Title: Using Sex as a Weapon
According to John Hamby, a Loving Relationship is:
1. Being available to serve another persons needs, and
2. Being intimate with them, that is, being vulnerable to permit them to hurt you while having the trust that they will not hurt you.
One of the truly great things that my Ex-Wife, Susan Jorrie, insightfully created in our former relationship
and that she successfully used for years when I would become furious with the other or get very angry with one another
was to jokingly invoke our Private Household Rule that we would
“Make Love First and Argue Later.”
Often when we’d begin to argue, she would “humorously” invoke that Rule, take me by the wrist and lead me gently to bed and make love.
We discovered that when we were finished, that much of that blind, angry fury at one another for whatever “horrible offense” we had done to the other,
(& perhaps even made worse by a recent lack of intimacy or worsened by increased sexual tension)
was simply “gone,” about 70% of the time,
and that after having renewed our intimacy, that we could still sit down, argue and “talk out” our respective positions with great persuasiveness and vigor,
but after sex we still argued our positions in a calm, clear headed, loving and trusting manner,
with each one of us knowing that the other really loved and cared for the other and that we each wanted to reach a satisfactory solution for the 2 of us.
We always felt that our relationship (and thus our Love for each other,) was enhanced greatly by using this device.
It was, for us, the Beginning of “Learning to Fight Fair.”
She always felt that the act of her withholding sex,
no matter what it was called, whether it was disguised as “ I just can’t do that when I’m angry.” and whether or not it was openly admitted to be a Weapon, to be the Antithesis of this helpful device, she’d created in our relationship
and it seemed to her to be a destructive, childishly uncaring, and worst of all,
the Deliberate Intensifying of an already emotionally charged situation.
As she explained it to me, she felt that that withholding of sex could never be “other than” a weapon to be used to the Long Term Detriment of our relationship
and could be wielded by her, only for the purpose of giving her greater Manipulative Power over the situation … and she declined to “use” that weapon on me.
How Caring she was,
and how Brilliantly Insightful it was of her to recognize that!
Robert Jorrie