Health News and Information

I don’t fantasize. I’m sure I don’t. Everyone talks about that, but I can’t do it and I never have. I just think about holding, being close, warm, intensely in love with my husband, just alone together, becoming more together, more in love, more turned on with each other. I think about that a lot, but I don’t fantasize.

WIFE

The early sexual perspectives saw fantasy related specifically to physical and genital imagery. Questions in the research protocols were about “physical turn-ons,” typically leading questions from the point of view of the male researcher. It is a fact that everyone fantasizes. Women fantasize, men fantasize, children fantasize. Sexual fantasy is the mental rehearsal of the love map, including some new paths that I described earlier, and relates much more to the individual experience of that love map than it does to gender. Here are two fantasies from the couples. See if you can tell which is a husband and which is a wife.

“I can see it in my mind even while we are doing it. My partner goes down on me while somebody is kissing me and somebody else is rubbing me all over. Then all three do everything to me. Then I do it to each one of them alone.”

“I see an image of the two of us embraced, close, kissing deeply. A candle is nearby, and our shadow is on the wall. The kiss becomes more and more intimate, and I come just by kissing.”

The first fantasy is that of a wife, the second was reported by a husband. You have already learned about the sexual similarities between men and women, so you probably expected the unexpected in this example, but most spouses reported the first as male, the second as female and were surprised to learn that personal and relationship development had more to do with sexual imagery than gender.

I discovered that it was more meaningful to ask about “sexual images” than fantasy. Some spouses were raised to censor the fantasy process but would readily discuss a set of mental images. It was as if the image was something to be “viewed” from a safe distance, while fantasy was something one participated in and therefore wrong. I explored not only individual imagery but “marital imagery,” asking couples to create and continually modify their collective sexual images. Here is one example.

“My wife is naked with me on a tropical island,” reported the husband. The wife is then asked to provide the next image. “We walk hand and hand in the warm sun and gentle breeze,” she reported. “We stop to shower in a warm, refreshing waterfall, and the water hitting us seems to arouse us,” reported the husband. “I notice his erection and touch it, begin to kiss it,” shares the wife. “I caress her breasts and run my hands through her hair,” shares the husband. The imagery assignment continued until the husband stated, “That’s about all we want to say in this session.” The wife added, “Good-bye, and we will leave you to finish this up with your own images.” Perhaps you and your spouse can take their imagery from here and develop your own scenes. Remember, images have no gender. You together are the producers, directors, and cast of this I-rated (intimacy-rated) movie.

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I have tried for years to make our marriage one long affair. Well, you know what? She had ended up having an affair all right, but not with me.

HUSBAND

Super Marital Sex Rule: Never try to make your marriage an affair. Affairs are short, intense, immature imitations of love that is only possible in lasting, mature relationships. Intensity, newness, and variety are culturally learned values that cannot compete with the predictability, sameness, and comfort of super marital sex. We must unlearn the negative connotations of these last three terms.

Type I extramarital sex is sex outside of marriage. Type II extramarital sex is the attempt to make an affair out of your marriage, to use affairs as the model of true joy so that marriage must live up to the “sexpectations” of affairs. It is the attempt to put sex “outside” of day-to-day marital living, to buy the latest sex toys, sneak away on vacations, schedule candlelight dinners, and dress in the most erotic clothing. Couples trying for this extramarital sex Type II end up with “separate marital sex,” a lack of closeness and trust in an effort to create a relationship within a relationship. You cannot have an affair with someone you love, but you can have super marital sex that takes place within the entire life system, not separate from it.

I offer a special invitation to single persons to join this “quest for intimacy.” Legal, cultural, sociological, familial, financial commitments that accompany marriage, in our society provide a framework for formalizing the unity necessary for the super marital sex you will be reading about. There are many aspects of super marital sex, however, that apply to those persons who are not, cannot, or choose not to marry. This model offers an alternative for single, widowed and divorced persons, for anyone who desires a standard of sexual intimacy based on commitment, trust, and the potential for personal and relationship growth beyond physical closeness. I suggest that we have more to learn from prolonged intimacy evolving from within a mutually fulfilling love system than from the use of sex as a means for finding someone to love. Marrying is a healthier model for loving and sex than “mating,” because it can provide for an adaptive all-inclusive style for true “living together.”

I am suggesting in super marital sex a new model for intimacy, a new course objective for our culture’s sex education, a new priority, a choosing of intimacy. The AIDS crisis should not frighten us into fidelity. We should celebrate the potential of fidelity, its capacity for a super sex where the super means whole, lasting, comforting, fulfilling.

The husband and wife who were given a second chance had never given their marriage a chance to grow into something very special. They had allowed their marriage to become de-eroticized. Has this happened to your marriage? Check the ways this happened to the thousand couples.

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