The Sexless Father writes about reinvigorating his sex life from the inside out. If you free your mind, will your ass really follow?
This article was originally posted at The Sexless Father
There was a time, not too long ago by most standards, that I didn’t talk about sex. I am blessed to have grown up in a fairly sexually open family. My parents had gay friends, and the church I grew up in was “open and affirming” for gay and lesbian members. When anti-gay candidates appeared on ballots, my parents knocked on doors and donated to campaigns to defeat them and keep them out of office. But despite this openness about sexual orientation and identity, my parents didn’t talk about sex at all.
When I was a teenager, they gave me the “what’s happening to my body” book for boys. I didn’t read much of it, but there was a chapter on what’s happening to girls’ bodies and I remember spending a lot of time examining the anatomical drawings. Other than this, though, my parents rarely acknowledged the existence of sex.
When I started dating and became sexually active at the age of around 14, the message I got from my Mom was ‘be safe’ and from my Dad was ‘don’t.’ I listened to my Mom, ignored my Dad, and had absolutely no idea how to approach the topic of sex with the girls I wanted to have it with.
Although my skill at talking to girls and women improved somewhat over the years, initiating a conversation about sex always struck me dumb. Rather than talk about sex with the women I dated in my late teens and early twenties, I dropped overly subtle hints and made awkward first moves, hoping that body language would give me cues and placing the burdon of refusal on my partners. It wasn’t until after The Mother and I started dating ten years ago that the concept of asking for consent prior to sexual activity entered my consciousness. When I was dating, I was convinced that it was enough to stop if a girl said no.
Most of my sexual encounters in the dating pool were drunk, awkward, and left uncomfortable unspeakables souring the air of several close acquaintanceships. My inability to talk about sex continued into my marriage, which was okay at first because The Mother and I had some very basic sexual compatibilities. We had sex in the early years of our dating and mariage, but we very rarely talked about it. We occasionally tried, and ended up both embarrassed and ashamed.
It wasn’t until the moment of crisis that precipitated this blog that I realized how many hangups were standing between me and having a healthy attitude toward sex. I undertook to solve this problem by giving myself a sexorcism, and it is working.
What Is a Sexorcism
This is a term that I coined for what I’m doing – and although I’m not the first person to mash up the words ‘sex’ and ‘exorcism’ I think my definition is the best. I’m on a mission to banish all sex shame and sex negativity from my mind. Here’s how I’m doing it.
1) Lots of sex positive media. This includes listening to back episodes of The Savage Lovecast, listening to other sex themed podcasts, reading about human sexuality in books like Sex at Dawn, as well as following a bunch of kinksters, porn stars, lonely housewives, feminists, and sex therapists on Twitter. (A sidenote: I also follow a fair number of mommy bloggers and daddy bloggers. My Twitter timeline is extremely interesting.)
2) Lots of sex talk with The Mother. Even though she still isn’t interested in having sex, my dinner table conversation, my breakfast table conversation, my noontime phone calls home, my text messages to her from work, and most of my other interactions have been imbued with sex related themes. The Mother is very academically minded, and she is interested in human sexuality on a theoretical level even as she isn’t terribly interested in practicing it. I’m keeping sex topics up for discussion. These are not graphic conversations, and hopefully they have the added effect of normalizing sex and discussions about sex with our kids.
3) Meditating, writing, and journaling about sex as much as possible. On my bike ride in to work, I think about sex and related topics. On a coffee break at work, I think about sex. As I go to sleep at night, I think about sex. This is not only daydreaming by the horny husband of a woman without a libido; I’m interrogating my own ideas about sex, thinking about sexual ethics, and reframing my entire approach to the question of sex. Of all the steps, this one has done the most for my level of sexual frustration. I don’t have any less longing for closeness and intimacy with The Mother, but this reframing has helped me to realize that what I’m missing isn’t just vaginal intercourse but rather the physical intimacy and tenderness that I’ve come to associate with it.
