Breadcrumbs and Grief Sex

Despite what some well-meaning-but-myopic feminist sex researchers might think, there are indeed more types of sex in marriage than just “bad” and “feminist-empowering”.   While the endless gentle foreplay leading to non-penetrative orgasms and non-patriarchal progressive power structures sound like a mystical forest of erotic delight, the cold hard fact is that married people – that is, people who are committed to their marriages, and aren’t just playing house until something better comes along – have all sorts of sex that have nothing to do with ensuring the proper consent paperwork is filled out before initiating foreplay.  

 Especially once you have children, the type and manner of sex a married couple has gets exotic and frustrating at the same time, as one navigates around the rocky shoals of nap time, exhaustion, and spousal resentment.  But even within childless couples there is more than one kind of sex.  That has been one of my consistent problems with the sex researchers, feminist and non-feminist alike, when it comes to their discussions of sex and “the right way to do it”.  Focusing on sex-for-pleasure or sex-for-intimacy, both with a strong emotional component, covers but a tithe of the varieties of married sex.  Most of the time when husband and wife manage to knock boots, personal fulfillment and mutual orgasm aren’t even vaguely fuzzy goals.  

Sex researchers who ignore the social component of modern sexuality, or downplay its importance (or even dismiss non-feminist-empowering sex as a “necessary evil”) miss the sophisticated and complex role that sex plays for a couple in a long-term relationship.  When you take the “sex act”, from flirtation and initiation to consummation and afterplay, outside of the context of the relationship and attempt to impose standards by which to judge the quality of the experience, most marital sex comes up depressingly short on paper.  

But if you consider sex within the context of the relationship, it can bee seen as a powerful normalizing factor in a functioning relationship, and that is due primarily to its versatility and variability as a means of providing balance to a marriage.

One of the more important, but rarely mentioned, elements of married sex is Grief Sex.

This isn’t necessarily tied to a death, although that’s when it’s seen most often.  Next to weddings, funerals seem to have an aphrodisiac effect on people, prompting all sorts of outrageous behavior as folks try to work through their grief with the most basic and life-affirming of all human acts.  People hook up after funerals – it’s a pretty common occurrence.  I've been known to do it myself.

But people grieve for other things than death.  All of us, particularly if we have children, are faced with a myriad of potential calamities that can kick the legs out of our “normal” lives.  When you’re an adult and your parents tell you they’re getting divorced, for instance, or even a couple that you are close to gets un-hitched, you and your spouse may grieve their relationship and the role that it had on your own . . . even if the two parties involved both remain in your life.  

When a cherished pet dies, or a vocational path dries up, when the dream house you got when you got married gets foreclosed on, when something awful and life-changing happens to someone you love, all of these can lead to a feeling of grief that can sap the vital spark from your sex life.  A miscarriage or other tragedy can certainly cast a long shadow into your bedroom.  Triggered memories of abuse can kill sex dead in a marriage.  So can illness, mental or physical.  Morbid obesity.  Depression.  Affairs, of course, are their own special kind of grief, and so I won’t speak to that here. 

But it’s almost inevitable that during the course of your marriage something will happen in your life that hangs like a cloud over your marital bed.  At some point, your “normal” will be taken from you, leaving you speechless, shocked, embittered, and grief-stricken.  Since men and women respond to grief and profound emotional insecurity in different ways, in general, this can lead to some treacherous intimate waters.

And when that happens, the shiny-happy-people-sex of the sex researcher’s ideal is so utterly off the table in a marriage as to be laughable.  How do you stay “fully present, attuned, and connected with your partner RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE” when the very subject of sex sends one or both of you into an emotional spiral?    When grief fills the air like a fog you move through in desperate search for your lost “normal”, trying to manage “traveling through someone else’s mind and body, while we allow them to travel through ours” when your emotions are volatile, frustrated, angry and bitter is just not an option.

So the right thing to do in a time of grief is to take sex off the table, right?  Something that everyone just knows is supposed to be “joyful” is the last thing you want to consider when your heart is breaking.  Sex is not a drive, it’s not a need, it’s merely a reward incentive system.  If there is an overabundance of grief haunting the couple, then just . . . postpone sex for better times.  Until you are both feeling "into it" enough to resume your normal sexual relationship.  It’s the prudent thing to do, right?

Wrong.

From what they tell us, “we can only have it when all the layers of us and all the ways of knowing we have are aligned, attuned, and paying attention right now to how we feel, how our partners feel, who we are together.”  And the fact is, when we are in the midst of grief our hearts and emotions can be closed, even walled up, as a means of personal survival . . . yet the need for sex and intimacy  for both people is nearly as overwhelming.

Part of the issue is how men and women view sex and grief differently, of course.  Women in the midst of grief often seek the intimacy that they find in sex in an effort to collect and build emotional sympathy for personal support.  But when it comes to the necessary precursor of that intimacy with their husbands – sex – sometimes these women aren’t just 'not interested', they can even get offended that their husband would have “that” on his mind when she is quite-clearly grieving.  

Meanwhile, the husband is merely seeking his own level of intimacy and comfort.  Male response to grief and other such strong emotions is to harden their hearts in preparation for doing something unpleasant - even when their need for emotional connection and emotional expression is just as great as that of his wife.  One would think that when both parties are seeking essentially the same thing -- comfort and intimacy -- then it would be easy to come to some resolution for this issue.  The problem is that the husband usually has a far more difficult time accessing even himself emotionally without sex to establish intimacy first.  

