The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [118]
15
Sex
With all this instruction about food and exercise, where is the modern lecture on how and when to have sex? Sex is an integral part of what many people are interested in when they talk about diet and exercise, but in our particular moment in history there is very little expert instruction about sex itself. Three millennia of sexual duties and restraints, and now we’re supposed to do as we please!
Or are we? Today’s expert advice is that consenting adults should do what they like, though we will think you happier if you have some sex rather than none, and if you do not seem to put too much effort into that part of your life. What odd criteria for normalcy. We tend to see much effort in these matters as a sign of pathology or at least “problems,” even if you protest you are having a great time. Note how little of this sex instruction has to do with particular acts or a particular schedule.
For that kind of detail we have placed the emphasis on sexy rather than sex, on youth rather than potency. What we look for in today’s sciences of bodily happiness is youthful vitality. Sex is today mentioned as a proof of that vitality, rather than the more traditional other way around, where all vitality is an indication of sexual potency. That’s a big cultural flip. I’m not saying we are not interested in sex, but the way we express it is quite unusual indeed: we talk endlessly about sexiness and what we are doing to get sexy, but we judge each other happiest when our sex lives are almost invisible and unmentioned, indicated, perhaps, by a wry smile.
Searching for happiness, men and women throughout history have been advised to address the issue through their sexuality: through fulfillment, abstinence, or monogamy, and a million further details. To address happiness through sexuality is timeless, and, in contrast, the particular ideas that frame sex at any given moment in history are likely to be peculiar to that moment. If you are one of the many people who at some point in life feel sexually abnormal, note that a century ago, a heterosexual married couple with cosmopolitan, secular values, having good sex three times a week, might well have felt shame and anxiety over it. The couple might well have driven themselves nuts with worry, thinking they were depleting themselves in this behavior. They might have consoled themselves that three times was not that much, but they might never notice the larger assumption, the idea of our bodies having a limited amount of energy. Some ideas become visible only the moment they disappear. A century ago, an average man who had not had sex in three years might have felt proud of his health and forbearance, and a woman might have praised herself for the health and happiness benefits of ten years of abstinence. Today sex is understood as a happiness requirement. There is no large category of people—widows, spinster aunts, priests, nuns, monks, and old scholars—who are expected to somewhat blithely forgo the whole thing.
Meanwhile, as I said earlier, to be considered happy, one is supposed to keep one’s sex life invisible and unmentioned. People guess that you are happy when you are in a committed relationship or, at certain ages and situations, in a period of serial monogamy. Anyone whose sex life becomes visible, due to a lot of partners or a lot of talk about specific acts, is not considered happy. Imagine a zaftig gourmet who also has several sex partners. Our culture tells us that she is sad. In his own day, and for centuries after, England’s King Henry VIII seemed self-indulgent and boorish, but, century