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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Not one of my friends ever mentioned this to me BEFORE I had my first child. After my husband and I first attempted sex after the birth of my first child, I was shocked. Like the writer, I'd read in my books that 6-weeks was the time. I rushed back to my nurse-practioner thinking that I was permanently damaged. Luckily, she was a mother herself and gave me some good advice. My daughter was almost 5 months old before things were back to "normal." I wish that more people would talk about this because I felt so wrong, so dysfunctional. Thank you Mary Elizabeth Williams
the best way to motivate your wife to stay in shape is for you to quietly and without fanfare, get into shape yourself.
She'll see that... wonder what you're up to... and then figure out that she's got to raise her game as well.
And if anyone is 100 pounds overweight, then the loved one in their life has to have a heart-to-heart about the health risks of obesity. At that point the person involved is probably in such a psychological funk over the weight that being approached about the partner's sexual needs can be perceived as judgmental, self-serving and unloving.
But to tell the wife, I'm working out for health because I want to live a long and active life, and I'd like for you to do so as well, would be perceived as being more caring.
The side benefit would be increased libido. A lot of lack of sexual interest is mainly fatigue from the hard work of raising babies. Just ask a high-pressure career couple each working 50-60 hours a week, how much energy they have for sex, and I'd venture their activity has fallen way down.
The other thing that the complaining husbands out there need to realize, is that all that primping and preening women do while single to attract men take a lot of time and money.
So when she comes home from the stores laden down with new clothes, don't gawk when you see the bill. You want her hair to still look long and flowing, how about paying for regular salon treatments? Don't forget to add waxing, manicures and gym memberships.
The reason she chopped off her hair after pregnancy is probably because 1) she's trying to save money on the salon visits; and 2) there is no time in her daily schedule to give long hair the time it takes. Likewise spending hours in the department stores finding flattering clothes.
Give her a reason to get out of those sweats. Spring for a romantic dinner date at an expensive restaurant, the way you used to.
It's no coincidence that men bringing in the big bucks tend to have the wives who look like they can afford to pamper themselves. They can.
Salon has lost its relevance to my life lately, and to many of my fellow readers. I canceled my premium subscription after reading this article.
I think it's important that those of you defending it understand that for many of us, the issue is not that this article was written and posted, but that it was given such prime real estate when so many more pressing matters are exploding around us (gay marriage, increasing rich/poor gap, presidential lies).
The exploration of post-baby sex for a privileged hetero woman living smack-dab in the mainstream of the world is what I can read in Cosmo for free as my nails are drying at the local nail place. I turn to Salon for something entirely different, and I'm not getting it anymore. I understand the need for lighter reading, but I agree with those who encourage Salon to strategically place articles to indicate their relative importance.
I'm tired of being disappointed by this publication, so I'm going to stop paying for it. If it changes, I'll be back.
Great, honest prose, but Elizabeth Williams along with other new nursing mothers would do themselves a favor to learn about the effect of the prolactin hormone (what makes you nurse), on sexual function. Not surprisingly, nature wants us to take a break from fornication during the early baby period, and thus sees to it that this happens. Google "prolactin + sexual function" or look on the website of the Pituitary Network Association (www.pituitary.com), a really great non-profit that is trying to disseminate these essential, but not well publicized facts about female sexuality. When the doctor pronounced Elizabeth as ready for sex (but surely knew, as most doctors know or should know, the impact of her hormones in the bedroom), he did her a great disservice. But hey--who cares about female sexuality? That's nothing new.
The headline and short teaser to any Salon article give you a pretty good inkling as to the subject matter. So why the whining about spending your valuable moments reading an article that doesn't apply to you? I've never read King Kaufman's Sports Daily -- because I readily determined that I just don't care. If you've got a legitimate complaint about the issues being discussed or the opinions being voiced, by all means, say it. If your only reaction is "Geez, I wasted seconds of my valuable time reading an article that subjects me to the experience of someone who's nothing like me, so Salon just shouldn't publish this..." maybe you need to be more a bit more selective.
One man insists that mothers should dress as hookers, even if many of us never did before we had children (I, like many of my friends, have never owned a pair of high-heeled shoes in my life, though I do own quite a collection of ski boots, running shoes and climbing and hiking boots).