4) Talking with other folks about sex. Outside of work, I have been trying to be more open to let sex slip into my conversations. I’ve tried to be more forthcoming about sexual topics with my friends and family, and not slink in shame when sex comes up. In a sense, this is a coming-out process. For my whole life, I’ve essentially tried to put forth the impression to the world that I’m an asexual person. I do this by avoiding conversations about sex, and getting visibly uncomfortable when the subject is raised. I feel as though I’ve been living a lie, and I’m ready to step out of my shell and let the world accept me as I am – a person who loves sex. This coming out is so much easier than what my queer friends have gone through, and I feel that the least I can do to make the world easier for them is to take a stand for sex-positivity by acknowledging my own sexuality and beating down my own sexual shame.
What Comes of All This?
I wish I could report to you that by cultivating a sex-positive approach and attitude in my house, a switch has flipped in The Mother and that now she’s begging for my cock twenty four hour a day. That would be a lot to ask. What I can say is that switching up my approach and building this attitude has made me feel a lot better about the position that I’m in. At the risk of oversharing, my masturbation has been far more satisfying since I started this project. Also, The Mother is picking up some of my newfound sex-positivity by osmosis. She had been as shy about sex-talk as I was before the sexorcism. Now, slowly but surely, she’s starting to talk about sex without so many euphemisms, without so many tittering giggles, and without so much shame.
So although the Sexorcism hasn’t given me everything I always wanted, it has made me much more comfortable with thinking and talking about sex, and that alone is enough to warrant a recommendation. Fill your head with so much sex positive media and thought that there is no room left for your shame. Do it until the only thing you can think about is great, open, honest sex. Do it until your hangups and inhibitions melt away. I predict that you’ll enjoy the results.
Photo—Girls and sex in mind from Shutterstock
Hi everyone.
Due in large part to the comments that have come in on this article, and on the blog since this was posted here, The Mother felt the need to set some things to rest. She wrote me this letter and asked me to publish it on the blog to explain her feelings about the project. I encourage you to go and read it.
http://sexlessfather.wordpress.com/what-does-the-mother-have-to-say-about-this/
It’s really disappointing to see a number of comments from people who clearly didn’t bother to read this post before blasting the writer and his wife with unnecessarily rude remarks. Although it isn’t mentioned in this post, yes, The Mother does know about the blog. Yes, she apparently approves. A quick glance at Sexless Father’s blog answers these questions. As a woman who’s been much the same place emotionally as The Mother, I absolutely, 100% get what Sexless Father is saying here, and to a certain extent, I get what they’re going through as a couple. I’m not going to… Read more »
I don’t understand … maybe because I couldn’t read every single word, I basically skimmed. But does your wife know you write this to the world, and maybe if you spent less time blogging about the personal details of your life and got some marriage counselling that would help. You seem rather detached, which makes me think this isn’t real, just something you’re writing about.
Well, you’re not likely to understand if you only skim the material. Didn’t your high school English teacher tell you that? 🙂 If it puts your mind at ease, his blog is written with the knowledge of his wife (and, it appears, with some amount of encouragement) and serves as an outlet for his frustration and a chronicling of his journey. She’s even made a guest post on it. Sometimes the detachment helps, because not everyone is ready to just open the vein and let it all pour out. But it’s very real, and if you want to read countless… Read more »
So his wife isn’t into sex. Sorry he didn’t marry a porn whore. What if she is never gets into sex? If you bothered to read the post first you might have discovered his problem isn’t that she’s not wild-n-crazy in bed, but rather that the frequency and quality of their sexual encounters has dropped off dramatically. If someone isn’t interested in having sex with their spouse, I would suggest they have no right to demand sexual fidelity from that spouse. It doesn’t sound like this couple has reached that point yet, but there may come a time when he… Read more »
So his wife isn’t into sex. Sorry he didn’t marry a porn whore. What if she is never gets into sex? Divorce her and break up your home? He will have to explain to his kids that he chose to be with a woman who never rode his knob the right way or doesn’t blow the right way or a list of other bullshit excuses and now he has to break up the family cuz mommy doesn’t fuck the right way. I bet if you dig deep enough, sex is the least of this couples problems. I would bet a… Read more »
He does seem to have quite an unhealthy obsession. He wishes ‘a switch flipped and she’s begging for my cock 24 hours a day’? This just sounds like someone utterly sex-obsessed wishing their wife was as obsessed as he is.
