Wedding Night Sex

 Photo hat-tip: Miss Licious.

Somewhere, in blogland or a trashy newspaper, I read that fewer than fifty percent of couples have sex on their wedding night. That seems about right. Conventional weddings are awful, stressful things, non-conducive to relaxed (or even frenzied) lovemaking. Emotional and physical exhaustion ruin desire.

But let's say you've practised abstinence. It's your wedding night, and high time for a thorough seeing-too. For God knows how long you've both restricted yourselves, and now your rules allow for...well, anything, I guess. Where do you start?

 Where would you start? It must be like being locked overnight in your favourite store, able to take anything you want. Presumably masturbation is allowed if you're pre-maritally abstinent towards your beloved, so holding back the reservoir wouldn't be too overwhelming. I guess the whole point is having penis in vagina, so the quickest way to make that happen would be the first order of business.

I wonder how many folks are disappointed at that first time? Wouldn't that be a sinking feeling, discovering that after all that delayed gratification, you'd hitched yourself to a dud bash?

Still, it must be quite a moment, that first time, outcome notwithstanding.



Miss Miz's favourite link. SFW

Bottoms Up, Newlyweds.

Here's how to find your wedding-day limousine.

Man 1.0

Photo credit. 

Civilization depends in large part upon men curbing their instincts. Restraint, self-discipline, filtering, gratification denial; call it what you like, it's all about out-thinking the first reaction.

In a monogamous relationship, it's natural for a woman to want to see a little (or, umm, a lot?) of the unrestricted male. I don't mean violence, of course. That's where trust comes in. But for everyone's benefit, raising the gate on a few more basic instincts leads to a happier experience. How many times have I heard women ask:

How do you really feel?

or

Just let go!

or variations thereof.

Not so easy. Curtailing the civilization software and (temporarily) re-installing Man 1.0 requires practice and understanding. My practice and your understanding.

Now. Where are those 5 1/4" floppy disks?



Bottoms Up, Coders.

Allow Yourself Pleasure

"Most women need permission to express themselves sexually and allow themselves pleasure."*

I sense an element of truth in this statement, and yet raise my eyebrows. 'Permission' implies someone has the authority allowing each individual female release. Is is possible that women themselves deny that permission? Do women stop their own natural behaviour? Why?

This kind of self flagellation is foreign to guys. We routinely deny ourselves expression from the other end of that spectrum - controlling our impulses civilizes us. This, too, can be overdone, leading to male sexual introversion.

Perhaps we could meet in the middle. Ladies, give yourself permission. Men, go meet the women.




Bottoms Up, Permit Holders!



Pic from here [link]

*Quote from a quote from "Release the Seductress Within" by Laurie Sue Brockway.

Another Notch on my Bedpost.

Another weekend passed without scoring, another play period without a notch carved on my bedpost. At the moment I'm suffering from sweeheart deficiency disorder, for which I shall soon be obtaining treatment. It's gotta a be a syndrome of some sort; a chronic problem like this must be treatable with a really expensive drug.

And by the way, why do we surreptitiously keep score? What difference does the total number of people with whom we have conducted coitus make? If my instinct is correct there's a curve out there that looks something like the trajectory of a low-orbit rocket launch - after a certain number of partners, it's all just floating about in space.

I would like to create a large-scale experiment. Men on the hunt for pussy would split into two groups. The first group would, during the chat-up phase, say they'd had sex with only two women ever in their lives. The other half would explicitly make mention that they'd had sex with twenty women. What's your bet as to the outcome?

And what's with all that notches on bedposts carpentry b.s. anyway? It's SO two centuries ago. Surely there's an iPhone app for that now. Sheesh. I wish these metaphors would automatically update.




Bottoms Up.


Stud from here [link]

Edited for split infinitives.

Who is your Secret Lover?

The answer is self-generating, but I wonder how our choice of partner would change if no-one else knew who they were, or what they looked like.

In other words, disregard the idea that you and your lover will ever be seen together in public. And no-one will ever know you're intimate and happily so with that person. How would that affect your ideal?

I imagine the social and familial acceptability of one's partner is worth somewhere between one quarter and one-half of the points. Accounting for such basic criteria doesn't strike me as something we do in western societies, because expectations lie at the lower end of the spectrum. But if you're from a culture in which you the individual are lesser, and the family and society are greater, their influence on your choice and thinking will be different.

To my mind, contemplating the way we think about this background sociopathy makes it easier to see where we're going. Perhaps an arranged marriage really is the best way, despite my desire to pick and choose.




Hitchcockian photo from here [link]

Fornicate in the Forum

It was only when a weird Jewish sect from Judea came to Rome did Romans change their attitude to sex. For the few hundred years before the first century AD, Rome had families at the centre of society, but sexual morality was looser than it subsequently became.[link] The rise of Christianity changed ideas of what was right and wrong, with an inevitable shift in behaviour.

