And I am not buying this "biological differences" bullcrap. Sure, some men are aggressive douchebags with no desire to please their partner, but so are some women. The differences between individuals of the same gender are so big that to use gender as an excuse does not make sense.
It's a question of degree, isn't it? It's also a question of wording. 'Excuse'? Generally no. 'Mitigation'? Sometimes, up to a point only. 'Explanatory reason'? Generally yes, imo, if it's not overstated, which it can be. Equally, it can be understated. We are, to some extent, just like other animals (though arguably less so) prisoners, of both our biology and our environmental influences, perhaps especially the ones we absorbed when we were very little.
Imo, it's almost impossible, as it is in almost any other sphere of study, to avoid generalisations, just for statistical analysis. On the other hand, I agree that generalisations can go too far, or be trotted out as if they could readily be applied in complex individual situations.
What happens in some discussions, it seems to me, is that people, of either sex or any gender, have a disposition to take sides and perhaps dare I suggest it, be prone to knee-jerk reactions. Psychological gender neutrality seems to be hard to achieve. So when for example a man reads about how
'men are (or generally are) this or that not-nice thing' the male reader (and I suffer from this myself) may tend to think it means or is aimed at him, when it might not. Or, it might mean him, and he is unaware that it does apply to him, at least partly. It's very tricky. Many of us ( male and female) have an undeservedly enhanced view of ourselves. And the male ego is widely (and up to a point deservedly imo) thought to be somewhat more fragile (I might even add selfish) than is commonly admitted. There's me generalising again of course.
I will say this (with apologies in advance for being about to go on and on at length, lol), in my own personal life I have learned a few things, sometimes the hard way, including that I did not appreciate many of the trials and tribulations that the average girl or woman goes through, that I under-appreciated others, and that I probably still have a way to go. I learned some of these things by having a wife and others by having and helping to raise daughters to adulthood.
For example, as a young dad and husband, I did not fully or even nearly appreciate just what physical sacrifices my wife made in having children, both during the pregnancies and after, and how this affected her attitude to sex afterwards, and it caused some serious, ongoing and even long-term problems between us, some of which would be generally relevant to the OP issues.
And that's just the physical/physiological issues. The psychological issues were arguably as unfortunate, and I don't just mean her body-image problems and sensitivities (which I again failed to take properly into account) particularly as they related to her genitalia and vagina (neither birth was a Caesarean section) but also, I was unprepared for my relationship role to change (especially after 1st child) from 'significant and exclusive partner/lover' to 'support staff further down the pecking order of love'. For her part, she may have unrealistically expected that I would know and understand certain things, and be ready and able to cope with or adjust to them, which in an ideal world, I would have, if I were an ideal man. So there were some things she hadn't appreciated either.
I also completely under-appreciated how much her being a working mother (full time employment after maternity leave) would result in her attitude to sex being adversely affected by plain and ordinary physical fatigue, over a period of many years.
I believe that in Denmark, for example, there is more emphasis on preparing both prospective parents, as early as possible, for the shit that is literally going to hit the fan when what has been described as the little infant bombs go off in their relationship, with after-effects that last for at least 20 years or more in most cases.
Oh and while I'm indulging in self-therapeutic personal confessions and virtue-signalling (and by the way I do freely if belatedly and after a lot of resistance admit and apologise to my wife now for all these shortcomings and try hard to make it up to her) another thing I (mentally) did was to allow too much of the psychological burden to bear on my wife's shoulders when it came to parental responsibilities, in a myriad of often subtle ways. There were too many ways in which I half-consciously at best thought of the children (and many household chores as well) as being more 'hers' than mine or ours. And I did this while thinking that I was a lot better, much more of a 'new man', than my male peers (which I probably was and am) and much better than my own father (which I almost certainly was and am) without realising that it was not enough. It didn't help that I had depression for decades, before and after being married and having children, luckily no longer.
In my defence, some of this also had to do with her not untypical (in my experience) dramatic (and unexpected, even to her) change from being 'my partner' to becoming 'doting mother' which may have had a lot to do with her own upbringing and biology, not to mention the pressure to conform with what her mother and three older sisters appeared to expect. To some extent, she 'left herself behind' and fell in love with the idea of self-sacrificial motherhood and it fulfilling her (ie filling a hole in her existential experience of life) to the point that she really wanted a third, late child, when I didn't. I wanted her back. And we didn't have the third child, I denied her that, and that caused problems too.
That is more about sex as it relates to marriage/parenting than to dating of course. I guess that up until now, most comments have been more about the latter, perhaps.
Anyhows, that's my personal, anecdotal tuppenceworth. I have a feeling I'm not all that unusual. Though I doubt I'm exactly the same as another man and probably different to many. Maybe it chimes, in some ways, for some other men or women here.
) While this may not always be necessary, it can help someone who is clueless about her own body. 