Men, Women, Love and Romance: Under the Covers of the Bedroom Revolution

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Men,Women,Love,Romance txt

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MEN, WOMEN, LOVE AND

Romance

under the covers of the bedroom revolution stephen whitehead

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First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Fusion Press, a division of Satin Publications Ltd. 101 Southwark Street London se1 0jf uk

[email protected] www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk Publisher: Sheena Dewan © Stephen Whitehead 2003 The right of Stephen Whitehead to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. isbn: 1-904132-22-7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Printed and bound in the UK by Mackays of Chatham Ltd, Chatham, Kent


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This book is dedicated to all those women who know they’re not from Venus, who can read maps better than most men, and who relish being part of the bedroom revolution.


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Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

ix 1

i

Men at the Millennium

25

ii

New Women, Different Women

67

iii

Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract

128

iv

How To Find Love

166

Summary

215

Bibliography

222

About the Author

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Acknowledgements

The people I should acknowledge first are those many women and men who gave their stories to me, stories which subsequently came to form much of the content and direction of this book.However,anonymity was promised and must be preserved, so all I can say to each and everyone of you is thank you. I learned much from you all. Many of you went on to become close friends, something which proved to be a wonderful, unexpected bonus. One of you in particular was more than just a friend, much more.You were there at the very hesitant beginning, offering me a guiding hand as well as love, affection and encouragement.You did this without fear or favour. Not only were you the inspiration for me deciding to write the book in the first place, for me you exemplified the bedroom revolution.You know who you are. To you, my deep gratitude and thanks. As someone who had only ever written rather dense academic books and articles, I found the initial shift to popular non-fiction writing a little difficult at times. I had to do a lot of practice. (In fact, I still have to!) But it wasn’t just practice that got me through, it was also having draft chapters read by women friends and those who had contributed stories. I cannot overstate how invaluable a service ix


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Men,Women, Love and Romance this was to me during the book’s development.This feedback from those very women who were living out democratic love and new sexual contracts every day of their lives kept me on the right track, helping me avoid slipping into academic terminology and making too many mistaken assumptions about key aspects of the bedroom revolution. My grateful thanks to each of you. I am especially indebted to my friend and colleague Beverely Metcalfe for kindly providing me with useful data on studies done into sex and relationships and also reading draft chapters and commenting on the final manuscript. Many thanks,Bev.My thanks also to Ann Bartholomew for reading a full draft of the final manuscript and providing me with invaluable feedback. But more than that Ann, thanks for letting me down softly and may good fortune accompany you on your own journey. A man who has been an invaluable part of my life for many years is my close friend, Roy Moodley.Thanks Roy, for sharing with me your unique and profound insights into life, love, men and relationships and for encouraging me with this project. My eldest son and best friend Gavin probably knows me better than anyone and he better than anyone appreciates what this book means to me, and, not least, what he means to me.Thank you Gavin, and Caroline, for your love and support. I’ve needed it, as you well know. I’m grateful to all my family for their unquestioning love and support, but especially my sister, Liz.Thanks, Liz, you’re great. To Suwanna Yantraruyaha my very special thanks for not only reading draft chapters, but more importantly for showing me just how quickly feelings of love multiply in

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Acknowledgements virtualtime – and how they can so readily translate to realtime, across all time zones and cultures. Of course, no book gets published without professional help and guidance and I’ve been especially fortunate in this regard to have Amanda Preston of Sheil Land and Associates as my agent. Thanks Amanda, you’ve been superb from start to finish. Finally, a special thank you to Sheena Dewan, Managing Director of Fusion Press, who believed in this book and backed it, and to her editor Charlotte Cole and all the staff at Fusion for their efforts in bringing the book to publication. Stephen Whitehead

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Introduction

Are you a lover? Are you in love? Have you ever loved someone, romantically and sexually? If so, then you will have experienced the most wonderful of emotions. But it is equally likely that at some point you will have felt pain: the pain of rejection, the anguish of loss.We are vulnerable in love.Yet knowing this rarely stops us falling in love.We continue to take the risk because love is addictive. It has a buzz like no other. Nothing else can provide us with that unique feeling of ‘being in love’, and the joy of being loved in return. In this respect women and men are exactly the same. They both want to be loved; there is nothing mysterious about this.The sexes are not from different planets.The 60-year-old man who lives alone desires love and affection just as much as the 16-year-old girl going to the disco with her friends. It is the most natural of feelings, the most powerful of emotions. Yet, as this book reveals, love and romance are changing. Relationships between women and men are undergoing profound transformations, far-reaching shifts that affect us all.Yes, we still meet, fall in love, maybe marry, maybe separate, perhaps divorce, and then start all over again.This is a romantic roller-coaster that takes off in youth and, for most, ends only when we do. However, the dawn of the 1


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Men,Women, Love and Romance twenty-first century sees this ride of love offer us new thrills, new excitements, new opportunities for romance, but also greater risks, for it is speeding up, getting faster and more hectic. Men, Women, Love and Romance is about the new roller-coaster of love: understanding it, getting on it, riding it, and getting off it. In exploring how individual women and men feel about their relationships this book acts as a guide through the opportunities and pitfalls of contemporary love and romance. In explaining how women and men are changing, this book will help you find the maximum pleasure in your relationships. In showing how men and women are now finding love and romance in their lives, often in the most unexpected places, this book shows routes to democratic love.

