YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/WIVES’ SEXUALITY: MS. MYTH – THE FEMALE-FANTASY MYTH

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I hate those X-rated videotapes. They are disgusting. A bunch of naked bodies humping each other. I like the parts where you can see some feeling, but that almost never happens.

WIFE WITH HUSBAND PRESENT

I get turned on a lot with those tapes. I feel guilty, but I got one out to look at while he was at work and I masturbated. I know it’s filth, but some parts turn me on.

WIFE IN PRIVATE INTERVIEW

The early perspectives assumed that men looked and women felt. I did not find this assumption to be the case with the couples \ interviewed. Women were aroused by visual stimulation, and sometimes were quite specific in their report. “I love the turn in the shoulders by a man’s neck, sort of the neck and shoulder area. I love to sort of smooth out his suit coat or jacket by running both my hands out from that turn on both sides of his neck to his outer shoulders. I love to look at men in the theater from behind and look at their shoulders.” This wife’s report illustrates a strong visual reaction, and other examples were similar.

The individual love maps of men and women, not their gender, determine what stimuli will elicit a sexual response at any given time. If we tell women that they do not respond visually, then they are likely to report that they do not. If we ask open questions without gender bias, we get the same range of responses in husbands and wives.

Talk together about your reactions to erotica and you will discover that both of you are turned on and off to various visual cues. Asking whether or not a woman is turned on to X-rated material is like asking if someone is turned on to books. It depends! And remember, the sexual-response system is not a closed energy system with an on-and-off switch. It is a flowing, ever-changing system. We do not really get turned on or off, we respond to varying degrees.

When we free our relationship from the mechanical orientation of the early sex perspectives, we learn that we we always “on,” and in control of our response through our selection, sharing, and awareness of our love maps and the variables that determined it.

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