The apathetic careless cruelty of a woman is the ultimate misandry.

Readership: All
Theme: Female Agency and Accountability
Author’s Note: Early this morning I received this essay from a reader who has requested it to be published under conditions of anonymity.
Length: 1,450 words
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Scott’s Continuums stirred up a lot of my past.  My marriage to my late wife is a textbook case of this discussion (and even this entire blog).  I could write a book on my experiences with her of the various topics, but here, I’ll share a brief summary of my story as another anecdote to add to the pile.

A large part of the discussion concerned the question of whether women know what they are doing when they hold out sex.  By “hold out”, I mean this in both senses of the term — offering and denying.  They hold out sex as an enticement before marriage, and they hold out on sex after marriage when they fail to deliver or refuse to satisfy.

As far as women knowing what they are doing, my wife certainly knew what my needs were and what she was doing.  Two years into our marriage, she wrote me a letter and in it she stated,

“You need to be respected as the man of the home.  You need to have a supportive wife.  You need to be appreciated.  You need to be loved.  You need your physical needs met as well as your emotional needs.”

She knew what my needs were and her part in satisfying them.  However, her actions didn’t align 99.999% of the time, and that 0.001% was clearly driven by her own motives and had nothing to do with my own desires or needs.  The best sex we ever had was when she wanted children.  During that time she rode me like a porn star!

Twenty-seven years later, she said that sex was never a big deal to her; that it would be okay with her if we didn’t have sex but once or twice a year.

It was a soul shattering epiphany.  All those times when I wanted to make love with her, and I was met with her indignation, I had gracefully dismissed it as being an untimely moment.  But now, suddenly it all fell into place.  To me, it was “making love to my wife”, but to her, it was, “he wants to have s.e.x…”.

How could I take that to mean anything other than making love to me has no meaning to her?  That the act of sex with her husband is just . . . sex.  Nothing more.

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Wow!

How does a husband not lose all enthusiasm for his bride when she reveals that?  How do you not feel let down — for all those times you made love to her — to now realize (after 29 years of marriage) that it didn’t really mean anything to her.  That she would have been fine to have left it — in the “take it or leave it” realm.  What choice does a man have but to look at her differently?  To look at her less as someone who loves him and that wants to express that love in such a way that is consistent with how God designed the marriage — to have a taste of Eden that resembles the unity of the two in the pre-fall.  How can he not look at her more as what she has positioned herself to be — an unwilling tool — and the corollary, seeing himself as a total fool?

But who will she have to blame but herself?  After all, she is the one who relegated the act to an unnecessary primal obligation.  She is the one who sees it as “just sex”, instead of an expression of love that is to be shared between one man and one woman in the union of marriage; an act of communion that sanctifies the marriage; an act of becoming one that cannot be expressed in any other way.

Seven months after that revealing disclosure, she began a 4-day assault of verbal and physical attacks.  It was as bad as it had ever been.  My description here grossly understates the intensity and the confrontational nature of her approach with me.  It is hard to capture in writing the tone of contempt and hate.  It is not a demeanor one presents to those they love.  It is not an approach of seeking understanding, let alone seeking reconciliation.  She persisted intensely for four days.  I told her that if she wants to divorce me, to go ahead — we would each take half.  She responded with fury, stating that she was going to take EVERYTHING.  A couple days later, when she cooled down, I told her she could have everything if that’s what is important to her.  I’d rather live in a cardboard box than with her abuse.

A day later she came on to give me a kiss in the kitchen.  It was a kiss that I don’t recall her ever giving.  It happened a couple times throughout the day.  Later she told me that our kissing got her wet.  This is so far beyond what she had ever said in terms of coming on to me in our 30 years of marriage.  When I went to bed that evening, she was wearing a nighty and a thong and asserted herself like she hadn’t done in at least 15 years.  This went on four or five times more for the next five or six days.

Then it all ended.

It confirmed what I already knew, that she used sex to either get what she wants or to claw me back into the relationship.  It was straight manipulation.  After the “make me wet” stuff, my thoughts were, “So she had this in her all throughout our marriage, but she held it back by her own will.”  Where did this idea (“You make me wet!”) come from within her?  From within this woman who had presented herself to me for 30 years as a somewhat prudish Christian woman; who called me a pervert for wanting sex with her on a regular basis.  Suddenly this?  What I would have warmly welcomed at any other time in the past became something tainted.  Where did it come from?  Did she recall it from her past relationships years ago before we met?  I had never heard it from her before.

I asked her about where she got this and she said, “I thought that’s what you wanted.”  Well… it is, but not as a way to claw me back after a 4 day out-of-control tirade of accusations and yelling.  It should have been a part of our relationship all along.

And that’s what makes me sick.

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The advances I made over the years were always pushed off as, “that’s all you want” or worse, indifference.  What should have been for 30 years, she withheld from the one person she should have been giving herself to with heartfelt enthusiasm — a passionate act of love to encourage instead of discouraging the “becoming one flesh” that would have been part of a healthy marriage.

Sex for married men is like gambling in that once you experience a winning hand, you foolishly think it’s out there to be had again.  We know that our wives are capable through a glimpse either in pre-marital sex or after marriage and we foolishly think that something will bring it back.  But at some point you realize that it never really was and never will be.

Closing Statements from Jack

In the discussion under Continuums, there was a lot of talk about the motivations a woman might have in carrying a laissez faire attitude towards sexual relations with her husband, including a lack of attraction, being alpha widowed, carelessness, control and the idolatry of control, cruelty, depravity, opportunism, selfishness, sinful pride / a lack of humility, …  But upon looking deeper than these things, which may vary from woman to woman and might change over time, it seems that women want to maintain a state of sexual tension primarily to keep their man humble (even at the expense of sacrificing his ego) and also to create the histrionics which their sense of emotional well-being feeds upon.  Even if they can’t or don’t feel visceral desire, then at least they can get the ego validation of being desired.  This is often glossed over as being “control”, but it is not the same as a man thinks of it.  It is more like edging in the spiritual sense – always walking that razor thin edge – not all in, but not out either, but yet, keeping up sufficient appearances in order to let the man believe she’s all in, and only just enough to avoid being kicked out.  And yes, it is all of the above things which have been mentioned by commenters.

Imagine realizing this after 29 years of marriage!

Update

This post has received quite a bit of feedback in the comments. Readers have offered a few theories about the author’s wife’s disposition, namely Hysteric Bonding, Incentives, The Main Event, and The Madonna / Whore Complex. This gives us a lot to think about and ponder.

The author of the OP has written a follow-up response to me. He wishes to thank everyone for their comments and support. He believes his wife’s behavior was more along the lines of Hysteric Bonding, and it was aggravated by many other confounding issues.

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