Grouchy Gals: The Problem of Unwanted Sex

Grouchy Gals: The Problem of Unwanted Sex

BLOGGER: LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

In a previous blog, we discussed why some women might feel sexually frustrated in long-term relationships and might be tempted to cheat or find a more sexually desirable partner as a permanent replacement for her current partner. Not getting enough high quality sex and romance in a long-term relationship makes some women grouchy. But some women suffer an opposite problem. Some men have a much higher sex drive than their girlfriends and wives and are constantly looking for and pressuring their girlfriends and wives to relieve their sexual tensions. It is not always particular romantic as some men just want to get a “quickie” to be sexually serviced in a rather impersonal way by their partners just to relieve sexual tension. When men are single, they usually rely on masturbation to relieve their sexual tensions because most single men can’t find enough women with whom to have casual sex to relieve themselves. Some men to keep their sexual tensions down feel a need to have daily orgasm or orgasms ever other day. If they aren’t having orgasms at the frequency that they feel they require they feel consumed by the mounting sexual tension. They become obsessed with sexual thoughts and fantasies and can’t focus on other things, like their work, until they can obtain relief.

When men enter a long-term monogamous relationship, they often hope and assume that the days of having to relieve themselves through masturbation are finally behind them as now they will have a sexually indulgent partner who will relieve them on demand at whatever frequency they need. Especially if the relationship starts off as an intense whirlwind romance, their fantasy seems to come true. When a couple is caught up in an intense romantic infatuation, they can’t wait until that moment when they can rip each others clothes off and have wild crazy sex. But unfortunately once the honeymoon phase is over the frequency of sexual relationships begins to decline and tensions arise when one partner seems to be a lot more interested in sex than the other partner. When men want more sex than their girlfriends or wives, men tend to turn into whiney, petulant little boys who just keep pestering their partners for sex until they get it. Obviously, this is a huge turn off for most women. Yet women are caught in a double bind. On the one hand, they are not in the mood for sex and feel resentful to be pressured to have sex when they are not in the mood, especially when they are being propositioned in such an exceptionally off putting way. Yet on the other hand, women may feel sorry for their sexually frustrated partners, feel it is their duty to keep their partners sexually satisfied, and may be tempted to sexually service their partners just to shut them up and stop their annoyingly incessant pestering. What is a woman to do: Resentfully have unwanted sex just to relieve guilt and pestering or decline to have sex and force her partner to deal with his sexual frustrations on his own (i.e. sexual abstinence, masturbation, or some sort of infidelity).

It would seem that few men are capable of exercising sexual abstinence in the marriage in which they patiently wait to have sex until their female partners are in the mood to have sex. Men may to some degree “save it up” until their girlfriends or wives are finally in the mood for a romantic tryst. Yet most men seem to have great difficulty with delay of sexual gratification and do not handle sexual frustration very well. Especially, if they are still very attracted to their wives, it’s a huge tease to sleep every night with a beautiful and sexy woman and see her walk around naked and not to be able to have sex with her just because she isn’t in the mood. As a consequence, most men masturbate to relieve themselves, just like when they were single guys, to relieve sexual tension, but to some extent resent their partners for not being available for sex on demand. Naturally, women resent this state of affairs. It doesn’t seem fair that women should be resented for not having sex when they aren’t in the mood, but unhappily that seems to be the case. And unfortunately, the most resentful men will probably look outside of the marriage for sexual relief.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer about how to deal with this issue. Even women who don’t mind sexually servicing their husbands on a regular basis often find that it is never enough. If a man needs to have his daily orgasm, there are few women who after years of marriage, with a full time job, and a bunch of kids is going to have the time, energy, or inclination to service her husband on a daily basis. It’s just not going to happen. So my advice is for husbands to have more compassion for the no-win situation in which their girlfriends or wives find themselves. You can’t blame them if their sexual drive is just not as strong as yours, if they aren’t as interested in impersonal sex as you are, and that they often just don’t have the energy to service you even if in general they don’t really mind doing you a favor, especially if you orgasm really quickly to save them time and energy. If you are not capable of sexual abstinence to save it for when your partner is in the mood, you might have to relieve yourself through masturbation just like when you were single. So don’t take it so personally as though it’s some big sexual rejection, if your partner is not inclined to sexually service you on demand and don’t hold it against her either. In the end, you will have a much better long-term relationship and your grouchy gal won’t be quite so grouchy if you stop pestering her to have unwanted sex with you when she isn’t in the mood.

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THE GROUCHY GUY: WHY GROUCHY GUYS DREAD MARRIAGE

Why Grouchy Guys Dread Marriage

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

Here is a list of men’s worst fears and how marriage or any long-term committed relationship arouses those fears:

1) Wimp: Any man who is too frightened to stand up to his wife or to other men.

2) Pussy whipped: Any man who is shamefully submissive in relation to his wife because he is afraid of antagonizing her.

3) Mama’s Boy: A man who is shamefully dependent on his wife because he would be lost without her.

4) Limp Dick: An impotent man, psychologically as well as physically, who can’t get it up, who can’t satisfy his wife sexually or otherwise.

