Sexless - How to Flog a Dead Horse
(Transcript from a Britical Sirius radio commentary)
NYC
Said Zsa Zsa Gabor, “I know nothing about sex because I was always married.”
It is said that if you put a marble in a jar every time you have sex before you’re married, that the jar will soon be full. Take one out every time you have sex after you’re married, and the jar will never be empty…
Indeed, one day you’re both having rampant, glorious, monkey sex and scoffing Chinese food between bouts in bed, and the next it seems…what? Well, you’re too tired, the kids are whingeing, and your chubby hubby forgot to take out the bloody garbage again! Suddenly, the fashionable, convenient, and comforting wisdom that a relationship has to be worked at is glaringly self-evident. Working at pleasure is a dubious virtue in my book, but what to do when both of you have a headache?
Nothing, actually. It’s inevitable. Depressingly enough, it has been discovered by those in the scientific know (researchers at the University of Pisa, to be precise) that desire lasts as little as 12 months and at most, two years. As tolerance to the lust drug cocktail of adrenaline and dopamine increases, the sheer rush of the initial high becomes impossible to sustain. Junkies understand this equation only too well, of course. But wait, there is good news: it seems the lust molecules are replaced with oxytocin – the icky sounding cuddle and snuggle hormone. Oh well, that’s allright, then! Problem is, it makes me think of the gerbils I had when I was little – holed up together, but terminally bored in their cozy den of torn up newspaper. Even they were not in the mood after a while.
When people lived shorter lives, it was till death do us part – death, that ended most marriages. Nowadays, with increasing life expectancy in the developed world, boredom and staleness have valiantly taken on the job. And with divorce rates soaring, what an excellent job they are doing, too!
It is a fact that passion thrives on uncertainty, newness and danger. Safety and security? Pah! Like my grandmother’s large, baggy bloomers, they can only be described as passion-killers. If couples and other unsuspecting optimists dreaming of a rosy future swear the sex lives on, their hormones will betray them. That is, if they aren’t already betraying each other, slinking in and out of the local motel looking for “a bit of strange”. And who can blame them?
Oh yes, we will be exhorted by New Age types to work on “keeping it fresh” and “scheduling time for each other” – how very, very hot and spontaneous that sounds. You can re-visit the site of your honeymoon all you want and sit there thinking “Wow, who knew it was so gorgeous here, honey!” swiftly followed by the awful realisation that’s because last time you were here you barely left the hotel room. After that, you can pop into Agent Provocateur for some sexy undies –except that now they will feel itchy and uncomfortable and anyway, you feel rather silly. This is what is called flogging a dead horse.
The last word here goes to a friend of mine. I asked him about marriage and sex. He paused a moment, sighed, the expression on his face suggesting that someone was about to die. And then he said, “If women knew how married men talk to other men about marriage, it would break women’s hearts.”
Copyright Britical 2007. All rights reserved.