What's Sex Got To Do With It? Part One.

A while back I posted my thoughts regarding Sesame Street's decision to start addressing Big Bad Divorce.  I received some very interesting feedback..some of it I expected, some of it was a surprise.  One of the comments really stuck in my craw, in a good way.  It made me think, and think hard.  In fact, not a day has passed since that I haven't thought about it.  Sometimes for just a second it will flash in my mind, other times it draws me in and I dig deeper into what this person said and how it applies to my situation and my life.  I'm not always happy about what I find.

The person who made the comment is Becky, and she writes a tasty blog called Eating the Scenery which is about her quest to eat "real" food, and how she cut out grains and sugar.  When I finish up the 8 pack of Progresso Light Chicken Noodle soup in my cupboard I'm seriously considering hopping back on the no-grain train myself.  But that's not what we're here to discuss today.  Becky has always provided supportive, thought-provoking comments but the ones she left on the Sesame Street post were particularly so.

Here is a chunk of her first comment on that post:

It's elsewhere, too. Think about the movies, even "good" ones, where it's STANDARD PRACTICE for a girlfriend and boyfriend to live together but not be married. Same message: Living together but not being married is NO BIG DEAL. But it is. There are real-world consequences to sex outside of marriage that the movies never show.

Kids still need the live-in examples of parents and adults around them showing them the healthiest way to live.

I'm no religious zealot, but it seems a number of basic ground rules that worked for our generation/our parents have been morphed by the media, to our peril, into quaintly passe. It's the thin end of the permissive and "progressive" wedge. Not that I'd want to peg out in the other direction, but there are a few rules in life that, as you expressed in your last post, set off a chain of pain when broken.

She wrote this (I think) in response to the gist of my post which was:  I don't like how the Sesame Street-ification of Divorce makes it all look so normal and easy.  I don't like how our society, in general, has made it seem like divorce is a super easy, non-harmful way to get yourself out of a bad or boring or lousy marriage.  I don't like how easily my ex-husband slipped out of our lives and into a new one, and how hardly anybody batted an eye when he did it.  I think it's indicative of the breakdown of morals and ethics and values in our world.

And Becky agreed.  Then she threw me this morsel to gnaw on:

Jenny, I met my current, wonderful second husband in May, 18 years ago. We didn't even kiss until September, and I didn't meet the kids until October. He and I had both been pretty badly scarred by our first marriages, so we just spent lots of time doing a variety of things together, seeing how we felt.

We both agreed that sex belonged in marriage, so it wasn't even an issue. Many, many times through the years we have said to each other, "I'm so glad we waited!" Because the waiting was what helped build the respect, friendship, trust and love that, taken together, formed the strong foundation for a healthy physical relationship in a context of true commitment.

Reading your blog, I have come to respect many things about you and your outlook on life. I would encourage you, for the sake of yourself, your children, and our country, to take a strong position, in principle and practice, for the values you are beginning to realize are being not just trivialized, but vilified.

In the media-driven culture, many perverse and dysfunctional actions are accepted as "okay," and except for a few extreme exceptions, the only things allowed to be labled perverse and dysfunctional are traditional values and the people who hold them. That is just one of the many conversations Americans need to have with one another. We need nuclear families, kids need two parents and role models. We all need stability and accountability. Unhappy kids do stupid things, and often parents slack off into their own brand of la-la land, dismissing the true consequences of their parenting or lack thereof. 

This is what has been rattling around in that drafty, airy place I like to call my brain: 
I would encourage you, for the sake of yourself, your children, and our country, to take a strong position, in principle and practice, for the values you are beginning to realize are being not just trivialized, but vilified.

I think sex, or the lack of it, is what killed my marriage.  I think the fact that sex between my ex and I had become a quick, furtive act done in the dark with the door locked and one ear open listening for kids and pajamas left halfway on so if one of the aforementioned kids somehow walked in we could quickly cover up, led to him wanting more.  I think the fact that he found a willing partner, a woman who conveniently overlooked her lover's marital status (and her own) led to him not even trying to have sex with me, his wife, anymore.  I think the fact that he no longer seemed interested in me "that way" led to me feeling defensive and insecure and worried and quite frankly, absolutely unappealing.  I think all of these things led to the death of my marriage. 

There are two things I remember him saying regarding the sex:  The first was in the office of the pastor who tried to offer us some counseling.  We met with him once, a few weeks after Big Daddy left us the first time. I remember he showed up at the pastor's office wearing a new shirt, and he seemed a little put out about having to be there.  He kept looking at his watch while I tried to tell the pastor, through my sobs, what happened.  At one point the pastor looked at Big Daddy, and said, "What would you like to say about this?".  He sat there, in his new purple shirt and ring-less fingers tapping the table and said, "She gets undressed in the dark. It's not exciting to me anymore." 

That summed it up for him. It wasn't exciting anymore.

The second thing my ex-husband said regarding sex came out during a heated phone call between him and me.  Someone from his office had insinuated that perhaps there was Another Woman involved, and I called him to find out. He denied it, up and down and all around.  And then he said:

"I think you're the one who's been screwing around."  Listen..even in my flustered, desperate, scared state of mind, I found what he said to be hilarious. I laughed. Out loud.  I replied to him, "Like I have time to have sex with someone else!".  I can still hear his reply:

"Well you sure weren't having it with me!"

And that, folks, is why I think sex killed my marriage.  But what sex did to me, after my marriage died?  That may be even worse.

I have way too much to say about this, so I'm making it a two-parter.  Stay tuned.  

I'm going to leave you with a quote from a good man, a man we celebrate today:


There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.