A new gender game Relationships between the sexes have never been more complicated than they are today. It can be argued that modern women in the West have more choices open to them than any women since the beginning of time. Men on the other hand seem bemused and confused at the mixed messages they receive about what it now means to be male. The simple stereotypes that once surrounded gender and sexuality are fast disappearing, and with these changes can come confusion for both sexes. This confusion hits us hardest when we fall in love. Because love does not come with a user manual, we are each forced to ask ourselves what it is we want from our relationships. Unfortunately, the answers are anything but clear. I believe that now, more than ever, it comes down to 2


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Introduction how much we are prepared to compromise our individual needs in exchange for a long-term partnership; how much we are prepared to put another person’s desires before our own. In the end, great love still depends on the sacrifices we’re prepared to make, rather than on those we expect our lover to make. However, today, freedom and a sense of individuality increasingly compete with our desire for love and affection.We ask for commitment, but see our lives as a journey; a journey that, for increasing numbers of women, means freedom to experiment, discover new pleasures, learn about themselves. This new way of being a woman does not sit easily with traditional gender roles. As one of the women I interviewed for this book put it:

Women may want traditional love, they don’t want traditional relationships. As twenty-first century men and women, we are no different from previous generations in wanting happiness and contentment in our lives. However, what is different is that we are caught between these two competing desires – the desire for a pure relationship and freedom to be who we are.This is the essence of the new gender game, and to play it properly we have to become adept at balancing these competing urges.We have to become skilled at following our instincts and feelings, while avoiding unnecessary hurt for others.Today, when we talk of contemporary love, we talk less of self-sacrifice and more of ‘What does this relationship do for me?’ Like Bridget Jones many of us seek that special person who will transform our world, make us complete, understand us, satisfy us, protect us and validate us as worthy human beings. And some of us find that 3


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Men,Women, Love and Romance person.Though what we usually find is that the Holy Grail turns out not to be so perfect as we first thought,and in fact requires constant care and attention in order to keep it pristine.This is partly because our desire for freedom, and for perfection in ourselves and others, forces us to constantly question what we have. We put the relationship under the microscope to see if it’s changing, if we’re changing. In the process the character of love and romance is being transformed. In attempting to be both who we are and who our lover wants us to be, we are now all required to be experts in ‘doing’ relationships. In subjecting them to constant scrutiny, to questioning their value, worth and purity, relationships have become the emotional work of the twenty-first century. They are given targets, appraised and assessed. If they don’t measure up, relationships (and partners) are dismissed, made redundant, replaced by a new one. Our ‘model’ for our pure relationship often comes, not from our own experience of life and love, but from colour supplements and glossy magazines, all telling us what love should be like and how we should do it.And to help us with this task we have a range of ‘experts’ ready to hand – psychoanalysts, psychologists, sexologists, sociologists, therapists, astrologers, counsellors. We are caught in a mix of confusion and reward: confusion because there are no clear signposts to guide us; reward because the opportunities for us to experiment, change, and fashion our lives in new and exciting ways have never been so great. 4


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Introduction

Questions of sex and love When I started researching this book I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask. For example, how are sexual relationships changing between women and men? What are professional, independent women looking for in terms of sex, love and romance? Are younger women interested in love or are they increasingly pursuing pleasure rather than commitment? How do more mature women feel about embarking on new relationships? In what ways do men express their romantic feelings – clumsily, instrumentally or with passion? Do men fake romance or do they feel it as strongly as women? Can men say ‘I love you’ and mean it? Does it mean the same thing as a woman’s ‘I love you’? Where do men and women find love and romance in this new era and what role does new technology play in this quest? Is there a new sexual contract between women and men? These questions were not just of professional interest, they were of real interest to me as a man. I’ve spent over a decade researching women, men and relationships, but my own experiences of being on the love roller-coaster, more often than not intoxicated and shaken by the whole experience, have been equally if not more informing. I have four children aged 5 to 28. I have had these children with three different women, each of whom I loved, and probably still love a little; certainly I have been able to retain some form of friendship with each of my ex-partners. I first married at 21, again at 37, and then had a third partnership aged from 45 to 51. In between all this I’ve had numerous friendships and relationships with women, some casual, some very serious. Love is in my life today. Indeed, it 5


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Men,Women, Love and Romance influences the very writing of this book and has done from the beginning. Apart from giving me countless moments of pleasure, these experiences and relationships have taught me that love is always out there if you’re looking for it. In fact,I have come to relish romantic moments,feeling bereft when they are not in my life. I have, like so many other people, become good at getting by without them when they’re not around, but I know I am not alone in wanting and needing to be enveloped in love. In examining how sex, love and romantic moments might be increased for lovers everywhere, and rekindled in the lives of those who have but distant memories of such emotions, this book emphasises that love and romance is for all, young and old, gay and straight, black and white. Recognising that we live in a time when previous gender stereotypes no longer hold sway, I have found that a new age of love and romance is upon us, affecting not only younger women, but especially women in their forties, fifties and sixties plus.This book suggests that these fortyand fifty-somethings are likely to be the storm-troopers of what is, in effect, a ‘bedroom revolution’, taking up opportunities for love and sex undreamt of by their mothers.

