An article in one of the first issues of Oprah’s magazine ‘O’ had this teaser line on the cover: “Why 24 million women don’t want sex.”
Gentlemen, start your engines. No, not that engine. Your brain. This is a wake up call. I mean, think about it. Millions upon millions of women, most of whom presumably once loved having sex, no longer do. Sheeeeeit, that’s a lot of love and energy and passion gone dormant out there.
I can identify with some of the guys in that article. I’ve been married to my wife for 28 years. I felt her desire for me for maybe the first year and a half of our relationship, and then we pretty much fell into the pattern described in the ‘O’ article: a gradual decrease in her sexual desire and a gradual increase in my sexual frustration.
The article’s author, Audrey Edwards, writes: “While she craves romance and a feeling of closeness, he wants physical release… husbands come home, looking for a haven from the pressures and demands of the outside world, and often want sex as a way to relieve stress.”
Ms. Edwards doesn’t quite get the whole picture. Sure, there’s that physical element in sex, and a lot of us guys think and talk like that’s all there is to it. We all know we’re wired a bit differently from women. (“Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.” — Billy Crystal.) Women get horny, but they evidently can do without sex much more easily than we can. We’re not likely to see a magazine cover shouting “Why 24 million men don’t want sex.”
But think about it. When it comes to sex, the idea is not just quantity. It’s quality AND quantity — to have a lot of good sex. The right quantity of sex is, um, tough to put your finger on, but it seems to me that there’s at least one common denominator of quality. Continued —> (R-rated)
Note: I wrote the first version of this essay in August, 2000, and published it on Real Joe. I revised it this week.