Want To Avoid A Dead Bedroom? Marry A Slut!

I know the title of this post will be controversial, but I believe this 100%.  I’m not using the term “slut” in a pejorative manner.  I’m a slut.  Slut is a meaningless word.  As some wise person said at some point, “A slut is someone who’s having more sex than you.”  By “slut” I mean, a woman who enjoys sex for the pleasure it provides her.  How that is expressed in her day-to-day life can vary.  When I lived in the Bay Area, I was hooking up on a semi-regular basis.  Not so much here in Germany, and I haven’t figured out if that’s because German men aren't attracted to my  full figure, or if German men are just awful at initiating any sort of sexual-romantic encounter (German women apparently have a lot of frustration around the lack of initiative German men show.  It’s an ongoing joke in German culture.)

But whether I’m hooking up or not, the fact is, I enjoy sex for pleasure’s sake.  I am absolutely capable of having sex with my husband that is deeply emotional, romantic, and expressive, and that’s amazing.  But I also like to get off.  I find other men attractive.  I have a wide array of sex toys that I like to use while watching porn.  And I’m not alone.  Many women of my generation and younger have shrugged off the sexual morals of the previous generation’s religion and culture and just enjoy sex for sex’s sake.

And what I’m saying to straight men is you should marry someone like me.

Well, OK, that sounds really egotistical, I’m not saying you should marry a weirdo ADHDer with a penchant for Bollywood musicals and a fascination with the history of the Holy Roman Empire.  I’m saying that if you want to prevent the dreaded “dead bedroom” a straight guy (or technically, a guy who is romantically-sexually attracted to women) should marry a girl who likes to get off.  A girl who knows her body and how it works,  is comfortable with her fantasies, and as a result maybe she’s had a few partners - or a few dozen - before you.

The common wisdom in the manosphere - that weird segment of the internet where inexperienced nerds collide with bitter misogynists - is that women who have extensive sexual histories, or even just like sex “too much” are to be avoided.  Athol Kay, of Married Man Sex Life, a really popular blog/money making site warns men to marry virgins or near virgins.  Most men who advocate “taking the red pill” - i.e. men who believe that society is “feminized” are aghast at the idea of getting into a relationship with a woman who has had more than a few sexual partners, even if their ideological cousins, the pick-up artists (PUAs) advocate fucking as many women as possible.

This is all just the old boring fundamentalism packaged in a shiny new box, except it often largely lacks even the religious component to argue that female chastity should be a given.  Instead these guys argue that “studies show” that women who actually enjoy sex and seek it out with multiple partners are destined to be unfaithful to you.  Much of this modern belief system is based on laughable assumptions from evolutionary biology, a junk pop-science genre in which sexist dudes project their own cultural norms onto cavemen to prove “things have always been like this.”

Except that history shows “things” have not always been like this.  There are many cultures who went through hundreds if not thousands of years believing that women, on the whole, had greater sexual libido than men.  You just have to read medieval Japanese, Indian, or French literature to see that this was a common cultural belief.  What most of these men take for granted is the idea that women don’t naturally desire sex, and that’s always been true, because of evolutionary biology, cavemen, etc.  But their sexual mores are actually far more modern than they realize, thanks to the Victorian culture which is pretty recent in the scope of human history. (And let it be said that even those prudish Victorians had quite the erotic imagination that included a whole lot of female promiscuity and crazy fetishes,  if you've read the erotica from that time.)

My ultimate point is this: most women do actually desire sex, but quite a few of us are fucked up about it thank to a culture that tells us constantly that being a woman that desires sex is an awful terrible slut.   Luckily, many of us are able to break free from that programming and enjoy sexual lives in which we are self-actualized, erotic human beings who know how to get ourselves off as well as our partners.  And this doesn't mean we’ll be unfaithful. Most women - hell, most PEOPLE - eventually want to find a long-lasting relationship with someone who can provide both emotional intimacy and sexual excitement.  Having a sexual history does indicate someone is incapable or unwilling to practice monogamy, any more than it does for a guy who has a few notches in his bedpost.

Marrying a woman who doesn't show interest in sex,  rarely or never masturbates, doesn't know how to experience sexual pleasure, and who has no interest in sexual adventure - for whatever reason - is going to likely result in a dead bedroom.  No amount of self-help guides or relationship books about being more dominant is going to change the fact that she’s fundamentally uninterested in sex.  She never was, and likely never will be.

Meanwhile, sure, maybe the statistics show that women who have an active sexual past are more likely to cheat.  I think the literature is dubious for a ton of reasons, but even pretending it’s valid, is being cheated on worse than 20 or 40 years with a woman who doesn't enjoy sex?  Well, that’s up for men to decide, I guess.  Lots of relationships find ways to cope with cheating, but the misery of someone stuck in a marriage where their partner refuses all sexual intimacy - that’s a pain that seems more damaging and awful, to me, than working through a break in trust.

As for me, I’m a “slut” in an open marriage, but despite having the freedom to seek out sexual partners outside my marriage, I haven’t in three years and I’m honestly not that interested in doing so.  My husband meets my sexual needs and then some.  I know what gets me off and I tell him.  I know what gets him off and I do it.  I value sexual pleasure and connection as an integral part of my marriage, and if my husband wanted to return to strict monogamy I’d be fine with that, too.  I like having the option to pursue other partners, but I was a slut who wanted monogamy before I was a slut who had an open relationship.  I’m interested in doing what works for us, as a couple, and right now that’s being open, but that’s not a result of my slutty nature.

I just don’t understand people who claim they need a happy and healthy sex life in a marriage, and then marry people who don’t feel the same way.  I think men who want to have a happy sex life need to get over the cultural programming about “sluts” and realize that what they want is a woman who embraces her sexuality fully.