Or, of course, in your marriage it could quite easily work the other way around.  Grief is weird that way.

That doesn’t mean you should force yourself to have sex, exactly.  But a prolonged period of grief and sexual inactivity can be hard for a couple to recover from if they have ceased all relations . . . or even any reference to sex.  Some couples, in grief, can go months without even mentioning sex or the possibility, even if they are both desperate for it.  They have been trained to view sex as only a celebration of their love and mutual pleasure.  They have been lectured about respect and consent and emotional connection their entire lives, so when presented with a situation in which having sex would be a practical benefit to all involved, they shun it, to their mutual detriment because of their perspective on sex is so myopic.  

In a recent round of grief at Stately Ironwood Manor (no, no one died) the situation was such that even ever-horny Ian was uninterested.  Yeah.  It was that bad.  A high-stress situation, and one that made “joyfully moving toward” Mrs. Ironwood . . . difficult, for emotional reasons.  It wasn’t that we didn’t both recognize the need – we were past-due, time-wise, and overdue from the High Quality Nookie perspective.  My stress level was reaching historic proportions, to the point where medical intervention was necessary.  Mrs. Ironwood was enduring as much grief, fatigue, and emotional investment as I’ve seen without a birth or a funeral being involved.  While other events overwhelmed us, both of us understood the pragmatic advantages to tearing one off . . . as well as the desperately-needed emotional intimacy we both craved.

But there just wasn’t time nor inclination.  We had more important shit to do, and for us that’s saying a lot.  Mrs. Ironwood and I consider sex the fulcrum of the see-saw of our marriage, a way to keep things in balance and fully functioning.  For us, sex is the Great Equalizer, allowing emotional and psychological stability to prevail over our personal desires to behave unreasonably.  It's an extension of our normal on-going marital conversation and provides important subtext for it, in context.

The fulcrum sex provides in our relationship has certainly allowed us to leverage each other into a fair amount of joy – but that’s easy.  Any  couple of idiots can associate sex with joyousness, unity, and happiness.  That's a serotonin binge that's implicit in every infatuated coupling.  The see-saw ride is smooth and easy and fun.  If one of us is down, sex is an important way for the other person to bring them up.

But there comes a time when Something Happens and we’re both left with our legs dangling in the air at the same time.

Grief sex isn’t fun.  It isn’t joyous.  Sometimes it’s good sex, technically speaking, and other times it’s bloody awful.  Sometimes it’s a way for you to share the burden of responsibilities by clinging to the strength of your union . . . but sometimes it’s a needfully selfish act, or laden with emotions far from joy and happiness.  Grief sex can be an opportunity to wallow in the emotional wellspring of your spouse’s feelings, gaining new perspective and emotional intimacy through the physical act.  Or it can be a desperate attempt to re-establish a lost normalcy after crisis or catastrophe, when even the hope of joy seems hollow.  Either way, the solace of a sexual embrace offers comfort and refuge even if the connection with your partner is lacking because of the nature of the situation.

It’s not something you can jump right into – usually you have to drop what Mrs. Ironwood sometimes calls “breadcrumbs”: conversational and physical suggestions of intimacy and sex without immediate fulfillment.  While that sounds needlessly frustrating to a spouse with a high drive or high desire for sex, the act of dropping breadcrumbs for each other does some very important things to alleviate that sense of frustration.

Firstly, it communicates that yes, sex is on your mind in some form or fashion, even if the nature of the situation or crisis makes the notion socially appalling.  It's a recognition of the loss of normalcy, and the importance of losing that fulcrum on the health and welfare of the union.  Mrs. I’s first breadcrumb, three days after feces hit fan, was along the lines of:

“If I hadn't just stayed awake for almost three days straight, I’d almost consider talking you into sex.”  

It wasn’t a rejection – she brought it up before I even thought about initiating – but it was a polite way of saying “I’m intellectually and maybe even physically interested, but I’m also so emotionally and physically exhausted that sleep wins out over your mightiest efforts – but it’s on my radar.”  That meant a huge amount to me, because yes, despite the stress and adrenaline and rage and such, a good scrumping would have revitalized me in the way only a good scrumping can.  

But I also knew that approaching the subject, under the circumstances, would be “delicate” at best.

So Mrs. I took the pressure off by basically saying subtextually “Yeah, I’m horny too, but not now . . . but real soon now.”  That’s different from the more-typical female response, “how can you think about sex at a time like this?!”   Needless to say, it's far more preferred to the masculine ear, too.  Rejection is one thing.  Rejection and a follow-up questioning your emotional depth is just insulting.

She followed up the next day with some sexually-suggestive kissing in a rare private moment that was filled with a confusing mix of desperate need and deep appreciation . . . but ended the session with “that’s all we’re going to be able to manage for a few days . . . God, I need some intimacy about now!”

I nodded.  I needed it too.  Good and hard.

I dropped a breadcrumb of my own that night, when I was tucking her in – a bit of routine normalcy that made her squeal with delight.  “I missed you doing that for me when I was on the road,” she said with a wistful smile.



“Gosh, y’know, there were a few things you do that I missed while you were on the road, too!” I answered.  She smiled and nodded.  I didn't push it.  It wasn't time yet.  I was just dropping a breadcrumb.  We went to sleep.  Message received.

