Independent Perspective News - The Zipless Fallacy

‘I was not against marriage, I believed in it, in fact. It was necessary to have one best friend in a hostile world...yet what about all those other longings which after a while, marriage did nothing much to appease?’ —Fear of Flying.

By Erica Jong

When I published “Fear of Flying” in 1973, women were not supposed to publicly confess to sexual boredom in marriage. It was rampant, of course. But as I was to discover (to my horror), it is one thing to be a secret, silent adulterer and quite another to be an adulterer on paper—especially if you are a woman—and “Fear of Flying” humorously suggested that there might be sexual fantasies about other partners even within marriage. My novel was passed from hand to hand, read aloud in bed, pressed on boyfriends by girlfriends and on girlfriends by boyfriends. Analysts recommended it to their patients. Mothers kept it from their daughters—the best PR a book can have. “Fear of Flying” made its way in the world, and so did I.

NOW, 30 YEARS later, when every glossy mag promises to teach “101 Ways to Drive Him (or Her) Wild in Bed,” you’d think that marriage would have evolved into something lusty and liberated. But no, we still hear that sex is dead, that exhaustion depletes libidos and that workaholic careers leave no time for connubial canoodling.

Is it true? Must we never hope for that zipless encounter in the five-star hotel with our beloved spouse, a bottle of Krug or Cristal and beluga caviar? The problem with Americans is that, unlike the French, we want all our emotional eggs in one basket. We crave passion, sex, friendship and children all with the same partner. Can such miracles occur? And if they occur, how long can they last? Two years? Time to conceive the baby and swaddle it? Twenty years? Time to teach the baby (almost) civilized behavior?

Since passion is about fantasy and marriage is about reality, passion and marriage are the oddest of odd bedfellows. My own experience has been that passion ebbs and flows in marriage. It is far more dependent on romantic vacations and child-free weekends than we like to admit. And when we do check into a fancy hotel with our spouse, as the women’s mags recommend, we’re likely to start talking about whether the roof needs fixing or the car needs tuning. After all, marriage with work and children leaves little time for adult conversation. You might get to that hotel room in the sky and use the time just to converse with your spouse. And you might consider that a perfect evening.

Perhaps the problem is not in our marriages but in our expectations. In our post-sexual-revolution era, we expect carnality and familiarity wrapped up in the same shiny gift package. We would be much happier and much more fulfilled if we changed those unrealistic expectations. And our glossy mags would do well to stop teasing us while pretending to be helping us.

The truth is that ziplessness has always been a Platonic ideal rather than a daily reality. Yes, wild passionate sex exists. It can even exist in marriage. But it is occasional, not daily. And it is not the only thing that keeps people together. Talking and laughing keep couples together. Shared goals keep couples together. If this were not true, how would some couples survive illnesses, deaths of beloved family members, even holocausts? The pair bond is strong. We are pair-bonding creatures—like swans or geese. We can also be as promiscuous as baboons or bonobos. Those are the two extremes of human sexuality, and there are all gradations of chastity and sensuality in between. The glue that holds couples together consists of many things: laughter, companionship, tenderness—and sex. The busyness of marriage is real, but we also use it to protect us from raw intimacy, from having to be too open too much of the time. Pleasure is terrifying because it breaks down the boundaries between people. Embracing passion means living with fear. “Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,” wrote the poet Rupert Brooke. “Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to fate.” Amen.