Sex...and sharing

I’ll be honest…this is about me, and a realization I had to reach before I was comfortable enjoying sex.

The customary point of view of the male and female roles in sex is that the male is always trying to get something from the female, and the female says no a lot to protect her dignity and reputation and whatever. We have an entire culture built on the fact that men want sex and women don’t. There are thousands of bad jokes and hundreds of movie and television scenes that trade on these stereotypes, and growing up this was naturally my starting point for trying to understand the whole sexual interaction mystery. I remember a female comic saying that afterwards men want to sneak away like they just stole something, and she seemed to be correct from what I could gather. That was the only attitude on exhibit, the “I got some” victory cry. I wanted to have sex, and some girls were interested, but I let some opportunities get away because I didn’t understand how it all worked. I was scared of the whole thing because, seriously, I didn’t know how to act the next day. I didn’t know what it meant to a relationship, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I would feel like I took something, and I didn’t know what to say or do about that. How do you get from “men always want it,” which is greedy and bad, and “women don’t want it” and have to protect themselves, to all the scenes in the movies where the man and woman are in bed together cuddling and smiling together and looking so wonderful? There’s a huge blank between those two snapshots, and what could possibly be in that space between that ties them together? What’s wrong with this picture?

Took me a couple years, but here’s the Big Truth of the situation, and this may help either guys or girls to better understand each other.

It’s difficult for men to discover this (well, it was for me), given our culture and the attitudes we see and hear daily, but…the healthy approach to sex is as “something two people share, as equals.” That’s it. There’s no “taking” or “getting from,” there’s just giving on both sides, and sharing. Turns out that naturally (obviously) women like sex just as much as men, so we are equal partners in it. We should enjoy it equally. If your partner doesn’t have that attitude, maybe it’s a good idea to bring it up as a positive change for the relationship, if it sounds right for you. Works for me.