In The Paris Paradox: how sexualization replaces opportunity with obligation, Hugo Schwyzer says:

Young women with the Paris Paradox were raised in a culture that promised sexual freedom, but what they ended up with looked a lot more like obligation than opportunity. It’s not hard to understand why the pressure to be sexy so often trumps the freedom to discover one’s authentic sexuality. 

This was written by a secular author who says a lot of things I don’t agree with, but he is dead right on this. I have been watching this happen around me since I was a teenager in the ’70s and it’s still getting worse. Girls grow up being told they have to be “sexy” to be pretty, to be accepted, to be popular, to get a date, and to get a husband. Being sexy is like playing a character in a play: it’s a costume, words, and actions that may have nothing in common with what the actress actually feels or thinks. Beyond the public persona of sexiness, women are expected to engage in sex with any man they become seriously involved with. And her feelings about it are not important.

I think all women suffer from this pressure to some degree. Those who give in fully suffer, those who resist fully suffer, and those in-between the two extremes suffer. In particular, I think great harm is done to a woman’s desire for sex and her ability to enjoy sex. For the part she is called to act out neither desire nor enjoyment is important; she just has to fake it well. What a woman actually wants is irrelevant; it’s about what she is supposed to do, how she is supposed to do it, and what she is supposed to say she feels about it. She’s a puppet, her strings being pulled by society, doing what she “should” regardless of what she wants or feels.

On top of this, your husband grew up in the same world. Odds are he took advantage of it to some degree. And if he didn’t, he probably felt life was very unfair since everyone else was having fun and he wasn’t. Either way, he was sure getting married would mean unlimited sex because that is what wives are expected to do! (And sadly some misinterpret  Corinthians 7:5 to say a woman can never say no for any reason. 😝)

You were set up to have sexual problems in your marriage. The world certainly did it to you and all too often the church makes it worse. 

So what do you do with all of this? I suggest a lot of talking with hubby. I doubt I’ve said anything here that is news to you, but much of it would be news to many men. He has no idea what it was like for you to be a teenage girl and a young woman. And unless you tell him, that won’t change. I also suggest reflecting on how you felt pushed to be sexual growing up and consider how this may have changed you.

~ Paul – I’m XY, and I’m sorry.

A post worth reading:

Honeycomb & Spice | Is the Spark Gone from Your Sex Life? ◄ There is hope!

Image by Jerzy Górecki from Pixabay
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