What about romance? Whatever our expectations around love and relationships, one of the things we still expect from our partner, at least some of the time, is romance. We all want to feel special, loved and desired.And we still want that love demonstrated in the old-fashioned way – flowers, chocolates, cards, romantic weekends, the occasional unexpected gift and, most of all,in thoughtful,unbidden words of affection – for 6


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Introduction it is through these moments of thoughtfulness that the flame of desire is kept alive. As is discussed in Chapter 3, foreplay begins in thoughtful actions towards our loved one, not in the bed. Sexual arousal usually takes place long before we remove any clothes. However, the traditional romantic game only worked when both parties followed the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Men supposedly learnt the game of love and became skilled at ‘pursuit’, women learnt their role and became adept at being ‘caught’. At a certain level these traditional roles worked, for they gave men a good feeling about their masculinity, while confirming dominant notions of femininity. But as this book reveals, these ideas around masculinity and femininity are being discarded and revolutionised. One of the outcomes of this new gender game may be that romance is dying,with true romantic moments only to be found in novels, films and women’s magazines. Perhaps romance is dead already. I don’t believe so, but it is certainly staggering under the weight of new expectations.This is a pity, for romance is the perfect antidote to seeing love as work, something to be analysed and accomplished in a cold, logical fashion.Without romantic feelings to sustain them our relationships may well stagnate and flounder. Despite the overwhelming interest in gender and sexual relationships, few books discuss ‘men and romance’. One can speculate on the reason for this: that men and romance do not appear to go together. Certainly, it takes two to tango, but it has always been understood that women are the emotional experts – empathetic, in touch with their feelings, loving and supporting. Women remember birthdays, anniversaries, and do the emotional labour so necessary in a loving relationship. Men, on the other hand, 7


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Men,Women, Love and Romance are supposedly the emotionally illiterate ones – laggards in the romance and love stakes.Yet it is increasingly expected of men that they ‘get in touch with their feminine side’, be loving, not just lovers. Is this realistic? Can men find new ways of being masculine which encompass emotional maturity, but which also signal a strong sense of manliness? If men cannot ‘do romance’ and women have turned to careers, personal advancement, singledom and serial sexual relationships (just like men), then surely there is no hope for romance. But more than this, if there is no romance between the sexes, can there be true love? I believe that each of us has the power and skill to find true love and romance in this increasingly complicated world. But in order to do so we have to be honest with ourselves, we have to be clear what our needs and desires are.

The bedroom revolution Like most revolutions, the bedroom revolution began in people’s minds before it progressed to the streets and,in this case, the bedroom.The first signs of it were visible in the sexual and cultural revolution of the 1960s, symbolised by the mini-skirt, topless dresses, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, hippy drop-outs, the Beatles and the Pill. But the 1960s were more about men’s sexual freedom than women’s. Most women had to wait through the 1970s and 1980s before they got to realise sexual liberation. Certainly, as many sexologists told us at the time, women were having more sex, but being a single mother was still a social no-no in the 1960s, women were still restricted academically and economically and most women still saw marriage as their 8


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Introduction ultimate destiny. Sex in the 1960s was about the penis, not the clitoris. If 1963 was the year that ‘sexual intercourse began’, as poet Philip Larkin famously suggested, then it began for men, not women. Lovers have at least two very good reasons to be grateful to twentieth century science: the Pill and Viagra. If we look at the 1990s, we can see that this was the decade of gender change in the second half of the twentieth century,not the 1960s.It was in the 1990s that society woke up to the fact that men have a gender; when questions around women and men, their sexualities, roles and expectations, were opened up to scrutiny, not just in academia, but across society. Not surprisingly, the media played a big role in this social transformation. Males had new models of masculinity to aspire to, such as ‘the lad’, the ‘new man’, the ‘househusband’, ‘downsizing man’ and ‘macho man’. This plethora of male types appeared to many as a crisis of masculinity, with prominent American writer Susan Faludi suggesting that men were ‘stiffed’ as a result of women’s progress into hitherto male-only spheres.As if to emphasise this point, women had ‘alpha girl’, the archetypal successful woman – a female operating high up the social and career escalator: determined, independent, work focused and very sexually confident. Tabloids such as the Sun reinforced these stereotypes, as, in different ways, did Cosmopolitan and Loaded, while broadsheets such as the Guardian discussed their social implications. Through the shops and houseparties of Ann Summers buying a dildo or vibrator became an open, shared experience for millions of women, as did going to the see The Chippendales reveal all.Women 9


