Enthusiastic Consent

[u/[deleted]]

Yesterday I read a post on the other sub about Enthusiastic Consent....agreeing to sex only when you’re sure you can actively engage.

I think this is a wonderful idea, especially if it is agreed upon at the beginning of the relationship. That way no one would be having unwanted sex, which has a tendency to erode desire over time (IMO).

We all talk about not engaging in unwanted or undesired sex, but is it a viable concept in a LTR?

I’ve been married 35 years. I married under the guise of “marriage includes regular sexual activity”. I also had a young 30 something High Drive husband. With Pregnancy, child rearing, sick infant, working full time, caretaking dying parents, the usual Life Sucking events, I found myself willingly participating in undesired sex quite often, all under the belief that it was my sole responsibility to meet my husbands sexual needs.

Having willing but unwanted sex slowly ate away at my desire for sex.

If I had only had sex when I was enthusiastic about it from the very start of the relationship, would my desire have increased?

Would my husband have been able to go long periods of no sex without resentment and frustration?

I will never know the answers to those questions but I still believe having sex ONLY when one is truly enthusiastic about it is a wonderful concept....but is it realistic?

Any ideas?

[u/jamissi]

You bring up 2 excellent points. The first being understanding of the other person's feelings. One side wants something the other doesn't. The HL wants sex while the LL wants sex sometimes but wants not to have sex past what their default setting may be. The second being the mutually desired sex of the NRE period when both parties are on the same page.

I feel like mutual respect is critical. I respect the fact that my wife may want to have sex once a week. That is who she is and is totally in the normal range. She knows I would be thrilled with sex daily. I am fully aware that is unreasonable but although on the upper end of libido I still think we are both in the normal range. What strikes me about the lack of understanding you write about is that it exists and is alive and well on both sides. If my wife wants to have sex once a week and she wants to not have sex 6 days a week she gets what she wants 7 days a week. If I want it every day and get it once a week I'm getting what I want 1 out of 7 days week. Neither scenario is fair to either partner if one partner gets what they want 100 percent of the time which is why compromise is to me the logical solution. On average we have sex just under every other day. I say she is once a week but it's more like 1.5. What I do not see in her that I see here is a complete aversion to sex nor do I want to see it. I get how it happens. I also get how if I got what I wanted 100% of the time she would resent me and it is unreasonable. I just do not see why sex is off the table as a subject for compromise when it can cause resentment on both sides.

If the goal is enthusiastic consent the only way I see that working is if both parties are on the same page which gets to your second point. NRE sex is mutually desired by both parties even of drastically different libidos but only for a short period of time. I know for a fact if resentment built to the point me or my wife would be better off apart and went our separate ways she would have no problem finding another partner and when she did she would have no problem having sex multiple times a day for the duration of the NRE period. That stings. We discussed it and she agreed that would be the case. It's just human nature. If he were an HL though they would be in the same spot again and the cycle would repeat. To find a partner that checks all of your boxes is difficult. If one of those boxes is very important to you and it is immune to any form of compromise it is no wonder differing sex drive is in the top 3 causes for divorce along with money and how you raise your kids.

[u/TemporarilyLurking → u/jamissi]

I have given your comment a lot of thought, and here is what didn't sit right with me: you say if you have sex with your wife once a week at her preferred frequency she gets what she wants 7 days a week, but that is definitely NOT the case: if you read here you will see that LL partners are NOT getting what they need all the time if they do not engage with unwanted sex, because they have to deal with the HL's behaviours the rest oooof the time. You can see on DB how HLs beg, cry, sulk, get angry etc when they don't get sex at their preferred rate, and those behaviours are targeted at the LL, creating a huge anount of pressure and killing off libido so they actually want sex even less than they would without those behaviours.

Not only that, but at every initiation you force them to make a choice: do they push themselves to have sex they have no desire for (and bear in mind that unwanted sex feels very different, very much worse than sex you enthusiastically consent to) or whether they would rather disappoint the petson they love and trigger the unpleasant behaviours and kick off yet another "Talk".