The next breadcrumb was when things were – finally – settling down from acute emergent crisis to merely profoundly serious crisis requiring most of our energy and attention.  After a particularly emotionally draining day in which several important decisions had to be made, we were both feeling  shell-shocked and emotionally exhausted.  In crisis mode, we usually relocated our base of operations to our covered and screened back porch, where I’m free to chain-smoke without giving the kids cancer and we’re both free to speak candidly about the freaky shit going on without them overhearing.

I’d snagged a double Irish on the rocks, because the Irish invented whisky to fortify you for just this kind of grief-tinged situation (ever been to an authentic Irish wake, with the dead guy on the dinner table and gallons – GALLONS – of liquor?  No one grieves like the Irish).  Mrs. I had elected to pop her prescription anti-anxiety meds instead.  It was the first real “calm” moment we’d had in days, and the quiet exhaustion led to a peaceful silence that was tantalizingly close to our lost sense of normalcy.  It was the first time either one of us had seriously considered sex.  The kids were in bed.  It was dark.  We were awake.  Motive, method, opportunity.

I looked over at her, the barest hint of a suggestion in my eyes.  Thanks to marital telepathy and her own unique insight into the masculine soul, she didn’t even blink.  

“I get eight hours of sleep, minimum.  Then a shower.  Then you are going to take me to Pound Town like you just got back from sea.”

“It would be rude to argue with such compelling reasoning,” I agreed.  “I’m almost at the point where some titties in my face would prove a welcome distraction.”

“I can make that happen . . . tomorrow.”

“It’s a date,” I agreed.  And it was.  The last breadcrumb was in place.

It wasn’t great sex.  It wasn’t even good sex, from a technical standpoint.  It was almost like (but not nearly as dreadful as) the first sex postpartum, when you know you should want to but you’re so wrapped-up in being gentle and tender or desperate and needy that “good” sex can be defined as any kind of sex at all. 

It wasn’t great sex.  But it was seething, passionate, emotionally explosive and physically challenging.  It was an opportunity for her to feel owned and protected, and an opportunity for me to feel like I was in control – of something – for the first time in days.   Grief sex is like an emotional dam bursting. The frustration and the anger and the helplessness turned into a frenetic need to drive away thought and replace it with the splint of soul-cleansing sexual pleasure so that – for at least a few cherished moments – we could pretend that the Normal had returned.  

And in some ways it had.  When you’re on the Red Pill and married, getting laid regularly and frequently becomes a part of your life.  When anything from travel to birth control to grief can stand in the way of that, then the very absence of sex in your relationship (in addition to other factors) becomes a problem, perhaps as much as the original problem, and certainly compounding it.  

So by having sex – even a mediocre, emotionally-overblown and largely un-fulfilling quickie in your hour of desperation – you can help re-establish the normalcy of your life.  For dudes, especially, the metric of sex is important to define the scope of a relationship.  By trying to return to the sexual rhythms of your marriage, even if the sex sucks the attempt will be important in and of itself.

For women, the emotional connection implicit in sex builds the intimacy she needs to feel safe.  Due to long cultural association, if not biological holy writ, women in insecure situations often seek to find security through connection and community, and intimate connection with a partner.  If she is aware enough of her own psychological needs, then the frustration she may feel at her partner's masculine emotional detachment in times of crisis can be seen as what it is: a cry for intimacy and connection, but not necessarily sexual intimacy and connection.  

Conversely, men need the physical release of sex  not just to re-connect with their deeper emotions, but also to validate their actions in crisis.  If sex is a "incentive reward program", then a crisis requiring a robust response from a man (such as defending his family or making a herculean effort to save the house) is going to encourage his body to seek just such a physical validation . . . while his bruised psyche cries out for the soothing and healing of caritas.   When men push for sex in a time of grief, it's a request for validation and approval, as well as a path to allow him to feel what he had to put aside in crisis.

Understanding this dynamic properly, and appreciating the suggestive and gradual power of "breadcrumbs", can allow a couple to cut past the bullshit and both get what they need . . . if not always when they need it.  Avoiding the topic entirely is not recommended, unless the issue involves sexual abuse or rape and you are under the guidance of a mental health professional.  

Sex can, indeed, be about joy, and a married couple who has made it past the decade hump usually has it in bucketfuls.  But in grief, even fondly-remembered joy can turn bitter in your mouth like ashes.  Remembering that things were once better often just makes you sadder.  Trying to imagine things being better seems a betrayal of your loss, as if hoping for better times and lighter feelings diminishes the value of your grief.  

Sex in grief isn’t about joy, it’s about sadness – and tenderness, and need, and pain.  It’s about the selfish desire for comfort and understanding when we do not necessarily deserve it or invite it.  It’s about the fundamental agreement not to just be a rock for your mate when the storm clouds come, but to indulge their sometimes jagged response to grief with understanding and support.  Sex in grief can be the frictiony abrasive needed to trim away the illusions and impractical perspectives, to gel both our emotions and resolve during a time of turmoil.  Sex is our desperate, individual cry for the Normal to return, as if we could wipe away the tragedy one orgasmic stroke at a time.


The fun and exciting sex is the sex you remember most.  Those happy times of joy in the past, where the physical met the emotional and even the spiritual in a vortex of infatuation and the seeds of nascent love.  The times where you did something particularly well, or made a particularly good impression, those are highly memorable.  Hotel sex weekends, heated quickies at a friend’s party, that one night after those two bottles of wine – those are the highly-positive experiences we want to associate with sex.  

