Sex Talk: What she wants, what she needs

“A woman responds to a man in direct proportion to his ability to fulfill her emotional needs. By failing to create an atmosphere in which his wife can respond, a man can deprive himself of the sexual pleasure that is important to his happiness.”

Are we together? I picked that from the book, To Have and To Hold by Nancy Van Pelt. She is not wrong. I have heard women say all sorts of things that their husbands can never comprehend, because…well… they are men. But they wish they understood.

One wife, for example, loves dancing with her husband.

“As a matter of fact, it is one of the reasons I married him; he is such a good, sensual dancer. We had so much fun together when we were courting,” she once said. But as they started counting the children and diving headfirst into the vagaries of life, hubby just stopped dancing.

“He refuses to go out on dates whatsoever, but even when I play our music in the bedroom and ask him to dance with me, he becomes impatient and even upset. But that is the only road to meaningful lovemaking for me!” she added.

No need to ask, the sex life in that marriage is suffering, because the husband expects his wife to be biologically programmed like him: switch the libido on and off at will. No sir.

In yet another home, the husband is preoccupied with making money, oblivious to the fact that his wife’s most fluent love language is quality time. He comes home in the wee hours of the morning, or not at all, after the hustle, and expects to be met by an over-eager and libidinous wife, but is met with disinterest and indifference, instead.

Things you consider trivial could actually be what stand between you and a happy, satisfactory sex life. If your wife loves to cuddle and talk, will you die if you occasionally indulge her and see where those cuddles lead to?

If it is important to her that you constantly compliment her looks, food, action between the sheets, etc, what do you lose, if that is what will ensure you have a steady supply of good loving?

Remember, Van Pelt said, “A woman responds to a man in direct proportion to his ability to fulfill her emotional needs.” “[A husband] may wonder how [his wife] can say that she still loves him and yet deny him what he wants and needs most. But when things are out of balance in the sexual department, the husband might well look to himself, for there are not so many lukewarm or frigid wives as there are husbands who fail to meet their needs,” Van Pelt writes.

Don’t you ever wonder how one wife can leave this marriage with a reputation of being frigid, then remarry elsewhere and she is considered a firecracker in the bedroom? Same woman, same emotions; different men, different handling.

Women may want all these other things – the money, comfortable life, your surname, etc – but when it comes to sex, they need an emotionally in-touch man. Small things like you noticing (and complimenting) that she changed her hair may have her body release the right chemicals to ‘deal with you’ later.

If it has been a while since you last saw a semblance of pink elephants in your marriage, evaluate yourself, sir. Don’t be the guitarist that never tunes his instrument but still expects a perfect melody from it. How?

carol@observer.ug