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Men,Women, Love and Romance were revelling in the freedom to be explicit about their sexuality and desires.Vaginas assumed a new and powerful symbolism in the female consciousness as characterised by The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s play that has been touring the States and the UK to packed audiences since the late 1990s.The clitoris is also well and truly out of the closet, and not just for women.As one of my women interviewees noted: For many men the clit has become the mysterious key to a woman’s satisfaction. If they haven’t got it ‘to work’ they no longer feel like good lovers. But representations of traditional romance are far from dead. Old-fashioned romantic movies give us our fix, if only for 90 minutes. One of the most successful films of the 1990s was Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. This story of passionate, youthful, but doomed love touched millions. Here we had traditional romance in full bloom and we lapped it up. Moulin Rouge, although more adventurous and elusive, takes us on a heady musical romantic extravaganza. Shakespeare in Love transforms the Bard into a sexy, modern, highly desirable, and uniquely romantic, male.While Bridget Jones’s Diary appears to offer hope to those modern 30-something women searching for their tall, dark, handsome stranger – their knight in shining armour. However, the new millennium is upon us and the media can no longer get away with portraying women as simple stereotypes. Even James Bond, that archetypal gung-ho male, is confronted with a female ‘M’ and has to learn some political correctness. It is becoming clear that there is no 10


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Introduction one way for modern woman to relate to love and romance, for she is a multiple,complex individual,with a mind of her own. Modern woman might appreciate an hour or two of being absorbed in a ‘weepy’, but when she leaves the cinema or puts down her romantic novel do not assume she is actually going to live out such traditional feminine values. Indeed, for many women their relationship aspirations appear more accurately reflected in the television programme Sex and the City, where sexually predatory Samantha uses men to search for multiple orgasms, not love. Of course, what makes the programme so fascinating is that it is women on the prowl for sex, not men. It is now socially acceptable to treat men as sexual objects, something women have had to put up with for centuries. The Full Monty, for example, amusingly captures women’s newfound confidence in their sexual expression as well as men’s responses to being treated as sexual objects of female desire. Sensing this social turn, the media have discovered a new market for films and books all about a male crisis, with the result of pictures such as Fight Club and American Beauty and books like Fever Pitch and Man and Boy. Each emphasise the point that women have changed and men are struggling to find a new identity. Suddenly women and men, far from being set in fixed stereotypes, seem more complicated, less predictable. Underpinning these changes are some hard facts and they are contained in several major UK surveys of sexual behaviour, published in The Lancet 2001 and 2002 (see Chapter 2).These surveys clearly confirm that women are in the throes of a second sexual liberation every bit as controversial and far-reaching as that of the Swinging Sixties. The research shows a remarkable shift in women’s sexual 11


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Men,Women, Love and Romance behaviour. More women are choosing to have sex with more men than ever before.They are having sex earlier and continuing to be sexually active well into their later years. Consequently, women are having more sexual partners over a lifetime. They are more likely to experiment with same sex relationships. They are much less tolerant of unfulfilling relationships, being the gender that, in the main, instigates divorce.The new woman expects men to satisfy her intellectually and emotionally, as well as sexually. She is instigating, in ways she never has before, the frequency and character of her sexual encounters. In short, the old taboos around women’s sexuality are being confined to the cultural dustbin.As one woman I interviewed put it: I have sexual needs and they’re going to be met. I don’t want a man around all the time, just some of the time, and on my terms. This 33-year-old woman is a full-time student at university. She is single with a young child. She is too busy for a heavy emotionally laden relationship, but she does want sex. Not with just any man, but someone who can be there occasionally without making demands. Someone who is emotionally mature. But, importantly, she intends to retain control of the situation. And that is the key difference: women are gaining control. It is clear to me that the bedroom revolution has, to some degree, turned the tables on men, at least in respect of their relationships with women. Men may still rule the world of work, but even here their behaviours are increasingly open to question and scrutiny. New woman, 12


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Introduction especially if she is educated and middle class, is not the passive woman of previous generations, but a sexually aware individual intent on pursuing her own life and agenda, if need be moving from partner to partner in order to satisfy her emotional and physical needs. This woman realises that she does not need a partner, a husband, to be successful. She is prepared to live on her own, if that is what it takes to be happy.She can and will cope with bringing up children as a single parent, if necessary. In this new era, men have to get used to being a sexual commodity, just like women have had to for centuries; scrutinised, assessed, picked up, put down, loved and, perhaps, ultimately discarded if they do not measure up. Female sexuality used to be associated with feelings of guilt, now it’s associated with feelings of power. So where does this leave men? In Chapter 1 I look at men in the new millennium, and how different types of men are responding to the challenges of this new gender game. It is clear that some men will thrive, but others won’t. Some men, ‘twenty-first century men’, will be empowered and excited by the opportunities available to them.These men will learn much, not least about themselves, from their encounters with new woman. Many other men, those I term ‘traditional men’, will retreat, as they are doing, to the domestic comfort and certainties that come from staying with mum.The football stadiums are full of men in retreat, snuggled up in the comfort blanket of male-dominated sport; in other words, postponing maturity indefinitely. These are the men who appear to be in what some describe as a universal ‘crisis of masculinity’. But be wary of taking 13


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Men,Women, Love and Romance this literally.Not all men are in crisis,and for those that are it is less a crisis of masculinity and more a crisis of adaptation. Such men reveal an inability or unwillingness to move on and instead stumble blindly through this sexual maze.