But the reality is that the interplay of eroticism and emotion really is in flux in a marriage.  Consider it an Advanced Sexual Skill, and one your marriage will not survive without you becoming proficient in.  That's one of the biggest myths about sex-in-marriage: depending on the infatuation-laden blush of a fun-filled single life to sustain you through all of the Bad Times to come without a more sophisticated approach is to invite suffering and misery into your marriage.  Married sex isn’t like single sex much at all.  It’s more complex, more sophisticated, more complicated.   Sometimes your wife isn’t even thinking about sex at all when you recognize a good scrumping would improve both her mood and her effectiveness tremendously.    

Sometimes sex is the last thing on your mind.  She proposes it out of the blue for reasons you clearly don’t understand and you have to make a conscious decision whether or not to have sex – all the while wondering how she will react if you decline.  Does she need affirmation?  Normalcy?  Comfort?  Connection?  Intimacy?  Assurance?  To feel safe and protected?  Even if that doesn’t mesh with your level of arousal at that point, rejecting her out-of-hand could be devastating, for her and for your relationship.  But if you really just can’t, for whatever reason . . . drop a breadcrumb.  

Let your spouse know that it’s on your mind, you understand it’s on theirs, and that it is on your agenda . . . but your mind/body/spirit combo is just too weak to indulge it at the moment.  Always remember to thank them for asking and assure them that it’s the situation, not your feelings for or attraction to them, that is behind your reluctance.  If you’re smart, you’ll bring it up before they do . . . and then just leave it alone.  Grief takes time to process, and “soon” might well mean two weeks, not two days.  You might need to follow a dozen breadcrumbs, not three.  Harping, nagging, and complaining are all annoyances that can compound grief and exacerbate an already-stressful situation. Don't do that shit.  If you make a suggestion and she passes, understand that it isn't time yet.

So drop a breadcrumb . . . and then back the fuck off.  Your spouse will know how to follow them, and until you can both manage the mental and emotional transition from “crisis mode” to “clitoris mode” these hints/promises/wishes are the best way to ensure that you both face the problem together, not blame the other for keeping their feet dangling.  

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Girl Game: Nuke The Site From Orbit

Red Pill Wifey, among others, have mentioned the seasonal epidemic known variously as "The Winter Blues", "The Winter Blahs", "Janufeb", or just "Winter - Post Christmas, Pre-Valentines' Day".  Whatever title you choose to give it, the result is the same: Stress, sickness, lack of money, lack of patience, and blown expectations frequently turn this fallow period into a smorgasbord of marital dysfunction.  A very good friend of mine who is a Private Investigator, and whose bread-and-butter are divorce cases, takes every December off . . . because his phone will be ringing off the hook in January.

This winter period can be hard to weather, especially if you have children and other stresses on top of your marriage.  Intimacy seems fleeting as we try to get back into our non-holiday routines.  It's a new year, new semester, new season . . . and every fracking bill in the universe seems to be due.  Stress, stress, stress, and almost none of it from how to hide the huge stacks of cash you're hoarding.  Pity.

Red Pill Wifey brings a particularly poignant observation to bear: among other evils, the stress of Janufeb can encourage a man to focus on the mission of keeping his personal trains running on time that he often doesn't have much time even for sex.  And when the Red Pill wife who has been getting a steadily-increasing diet of dick and loving it suddenly hits a spot where hubby just isn't initiating, the result can be perplexing, at best.

As she says, "I guess I’m feeling his lack of initiation as a rejection."

That made me think.  For dudes, rejection is rejection, because we rarely expect our wives to initiate sex and as Red Pill men we have come to understand that it is our role to initiate the majority of the time.  But for women, who are largely reactive in a sexual relationship, lack of initiation on their husband's part is often considered a form of rejection.  That's a subtlety that Red Pill dudes need to remember, but often don't.  But try to see it from her point of view.  You not initiating sex with her is like her going out and spending a car payment on her hair and dress . . . and you not noticing.  

It seems hard for a guy to get through his head, that his wife actually wants him to initiate on a regular, if not predictable, basis.  Many times we think you'd rather skip it, considering how hard it can be to persuade you.  But it's a Red Pill fact that women get horny, and when they are deprived of stimulation, sex, and attention they can get downright cranky.  And that's a very, very important factor for a lot of marriages.  

The problem is, especially this time of year, a man feels compelled to apply his nose to the grindstone and redouble his efforts, thanks to post-holiday poverty, guilt, new year's resolutions, and the impending tax deadlines.  With that kind of beginning-of-the-year stress to focus your attention, as much as we'd like to think about sex all the time as per usual, the fact is that the most responsible among us are often the ones most likely to ignore sex . . . and just put off initiating until things are more "convenient".

I'm particularly vulnerable to this, because my birthday is just a few weeks after the holidays.  Usually just before people get paid a paycheck that hasn't already been spent, and long before their tax returns are out. So my birthdays tend to be frugal affairs, usually.  This year was no exception.  And with as much stress (trying to publish 4 books at a time PLUS a day job, daddy duties, and Girl Scout cookies, now) as I'm bearing, as much as I'd love to be taking Mrs. I to Pound Town by the most convenient route, the fact is I just don't have the mental or emotional energy to initiate properly.  

So to work with our circumstances and not against them, Mrs. Ironwood has developed a bit of Girl Game I like to call "Nuking The Site From Orbit", after the famous line from the classic sci-fi horror movie, Aliens ("It's the only way to be sure.").  While a good GFE or other exotic move can put pep into hubby's step, those are targeted, surgical strikes on his libido.  There are times when the carpet-bombing method of sexual satisfaction are actually more helpful.