Another says new mothers should take drugs to rid our bodies of prolactin, a hormone necessary to produce breast milk.
These two remind me of those desperate grizzly boars that sometimes kill cubs in an attempt to mate with the cubs' mothers.
God help the children if these two every become fathers.
"Again, if a man were to lose almost all interest in sex and refuse to engage in sexual activity with his wife for years -- would women be so quick to say there is no problem? Would they argue that it's just evolution? Would they try to shame the wives if they asked for a divorce because they hadn't had sex in years?"
Actually, this does happen, a lot, especially after kids are born. Pregnancy turns men off. Childbirth turns men off. Motherhood turns men off, especially since it usually does come with extra weight that can take several years to shed and physical changes that cannot be reversed without surgery (e.g. sagging breasts). Sometimes sex loses it's savor once the ring's on her finger and she's a sure thing; he wanted the chase, not the quarry.
And yes, husbands get fat and out of shape. They're notorious for it; married men are twice as likely as single men to be obese. They also dress like slobs, ditching the suits once they get married because they no longer have to try as hard. I got to see this in full, living color today, a father of 2-year-old twins whose jeans hung too low off of too little rear and whose drab T-shirt was stretched over a belly that made him look like he was expecting himself. Plus a bad haircut, and I mean really bad. Does his wife have grounds for divorce, maybe trade him in for a younger, sleeker model? That and both sexes age. If men don't get fat and wrinkly, they get scrawny and wrinkly. Neither is particularly attractive.
The always-on male sex drive? Sometimes men find being outearned or being married to someone with a higher-status job emasculating. Male libido can tank over any kind of stress, including marital problems. Sometimes men get stressed out over something completely unrelated to their wives, and it still has an unsettling effect on their libido. They develop diabetes or heart conditions that render them impotent, or have to take medication that does the same. Age can significantly reduce their interest, and can start having that effect as early as 35 - 40. In short, a lot of things can happen to men that make them less attractive, and that either decrease the frequency of sex or remove it from the equation entirely, and wives are expected to adapt. We know that it comes with the territory.
The reality is that a baby is a dramatic and even traumatic life change, especially for a woman who has to cope with a whole new body, either quit or downscale her career, dump most of her pre-baby entertainments, and probably do most of the grunt work of raising the child. There is no way to change that. Changing expectations to fit reality is a lot more constructive than trying to change reality to fit expectations. Given that the vast majority of women experience physical and emotional changes following childbirth, and that there doesn't seem to be any way of eliminating them that costs less than several hundred thousand dollars a year, it stands to reason that a sensible man would have this in mind when planning marriage and a family. If he doesn't think he can handle it, then he needs to consider other options.
Anyway, the more dramatic effects of childbirth usually ease off. Most women eventually lose some of the weight, the kids get older and more independent, and both men and women adapt to their new roles. The post-partum crisis mode is temporary. Like any other storm, it will eventually pass and both parents will be stronger for having weathered it, if they have the chops to see it through. Courage, as C.S. Lewis put it, is "the form of every virtue at the testing point." Fidelity is a virtue, and a virtue that cannot hold up to pressure is nothing but a pretty word.
My grandparents did not stay married for 50+ years because my grandmother looked like a supermodel after five babies. They stayed married because they had certain values in common that trumped her attractiveness. And no, it wasn't his money because he never had much. He was a schoolteacher and a farmer. Something else brought them and kept them together, but in light of this particular conversation, it's hard to imagine what it could be. In light of that marriage, which ended with his death, I find it profoundly disturbing that a wife's primary value could be her sexual attractiveness. It's just as bad as a husband's primary value being his money. Have we, as a culture, really sunk so low that the only imaginable happy marriage is that of eternal youth to endless wealth?
For the record, I'm mother myself with a BMI within healthy range, so I'm not whining about how I can't help being fat. I'm not fat. I'm just astonished that anyone would think that a woman should pop out a baby and be back in the bars in her miniskirts in a few weeks. I thought this article was a bit of reduntant fluff until I started reading the responses to it. Perhaps the fact that childbirth can have a profound effect on a woman's experience of sex really is major news.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
