Rattle of the Sexes

Since I abhor battles of any kind and much the more when opposite sexes are the combatants, I naturally dislike the old term, Battle of the Sexes, which has been around longer than anyone can remember.  But I also see most of these so-called battles as mere rattles, due to the desire we all have to get attention.  Fortunately, most of the fighting done between the sexes is limited to verbal skirmishes, but these can be pretty damaging, and in the awful extremities of the battle concept, can result in physical pain or worse.  Still, there will always be the rattling of words, hopefully in lieu of sabers.

I have long had this title in mind, thinking one day to try to write a book or at least an article so named.  Surprised it hasn't already been used as a book title by an authority on the subject - perhaps the writer of the Venus/Mars treatment.  Somewhere on the web there is a site called Citizen Poet in which the expression Rattle of the Sexes was picked up in my search, but I failed to locate the full piece entered there.  So I feel comfortable using it here in this little corner of the blogosphere.  Now I will make my foray into the world of sociological comment on one of the most confusing and misunderstood areas of human life: the male/female divide. 

Naturally, anything I might offer is as a layman only (no pun intended) because I am totally untrained in sociology.  Well, not totally.  I am, after all, a social animal, a senior citizen, and one who has lived a perhaps unusually active and varied life to this point.  So I do have some little insight, most of it learned in the school of hard knocks and personal experience.  The experiences have been of the beautiful type and of the cruelly painful type, with a few other types along the way.  But all have been instructive and therefore, over the course of six decades, positive. And the marvel of the Internet allows me to be quite frank, even blunt, and not constrained by anyone's disdain for my lack of letters.

So my approach here will be to introduce my take on the rattle of the sexes topic by expostulating on some point, then allowing my views to be informed and perhaps altered by any comments that might be engendered. Then I plan to continue filling out the topic, in hit-and-miss fashion, by addressing related issues in future posts.  So feel free and welcome to be one of those who informs my view!

Jumping right in with alacrity, let's consider a sensitive area of conflict that may exist between mates after years of marriage: sexuality.  My experience, as well as what I hear in talks with many others, tells me that libidos and sexual interests do fluctuate for all of us as we age and seldom do they change in concert.  The common term we hear when a couple is separating is that the two people have "grown apart."  This surely involves a wide variety of ways in which the apartness manifests itself, but I am confident in my assertion that a high percentage of that grown apart state involves the sex drive and the sexuality field in general.

And it isn't merely the drive (or lack of drive) to participate in sex that changes as we grow older; it is the fact that many other variables come into play, and these also rarely match up between mates.  For example, fantasies.  I still chuckle when I recall a little joke I heard decades ago, involving an elderly couple who made the commitment one night to try sex again following a few weeks without.  After unconvincing fondling of one another for a while with no apparent excitement developing for either, the man finally sighed and asked, "You couldn't think of anybody either, huh?" 

At least these two understood each other.  For many sex partners, the concept of fantasizing is a closely kept secret.  How many people utilize a fantasy now and then during sex in order to achieve orgasm which may not arrive or may take far longer to achieve with just the action of the moment?  Do ALL humans fantasize?  My baseless guess is that more than 95% do, and probably absolutely everyone has once or twice.  [Here I will admit to lots of guessing.  Were I as capable as a Dr. Kinsey, I would document a basis for my percentages.  On the other hand, though Kinsey went about it using a scientific methodology, I don't believe he used a polygraph when he questioned his survey participants.  Knowing the human capacity for deception - including self-deception - I will guess his numbers were off by a wide margin.]  How many people would you suppose will admit to using fantasy during sex?  Another wild guess of mine would be less than half of those who do so will admit it.  How many would admit to it if actually asked by a mate during the sex act?  I'd say maybe 5% (being generous) would be honest at that moment.  No harsh criticism intended here; it may not be only self-protection or embarrassment that would cause a person to lie about this point.  Truly caring for a mate might cause any of us to make a judgment call at the moment to protect him/her from the pain of inadequacy one might feel if it were known that the partner is fantasizing.

Do men and women engage in fantasy in essentially equal numbers?  I'm guessing, yes.  Will men admit it as often as do women?  Very doubtful.  Do males and females have similar fantasies?  Probably never - or very seldom.  Do partners openly discuss the whole fantasy matter with each other?  Rarely.

