My husband wants me to initiate sex sometimes, but I just feel so self-conscious and awkward—it seems that he should initiate.
WHO INITIATES?
It is not uncommon for a woman to be frustrated, crying, and complaining that nothing is happening sexually between herself and her husband. As we gather data and put together a total picture, what emerges is rather interesting. After she describes her husband’s excessive involvement in his career and lack of sexual approach to her, we will usually ask, “What keeps you from approaching him sexually, since you’re the one wanting sex and he apparently doesn’t have the drive?” The response is often a blank look or a stumbling for words. Finally, the answer comes: “I just never thought of it.” She may have given all sorts of subtle hints and become upset because he did not respond. The husband usually didn’t even catch on that his wife desired sex. Perhaps she mentioned that she’d like to go to bed, or she wore a special nightgown, or she was waiting up for him when he came home late at night. But she never let him know the real meaning of these symbolic, subtle expressions of her sexual desire.
Breaking Down Stereotypes of Male-Female Roles
The stereotype is that the man is and should be the sexually aggressive initiator. The woman is to use somewhat manipulative tactics to get him to approach her. For some couples this works. But there are many marriages for which these expectations are disruptive.
Here again, you may need to have a frank discussion with your spouse in which you examine the initiation pattern in your sexual relationship. What percentage of the time do you see yourself initiating, and what percentage do you see your spouse initiating? Often there are discrepancies in how each partner answers the question. The husband may see himself as initiating 90 percent of the time; whereas the wife may feel that each one initiates 50 percent of the time. If you discover that your views are quite different, don’t try to settle whose view is accurate. Each person’s experience and perceptions are his or her own; therefore, the way each of you feels is accurate. What is important is to try to “get under the other person’s skin” to discover the other’s view. Maybe the differences lie in the way each of you defines initiation. For example, the “90 percent” husband may not be conscious of his wife’s cues, so he doesn’t realize how often she has communicated a subtle message intended to cue him.
After you’ve each discovered how you would define the frequency of your initiation pattern, talk about your feelings concerning that pattern. Is it working for the two of you? How much stress or anxiety does each of you experience around the issue of getting sexual times started? Work through the exercise Resolving Initiation Problems described later in this chapter.
APPROACH-AVOIDANCE GAMES
One typical problematic initiation pattern that develops is the approach-avoidance game. One person sees it as his or her responsibility to get sexual activity going, so he makes frequent approaches to the other—using sexual overtures, dropping hints, or making direct suggestions. He feels as if he has to mention it eight times if it’s going to happen once. So he is anxiously suggesting sex far more often than he really wants it. His wife would like him not to bother her and feels that she never even has an opportunity to suggest getting together sexually because he wants it all the time. She feels bombarded and unable to get in touch with her desire. So she resists or avoids his approaches. You can see how the pattern perpetuates itself: The more she avoids, the more anxious he becomes, so the more he makes advances. This increases her feeling that demands are being placed on her that don’t allow room for her desire to build, and so the pattern continues.
This approach-avoidance pattern may have developed as a result of varying levels of sex drive, interest, or desire for frequency. It may be that one of you has an intense sex drive, but after a sexual time with your spouse, you have a sense of release and satisfaction for quite some time. Your partner may be the opposite. The release may not be as complete, so there is more ongoing desire, or a satisfying experience may serve to heighten interest for one of you.
If you are a young mother with several preschoolers you’re probably tired most of the time. Sexual encounters sound like a good idea, but by the time of day you’re available for such activity, you feel exhausted. Therefore, your interest rarely has an opportunity to be expressed. Your husband is probably young and full of sexual energy and can’t understand what’s wrong with you. This very real difference in sexual interest may lead to an approach-avoidance pattern if the two of you do not talk about the dilemma and plan ways for you to be rested and available.
You may be a thirty-five-year-old businessman or professional at the peak of establishing your career. Your sex drive is so used in pursuit of your vocation that your frequency of desire for sexual activity has decreased significantly. In contrast, your wife finally has time for herself, and so her frequency of desire has increased. The children are in school. She has time to bathe leisurely, manicure her nails, and play tennis; she is much more in tune with her body. You may experience her constant state of readiness for sexual encounters as a demand that makes you feel inadequate.
You walk into the house exhausted. You’re late for dinner. Your mind is still going a mile a minute, thinking about the decisions of the day. She is beautiful, well rested, and in her negligee. The children are in bed. She has a beautiful candlelight dinner set up for the two of you. Instead of feeling appreciative, you think, Oh, no, not again. I’m just not up to it tonight. But you feel guilty for thinking that, and you try to express appreciation for her caring intention.
After many such events, you experience more and more tension about the demand you feel being placed on you. You either start coming home later or you blow up over the smallest conflicts with your wife. And so another form of approach-avoidance has developed. Talking about your feelings at a time away from the event is the only way to break the pattern.
There are many other versions of this same dilemma. If you have fallen into such a problem, what is your version? How can you break into the situation? You need to take decisive action.
