One of the comments on the What “Feeling Desired” Means to Him  post read, in part:

“My biggest problem with this whole thing is how sad it makes me that some men aren’t able to accept their wife’s sexuality and the way she expresses it as a valid way of showing desire. Her sexuality is being undermined.“

I doubt it was the intent, but to me, this sounds like saying the woman’s expression of sex is just fine, and if there’s a conflict it’s because he’s messed up. 

I assume virtually all men have seen porn, and that certainly messes up a man’s sexuality. It messes up what he desires. It messes up how he acts, and how he wants his wife to act. In short, it messes up the way he expresses his sexuality.

However, virtually all women also go into marriage sexually messed up. It could come from premarital sex, porn, body shame, rape or abuse, or being taught sex is shameful. Most women have more than one of those in their past, and it messes up how she expresses her sexuality. 

So neither of them is expressing their true sexuality, and neither of them knows where they have deviated from their true sexuality. If either assumes they’re right and their spouse is wrong that will become a road block.

Beyond all of that, it seems to me we all come into marriage with far too much sexual expression. I don’t think it can be avoided given the world we live in, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. In a perfect world, a couple would marry with almost no expectations or preferences; their sexual expression would be an almost blank slate. Then together they would discover what they both enjoy and what one or both of them does not enjoy, and together they would build a joint sexual expression. This means Jack and Jill will have a different sexuality than Jack and Mary or Jill and Bob would have had. Every couple would have a unique sexual expression.

We can’t undo what’s happened to us or what we brought into the marriage. We can choose to hold those things loosely and make changes that bring us closer to what should be. And no, that doesn’t mean just the woman, both husband and wife need to do this.

~ Paul – I’m XY, and I’m glad my wife had never worn a paper bag to bed!

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