Deserving Desire by Beth Montemurro

Author:Beth Montemurro [Montemurro, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780813573069
Google: 1XVYBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2014-09-01T04:24:57+00:00

Better on the Other Side: Divorce As a Catalyst to Sexual Subjectivity

Though it may seem logical to expect marriage to bring greater sexual subjectivity and divorce to bring sexual insecurity, overall the pattern was the opposite among the women I interviewed. After grieving over a marriage that had ended, they had the opportunity to reflect on their sexual desires and make different choices in subsequent relationships. Marilyn Meadows (1997) noted a similar pattern in her study of midlife British women: relationships affected women’s sexual self-image, and new relationships inspired more sexual self-confidence. Women who discovered greater sexual subjectivity in the aftermath of divorce were generally those who had divorced in their twenties or thirties and found the search for new partners exhilarating and fruitful. The same was true for women in their forties, fifties, and sixties who had left sexually unsatisfying marriages. Given generational changes and the greater cultural openness that began in the 1980s, older women found they had more freedom of sexual expression and more power in sexual interactions. Although divorce itself was usually a shock, the experience shook women’s vision of their imagined futures. In this new anomic state they felt free to write a new story and make new rules.

Divorce in the Younger Years. For women who experienced a divorce or separation in their twenties or thirties, the end of a long-term relationship or a short-term marriage most often had a positive impact on sexuality. These women had often been unhappy with the sexual aspects of their relationships or had focused on their partners’ pleasure rather than their own. As relationships dissolved and they spent time being single, they often took the opportunity to reflect on what they wanted in their sexual lives and needed to feel sexually satisfied. Amy, a thirty-four-year-old white woman who had married her high school boyfriend when she was in her twenties, described sex with him as “monotonous. I guess that’s the only way I can put it. It was almost like a schedule. I think that’s what it became, . . . maybe that’s what happens when you’re with someone for ten years. . . . There was no passion. . . . I think it had to do with me not having that experience before I got into that relationship in order to know what I really like. I wasn’t able to explore what I liked or anything else.” Once the couple had established a routine of when and how they had sex, and because neither had had much experience before their relationship, they found it difficult to change.

Although Amy said their stale sex life was not the primary reason that their marriage ended after two years, she told me that only post-divorce did she really begin to know herself sexually. Amy used that time to date, experiment, and learn about herself in ways that she imagined her peers had done before they got married.

In my twenties [after my divorce], that’s when I was going out, I guess learning

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