Here are steps you can take to resolve an initiation problem:
1. Have a casual time together in which you decide you both want to talk about your sexual initiation patterns. If one of you is the initiator in suggesting there is a problem, do not blame your spouse for it! Rather, own the problem yourself. This means that you use “I” statements rather than “you” statements. You might say, “I’ve been desiring intercourse more frequently.” Avoid a statement like, “You never seem interested in intercourse anymore.” Tell how the situation affects you and what you bring to the situation, rather than what your partner is doing wrong. For example, “I end up being afraid to take the lead because I don’t want to be rejected again.”
2. Plan a time to work on the difficulty. During that planned time, follow the next steps:
a. Each of you spend at least an hour alone writing out how you experience the dilemma. What do you see happening between the two of you? How do you participate in this problem—what is your role in perpetuating the difficulty? What feelings does the entire experience trigger for you?
b. Plan a two- to three-hour block of time for the two of you to be together when you won’t be distracted or interrupted—preferably when you are both at your best, and not when either of you is exhausted. A breakfast or lunch date usually works best—at a restaurant, having a picnic, or staying at home without children and with the telephone off the hook.
c. During the allotted time, start by reading each other’s writings from step a above. In reading, focus on what the other person is saying about himself or herself. Try to really step into the other person’s shoes and feel how he or she experiences the difficulty. This may take concentration. The more natural response is to see what the other is saying about you, and then to become defensive or start arguing or attacking him. The latter reaction will stifle progress.
d. Apply active listening skills (see Chapter 12) to feed back to your partner what you have understood about him or her from the writing. Work hard on reflecting how you sense your partner experiences the sexual initiation situation.
e. Partner: Clarify and expand on what your spouse has learned from your writing (e.g., “Yes, and another way I sense that is . . .”; or “I know that’s what I said, but when I hear you say it I realize what I really meant was . . .”; or “If that’s what I said, it isn’t what I meant; let me try again”).
f. Repeat steps d and e, reversing roles.
g. Agree on the need for change.
h. Make a plan that reverses the old pattern. That is, the approacher will not make sexual suggestions, just be affirming. The avoider will be responsible to initiate an agreed-on number of sexual encounters within a designated time frame.
EXAMPLES OF PLANS TO REVERSE
INITIATION PATTERNS
Problem: The Man Always Initiates
After discussing what the situation feels like for each of you and deciding on the need for change, you might make a plan similar to this:
1. Set a time span (for example, one week or slightly longer than your usual time lapse between lovemaking events).
2. Rules for this time span:
For husband: Back way off—no sexual approach, not even a hint—don’t bring up the topic. Be affirming of wife—warm, loving, but make no sexual advances.
For wife: Be responsible to initiate intercourse once during this period of time. Be free to initiate by any method that is possible for you. If you want to initiate but are having a particular difficulty, you may bring up the topic and discuss your feelings and anything that might be helpful to you.
3. At the end of the time span, set aside a minimum of two hours to talk about what happened or didn’t happen, and what it felt like. If the designated time elapsed and the wife didn’t initiate, discuss a plan for the next time span. Or perhaps she initiated, but he didn’t catch on. Maybe she sat down close to him while he was watching TV. She snuggled up to him and rubbed his neck in an attempt to get something started, but he just kept on watching TV. Discuss what sort of behavior each of you perceives as sexual initiation.
Problem: Fatigue (for One or Both of You)
Before you get into a plan for breaking an old habit, start by defining how each of you sees the problem.
1. Look at your reasons for fatigue. Are you a mother of small children, getting up at night with a baby? Are you a husband who arrives home late and must get up early for work or other responsibilities? Are you depressed? Or is fatigue your way to escape involvement? If the cause is one of the last two (depression or escape), you need to work with a therapist or counselor. If it’s a lifestyle problem, then proceed to the next step.
2. Agree that time together each week or every other week is a priority. This together time must occur when neither of you is tired.
3. Schedule specific time to be spent together: an evening, two hours at lunchtime, two or three hours in the morning, a weekend or day away every now and then.
4. Make sure this time is free of interruption—telephone off the hook, kids at friend’s house or down for the night, the two of you away at a motel—whatever it takes.
5. Plan for adequate rest on a regular basis—have a baby-sitter come in one hour a day so the wife can nap; the husband may cut down on commitments, and so on.
Once both partners are free to express sexual desires when they feel them, most couples enjoy mutual and spontaneous initiation. Mutuality means that both feel equal freedom and responsibility to initiate when the desire is there. It can also mean that the desire grows mutually out of contact with each other. That is, instead of sexual desire starting in one person and that person approaching the other, the feelings grow spontaneously between two people. This may happen while working together, playing together, or just being together. When the old, demanding pattern is broken so that each of you is free of the negative feelings, the good feelings flow. However, be alert to difficulties creeping in. Plan for correction before negative patterns are formed again. Obviously the most relaxed style is the ability to feel free with your own sexual desires and to be accepting of your spouse’s. That way either one can express desires as they are felt, without causing conflict.
