The Original Quickie

Denise Said

It seems I still have a lot to learn about the nuances of marriage and it’s something that needs tending every day. I hope you will forgive me for bringing up our late-night conversation again, but I think it bears documentation.  What else does a late night drawn-out conversation involve other than love making? While it was difficult to hear that you feel “bankrupt” with nothing left to give and that sometimes a quickie is really what you want, and not having to take care of me sexually, I was proud of you telling me how you felt. This seems like a huge step for both of us, since I’m the one usually doing the talking.  Part of the reason I love to be with you is that you are a wonderful sensitive lover and you play me like an instrument.  But sometimes I think you’ve created a monster in me too, in that I have such high expectations and I know what you are capable of creating between us. That’s a lot of upkeep and sometimes quickies would be perfect, I totally understand. (I do actually like quickies.)  I have nothing against any of your requests and we both acknowledged that our life is extremely complicated right now which in general is adding to our angst in lack of time for sex.

This made me think about the evolutionary differences in men and women and a realationship call I listened in on with Alison Armstrong . Alison spoke about the physical differences in the male and female eyes. Men have eyes that see more like a predator out for the kill – straight ahead - and women have eyes that see as both predator, and the prey, using also peripheral vision.  This is very apparent in driving. A man is driving. His wife is in the passenger seat. She screams out that he’s going to hit something along the side of the road, and from her point of view it looks like that. He on the other hand thinks that his wife doesn’t trust him. Trust is a huge thing with men. They want to know they are trusted totally. Anyway a ping-pong argument usually starts simply because of physical difference in the way men and women see the world.

After our talk last night I woke up thinking more about these differences. What if our dilemma sexually is also simply a physical one and not something to take so personally and make into a long and drawn out discussion about?  I started to think along the lines of Leonard Shlain. In his book Sex Time and Power : How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution he talks about  how there are no female mammals besides human females that have orgasms (there seem to be some monkey species that enjoy sex and that is a research project for another day for me to dig back into that book.)   This got me thinking.  Most of the male species mount the female and get their procreation business over within seconds, afterwards leaving the female to continue on with whatever task she was doing.  The original quickie. It’s evolutionally in men to Wham Bam Thank You Mam!

Shlain’s argument gets more complicated when he gets into the nitty gritty early makings of the idea of caveman marriage when the early female of our species started to piece together how babies were made,  and then the women did something drastically new…… they said NO to sex.  Men now had to do a song and dance and court women to get them to have sex with them. And the women now wanted the men to prove that if they got their way with them, the men would stick around and help care for any children created and also help feed her and them, since she now was in the role of caregiver. Shlain’s theory gets more and more intricate and I could not do justice to his careful research and his quite amazing insights, but I do think there is something to his thoughts in how we evolved as male and female. We did arrive at the conclusion that quickies have their place, as do long-drawn out I’m-here-to-stay sexual encounters.  It’s that Ying and Yang thing again.  XO

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Max Said


I definitely agree that we have learned a few valuable lessons about relating over the last week…
I think you have illuminated one of them very well.  Men and women just plain have different wiring when it comes to sex.  If we don’t recognize, embrace and celebrate these differences, then we are missing something important.  Vive la différence!

The other thing is more about uncovering a part of my personality.  I have a hard time asking for what I want.  I am happy to give to you selflessly and leave my own needs out of the picture.  When it comes time for putting my wants and desires out there, I’d just as soon pass.  So it was a big step for me to tell what I was feeling about sex.  I know it was all my own doing that I was not getting my quickie quota :)

And finally, after a week of swinging the pendulum pretty far over to the quickie side, the final thing that I have learned is that balance is good.  While I am the most satisfied in our intimacy when both of us are fully engaged and we share a perfect moment of transcendent rapture, the occasional wham-bam is a good thing as well.  It keeps us balanced, and it keeps us connected.