Sex Without Love? – Musings On Unrequited Passions
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There are some seriously weird and so-called conventional notions around sex. As women, we are always told to suppress our desires, keep ourselves mellow and submissive, and show least interest in sex – a realm solely reserved for men. Sex is also made a big deal out of. For me, it is much more than some carnal or biological drive. Sex is a passionate reunion of two consenting adults who share a common place in terms of feelings, emotions and mutual care. It’s an expression of love, and the most subtle one at that. Yes, we do have those once-in-a-while wild encounters, fleeting emotional undercurrents and hormonal impulses, but deep down intimacy is something which comes with time and requires two individuals to be on the same page. When I think of my most memorable experience, I recollect lots of roses (it was Valentine’s Day), warm candle light ambiance, gentle tunes of romantic music in the background, along with loads of tender touching and ecstatic feeling. There’s nothing in the world that could replace that heavenly experience. It was definitely one of those special days; however, as long as I remember, our love-making was mostly driven by romance and warmth. Me being the typical romantic type. For me, foreplay has always been important to build a tempo. A prelude to the most personal way of expressing your love for another human being. As far as the sex is concerned, it could be both intimate and rough, or gentle like the touch of a flower. It is totally up to us what we crave when it comes to the level of intimacy and style of love making. However, sometimes, when there’s no love or feelings attached to the act of making love, it becomes more like a routine sex – where there are orgasms sometimes, if your are lucky, but never enough touching, feeling or exploring. And for me, that matters the most. I would rather encounter a slow paced, passion-drenched, desire-lit intimacy, than a few minutes of mechanised thumping and grinding to reach the climax.
Sadly, not many women experience that ecstatic feeling with their partners or husbands. However, many of my friends have shared with me how sex without such intricate. romance and bonding becomes a tiring and mundane activity.
Priyanka (name changed), my college roommate, would get into details to explain her agony to me. ‘He’s only good at undressing me,’ she would lament. When I would ask her if he ever managed to satisfy her, she would defensively say, ‘It’s okay. We connect at a different level altogether’ – which meant that she never was happy with him sexually, and bargained it for some other quality of his. She eventually got married to the guy. But today, she keeps sharing with me how she wished she had been more expressive about her fantasies and urges, and should have let the wings of her sexuality take a flight when they were exploring each other in the early days. Having been married for three years now, today I can look at Priyanka and say how unhappy she is, secretly hoping for a man to come by and give her the pleasures she could never experience with her husband.
Such stories are not rare, and happen at a wider scale. It’s only that women have found a way to hide their desires because they are believed to be less sexual, and are socialized in a way to ‘satisfy the man’ instead of looking for her own satisfaction.
Some women also have to put up with flat, tedious, passion less sex with their husbands on a regular basis. Since it is expected that it’s a man’s job to be the bread-earner of the house who works day and night to keep his family happy, many of my housewife friends go through what I call duty-like sex. In their words, there is nothing to fancy, lack of yearning or craving in every move the husbands make towards them. No wonder, men are supposed to be tired after a long day at work, and turn to their wives as objects of ‘stress relief.’
Payali (name changed), a close friend of mine had to quit her job right after the delivery of her first child in order to keep up with the family needs. She would tell me, ‘He would simply behave as if I was only a machine to help him get off. It was as if it doesn’t matter ‘what I want’ or which time of the day or which day of the week I wanted to have sex. It is as if, since I stay at home, it is my obligation to satisfy him at any time he feels like. How could I enjoy the experience when it’s done under compulsion?’
Shivani, another sad wife, and a dear friend, had her own story to share with me.
‘Tarun and I have been married for more than five years now, but frankly, it is an alliance that I would rather forget. Harsh as it may sound, that is the situation I am in. What is marriage when there is no intimacy, the lingering touch, the long-lasting kisses, the flowers, the hands exploring one-another for never-ending minutes.
Making love for Tarun is probably a package that comes with marriage. My moods don’t matter to him, his does. He just comes into the room, asks me to take my clothes off, jumps on to me, pumps into me a number of times and when done, just rolls me over and leaves me humiliated. It makes me feel like a whore… as if marriage has given Tarun the right to just use me like a piece of napkin, a ‘use and throw’ commodity.
I always want to be loved in a manner that will send a thousand tinges of excitement all over my body. To me the foreplay and afterplay matters the most. I would definitely like my man to explore those parts of my body that will make me cringe for more. I would like to do the same also, but sadly that never happens. The passion, the excitement… all seem to be things of a distant past, something that I felt with my school mate Sekhar.
Sekhar and I have always liked each other from our early days. As we grew old, it turned out that I couldn’t do without him. We learnt to play with each other’s bodies and our love-making sessions made me crave for more.
I remember the first time we were alone in my house as my parents had gone out. He cuddled me from behind, kissed me on the back of my neck and slowly his hands slid into my top. He had this perfect idea how to play around with my torso. The feeling was mind-blowing. I craved for more and that is what seemed so heavenly.
He loved to cuddle me whenever he could and I also enjoyed snuggling up to him. That to me was real love making. Sadly, Tarun can’t ever get me into that mood. I miss Sekhar so much these days, but we went our separate ways as the situation forced us to do so.
Sekhar loved to give head and he enjoyed when I gave special attention to each part of his body, and his member especially. Tarun feels that going down on someone is dirty business and I have failed to make him understand that when I have his member in my mouth, I enjoy it. Today I am more of a utility object to my husband, not the passionate lover I wanted to be. I just hope he realises that my body and mind crave for more. I just don’t want sex to be deplorable, I want it to be the most romantic, sensuous and passionate act that I can ever experience.
I don’t know when I will have that feeling again… I just hope it happens soon or else only god knows what will happen.’
I could only sigh at these tales of lost love, unrequited passions, and mechanised sex. I feel sorry for women who rather than voicing their inner desires, fall prey to the tentacles of horrid societal arrangements and unfeeling husbands. If only we give a place to our sexual cravings…just like any free human being looking for love, passion, sex, will we be able to embrace a woman’s sexuality as comfortably as that of a man’s.