WHEN “WHEN” IS A SOURCE OF DIFFICULTY
The same flexibility and spontaneity that are the goal for who initiates are also ideal for when sexual encounters are initiated. It is helpful if neither of you holds rigid stereotypes of when it is appropriate to enjoy lovemaking. You may always have associated sexual activity with going to bed at night. Once the lights are turned out and you have both crawled under the covers, you will roll over to your spouse and start fondling with the intention of proceeding to intercourse. That’s the only time you envision as a lovemaking time. This clearly does not allow for flexibility and spontaneity.
If you are in a rut, you will need to make clear plans to open the door to sexual encounters at other times of the day. Flexibility doesn’t usually happen just by recognizing the need or the desire for it. Start by talking about how your limited concepts about when sexual activity should occur developed. Then plan some times together that are different from your usual times. It’s best if planned times are designed primarily for sexual pleasure, with the option of intercourse if that is desired by both.
Little children in the home may limit flexibility. Plan around their schedules, or find ways to be free of them periodically. Maybe you can get away from home or have the children cared for out of the house. It will be more difficult to allow spontaneous initiation if you have young children or anyone else present in the house.
There are other ways in which the “when” of initiation can cause tension. Timing can sometimes be used to sabotage the relationship. This usually happens when anger has built up in the relationship or when there is anxiety about performing sexually. The way timing manifests itself varies. It may be that the woman is most alert and responsive in the morning, but the man always initiates sex at night when she is tired. Or he has his fullest erections and is most sure of his responsiveness in the morning, but she says she’s just not a morning person, and then complains when he’s not responsive in the evening. One partner may insist that sex always has to occur before a certain time.
Whatever the reason, they never seem to be able to get on the same timetable. We will talk about other forms of sabotage in Chapter 20.
To reverse problems with timing, try scheduling times agreeable to both partners. This may involve compromise, perhaps alternating with each other’s preferred time. Or it may be that neither time is used, and several new, mutually agreeable times are selected. Again, it is important to make sure that your planned time together will be free of interruptions and pressures. The time period should be long enough so that neither of you feels rushed at either end of the experience together. The goal of the time together must be enjoyment and pleasure, without demands for response or intercourse. Allow each sexual experience to be what it will be!
WHERE—CREATIVITY WITH SENSITIVITY
Finding new and fun places to enjoy each other’s bodies can give new spark to a rather “ho-hum” sexual relationship. This is one of the ways to create an ever-changing mood that allows each experience to be a new one. The variety in itself is a delight.
There are really only two limits on where you might plan a sexual nest. One is that the place chosen provides the privacy needed by both of you. For example, your backyard might be an option for you but would make your spouse feel very uncomfortable. If it’s not comfortable for both, it’s not a possible place. However, if you’re the one who has always been hesitant about feeling private in the backyard, and you decide you’d like to push yourself a bit, that’s fine.
The second limit is that your choice of a place must respect other people. You may be totally uninhibited but your neighbors need to be protected from your sexual activities.
It can be fun to plan a new place. You can plan together or surprise each other. In all situations, remember to be sensitive to each other’s need for privacy. A lock on the door of the chosen room usually relieves anxiety about being interrupted. Taking the telephone off the hook prevents fear of intrusion. Closing windows, doors, and drapes can encourage freedom from noises. A secluded yard or area is necessary for outdoor play. Once the privacy needs have been cared for, let your minds run free. The swimming pool at night has been a fun variation for some. A new room in the house, a different bed, a love nest in the family room or living room are all options. Or you may want to be so different as to take your pickup camper to the grocery store parking lot!
HOW—SYMBOLIC MESSAGES AND
DIRECT INVITATIONS
Different people initiate sexual activity in different ways. Some individuals tend to express themselves with direct physical activity. This may be a combination of kissing, fondling, hugging, caressing, or rubbing bodies together. For these people, their bodies express their desires more easily than words.
Others are direct with verbal messages of initiation. “I’m really feeling turned on. Let’s go to bed and make love,” for example.
Then there are others who are much more subtle and indirect in their initiation. In our culture this has tended to be true of women more than of men. However, we are finding that the trend is changing, and women are becoming more direct. For some men, a woman’s increased directness stimulates a tendency toward hesitancy and timidity.
If you are a subtle initiator, it is important that you take responsibility to make certain your desires are clearly communicated to your spouse.
As long as both spouses are clear about the message being communicated, subtle, symbolic methods of initiation can add spark and intrigue. You might use pet phrases, fix a love nest, come to bed in the nude, prepare a romantic dinner for the two of you, light a candle, bring flowers; or, as you get totally free with each other, you may have fun with more ridiculous messages. One man appeared in the bedroom with a bow tied around his penis. Another man took everything off except his white shirt and tie and came in carrying his briefcase and a rose. One woman pasted hearts over the appropriate spots on her body. It’s fun to be creative. Remember, within marriage the Bible has no restrictions on your behavior, as long as it’s loving. Being sexy with your marriage partner is a plus, not a negative!
In summary, it’s important to reduce stress concerning who initiates sexual play and when, where, and how that initiation takes place. Then initiation will assume a healthy role in the total sexual picture, rather than presenting a barrier or being a source of tension. Initiation can also be cultivated to enhance a merely adequate sexual relationship where more spark is desired. The needed ingredients are removal of demands, freedom within oneself, and unconditional acceptance of each other.