5) Cuckold: A man whose wife cheats on him or flirts in front of him with other men and he let’s her get away with it.

Committed relationships unconsciously expose men to men’s worst fears of being emasculated. Therefore falling in love is dangerous for men. Men think marriage can be an emasculating trap because a castrating wife can turn a husband into a wimpy, limp dick, and pussy whipped mama’s boy who is cuckolded. This is a straight man’s worst nightmare, almost as bad as getting fucked up the ass by a thug in prison who is going to use him as his personal bitch. Yet many men will face these dangers because they are also hopeless romantics and fools for love who will do anything to win the woman of their dreams. So men do enter the lion’s den of marriage but they do so self-protectively to play it safe. Men enter marriage in a self-protective way that hedges their bets. Men go into marriage with a certain type of protective armor on. They will maintain as much of their independence, self-sufficiency, personal space, and freedom as their wives will let them get away with. They keep their feelings and their thoughts to themselves, not really letting their wives into their inner sanctum. They become grouchy when wives threaten that protective armor because they don’t want their hidden vulnerabilities exposed.

Men are secretly ashamed of their monogamous tendencies because privately they think that only an emotionally needy mama’s boy would choose monogamy for the sake of emotional intimacy over a life spent playing the field and making sexual conquests. A real man like James Bond or Hugh Hefner spends his entire life enjoying the pleasures of being a playboy having sex with an endless variety of young beautiful women. Men secretly believe that only wimpy men (i.e. losers) submit to having sex with just one woman for the rest of their lives. Grouchy guys look around and see that the alpha males in our culture don’t seem to be particularly monogamous. They see Hollywood superstars who never get married and instead spend their entire lives having sex with new starlets, siring and supporting children out of wedlock. Or they see captains of industry who engage in serial monogamy. These rich men, like Donald Trump, can easily afford to trade in their middle-aged wives for younger models. And closer to home are all the guys at the office who seem to be getting away with having extra-marital affairs and even have the audacity to brag about it.

Monogamous guys begin to feel envious and sexually inadequate in relation to guys who remain free to enjoy playing the field. That’s why they are so grouchy. They take out their frustration with themselves on their girlfriends and wives. It doesn’t do anything for their male egos to remind themselves what loyal and devoted husbands they are when they are beginning to feel like first class shmucks who are missing out on all the fun.

There has been great controversy in the social sciences as to whether or not men are biologically predisposed to form monogamous relationships. Yet what is not widely appreciated is most contemporary evolutionary psychologists now assume that strong but not exclusive monogamous tendencies are now thought to be biologically based. Humans are one of the few monogamously inclined primates. Chimpanzees are promiscuous and gorillas have harems. Humans are thought to have evolved towards monogamy as females started needing help raising their helpless big-brained babies who take almost two decades to reach full maturity. Monogamy evolved as children with both a mother and a father survived and reproduced more successfully than children did with only a mother to take care of them. Humans, men included, possess an instinctive tendency to pursue a quality over quantity reproductive strategy. Wanting to have sex with just one woman for the rest of one’s life in order to sire children with just one woman is a completely natural and in fact powerful tendency within the hearts of men. All men have a sense of what it means to be a “good Dad.” It means putting all your resources into raising a handful of children who will be given every advantage in life. All men intuitively appreciate that what is best for children is for them to be raised by two loving parents who function well as a team together who will funnel all their joint resources towards enhancing their children’s long-term prospects.

Men feel guilty when they fail to live up to this “gold standard” and this guilt isn’t simply imposed by society. Men know that their children are getting less than they deserve when their family life is characterized by ugly bickering, infidelity, and/or contentious divorce. Pursuing a quantity over quality reproductive strategy by siring children with different women means that none of those children will reap either the emotional or the economic benefits of a full-time devoted father. In a study I conducted at Adelphi University where I teach I discovered that over 20% of undergraduates were aware of parental cheating and those undergraduates were significantly more likely to cheat or be cheated on themselves. Thus it may be natural for men to want to cheat but cheating is not only devastating for the betrayed spouse but has real long-term effects on the future love lives of their children, independent of the impact of parental separation or divorce. What kind of example is a philandering Dad setting for his son and what is he conveying to his daughter about how a devoted woman in a long-term relationship can expect to be treated by the man she loves?

Human males invest more in raising their children than do any other primates (i.e. apes and monkey’s, human’s closest animal relatives). Even though women tend to remain the primary caretakers of children in comparison to men, in comparison to males of most other species most human fathers seem like Mr. Mom. Thus not only have human males evolved towards monogamous arrangements with women but they have also evolved to have a strong paternal caretaking instinct. Thus what men are born with is a deep-seated inner conflict, a potentially overwhelming conflict between love and lust. On the one hand, men lust for endless sexual variety with young beautiful healthy women at the height of their fertility. On the other hand, men have a deep yearning to mate for life with a soulmate with whom they will become dedicated fathers who will provide for, protect, play with, and nurture a brood of children and grandchildren. What’s a man to do?

Click here to find out more about Dr. Josephs on the About Us Page.

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