Last week, I was invited to a women’s chama meeting; they were handling a topic on sex.
“We are holding this special meeting to resolve a sticky issue in our country,” the chairperson said in introducing the subject of the day, “we have members today who have sought our help after their social media activism bore no fruit.”
They were introduced as Rose, Mary and Esther. They were reported to have flooded the social media with messages of how their husbands have abdicated their conjugal responsibilities. The activism was meant to force the men to behave in the bedroom.
“I have not had sex with my husband for the last four months,” Rose explained, “last year we had sex only three times.”
“In fact she is better off,” interjected Mary, “mine stopped two years ago and any time I make advances we go into serious quarrels.”
The problem of women protesting because their husbands have neglected sex is an old one. You may have heard stories of women demonstrating because their men are into alcohol and unable to satisfy them sexually.
Lack of sex in a marriage can be disastrous. A number of research studies have found that the best predictor for a stable marriage is a man’s sexual satisfaction. Women, on the other hand, look at marriage in a broader perspective with sex only being one of the considerations for marital satisfaction.
The question, then, is whether men are abandoning sex because sexual satisfaction is in itself lacking.
“What do you mean by that?” Esther interrupted, “I am always there for him, I have never stopped offering myself to satisfy him and please let us not blame women for men’s failures!”
Well, sexual satisfaction happens in a context of a functional relationship. When couples are facing difficult relational problems, they shut off sexually. This is the commonest cause of sex failure in long term relationships. Conflict can arise from any source: money, relatives, lack of communication, etc. Conflicts happens for a while before sex ultimately ceased.
In some cases, the problem is lack of intimacy and love skills. Nobody is born with these skills. In the traditional African communities, men and women were coached on how to have sex. Those traditional systems have collapsed.
Unfortunately the modern sex coaching systems have not commensurately picked up and a number of married couples are at a loss on how to satisfy their spouses. The boredom in the bedroom can be tolerated for only a while before hell breaks loose.
There is also a mentality that sex is dirty and taboo and this makes people not seek help when they have challenges in the bedroom. It is taken that decent people do not talk about sex. Women who have gone to the streets to demonstrate should be credited for making the public aware that these problems exist.
The better way, however is to seek the help of a sex professional in privacy and candidly talk about sex and the difficulties a couple is going through. There is no alternative to this and in fact a couple does not have to wait for problems to happen before seeking help. If you are doing well, seek help to even get better. This matters if you value your relationship and want it to last.
Of course, there is a challenge that sex professionals are very few. Sex therapists, sex counsellors, and sex coaches are not easy to come by. As a result, several people with no qualifications whatsoever have come up to provide help. In some cases, these nonprofessionals have caused more harm than good, giving non-scientific and sometimes dangerous advice. Always ask for the person’s training before opening up your life to them.
I asked the chama guests to explain the steps they had taken when they noted there were problems. To everyone’s amazement, the best they had done was shame their men in public!
“Unfortunately, things even got worse after that,” Mary explained, “the men accused us of being irresponsible and reckless!”
Other than relationship problems and lack of intimacy and love skills, there are times when either the man or the woman has an illness. The illness could be causing a woman painful sex, lack of lubrication, inability to get an orgasm or any other problems. The man could be having erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and so on.
Some of the illnesses may be as serious as diabetes or sex hormone imbalances. Whatever the problem, the natural response is to get discouraged in the bedroom and avoid sex altogether. Many people lose self-esteem, become violent, or even drown their frustrations in alcohol. If you find yourself in such a situation, what helps is to seek professional help.
“Members, the message is clear, let us seek professional help as couples when bedroom problems arise, let us not shame our men in public,” explained the chairperson in closing the meeting, “although the man may appear to be the problem, the cause of bedroom troubles is shared and we should not put all the blame on them.”
