There is an incomparable purity in the relief I feel from her authentic touch.
I used to think the most relief available to me came from the euphoric feeling delivered by the second IPA. Alcohol provided relief, yes, but the emotional and cognitive sensations delivered by a toxin are anything but pure or authentic.
I might be getting fired.
I’ve never been fired before. Now that the likelihood looms, I actually feel guilty that I have made it 51 years without doing anything important enough to threaten the narrow minded among us.
***
My first job was scooping ice cream one town over from where I lived in high school. I was eventually promoted to ice cream maker, and it was probably the best job I’ve ever had. I ate unlimited ice cream and made my own hours with one guiding responsibility: never let the freezers run out of any of the flavors. I tried to stir the thick, sweet rum syrup for the rum raisin ice cream into cups of fountain Coca-Cola. It tasted like shit, and I had to slurp it more than drink it, but it gave me the naughty little kick teenagers brag about to their classmates. I left that job to work at Sam Goody, a music store selling CDs and tapes. Even though I had to wear a tie and work in the mall, music was way cooler than ice cream for a high schooler. Drudgery quickly replaced coolness as I was tasked with alphabetizing all day, everyday. Put out the new shipments, restock returned CDs and tapes and fix the disorder created by careless shoppers who clearly didn’t know their ABCs. That job sucked, and it made me feel like a criminal when the manager patted me down after every shift, or even when I went to the food court for a Wetzel’s Pretzel.
When Harry Met Sally is an iconic movie with a star-studded cast, and is arguably the best flick from the classic era of late 20th century rom-coms. But it is not best known for the romance, or even the comedy.
It is best known for the orgasm scene.
When it comes to sex, my wife, Sheri, could dump a bucket of ice down my pants, and I’d still be ready to go.
I despise ambiguity and hidden meanings, and there is no room in this message for subtlety. So rather than bury the lead, let’s get right after it.
I experience spontaneous arousal. I can be changing the filter on our furnace while listening to a recording of a gospel choir singing “Amazing Grace,” and if the wind shifts out of the northwest in my basement, I am turned on. I don’t really listen to gospel music (I’m more of a Broadway show tunes kind of guy), and the last time I checked, our basement is almost entirely wind free. But that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t have to be doing something sexy to be ready for sexy time.
Perhaps the worst prevailing relationship advice is that women in committed romantic partnerships should feel compelled to have sex with their partners, whether they want to or not. Let me say this in no uncertain terms:
It doesn’t matter if she is giving him sex because she is told it is her duty by the church, their couples counselor, societal messaging, some study in a magazine, endless cinematic rom-coms, some call-in radio psychologist, cultural arranged marriage practices, the family court system, or even her own mom. Consenting to unwanted sex is the absolute enemy of trust building, and it is toxic to the very connection we seek in pursuing sex in the first place.
You might be easily convinced that obligatory sex isn’t fulfilling for the woman who feels obliged. But here’s the counterintuitive part: Obligatory sex is even worse, in the long run, for the person who is asking for it.
One of the worst days of our marriage, for both Sheri and me, was July 14, 2021. Since we are a couple who experienced my active alcoholism for 25 years, you might be surprised to learn I was four-and-a-half years sober on that traumatic day. Even without alcohol, Sheri and I make occasional trips back into the pit of hell with emotional relationship relapses.
Relationship relapses often spin out of control as both partners revert to deflection, manipulation, overreaction and self-protection – all skills learned during active addiction. But before we pull out the old tools of dysfunction, there has to be a spark. An impetus. A new or refreshed wound around which the spiraling decline can revolve.
Popular media and other cultural depictions of us guys as horny, thoughtless seed scatterers are crass, shallow, and add a lot of unnecessary fuel to the inferno of misinformation and stigma blazing around the very real (and really important) topic of sexual desire discrepancy in romantic relationships. Take, for instance, the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series episode titled, “Broke.” The very real (and really unfortunate) cultural trend of counting the number of, “baby mommas,” male athletes can impregnate as a source of bragging rights is one of the main topics. And as we have come to expect in our society, when our professional athlete superheros brag about something, the message trickles down. In this case, the message is that lots of indiscriminate, unprotected sex without acknowledging the very real (and really generationally traumatic) consequences is a sign of virility and success. It is part of what it means to be a man. I don’t relate. I don’t feel that way, but I am a man, so I am at least ever-so-slightly, tangentially tarnished.
But like with most stereotypes, amid the legions of uneducated assumptions is the kindling of truth from which the fire was started.
“Sexual health.”
Those two words in response to the question, “Oh yeah, what in?” elicit stunned looks and awkward silence with consistency. Depending on who I am talking to, I hesitate to varying degrees to acknowledge that I am finishing up my master’s degree.
People who know my passion for writing about and studying maladaptive coping mechanisms like alcoholism assume psychology. Others who know my wife and I are self-employed assume it’s an MBA. A master’s degree in sexual health drops jaws to the floor. Those who compose themselves always have one or both of the same two follow-up questions. “You’ve got to be the only 50-year-old heterosexual white cisgender male in the program, right?” and, “Why?” The answer to the first question is, “I am meeting a lot of people I would not otherwise encounter, and it’s great to hear different perspectives (that is a long way of saying, ‘yes.’)” The answer to the second question is so simple in my mind, but it’s a bit hard to explain.
As an active alcoholic, the only connection I could imagine between orgasm and addiction was that I sure liked to have sex when I was drunk. Even years into sobriety, when I thought back to the relationship between my drinking and sex, my sloppy, handsy, unromantic and insistent predatory behavior brought a wave of shame crashing over me.
And now – even as I’ve studied the issue from a scientific perspective – even as I make a pitch here based on what I’ve learned – I still feel compelled to defend myself. The compulsion for self defense can only come from one place. It comes from an indelible mark of shame stamped permanently on my soul. All of my sexual attention was always directed only at my wife, and I never raped my wife. I was often disgusting. I was verbally and emotionally abusive. But I defend myself by insisting that I did nothing worse, as if my transgressions are not far more than enough.
My mom likes to tell the story at family gatherings and other social occasions. “When I approached Matt and told him it was time for us to have, ‘the talk,’ he replied, ‘Sure mom. What do you want to know?’”
It is a chuckle-worthy story that illustrates two things – one accurately and one inaccurately. As a teenager, and into my 20s, my sexual confidence often bordered on arrogance. But it also might lead one of my mom’s guests to believe we had open and honest communication about sex and sexuality. She tried, and so did my dad. But they both viewed “the sex talk” as something to check off of a list. We did not engage in the kind of honest vulnerability that might have led to a healthy education about sex and intimacy for me as an adolescent. I don’t blame them, really. I have yet to meet anyone from their generation who could talk about sex as openly as is required to lead youths to a healthy adult outcome. My generation isn’t doing much better.