My wife did not coerce me. She trusted her instincts about what I needed, the kind of instincts that a devoted couple can develop about each other.

Men have been pressuring women to have orgasms in order to assuage their own fragile male egos for, oh, a fair stretch of time. There is no comparable tradition of women urging their husbands to get massages, and no comparable ego payoff. Trust me, I was the one in the room that Valentine’s Day and no coercion was involved. My words may have inadvertently given you that impression.

I think we need to stop this sidetrack and limit the comments to pleasure and its importance.

Instead, let’s try another analogy. Scientists say that many women have trouble climaxing during intercourse. Many, many women who cannot orgasm through intercourse CAN orgasm with a vibrator. Let’s a say a husband tries to coerce a woman to use a vibrator or some other type of sex toy. She is scared of battery powered sex toys. He says, “Babe, you will get so much pleasure from an orgasm and It would make me so happy if you had one. I’ve ordered sex toys for both of us. We’re gonna sit in bed and use them on ourselves. I don’t want any arguing. I want you to try it as a Valentine’s day present for me.”

I think it’s cool to convince someone, in an open discussion, to consider things. I don’t like emotional strong arm tactics and I personally hate coercion.

Usually, when someone is trying someone else to do a specific sex act, the person pressuring is the one who will receive the most pleasure.

My wife wanted me to start getting massages because she thought I would enjoy them. She wanted me to work through my issues with receiving pleasure. She got no direct physical pleasure out of it.

We all need to be pushed to go out of our comfort zone, but only by those who don’t directly benefit from our doing so!

BTW - I personally think that massage is awesome.

But as to Hugo and Adrienne’s posts above…Hugo, have you ever read any John Piper, particularly “Desiring God”? Piper’s way too Calvinist for my tastes, but his premise is that our problem is not that our human desires are too strong (ie, the flesh) but that they are too weak (that is, we settle for the fleshly desires when God wants us to delight in greater things). The subtitle to his book is “Christian hedonism,” which he carefully defines not as a subset of hedonism as normally understood, but as delight in the things of God. He takes the old Westminister catechism definition “the purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” and turns it into “glorify God BY ENJOYING Him forever.”

Adrienne, I know what you mean about “Official Virtues Lists”. But consider St. Paul–who has been variously considered a curmudgeon, a legalist, and a misogynist by some–who writes that the fruit of the Spirit (ie, the fruit of a life lived fully unto God) is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Joy is #2 (and I think his #1 is right on as well). He practically commands joy at one point–”rejoice in the Lord always–again, I say rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4) So, I would submit it IS pretty high on his “Virtues List.”

A lot of things you’ve been saying lately about pleasure and self-sacrifice have resonated with me, and i thought i’d share a couple of the resonances.

There’s an idea in Jewish rabbinic thought that’s always echoed in my head, ever since i first found out about it. The idea is that when you go before God to be judged, you will be asked to account, not just for every forbidden (contrary to the commandments) pleasure you sampled, but also for every *permissible* pleasure which you *failed* to sample.

While not Jewish *or* Christian myself, i’ve always loved this idea. It teaches that God gives the world to people not just for their *betterment*, but for their *enjoyment*–and that therefore *failing to enjoy it* is, in and of itself, “missing the mark”.

Regarding anhedonia: i’ve long thought it telling that while the early Christian church talked about Despair as a “primary” or “deadly” sin, it later got more or less erased (well, folded into Sloth. But mostly nobody really thinks of Sloth as a deadly sin anymore; even though it’s on the Official List, it’s regarded as much less bad than any of the others.)

As someone who suffers from Despair myself–in the form of clinical depression as well as just general negativity and nastiness–i can certainly attest that it blinds one to what is good and what is holy, *regardless* of one’s religious/moral/ethical framework.

Joy–real, honest-to-goodness Joy–is the only real antidote. But it’s not on anyone’s Official Virtues list. And that pisses me off.