The process has evolved over the years - the first one was for my 33rd birthday, so she's had some time to refine her technique.  Simply put, on the weekend closest to my birthday, Mrs. I arranges to get the kids out of the house for a weekend, allowing us unlimited and uninhibited use of our home . . . and then she dedicates herself on spending no less than twenty-four hours and no more than forty-eight to getting busy as often as humanly possible.

I mean, you clear your calendar, lock the door, turn off the cellphones and computers, and you just . . . scrump.  And then when you're done, you catch your breath, get a drink, maybe do some stretches . . . and then dive right back in.  Shower as necessary.  Wardrobe changes as desired.  

This year was no exception, and we were actually broker than usual.  A lobster tail special at the grocery store gave us dinner, but I left the entertainment up to her, and I wasn't disappointed.  For my birthday - I'm 45, pretty much "Peak Ian" -- Mrs. Ironwood did her best to exhaust me sexually.  Over and over again.  In every way that she could think of.  Plus some new ones she came up with on the spot.  She went to it with drive and determination, and displayed an eagerness and enthusiasm that bordered on the frightening occasionally.  But hey, I like to live dangerously.

Mind you, this isn't the sort of thing you can do at the drop of a hat.  You need some preparation, planning, and possibly even some training time.  You should have at least three outfits you don't mind slipping into and out of repeatedly, and a variety of non-standard sexual venues is highly recommended: couch, kitchen, deck, garage, living room, bathroom, pantry, doghouse, wherever.  Get plenty of rest and hide snacks and beverages, lube and toys at strategic spots around the house.

It's always been a big hit with me, especially the year she gave me "30 Days of Joy" (In the spirit of Mrs. Yes at I Will Never Say No, we had sex every day for a full month.  It was a sexual adventure that is certainly blogworthy, but deserves its own post).  This year was no exception - indeed, while it was generally no-frills, it was lustfully executed in a thoroughly delightful manner.

It wasn't until I read Red Pill Wifey's post about her big January chill that it suddenly occurred to me just why Mrs. Ironwood's dedication to my birthday shagging always seems so intense.  I realized that our nookie-filled holiday season, culminating with our wedding anniversary, seems to lead to a two-to-three week period of low-sex . . . not because she's not interested, but because we're both too stressed to put the time and energy we usually do into it.  And since I'm the one initiating most of the time, if I slow down it stands to reason that my initiations slow down, too.  And looking back at the records, yeah, that seems to be precisely what happens.  

What's worse is that my attention to my mission -- and away from her -- drives Mrs. Ironwood up the wall with the hornies.  The more aloof I am about sex and our relationship, the more she wants me.  The more I'm focused on something that isn't her vagina, the more she feels compelled to distract me. 

Of course this is the time of year I'm thinking about mortality and legacies and death and life insurance and other depressing shit, so I'm just not initiating spontaneously the way I usually do.

So by the time my birthday rolls around, toward the middle of the month, we've have usually been in a trough.  Because I'm too driven and focused and dedicated to my task to initiate properly, she's too tired, getting out of work while it's dark is always tiring, we're broke, the kids are headed back to school, yadda yadda yadda.  There's always a damn good reason why skipping sex and going straight to bed sounds luxurious, especially on a school night.  When birthday nookie rolls around, Mrs. Ironwood's frustration about the lack of quality humpage is simmering, and heading to a boil.

In retrospect I should have seen it.  January is when she seems to be most experimental with hairstyles and clothing purchases, and in hindsight I can trace that to a sense of insecurity about her appearance brought on by me not humping her leg immediately upon getting home, as per usual.  Her darling little hamster rationalizes my inattentiveness as a disinterest in her, sexually, not as a dedication to a bigger cause.  

She's tried to get my attention in other ways too, I see now.  Conversations about friends (" . . . so do you think she's pretty?"), about our friends' relationships, about the hot dude on Arrow and the mildly disturbing homoerotic discussion about Sam and Dean from Supernatural, all of it utterly escaped my clueless ass . . . until this weekend.

What the Nuke The Site From Orbit move is, for her, is the blanket permission to initiate at will.  With the expectation of righteous birthday sex out there, this sudden erotic blank check felt like a real blank check.  For a change she could quit worrying about whether or not I wanted her, sex, etc. and just do me like she wanted to.  And when she was done, we could do it again a different way, as long as my constitution could stand, and I just had to take it.  It was like a Sadie Hawkins dance for her naughty bits, and I was the only boy in the room.

(As it turns out, I'm still fairly virile.  Let's just say I took seven showers in a twenty-four hour period.  Not bad for an Old Married Guy.)

What I saw as wifely devotion and the desire of a girlfriend to really impress her dude was (in part) actually an erotic shopping spree designed to re-assure her feminine soul that yes, I do indeed plan on spending my declining years shagging her rotten and not chasing 25 year old poon.  See it as Reassurance Sex at a very basic level, something every spouse needs from time to time.  Add in the wonder and excitement she got from feeling compelled to push her erotic envelope in the process, and the result was spectacular.  Downright nuclear.  It was an atomically orgasmic experience for both of us, and was well worth the physical toll and the friction burns.  