Women and men: are they different species? The biggest stumbling block to men changing is the idea that men’s gender is their destiny. It is to believe that men’s genes, their hormones or man’s prehistoric desire to be ‘the hunter’ somehow make them who they are and that this is fixed, unchanging.This is patent nonsense. Men are not all alike, they are very different. Men are not a species from Mars, any more than women are a species from Venus. Men’s brains are not hard-wired to be masculine from birth, for the simple reason that there has never been one type of masculinity but many.What it means to be a man in the twenty-first century is a whole lot different from what it meant in the Victorian era, or even in the last century. Not only are men very different from each other, they change over their lifetime. Their experiences of love, family, ageing, sex, relationships and work all contribute to how they will live their lives, how they will feel about themselves and others.Although we may have some inherited predispositions, none of us are simply products of our genes or hormones. Our brain is a muscle which is small and undeveloped at birth and grows as we grow. It grows from being in the social environment, because it is the social environment that triggers responses in us. All brains require external stimuli to thrive, and the type and quantity of stimuli we put into our brains develop them, and, importantly, produce and develop our very identities. 14


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Introduction Testosterone may be a powerful hormone, but it doesn’t stop you cleaning the loo. Rather than believe in simple gender stereotypes, today’s woman is asking more searching questions of men. She is not buying into this idea that men can’t change, that they make natural leaders but can’t clean toilets or iron. She no longer believes in the inevitability of her gender as it was told to her mother and grandmother. And she knows the world is her oyster and she’s going to get her pearl, with or without men.As novelist Kathy Lette warns: If men don’t want to become obsolete, they need to pull up their psychological socks.We only need to find a way to get rid of spiders in the bathroom, light the barbie, kiss our upper eyelids and tell us we don’t look fat in Lycra and we won’t need men at all. I have worked with young women students for over a decade and although I’ve come across many who would not consider themselves feminists as such, I’ve not met one who didn’t have strong opinions about the world, about men – and about their personal futures.The heterosexual female students I’ve encountered may like nothing more than a romantic evening with an attractive male, but they’re just as likely to ditch him if he becomes an emotional burden.Very few are prepared to settle down to a life of marital bliss at 21, not when they can be financially independent, travel the world, and have a varied and interesting sex life to boot. Marriage maybe, children quite probably, but not before they can say,‘I’ve made my mark’.These young women are the beneficiaries of the women’s movement of 15


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Men,Women, Love and Romance the 1970s, though the irony is many don’t want to recognise this because it suggests a non-femininity about them. They’ve been seduced by the tabloid myth that portrays feminists as lesbian man-haters. And this is where women and men are alike. They’re both working through highly complex changes of gender and opportunity, and trying to deal with often conflicting desires of sexuality and identity. The difference is that women are, for the most part, way ahead of men in understanding their place in this new and for them exciting gender game. Author Fay Weldon succinctly captures the similarities of modern women with those early gender pioneers: When today’s young woman says she isn’t a feminist what she means is she isn’t a lesbian and she doesn’t hate men, and she likes to wear make-up and she enjoys a l augh. She is no different from many an early feminist.

Democratic love These changes in the pattern of gender and sexual relationships suggest that we have to look upon women and men, not as different beings from different planets, but as individuals with particular desires and needs. Very similar in many ways, but ultimately unique in their detail and character make-up. No two people are identical and as this book emphasises, there are as many differences between women and between men as there are between women and men.Therefore, we have to debunk the idea that only by women ‘surrendering’ to men can society resolve men’s supposed ‘male crisis’. I suggest the new millennium will see increased pressures for democracy in relationships, with 16


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Introduction women and men only maintaining successful relationships through active partnership, discussion and emotional literacy. While recognising that the new millennium brings particular pressures, especially over work, career expectations, ageing, and managing multiple roles, not least those connected with childcare, it is clear that the demise of traditional gender values has the potential to benefit us all. However, as most parents know to their cost, when children arrive so too do traditional gender roles. As US researchers Carolyn and Philip Cowan report: It’s not just that couples are startled by how the division of labour falls along gender lines. But they describe the change as if it were a mysterious virus they picked up when they were in the hospital having the baby. As any couple with children will tell you, children do shift the landscape upon which a relationship has been built.But this does not necessarily mean that the shift need be for the worse and that relationship is then under threat. It all comes down to a willingness to accommodate change, both in ourselves and in others. It comes down to a recognition that although we meet and fall in love as one person, over time we change, and so too does the relationship. Traditional gender values do not allow for that shift.They assume women and men to be fundamentally different at their core, with gender being the rock upon which this difference is fixed – something unchanging over a lifetime. This is a dangerous fiction. With traditional gender roles there is no democracy, for they were devised in an age when men’s views held sway and women maintained their presence in the home.This is something most couples now 17


