as hard as it had been when we arrived. Winter is cruel. Parking lots and sidewalks have been snow free and dry since early in the week and spring threatened. And so, it follows that snow must fall. It is only mid-March and this is Canada – as I am reminded often when I read about the warming and melting back in Iowa.

 

Katy is excited about her next hockey game. She has a flag to wave now and knows that if she wants something free thrown at her, she must stand up and wave or dance for the webcam like the little boy that the perky talking head spoke to at one point in his give-away madness. The boy looked about eight or nine and would dance suggestively on demand much to the delight of the crowd. Rob remarked that the kid would be much in demand by the ladies someday, provided that he was playing on that team.

 

I think a hockey game here and there would make a nice family outing. Like hiking  and camping, it is a Canadian thing to do and we are fast forgetting our American ways in favor of our new home.

 

 

Letters Between Lovers


I was tag surfing and discovered a blog entry on Nicole Shannon’s Making Waves around the Reservoir about a joint venture between the U.S. Postal Service and HBO to promote letter writing. HBO is showing (or about to show – I don’t know ’cause I don’t watch TV) a mini-series on John Adams. The series is based on the book by David McCullough – who is a fabulous historian by the way and I love, love, loved him best of all the narrators involved in Ken Burn’s Civil War extravaganza (I could, and have, watched that series for hours at a time). The only other person who comes close is Shelby Foote (I love the stories he told about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a pretty heinous person overall but a great horse soldier), he has southern drawl that just melts your earlobes. Anyway, the John Adams biography by McCullough was based largely on the letters that John and his wife Abigail wrote to each other over the course of their courtship and marriage. One letter I remember has Abigail reminding her husband to press harder for women’s rights during the spring of 1776.

“…remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” 

 Something I didn’t know until recently was that women in Colonial times possessed the right to vote in most colonies so long as they were property owners. Voting was a privilege reserved to those holding property and gender didn’t matter. It wasn’t until after the Revolution that women were specifically stripped of this right by the new states as they crafted their individual constitutions. The oppression of women is never an accident. HBO is just looking for publicity but the Postal Service is hoping to revive the lost art of letter writing, which has been lost to the phone – land and cell, texting and email/messaging. John and Abigail wrote 1,100 letters back and forth over 56 years. Wow. She called him “dearest friend” and he addressed her as “Miss Adorable”. Do you suppose Bill and Hillary send each other missives with their special pet names for each other? Okay, maybe not. But Rob and I did have quite the exchange of emails going on during the long distance phase of our romance. That and IM sessions that stretched into the wee hours and phone conversations that surpassed even them. But, I have written about this before and I bring it up now only because I am moving my archived posts from my .mac blog to this one and was rereading entries from last spring and up almost up to our wedding last June. I have forgotten many of those pieces. It’s like reading someone else but it’s me. 

I told Rob about my topic for tonight after he wondered why I needed to know the name of a famous Southern Civil War Calvary general (and I asked him because I knew he would know or probably know. It’s nice to be able to ask obscure and out of the blue American history questions of one’s life mate and be assured they will have little trouble catching your train of thought). He rolled his eyes a bit. I think he gets a bit embarrassed about the way I gush about him. A lot. What’s the point of keeping his wonderfulness a secret though, I ask you? Even as I type this, he is rubbing my foot and reading me snippets of the latest Johnny Virgil. What an awesome man. My husband that is though I am sure JV is a nice guy too.

It’s been almost a year since our trip to Arkansas and our engagement. I was telling the story to Kathy and Susan at writing group Wednesday night and instead of being shocked at the brief span of our courtship; they both agreed that when you know, you just know. And we knew. Still do. We don’t write those long letters anymore. Hardly email at all, but so many other things have replaced those early expressions of love. Like foot rubs and reading to each other from the newspaper and blogs and books we are currently reading.