Or that he came from an extremely conservative background which whipped the dirty thoughts from children and is now vastly overcompensating.
Apparently you’ve never heard of hyperbole.
I find your response utterly repugnant. Here you have the story of a man trying to do the right thing, trying to stay sane in a marriage in which he desperately loves his wife but the sex has all but disappeared, and here you have decided instead to disparage him for opening up about his pain. This is the reality of many relationships. You can choose to remain ignorant if you want, but try not to let it show so much next time.
Thank you, honestly, for your comment. I appreciate the reminder that the sex-negative culture I’m up against in this process is a reality, not just a product of my imagination. Before today I hadn’t ever experienced slut shaming first hand in so clear and transparent a way as this. It’s enlightening and I genuinely appreciate it. In your comment there are a number of assumptions about who I am, who my wife is, and what our relationship is like. I’m not going to take these assumptions on one-by-one; I see no advantage in it, and much of the information is… Read more »
“Maybe he’s not working and she’s slinging burgers at two jobs to pay the bills while this fucktard sits around and masturbates and journals about sex all day. Maybe she’s tired of having her lack of sex skills being blasted all over the internet.” Well, since he references a regular job several times in his blogposts this assertion hardly takes much disproving. His wife is stay-at-home and he works; that took about 5 seconds to find out. Maybe you should have bothered to do so before running your mouth. “Maybe she’s tired of having her lack of sex skills being… Read more »
for “anyone” in the second paragraph of the above post, read “everyone”. Damn typos and lack of coffee…
He did address the open marriage issue on his blog. He asked his wife for a Savagesque “monagamish” arrangement, whereupon she (direct quote) “flipped her shit”. I’m guessing the request touched off some fairly nontrivial insecurities, as, from reading her guest post to his blog, I would say that she invests very heavily in her identity as a good mother and wife, and to her, at any rate, “monogamish” would represent failure in one of those roles. The way I ordered those last three words was not coincidental, and I don’t think it’s coincidental either that she’s called “The Mother”… Read more »
Ooh – this is the only other I would say – having read all your blogposts I didn’t get much of a sense of what your wife likes in bed. It’s possible I missed it, but this does make me wonder if she or you actually knows what gets her off. If not, that is probably a major part of the problem, and not something you can really fix on your own. Might be worth asking what she has erotic daydreams about – dreams of joy or laughter, dreams of fear and terror, dreams of food sex with Marlon Brando… Read more »
You dont need to know what his wife likes in bed. Get a life
No, I don’t. Actually, I wasn’t asking. But he does need to know. So does she.
“I’m increasingly becoming convinced that sex is one of the easiest pathways along which a LTR can disintegrate, so you’d better make sure you’re having regularly awesome (not just “good enough”) sex before you commit. ”
I’m sure I won’t be the only one reading this who thinks “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Of course you’re right. But, and there is a but here, if you once DID have awesome sex it seems to be a lot easier to get back to that peak (after a kid or two, say) rather than have to discover awesome sex with your partner for the first time 7/8 years through a marriage, in your mid-to-late 30s, after a lifetime of merely so-so shagging. The sum of the stories I read seems to be saying that the troughs are much easier to escape if you have real peaks to return to. That obviously isn’t true for anyone,… Read more »
Honestly, given all the baggage, I could almost imagine it being easier to re-discover something awesome with a perfect stranger.
I applaud you for being open about being a sexual being, and even for talking about enjoying masturbation. Thank you for your candor.
Maybe you’ve addressed this on your blog already, and in that case I apologize for the repetition. Have you considered opening your marriage?
I rather doubt that’s even on the table. Perhaps it might be broached in a moment of frustration, but more realistically, in our culture at least, it’s likely to be seen as a betrayal of the marriage.
I do wonder about this idea of high and low libido, though. I’m starting to think it’s not nearly as relevant to sexless marriages as we like to make out; or at the very least it shouldn’t be thought of as a “set point” for a particular person as much as it is for a particular relationship.