In search of Erotic Intelligence

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Everybody's not doing it. That's the word from Newsweek, The Atlantic, and other trend watchers: Couples are having less sex these days than even in the famously uptight '50s. Why? Busy, exhausting lives is the easy answer. But how Americans view eroticism in the wake of recent sexual and social revolutions may be an even bigger factor, according to a growing number of researchers and social observers. -- The Editors

A few years ago, at a psychology conference, I heard a speaker discuss a couple who had come to therapy in part because of a sharp decline in their sexual activity. Previously, the couple had engaged in light sado-masochism; now, following the birth of their second child, the wife wanted more conventional sex. But the husband was attached to their old style of lovemaking, so they were stuck.

The speaker believed that resolving the couple's sexual difficulty required working through the emotional dynamics of their marriage and new status as parents. But in the discussion afterward, the audience was far less interested in the couple's relationship than in the issue of sadomasochistic sex. Some people speculated that motherhood had restored the woman's sense of dignity, and now she refused to be demeaned by an implicitly abusive, power-driven relationship. Others suggested that the couple's impasse illustrated long-standing gender differences: Men tended to pursue separateness and control, while women yearned for loving connection.

When after two hours of talking about sex no one had mentioned the words pleasure or eroticism, I finally spoke up. Their form of sex had been entirely consensual, after all. Maybe the woman no longer wanted to be tied up because she now had a baby constantly attached to her breasts-binding her better than ropes ever could. Why assume that there had to be something degrading about this couple's sex play?

Perhaps my colleagues were afraid that if women did reveal such desires, they'd somehow sanction male dominance everywhere -- in business, politics, economics. Maybe the very ideas of sexual dominance and submission, aggression and surrender, couldn't be squared with the ideals of compromise and equality that undergird couples therapy today.

As an outsider to American society -- I grew up in Belgium and have lived in many countries -- I wondered if these attitudes reflected cultural differences. I later talked with Europeans, Brazilians, and Israelis who had been at the meeting. We all felt somewhat out of step with the sexual attitudes of our American colleagues. Did they believe such sexual preferences -- even though they were consensual and completely nonviolent -- were too wild and "kinky" for the serious business of maintaining a marriage and raising a family? It was as if sexual pleasure and eroticism that strayed onto slightly outré paths of fantasy and play-particularly games involving aggression and power-must be stricken from the repertoire of responsible adults in committed relationships.

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