Sex and the desperate housewife

I got home from my business trip, and Wife and I spent a little time talking about her new affaire de coeur - cum - Internet infatuation with Boyfriend 5. Not really a lot of time, considering all that has been going on.

One of the things we have not discussed yet is the sexual side of this infatuation, and of others like it. Of course in a sense there isn't any sexual side, because Boyfriend 5 lives in another country. That doesn't stop Wife from fantasizing about him (them) though, so in her mind there is certainly a hope for some kind of future along these lines.

What's to discuss? I don't know ... maybe questions like what she hopes to get out of ever-newer romances that she can't get from the older ones (or even from me)? Or more generally, what does she want out of a sexual relationship to begin with? That could, for example, help me understand why she regularly chases after new ones.

The thing is, I'm not sure she knows. Or more precisely, I don't think she can allow herself to know, because I think that at some deep level she is profoundly conflicted about sexual relationships as such. On the one hand, she has traditionally had a very strong sex drive. (Lately this has been dampened somewhat by illness and other things, but I am speaking over the long haul of decades here.) On the other hand, there seems to be a part of her that finds sex -- as such -- shameful or degrading. She would be reluctant to admit this, for reasons that I might almost call "political" -- namely, that as a feminist and as a woman who does not subscribe to very "traditional" social norms, she professes a belief that sex and the body are natural and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in nature. But try talking to her about it and she blushes and changes the subject. It is not an easy thing for her to talk about.

Now, in fairness I should admit that I too often find it kind of difficult to talk clearly about sex, at any rate when it involves me. But the upshot is that this is not an area where we have ever been able to communicate at all well. And I think this is part of the frustration that Wife feels in our marriage ... and that she hopes to be able to cure magically with somebody else. Since the communication problem is on her side as well as mine, though, changing partners doesn't always seem to be quite the panacea she hopes for.

An example or two might be in order. (Anybody who is going to be offended by examples that could get a bit graphic should just stop reading here ... you've already got the main point up above.)

When Wife and I were first married, her response to foreplay was to lie as still and motionless as possible ... apparently because she was embarrassed to admit when she enjoyed it. But this meant that I had no idea what she liked and what she didn't, or even if she was responding at all; sometimes after an extended time with no response whatsoever I would simply give up. It wasn't until years later that, in the middle of a tirade on some other topic, she accused me of torturing her in order to control her ... where "torture" meant getting her thoroughly aroused and then quitting before she could orgasm. Huh? She was aroused back then, when she lay silent and stiff as a board? Who knew?

She has -- very belatedly -- gotten better about showing it when she is aroused, but the mixed signals still continue. A week or two ago, just before my last business trip, I awoke one morning as she took my hand and placed it directly onto her open vulva, which was already sopping wet. I took this as an invitation to massage the area and proceeded to do so, with perhaps some special attention to her clitoris. Later that day she complained bitterly that I had "hit on" her so crudely, and that I had apparently "never even heard of foreplay."

She is embarrassed whenever I see her orgasm; she is deeply humiliated if I happen to catch sight of her masturbating. And yet, what kind of sex life is it when you can't orgasm in front of your partner? How can you be open and relaxed with somebody -- and this is a prerequisite for good sex -- if you can't ever allow that person to see you stimulate yourself, even though everyone knows that everyone else does so from time to time? How can that possibly be satisfying?

Things start out better when she is first with someone else, but they don't stay that way. At the beginning of a new affair, her libido is in overdrive and new lovers naturally assume that this quantity of uninhibited sex is what they should expect in the future. But the quantity and frequency of sex that she is willing to offer never stay at that level. I specifically remember once when Wife complained to me about a time that Boyfriend 1 approached her profoundly aroused -- I think her phrase was "hard as a rock" -- and more or less pleaded for sexual attention from her; her response was to shove past him to get out of bed and go about her business. Ironically a few years later she told me an almost identical story about Girlfriend 1. Then there was the time she was with Boyfriend 2 and dropped her pants as an apparent invitation -- only to keep chattering to him incessantly about the day-to-day anxieties on her mind until he was totally unable to respond. Or the time that she unilaterally told Boyfriend 4 that she was no longer interested in fucking him, so the terms of their relationship would simply have to change. Like that.

And it is possible that I have just answered my own question. Maybe the thing that is so special about new romances and new lovers is that she lets herself fuck more freely then. After all, a new romance is dominated by flirting, coyness, come-hither smiles followed by quick glances away, ... all of that stuff. When the new lovers finally do lie down together, it is like the [forgive me] climax of a novel or a movie; there is so much narrative force [so to speak] behind the event that I don't think Wife gives herself a chance to feel embarrassed. Certainly the first time Wife and I fell into bed together she wasn't shy about her orgasms ... nor really about much else, come to think of it. She only seemed to get more prudish as we got to know each other better, and as our sex became more frequent and more normal.

Of course if this hypothesis is true, then I can't expect any end to the new lovers -- to the infidelities -- until the day that Wife no longer wants sex with anybody; because if this hypothesis is true, the only satisfactory sex that Wife can ever have is with people who are new. For both her sake and my own, I hope I am completely off base. But this theory does seem to explain some of the data.

I really don't know.