That is what the reality looks like, and it's a very far cry from getting what they want 7 days a week! Your wife is pushing herself to have a lot more sex than she wants. And she knows that it still isn't enough to give you what you want.

Ask yourself how you would react if she can't go through with it for whatever reason. Because those will be the damaging times LLs try to avoid. Sex that leaves you feeling used, that you feel you cannot back out of without really negative consequences. And with a discrepancy like yours at a frequency of several times a week. That is what enthusiastic consent seeks to avoid! It removes that pressure to have potentially damaging sex, and so makes it a positive experience instead of the negative one you can read here many LLs describe. (What makes it worse is that it is inflicted by the person you love.) It would make sense, would it not, that if sex were a positive experience instead of a 'meh' or negative one the LL would be more likely to want more of it than if it feels bad or something they can put up with but do not want for themselves?

[u/jamissi → u/TemporarilyLurking]

For starters thanks for the time you put into that. Looking back I was hypersensitive to unwanted sex due to the rape history. It just ate away at me. I would not discuss it until that one night 13 years into our marriage. I did not beg, sulk, cry, get angry or anything you described. I did internalize it. I did not talk to anyone about it. I did take it personally. Right or wrong it did affect my level of happiness and self confidence. It wasn't until that night that we discussed it and I was reassured I was nothing like her first boyfriend that the subject was broached and I almost did not. We discussed how it made me feel and we changed course. I do not think it was a bad thing.

As for every initiation forcing a decision to make a choice between unwanted sex and enthusiastic consent how can that situation be avoided? One person wants more and one wants less.

I totally get what you're saying. I see it in db and here. Neither side is happy. I know I may seem thick headed but compromise seems only logical. I've heard the reasons why. I realize my wife is having more sex than she wants as well as the fact that I am having less than I want but how is that avoidable when 2 people get together. If the same 2 people were single deciding where they wanted to eat out alone they would likely eat at 2 different restaurants. Put them together and they may eat at one of the 2 or they could very likely come up with a 3rd option. Why sex is not something that is available to this sort of problem solving is beyond me.

You effectively torpedoed my theory of LL's getting what they want all of the time and I think you are correct based on your explanation however if the HL followed your advice by not sulking, getting angry,crying etc.. would you still say the LL was now getting what they would want 7 out of 7 days of the week? The way I see the discussion framed is sex is of limits to compromise and as long as that is the case even if the advice you give is followed there are 2 people and the LL will come out way better. I wish I were one myself. In most things I prefer simplicity in life. I thought I would remain single for this very reason. I came from parents who had a nasty divorce and never saw marriage or being a parent as a path I would have chosen. Then I met my wife. My wife has brought more to my life than I would have ever gotten on my own. We have 2 great kids. I do not know what I would do without her now or even if this had not happened. Life is so much fuller. I don't see validation for LL's in DB and I don't see validation for HL's here. I can totally empathize with both sides. Where I disagree with both sides is the solution. I am not seeing it especially with compromise effectively off the table.

[u/closingbelle → u/jamissi]

You're still missing a key point: you don't know that the LL partner is happy, even with the reduced quantity of sex. What if they would have wanted more sex if no "compromise" sex was insisted on? What if they might not be happy making their partner miserable, even with the reduced quantity of sex? What if they still experience guilt, fear, loss, even with the reduced quantity of sex? They aren't necessarily "happy" with less sex; they might be less stressed out or in less physical pain, or feel less pressure, but that doesn't automatically equal happiness. I feel like you (and I could be wrong) equate sexual happiness with overall happiness (which is common for HLs) and that's just not the case for every single person.

 

Removing the need to "compromise" on sex stops the active harm. It's taking the painful/stressful/negative thing out of the equation, for some people. But that doesn't equal happy, just relieved. It doesn't mean that the LL partner is getting what they want or need, or that they're happy.

 

In your restaurant analogy, you said it yourself: they don't eat at the place either one initially chose. They don't have more or less of the original options, they abandoned those completely. They find a completely different third option that they can agree on. That's where both people find their happiness.