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Men,Women, Love and Romance struggle with.That is, they believe in equality, but also subscribe to the notion of fundamental gender differences.As gender researcher Susan Maushart explains: Research consistently shows that the vast majority of men and women are committed to equality in marriage. It also shows that most are astonishingly ineffectual at achieving it. Rather than seek biological explanations for how we behave, we have to recognise cultural and social aspects as key influences on our gender and sexuality. If you still doubt this, look at how women have changed in the past four or five decades. From journeying into space to diving the depths of the ocean, from climbing Everest to sailing the world alone, sisters are doing it for themselves. Every woman who runs a company, runs a marathon or runs a family is a model for other women.And many women are doing all three! How many men could? These models of femininity are much more powerful than our genetic coding or hormonal make-up. They are visible, alive and immediate.They carry a clear message:‘If I can do it, then so can you.’ Unfortunately, many men have yet to grasp the implications of all this. Democratic love cannot work for those men who have an understanding of women that is rooted in the Victorian, or Elizabethan, age. If we can put aside simplistic ideas about biology being destiny, then we can better come to terms with the enormous changes afoot in this new millennium.These changes 18


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Introduction will be challenging, not least because they offer us much less certainty about our roles,while requiring us to be more willing to discard out-dated stereotypes. Remember, we hang on to stereotypes because they are simplistic and therefore comforting, not because they are insightful.Yet the rewards will be enormous if men, as well as women, can move forward in their thinking and become more enlightened about their gender identity. What we have here is a real opportunity for what I term democratic love, with both partners sharing every aspect of their union, openly, frankly and sensitively, but importantly, retaining their unique individuality. Many couples are already doing this, and very successfully, though I recognise that they may well yet be a minority. As Hazel, a 42-year-old divorced single parent and occupational therapist, wryly notes: Like most women I’m looking for someone I can be equal with and ditto.That’s the difficult bit. But despite it being a challenge, women like Hazel will not, indeed cannot, settle for anything less than democratic love.Their self-dignity and intelligence won’t allow it. For they understand what being equal in a relationship really entails. It means both parties being at the core of the relationship, neither one occupying central place to the exclusion of the other.It means both parties being skilled at emotional literacy, able to feel and express their emotions, fears and desires in a sensitive, but structured manner. It means thinking before acting, learning from past mistakes, listening as well as talking, and not assuming that the other person is always wrong – or right.But perhaps most importantly, democratic love means respecting our partner’s right 19


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Men,Women, Love and Romance to have their own special life journey, one not determined or inevitably centred around us.

Summary The dawning of the twenty-first century has seen a new gender game emerge, and women are leading it.They are asking more of themselves and of their relationships.They are more likely to subject their relationships to scrutiny than their mothers or grandmothers.They are less tolerant of second-best relationships, and of abusive and emotionally damaging relationships. In this bedroom revolution, women are increasingly aware of the opportunities to experiment and construct new sexual contracts. They are more demanding both of themselves and their partners, not least because life is now seen as a very special journey and only likely to come around once. For both women and men, serial sexual relationships are no longer taboo but seen as part and parcel of one’s individual life journey.We are living healthier and for longer, our sex lives no longer automatically going into limbo once we reach a certain age. And if our libido does flag then we haveViagra,that blue pill of pleasure,to get us back up again. Yet both women and men still yearn for true love, relationships which are pure and lasting.And central to love is romance, that feeling of being special and unique to another person. Despite the transformations wrought by the bedroom revolution, romance remains the oxygen of love. But traditional romance works best with traditional gender roles, and they’re disappearing fast. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with many choices but fewer 20


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Introduction rules. It leaves us playing a gender game no longer controlled by men. It means men having to change and adapt – or retreat. For those couples that play this game well, the reward will be democratic love, with no one party playing second fiddle to the other, and with a solid relationship from which to weather the storms of change. For those men who don’t understand this new game – or choose to ignore it – they’ll quickly get sidelined, picked up, put down, discarded by increasingly choosy women. Or, if they are really lucky, a woman will come along who feels sorry for them and decides to take them on, regardless of the baggage they are carrying. A woman, maybe, like TV personality, Melinda Messenger: I have no problem with British men. There is something endearing about desperation and hopelessness.