Turns out, we might not have the stamina and energy we did in our twenties, but DAMN, are we more creative.  The huge advantage of a long term, monogamous relationship is that familiarity breeds comfort, even if it dulls novelty.  When the goal is freestyle marathon sex, being comfortable enough to do that thing you did once and totally blew her mind without making her freak out is golden.  Knowing that that other thing you did, the one that should never be spoken of again, isn't even on the agenda -- likewise golden.  You know each others' shapes, curves, tickle spots, favorite positions, least favorite positions, lube viscosity, sweet nothings, favorite snacks, smells, strengths, weaknesses, pet peeves, power spots, etc. etc. ad nauseum.  When you've been driving that same stretch for twenty years, you know the way enough to slow down and smell the . . . roses.

And the advantage of Nuking The Site From Orbit is the permission to initiate pretty much any kind of wild or tame sex you ladies would like, with the understanding that you both will keep going until one of you just can't, any more, or the kids come home. It's an endurance contest, toward the end, all pretense of romance and tenderness gone as you push your sexual boundaries.  

So, how do you initiate the Nuclear Option with your aloof and distracted hubby, if you don't have a convenient birthday to exploit?

First, make sure you pick a calendar day that is free from both appointments and expectations.  Maybe even fill the spot by making him promise to do something annoying, that he doesn't really want to do, but feels obligated to do.  Then, when he starts fidgeting as the supposed shopping expedition with your mother and sisters approaches, you pounce.

Second, get his attention.  You can do this by the simple expedient of stripping completely naked, walking into the room, grabbing his hand, and saying "change of plans" before dragging him away.  Or you can be a little more elaborate.  If you want to get creative, you can try to slip in something like this:

"Honey?  You remember our shopping trip/colonoscopy/bridal show/brunch with my aunt we had today?  Would you be terribly upset if it didn't happen?  I know you were so looking forward to it.  Hey, let me make it up to you my sucking you off for the next hour."

Or

"Babe?  I hate to break it to you, but our plans totally washed out.  And since the kids are over at Mom's anyway, how about you and me get naked, split a bottle of wine, and spend the rest of the day pulling stray hairs out of our mouths?"

Or, you can take the direct approach:

"Hon, I lied to you and I feel terrible.  Here I told you that I wanted to do ______, but what I really want to do is spend an entire day having nasty sex with you in ways that are illegal in this state.  That's the goal: as much sex as possible until we can't do it anymore.  Really just clean those pipes out, make each other cum until you're spurting sawdust and I'm walking funny, and don't answer the phone or door unless it's an asteroid strike . . . in progress."

Or, there's the other direct approach:

Sit him down, crawl in his lap, kiss him for thirty seconds straight -- even if he's reluctant at first.  Put his hand on your boob, grab his crotch, then shake your head sadly.

"This thing is just too fucking hard.  I'd better nuke the site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure."  Smile sweetly.  Start undressing him.  Proceed to your favorite foreplay.

Sure, it's simple, but not only does his consent give you permission to ride him hard and put him up wet, the additional 'compulsory' element of the marathon can be an exciting novelty in and of itself.  Some (hope I emphasized that enough) women feel guilty about their responsive desires, especially the ones who respond powerfully to aggressive behavior or who have strong cultural or religious taboos about such things.  They want to feel "forced" into what they're doing to salve their feminine conscience, but feel horrible about it because they feel it encourages bad male behavior and devalues their own sexuality or something like that.  

Having a set period in which the Rules of the Game are the thing that is "forcing" you into having nasty, kinky sex with her husband allows them to escape both the guilt over their submissive desires and the stigma of being a woman who initiates.  If things get uncomfortable, after all, either party can declare an end to the festivities. Just make certain your dude understands this before you get started.  

But the big winner is Mrs. Ironwood.  She certainly notices when I'm not initiating, even when she's in a trough herself.  It can sometimes be infuriating for a dude to hear "Oh, I'm not interested in sex right now . . . but I'm worried about why you don't want to have sex with me".  It's okay to her feminine sensibilities if she doesn't want sex . . . as long as I want it with her.  It doesn't matter as much whether or not we actually have sex, but it does matter whether or not I want to have sex.  

To have a day where she can dispense with both of our immediate desires and fall back on our customary "institutionalized endurance screwing" for fulfillment might seem impersonal . . . but since it falls fairly close to her ovulation date, her body could care less.  

And you'd be amazed just how quickly your penis responds to a gentle caress and a "Relax!  For the next 24 hours you don't have to worry about anything but chafing and dehydration."

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Girl Game: The Glory Hole Experience

Once again we return to that most-popular of topics (ironically enough), the issue of Girl Game.  I'll leave the basics to others, but this is a subject which might appeal to the more adventurous among you ladies, if you're looking for something interesting with which to intrigue your husband.  Pray attend.

Glory Holes, for the innocent and ignorant, are the popular name for the penis-sized holes between booths in adult bookstores -- and they are rarely used for mere peeping.  For decades the Glory Hole has been the staple of the underground Gay community, and even in our enlightened times there are still plenty of men who haunt these places, looking for anonymous relief.

The action is usually oral, but the key point to the fantasy element is the anonymity of the experience.  Not being able to see the mouth on the other side of the wall allows the imagination to run wild.  That's why plenty of straight men try these booths out, because, gosh, you can't really know if the mouth on the other side belongs to a man or a woman . . . can you?

Their own Rationalization Hamster takes them through the maze of their subconscious and finds a way to an anonymous blowjob in a squalid and dirty porno palace:  It isn't really cheating.  If no one knows, it never happened.  It's just advanced whacking off, right?   It doesn't mean I'm Gay, really . . . does it? I'm just . . . contributing to the local Gay community.  Yeah, that's it!

