How My Wild Sex Drive Killed My Marriage – review by L. Crocker of book by R. Rinaldi
I’ve read an article about this woman’s book (“The Wild Oats Project”) before. I may have blogged on it a few months ago.
Her story makes me want to barf. She made a mockery out of her first marriage.
One problem or area of weakness I have seen with Christian teachings on sexual purity (in which I include virginity and celibacy) is that if or when Christians bother to defend or promote sexual purity anymore (they seldom do these days), is that they tend to emphasize it only for singles who are teen-agers to about their mid-20s in age.
Anyone past age 25 or 30 who is sexually abstaining is ignored by Christians in regards to sexual purity encouragement or teaching.
Married couples are usually ignored in Christian sexual purity teachings as well, although every other testimony I see on Christian blogs and television is about married couples who are porn addicts, or one partner is cheating on the other with other sexual partners.
Note in the story below that sexual behavior has consequences. It can sometimes end in negative ramifications for yourself and/or your partner.
At one point, this review says that Rinaldi goes on about how much she enjoys penises and finds them beautiful, and that she enjoys sticking them in her mouth. Warning here for any men reading: the vast majority of women do not like penises or find them beautiful.
Rather, most women think penises look horrible or ridiculous, and most do not want to perform oral sex on men.
Most women don’t enjoy looking at penises and do not enjoy (Link, off site: Should You Send A Lady A Dick Pic) getting “dick pics” on dating sites, or anywhere else.
Christians – if bothering to support virginity at all these days – will tell singles that if they wait until marriage to have sex, the wait will be worth it, because the sex will be (this is their favorite phrase in this area of discussion) “mind blowing,” and it is implied by these Christians that married sex will be regular and frequent.
What this book shows that I am blogging about here is that after several years, plenty of married couples find their sex lives to be hum-drum, routine, and boring, not “mind blowing.”
Some of these spouses are fine with routine, boring sex, but the other partner in the relationship may get bored and tired of it. That is why some of them seek out affairs or weird, kinky sex moves with each other.
One of the few positive things I can say about the revolting information and story in this review about this book is that it lays to rest some secular and Christian stereotypes about female sexuality.
Here is a long excerpt from the review:
(Link): How My Wild Sex Drive Killed My Marriage – Review by L. Crocker
Robin Rinaldi wanted to spice up her marriage by having sex with other people—which ended up bringing a lot of heartbreak, and destroying her relationship.
Forty pages into her new memoir, The Wild Oats Project, Robin Rinaldi has mined every modern female anxiety: fear of being alone; boredom in monogamy; a ticking biological clock; a husband who doesn’t want children; a marriage devoid of passion.
Rinaldi loves her husband, Scott, and has been with him for 17 years. He never wanted children, and when Rinaldi begs him to reconsider, he responds by getting a vasectomy.
With no hope of having a family and desperate to feel passion that had long ago flickered out in her relationship, Rinaldi—then 44—negotiates an open marriage that permits both to see other people for a year.
They jokingly refer to it as the “Wild Oats project.” She lays out ground rules—“no serious involvements, no unsafe sex, no sleeping with mutual friends”—and proceeds to break them all within a few months.
… She advertises for hookups on Craigslist and Nerve.com (Tinder didn’t exist yet) and sleeps with men half her age…
… Rinaldi’s husband is, for the most part, a saint. He frequently entreats her to quit the project and work on their marriage. He is patient and loving when she refuses, and reneges on his threats to leave her when she collapses in tears at his feet.
As they struggle to rekindle desire and trust a year later, he finally breaks down in one of the book’s most emotionally searing scenes. “Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep when you moved out!?” he screams, holding her up by the lapels of her jacket. “Do you care about anyone’s feelings but your own!?”
…He’s right about that. It’s not that theirs is a sexless marriage. And the sex, as Rinaldi describes it, isn’t hopelessly bad or even notably infrequent.
“His erection was solid and dependable, just like him,” she writes. “I could go as slow as I wanted without worrying that it would flag.”
But she can’t help but fixate on everything their sex life lacks: in 12 years of marriage, they’d never once made love in the middle of the night. He doesn’t talk dirty. He doesn’t tear her clothes off. He never looks her in the eye during sex. “Instead, we silently kept pace, faces buried in each other’s shoulders, both saying I love you,” she writes.
…Indeed, we have a seemingly insatiable appetite for stories about the (Link): trappings of monogamy, the (Link): limitations of passion in long-term relationships, and the (Link): lack of sexual tension in egalitarian domestic relationships. There’s even a (Link): growing field of research behind “love drugs” that alter couples’ brains and transport them back to the honeymoon stage.
For years we heard mostly of men straying in monogamous relationships and women rebuffing their advances (“Not tonight, honey, I have a headache.”) But recently, research has shown that women are not necessarily the more faithful sex.
Daniel Bergner laid out this argument in his 2013 book, What Do Women Want?, writing that “women’s desire—its inherent range and innate power—is an underestimated and constrained force,” and one that is “not, for the most part, sparked or sustained by emotional intimacy and safety.”
Rinaldi’s memoir is anecdotal proof of Bergner’s argument. And while her memoir is, at times, grossly self-involved, she doesn’t leave out the darker moments, the loneliness and despair that both she and Scott suffered.
In the end, Rinaldi needed passion, and she found it in one of the men she met through OneTouch. They reunited shortly after she ended her marriage, roughly five years ago, and are still together.
They share a more potent sexual chemistry than she had with Scott, and are monogamous. Rinaldi and Scott remain friendly (and he is now in another relationship himself).
Related Posts:
(Link): New ‘Christian Swingers’ Dating Site Offers Faithful Couples Chance to ‘Hookup’
(Link): No, Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity
(Link): Stop Telling Your Single Friends to Try Dating Sites – Please.
(Link): Marriage Does Not Make People More Godly, Mature, or Sexually Ethical
(Link): When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men – and how the stereotype flipped
(Link): Hypocrisy From The ‘No Slut Shaming’ Crowd by C. Nance
(Link): Why Christians Need To Divorce The Topic of Sex From “Family” and “Marriage”
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