7 love questions To find out if you are a Democratic Lover, enlightened and adventurous and part of the new gender game, here are seven questions to ask yourself (and your loved one): 1. Do I see myself as central to the relationship or do I put my partner’s needs first? 2. When we have a disagreement, can my lover and I reach an amicable conclusion or does one of us always feel silenced by the other? 3. Have I retained my individuality in the relationship, or have I lost it? 4. Would my lover support me if I wanted to go off in a 21


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Men,Women, Love and Romance completely different direction with my life? Would I support my lover if their life journey took them on a new, unfamiliar, route? 5. Do I constantly judge my lover? 6. Have my lover and I come to a joint, negotiated decision about how we share work roles around housework, childcare, and bringing income into the household? 7. Is my lover my best friend? How did you score? 1. To be a democratic lover you should not see yourself central to the relationship, but then, neither should you put your partner’s needs first, at least not all the time. There are three parties to every relationship – you, your partner and the relationship itself. Remember, the relationship exists only because, and so long as, the two of you are lovers.Therefore it is unique in its own right, with an energy and character all of its own. 2. Democracy thrives on discussion, not on silence, so don’t be afraid of disagreements with your lover. However, disagreements must be settled and if either partner feels silenced by the other then democratic love is not happening. 3. Lovers can suffer the experience of being emotionally crushed and stifled in relationships, especially if one partner is oppressive of the other. When this happens we lose a sense of our individuality. Retaining individuality is the key to democratic love for it is through this that we flourish and mature, and therefore our capacity to love and be loved flourishes too. 4. This is a key question for all lovers in the new millen22


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Introduction nium, especially women. The life choices open to women are increasing and many are pursuing them in ways that men always have done.This can put a strain on relationships which appear democratic on the surface, but in reality are still rooted in traditional notions around gender roles. Sometimes, it might be necessary for the relationship to die in order for the individual to pursue their life journey. But such a break up can often be avoided if both parties are truly honest with each other about their feelings and expectations. After all, life journeys are better shared. If you feel your lover would not support you if your life journey took you to new horizons, then that suggests there may be a democratic deficit in your relationship. 5. It is very easy to fall into the habit of judging others. Indeed, it’s something most of us do at some time, in one form or another. However, to constantly subject your lover to judgements about their behaviour and actions is to claim superiority over them. It is to suggest that your moral or intellectual position is above theirs, and that cannot be a good basis for a democratic relationship. Rather than judge, try to understand why they acted in the way they did.Talk, listen, reflect.This way you’ll learn more about them – and yourself. 6. Twenty-first century lives are busy lives, especially for couples juggling domestic, work and childcare responsibilities. If one partner is doing most of the juggling then that is not democratic love.The issue of roles and responsibilities in a relationship should be agreed on at the outset. But remember, such duties should always be open to democratic renegotiation. 7. Friendships tend to last longer than relationships, not 23


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Men,Women, Love and Romance least because they are less effort and more likely to be democratic. The emotional and physical commitment in a friendship is usually much less than in a relationship. But democratic love does need a basis of friendship to really flourish, for friendship can see you through the tricky times and those periods when companionship is more important than, for example, sexual relations.We should see our lovers as our best friends, not just as sexual objects or means to security and a comfortable lifestyle.

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chapte r 1


While I was doing the research for this book, interviewing women of all ages and backgrounds, one theme recurred in virtually every interview. It was about men’s maturity or, more precisely, their lack of it. I lost count of the number of women who complained that ‘men never grow up, they stay little boys all their lives’. One woman said to me:‘I like to have a man around now and again but not permanently. I’ve already got children.’ It was as if these women were despairing of finding emotionally sorted men who didn’t retreat into denial when faced with difficulties in a relationship, men who could contribute to the emotional and physical labour of a relationship. Not surprisingly, as a man, there were times when I found these comments hard to take. Nevertheless, when I looked around me and reflected on how I’d sometimes been in relationships, when I went back to the research I’d done on men and masculinities and when I heard the stories of these women, then I knew they were only too right in what they said. In general terms, these women were being cuttingly accurate in their appraisal of the state of many men. Recognising this, I accept that some women reading this book will think to themselves: ‘Where are the men worth getting on the romantic roller-coaster with?’ 25


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Men,Women, Love and Romance However, although this is a pertinent question, I also know that not all men are emotionally stunted and locked in patterns of denial. I know that men can change for the better. I know of many couples in long-term relationships who are not only clearly in love, but have the maturity, experience and capacity, as a couple, to live their lives in democratic love and friendship, and are doing so. Most men are in their late thirties before they really grow up. Many others stay teenagers all their lives. Yet despite the profound consequences of the bedroom revolution for many men, women are not engaged in a battle with them. Most heterosexual women see men as central to their lives – although not necessarily essential. They know only too well that men have the capacity to bring them either joy or anguish, pleasure or pain. Most heterosexual women yearn for a loving relationship with one man, a democratic love that will survive whatever problems they may face as a couple;a lifetime love,bringing with it fulfilment and contentment. But it is not easy. Despite not wanting conflict, relationships too often come to resemble a battlefield, with man on one side and woman on the other. Democratic love won’t necessarily remove conflict. What it will do is allow relationships to develop based on equality not inequality, thus removing one of the fundamental flaws in the old gender game. However, for this to happen men have to change for democracy only works if all parties sign up to it.So although women may be leading the bedroom revolution, men are central to its very success.Yet how many men are aware of what their partner now expects from a relationship? How many are prepared 26