The giant arena of fantasizing during sex is basically an unmentionable in human intimacy.  Yet it plays an enormous role in the sexual relationship of mates, and it can be quite literally the single largest factor when two people grow apart.  Their secretly held fantasies change in different ways; the fantasizers change also.

Good or bad - keeping fantasies as secretive as they have always been?  Tough call.  It seems to me that when mates, even those who proclaim that their bond is so complete that they have no secrets from each other - soulmates - come to the subject of sexual fantasies, they will shut down.  Something about fantasizing strikes fear into the hearts of sex partners.  One painful experience I will share dealt directly with this vague no-man's-land of fantasy.  My excitement over reading something my partner had written involving an intense fantasy of desire between two women, caused me to believe our personal sexual activity would advance into sharing another female in our sex play.  How wrong was that notion!  How quickly were we over!

Personally, I think this whole thing of sexual fantasy and its impact on our intimate encounters has been completely bungled.  Many have heard me voice this view along with my strong advocacy of the need to share our fantasies openly.  If one partner in a loving relationship is unwilling to share his or her fantasies with that one special mate, then how can the two go forward in a syncronous harmony for very long?  It seems they set themselves up for a fall.

Earlier, I alluded to my doubts that males and females ever fantasize in the same way.  Perhaps this discovery between mates, at an early attempt at minimal sharing of their personal fantasies, causes them to cease trying to do so further.  And maybe this is the beginning of their separate directions in sexual comfort zones.  When a woman hears that her guy, who loves her so much, harbors fantasies of threesomes (as I admitted to a partner and to you here), how does she take this news?  Can she ever feel that she is "enough" for him after that admission?  And a man who finds that his little woman is prone to visualize a prince or a knight on a white steed coming to rescue her, and this aids in her orgasm, how does he feel?  Does he not begin to wonder about why she needs a rescue?  Why she wants something he could never be?

Of course, the above is generalizing and gross over-simplification.  But admit it; a man's fantasy is most likely going to include nudity, "base" lustful and lurid scenarios, and often with more than one lusty female.  It's why men are typically branded as simple.  [And if there are any straight males who have not fantasized about sex with two women at once, I do not know these men.]  Females who discuss their fantasies typically don't cite those bare-chested models from paperback romance novel covers as their fantasy subjects, but rather they think of impressive, wealthy, royal, strikingly handsome or super-strong males.  Males who are seldom naked!

The rattle of the sexes begins not in words but in thoughts, most of which are subliminal for many years.  We apparently have some basic big differences in these subliminal thoughts beginning when the developing fetus takes on the role of either gender.  Then from the moment we breathe the outside air and begin the long developmental slog through learning about life, we are aided(!) by societal stereotyping in assuring we as males and females will never be alike  in any way, especially in our fantasies.

I submit that when two young people are first married (probably slightly before the wedding would be much better), they should calmly and openly discuss fantasies and share a large laugh over the major differences in the fundamental thinking of the sexes.  Then from that point, plan to keep each other updated by allowing new fantasies to be discussed without judgment as their lives progress.  This could become a whole new area of sharing that would further bind two people in love, and often each would benefit from the other's nuances on the subject of fantasizing.  If the opposite were to occur and they eventually were to grow apart anyway, at least their sharing of individual fantasies might provide a heads-up for them both and give a hint as to what simmering thought might be about to rear its newly assertive head and bite them.

Much, much more can be said about the subject; I will probably say more myself.  But now it's time to see whether others may have something to say.  Perhaps I will learn a great deal; perhaps some sharing here can be healthy and helpful to a few of us.  Perhaps I will hear nothing from anyone and will have to wonder whether I have stepped into a no-no zone instead of my neutral zone.  Oh, well, I hope someone gets something out of my ramblings.  And you might enjoy visiting this no-no zone if you're not too timid.

Please remember that many great contributions have been made over centuries from that wise and prolific writer, Anonymous.  If you are one of his descendants, I'm always glad to hear from you.  Or consider creating a private user name. This keeps you completely unidentifiable but allows you to comment often and develop a thread.  Any approach is a good one.  How often can that be said?!