(Now, before you ladies freak out and think every trip your dude makes to the video store will lead to illicit, anonymous gay sex, let me assure you that plenty of guys never venture back into the back room - they're just there for the boobie flicks.  On the other hand, if you purchase all of your porn DVDs online, say at a reputable company with over three decades of experience, you can avoid that possibility.  But I digress.)



So why bring up the Glory Hole at all if it's so gay?  Let me explain how you can turn the faint allure of anonymous sex into something you can, possibly, use in your bedroom.

You see, like a lot of things in Gay sexual culture, like the Cosmopolitan, hooking up, and and pastels, straight women can't resist stealing it.  Once certain women found out about the secret Gay stash of endless anonymous penises in the back room of the bookstore, well, some of them went a little crazy.  By the 1990s, you were starting to see couples and even single women sneak into the 24 hour XXX stores to get a midnight snack.

Enough of them, at least, so that my Gay friends grumble that they can't hook up on a Saturday night anymore because the straight dudes congregate around the known pussy -- and if a woman (or good-looking transvestite) walks into a booth, you can bet the line will be as long as she wants it to be.  Instead they meet men who want to be with men on Craigslist and invite them to private glory holes in hotels or at their homes like respectable gentlemen.

But when women did start going into Glory Hole booths, of course the porn cameras were soon to follow.  Glory Hole porn has become a new specialty in the pornoverse.

It's easy to see why -- a girl, a wall, a hole, a penis, cheap movie magic.  Anonymous sex becomes adult entertainment.  And guys loved the fantasy element of glory holes almost as much as MILFs and cheerleaders.  Hot girl on the other side of the wall?  Not knowin' who she's blowin'?  How could that not be hot?

The thing is, your hubby might actually be turned on by the fantasy of anonymity, but that's one of those things he probably doesn't even know how to ask for, even if he knows he wants it.  But enough dudes do that I feel comfortable sharing this tip.

The Set Up

First, you're going to want to prepare an utterly private place where you know you won't be interrupted.  What you want is a closet, a spare room, even just a doorway if possible, across which you can stretch some sort of visual barrier like a blanket or a big piece of cardboard.  If you really want to put some effort into it, and have the space, go to your local hardware store and purchase an 8'x4' sheet of easy-to-cut foam insulation board -- and advanced couples might want to make the whole thing out of wood.

But start with the cheap, easy-to-dispose of stuff first, because if you don't get into this (and Athol says about 70% of the stuff you try won't work for you, and I cannot disagree) it's easier to get rid of cardboard or foam insulation than it is to explain the huge plywood sheet with the suspicious hole in it to the neighbors.

The goal, of course, is to build your own glory hole.  The actual hole is likely less important than the feeling of anonymity.  Once he puts his dick through the hole or slit, his imagination should be utterly reliant on what he feels, not what he sees.  Removing the visual component is the exciting thing, and this is a lot more elaborate than a simple blindfold.  It shows you put some effort into it.

Once you have a decent glory hole set-up prepared, stow it away until one night when you want to treat your husband to something a little . . . special.

After preparing him thoroughly (say, ten solid minutes of kissing to get him worked up good and hard) then grab his hand and pull him to his feet.  Hug him.  Grab Mr. Happy and give him a shake or two.  Put your mouth up to his ear.  Whisper . . .

". . . do you trust me?"

If he says no, well, you have bigger issues.  But he'll probably say yes.  Let's assume he does.

"Then I want you to wait here for exactly three minutes.  Then I want you to come into the living room/dining room/observatory/woodshed.  You'll know what to do then.  I've prepared something a little different tonight."  Give him a final peck, a sexy smile, and wiggle your ass out of the room.

If he's not thanking the gods he married you at that point, again, you got other problems.

Slink away to your pre-prepared "Glory Hole Booth".  Make certain during your prep that you've considered all of the logistics of the situation, first.  That is, have a bottle of water, some lip balm, and any other fun stuff you might need at hand, and do grab a pillow or ottoman -- you might be there a while.

Or, if you do it right . . . maybe not.

In any case, when he finally enters the room, he should see a clear indicator of what he should do, such a cardboard sign that says "INSERT PENIS HERE" or "HUSBANDS ONLY (FORM A LINE)" or "RING BELL AND INSERT COCK FOR SERVICE" or "BLOWJOB VENDING MACHINE" or any other sexy, witty thing you can imagine.

If you have followed my instructions to the letter, and your husband is straight and has even the remotest attraction for you, you're gonna see Mr. Happy poking through the hole in record time.

And this is where it gets fun for you: because he really doesn't know exactly what you have planned.  He doesn't know what to expect, or just how far you've decided to go.  You have successfully captured the mystique and allure of the Glory Hole, and his brain is buzzing at a thousand miles a second.

Some women might think of this move as inherently objectifying.  You're right.  That's the point.  You have entertained your husband's sexual brain as well as his dick. It wasn't about you, personally, it was about you, plural.  You both get to indulge a fantasy at the same time.  Remember that.

Now, back to the dick: you can approach this a couple of different ways.  You can just gobble it down enthusiastically like normal, and he will think it is fucking fantastic -- guaranteed.  That might actually be a good bet, the first time around.  It's an Ironwood rule-of-thumb that you should probably only introduce one new element into your sex play at a time, to fully explore it and appreciate it without distraction.  So start with just the basic Glory Hole Experience, if you're feeling hesitant about his response.

If you want to kick it up a few notches, however . . .