What's considered acceptable in sex changes depending upon the culture. Everyday activities in the Anglosphere can be heretical in the Islamosphere, and v/v. The Hindu life-cycle blueprint is different from Buddhist Nirvana-seeking. Religion and politics inevitably shape how we have sex, with whom, and how we talk about it.

So...if the spectrum of activity starts with complete sexual liberty, and ends with permanent abstinence, somewhere in the middle lies the best compromise for individuals, families and society, right? Some indulgence and some discipline (not the leather and whips kind); as with all compromises, keeping reasonably within the white lines isn't always easy.





Mosaic of the Ancients here [link]

Modern Rome [link]

Edited to minimize Imperial Roman tone. SPQR.

Sex With Attitude

Repellent thought that it is, I guess that our parents build the foundations of our attitude to sex. Inbuilt drives to reproduce work on one level, obviously, but as anyone who has ever asked a complete stranger for sex knows, drive needs a driver - or a chauffeur, really, to get where it wants to go. Smoothing out the rough edges of animalism helps us accommodate that inner beastie, and is partially the reason parents exist; to tell us how.

In other words, our parents give us the architecture by which we think about and approach sex.

Let's contemplate that for a minute or two: Your parents create the framework for your sex life. By sex life, I am not talking about the reproductive blarney. I'm talking about how you feel about your feelings, how you deal with the irrationality of attraction, or how you resolve conflicts around fidelity or abstinence.

The problem that I see is that we entrust this very important job to two amateurs who are probably embarrassed to even consider their darling sixteen-year-old fucking like a minx. Which is probably why in the end we learn more about what sex means - or should mean - from our peers and media. That starts in one's teenage years and they hardly seem better choices. At least our peers provide a kind of library of sex-facts, a sort of TeenBonkWiki. None of the information is likely any good, but at least one can pick and choose from all the foolish notions out there in the school quadrangle.

In the end, most of us rely on the time-honoured methods: experience, advertisements and porn, although I guess someone has 'rents who rocked at telling it like it is.




Happy family from here. [link] Don't bother reading the article.

Edited for too many partiallys, a word of which I am apparently partial.

Cooking with Condoms

Beware all you non-bareback fuckers out there. The LA Times reports that China is not only producing low-quality goods for Walmart, those sneaky commies are in your wallet or purse now too.

Millions of knock-off Trojans were produced and exported to the USA in 2008, and it turns out they're still out there. [link]

From the article:

None of the counterfeits are properly sterilized, and others are of such inferior quality that they could rupture during use. Authorities say they're all dangerous.

And:

Authorities have yet to track down more than 1 million condoms they believe have been distributed nationwide, lubricated with vegetable oil and stored in metal drums.

Lubricated with vegetable oil. Hopefully they're MSG-free, otherwise you'll bonk, and ten minutes later you'll want to do it all again.




Pic (ironically) from here [link]

Resignation

Being single is okay, but that might be resignation talking.

Resignation has a habit of filling silence with verbal equivalents of shrugs and open hands raised in surrender. He (or she) is the kind of emotion who sits in a comfortable chair in a corner at parties, not saying much, but making it count when he (or she) does.

Not that Resignation is devastatingly funny or heart-breakingly pithy; it isn't. His (or her) trick is timing, knowing when competition is at a minimum. Resignation is what's left when there's not that much left.

Like I wrote, he (or she) lives to fill the gap.





Oil from here. [link]

Sex Before Marriage

Am I right in thinking that the distaste for pre-marital sex stems from Christian religious belief? Do any groups of agnostics, atheists, communists or other non-believers likewise implore the unmarried to abstain? And - forgive my ignorance - do Judaism, Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism and Islam also teach that sex is a married person's activity only?

The arguments against sex before marriage are clear enough: sex is the physical act of making love, the result of which love is the miracle of a child, which child will require raising, for which the best institution is marriage, and marriage is a sacred union.

The arguments for SBM are similarly obvious: sex isn't always making love; modern contraceptives mean sex doesn't always result in a child; are we all naturally monogamous? for life?; sex is a big part of marriage, and buying without trying sets people up for misery or infidelity; sowing wild oats allows for stronger marriages and more mature people.

I'm sure you can add to both sides.

My interest lies not in changing the beliefs of either side. Having sex with someone in or out of marriage is a personal choice, a choice everyone must live with.

In my mind choosing no SBM is about abstinence, self-control, delayed gratification, belief, and life after death. It can also be about love.

In my mind, choosing SBM is about self-expression, freedom and feeling. It can also be about love.

The dilemma is that we can all identify with parts of both of these arguments. Therein lies my problem; the way this stuff is handled (at least publically) polarizes ideas about people when anyone with a brain can see both sides reflect different elements of being a human. Conflicting layers of understanding about ourselves and our place in the universe is a part of being us, and a better way to communicate this to our juveniles is worth pursuing.

In the same way I think our 'Sex Ed' is flawed [link] , so too is our approach to more complicated life decisions.

A bigger principle resides in this neighbourhood. Every freedom has a flip-side of responsibility, and every responsibility has a freedom. Problems arise when we see only freedoms, or only responsibilities.




Edited for clarity and spelling.