This is your opportunity, too -- you can experiment with your guy's penis in all sorts of silly ways.  If you've usually been too into him to really get into his dick, the disembodied-and-could-actually-be-Daniel-Craig-if-the-light-is-low-enough penis of your husband.  Just listen to what he says and the sounds he makes.  This is your mutual opportunity to experiment.  Revel in it.

Besides the Basic Blowjob, which he's fairly familiar with by this point if you've done your wifely duties appropriately, consider a few of these intriguing variations on the Basic Level:

The Hummer

Hum -- Happy Birthday, Christmas Carols, or just hum some scales or your favorite song while you're doing the deed.  It creates all sorts of startling situations and will be noted.  So hum a merry tune . . . because it's hard to whistle while you work with a dick in your mouth.

The Knob Job
Focus exclusively on the head and the first three inches (if he has at least three inches -- and I hope he does, for your sake), and leave everything else alone for he first fifteen minutes.  Suck hard, suck softly, nibble, but don't go any further down the base until he's begging for it.

The Oily Handy
If you have a cold sore, sinus issues, or any other problems that keep you from being able to deliver a good blow job, a perfectly acceptable substitution is a super-slippery hand job to completion.  Use a good thick commercial lube, hand lotion, massage oil, or other slippery stuff.  And if you want to get really crazy, consider olive oil or room-temperature butter.  But if you want the best all-time long-performing lube combo, according to interviews with hundreds of dedicated masturbators, is Petroleum Jelly (not KY) and a cup of water.  That seems to have the best coefficient of friction, but clean-up is hell since it's not water soluable.  Still, you should be able to find something slick to slip on his dick.

For Intermediate Level:

Good Vibrations
Maybe it's time for hubby to meet your toy collection?  Use your faves on the head, base and shaft -- but avoid the testicles.  The Fellas are a little sensitive.

Glove Love
Some dudes really get off on rubber, and slipping on a pair of gloves (the yellow housework kind or the medical kind) and lubing up your mitts to give your mouth an assist as he's poking through the hole is guaranteed to give him some very unique sensations while he's climbing to paradise.  If rubber isn't his thing, consider trying silk or satin gloves, too.  Or maybe a scarf.

Panty Play
If you start out with the Basic Blowjob, you might consider wearing silk or satin panties while you blow him . . . and then half way through, slip them off and start using them to stroke his shaft and head.  Some dudes can really get off on this, and if their silky enough, that's hard to beat.  Which I suppose is the point.

Now, for ADVANCED Home Glory Hole users, consider some potential suggestions from Uncle Ian's Super-Secret Book Of Mind Blowing Fellatio Tips:

FIRE AND ICE
Warm cocoa and ice water.  Take a sip of one.  Give him thirty seconds.  Take a swallow of the other.  Give him thirty seconds.  Repeat until he promises to have your babies if you finish him off.  NOTE: back off a bit if he gets over-stimulated.  And don't use water any warmer than you'd probably bathe a baby in -- it doesn't take much heat to make your mouth feel REALLY hot.

FUR FUN
Buy a scrap of fake fur, or use a similarly fuzzy or furry object to tickle his johnson until he's moaning.  Change up with a slightly different texture for a few minutes, then go back.  Remove loose hair from mouth afterwards (hey, I never said there wasn't any risk).

HAIR DRYER

Give new meaning to the term "blow job" with a little extra heat on his junk!  Whip out your favorite styling tool and blow your man right.  You might only have a couple of passes before it gets too hot, but it's quite a unique sensation.  But skip the curling iron -- the blow dryer is warm and interesting enough.  Speaking of which . . .

POP ROCKS
'Nuff said.

CAST OF THOUSANDS
This is the perfect time to try to fool him into thinking there is someone other than you behind the glory hole.  Crank up some music to cover any noise, and after you start him off more-or-less as normal, step away for a moment, then return and attack his schlong with an entirely different style.  If you're usually soft and mushy, go hard and fast.  If you're usually heavy on the long strokes, flicker the head instead.

OR, you can actually get someone to help out, if you're into that sort of thing or you accidentally wrecked his car.  But even if you're alone, you should be able to create the illusion of a couple of girls (?) taking turns by simply putting your hair up and changing your style and grip.

 If you really want to freak him out, try wearing a fake mustache and/or beard.  Like I said, advanced users.

The key to this is the novelty of the situation.  You both get the illusion of anonymity (after all, are you SURE that was your husband's dick?) and the endless fantasy implicit in he Glory Hole Experience.  Plus you get bonus Wife Points for instigating, planning, and executing the plan until orgasm.  Dudes LOVE that kind of stuff.  We eat it up.

Where in your marriage would you use this?  Not when things are rocky -- if you and the Missus are having problems, then inserting your penis into some unknown variable isn't necessarily the wisest thing, no matter how sweetly she asks.

But if you are just experiencing the desire for novelty, or you want to impress him with a little experimentation but you don't want to break out the ball-gags and paddles just yet, then the Glory Hole Experience is a great way to inject some fun fantasy into your sex life for the price of a piece of cardboard and a little ingenuity.

If you're concerned about what he's thinking while he's thrusting away through the hole, don't be.  You are over-thinking it and you probably don't really want to know, anyway.  But that's the point: this is an indulgence in sexual fantasy play.  It's not a precursor to ten-guy blow bangs in some funky-smelling dive.

Just relax and enjoy the happy prospect of a cock without a man in sight -- and then tell me you haven't dreamed about what you would do if you had that chance.

Give it a shot, try it out, let me know how it worked out for you.  Professional interest.  Really.

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