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Men at the Millennium for the give and take of democratic love? In order to answer these questions we need to look at men, and their masculinities, more closely.We need to ask:‘what is a man?’ There is a popular assumption that men and women are fundamentally different, even to the extent that they talk a different language. But is this really so, or is it that many men don’t want to hear what women have to say? Are men really from a ‘different planet’ to women? Of course they’re not, it’s just that each of us experiences Earth a little differently. We are all unique, and it is that uniqueness which makes us special. After all, is it not that special something that we fall in love with? Romance thrives on difference for in our love we see someone who is beyond compare. But that is not to say that many men do not exhibit similar patterns of behaviour.If we look closely,but put away stereotypes, we can see some of the primary ways in which men relate to the world – and to love and romance. In explaining why traditional ways of being a man are so incompatible with democratic love, this chapter will explore the different ways men do relationships and romance. Perhaps you will recognise yourself, or your partner, here.

What are traditional and twenty-first century masculinities? One of the most powerful gender myths is the idea of a single, unchanging femininity or masculinity. Research by sociologists and psychologists reveals how our identity is fluid and changing, not fixed from birth. Once we 27


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Men,Women, Love and Romance recognise this then we can no longer talk of masculinity as being the same thing for all men. Masculinity is multiple and contrasting.And while masculinity is the name we give to men’s behaviour it is not rooted in biology but in culture and social experience. We are the sum of our life experiences, not the sum of our DNA. Men are not genetically programmed to wear suits and ties any more than women are genetically programmed to wear high-heeled shoes. Men are not genetically programmed to hate ironing, any more than women are genetically programmed to enjoy it. Men are not genetically programmed to be unfaithful. Women are not genetically programmed to love, honour and obey. Men are not genetically programmed to rape. Women are not genetically programmed to submit.To believe otherwise is to be trapped in dated ways of thinking.We have to move on from believing our identities are simply products of our genes. Importantly, we have to take responsibility for the way we are in relationships. It is precisely because masculinity is not rooted in nature that makes it so interesting – and potentially dangerous. So the good news is that our gender is not our destiny.Who we are at 20 is not who we will be at 40.At no stage are our life patterns predictable or set in stone.We change, and our sense of gender and sexuality also changes. But there is a danger to masculinity, and that is the assumption of superiority which has historically come with it. 28


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Men at the Millennium To be a man, especially in traditional societies, is to be considered superior to women. Being male in most countries continues to carry a life advantage in terms of wealth, educational opportunity, career advancement, lifetime earnings and, as a consequence, a sense of power and potency. Of course, not all men benefit in quite the same way, but all men do benefit from their association with the category man/male. So we can understand why men want to appear masculine – there is an advantage to them in doing so.And because our identities are not assumed in nature we have to develop them in our social and cultural settings.This alerts us to the added benefit to appearing masculine for men – it gives them a sense of identity as members of the male species. It enables them to join an enormous club, entry into which is beholden on, first, having a penis, and, second, demonstrating appropriate masculine behaviour. Males are not born men, they have to learn what it means to be a man in the culture they are born into. A key aspect of traditional masculinity concerns control. For centuries men have been expected to master their environments. Consequently, many men will confront when that control is threatened, and resist attempts to explore any self-weakness.This desire to control seeps into every aspect of men’s lives, both at work and home, but it is particularly insidious when applied to relationships. For control implies power over others – and self. Men’s ability to control situations, events, circumstances, people, self, environment, remains central to traditional notions of 29


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Men,Women, Love and Romance masculinity. Men are supposed to be rational, reasoned, unemotional,distant.This idea has a long history,but is particularly apparent in the notion of man as architect and overseer of his environment, whether at work or home. Certainly, for most men the ability to control everyday situations is very limited, but nevertheless, few men will admit to not being in control, to not being masters of their particular world.This appears to them as weakness. It does not indicate masculine power. And if masculinity is about anything, it is about power over one’s environment, one’s self and others. Not surprisingly, as will be discussed below, traditional notions of masculinity do not sit easy with notions of romantic intimacy. Another important element of traditional masculinity concerns man as provider. Despite the fact that the male breadwinner family is becoming extinct in the West, many people, women and men, still buy into the idea that men are genetically programmed to be the hunter, the provider, the protector of family. Indeed, it is the very absence of opportunities for most men to be sole breadwinners in the twenty-first century that leads some to conclude that this is one of the main reasons for a crisis in masculinity.This idea would hold up if there was not the overwhelming evidence to show that men can very easily live in dual earner families or indeed in families where the woman is the main or only breadwinner.Men do not suddenly become depressed if they are not the major breadwinner. Some men might, but that is not because the condition flies in the face of their biology,it is because they have failed to move on as individuals.They have failed to change as the world around them has changed. One thing we do know from biology is that failure to adapt to one’s environment is a deadly mistake for any species. 30


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Men at the Millennium Men who cannot play the new gender game, who cannot adapt to democratic love, are in danger of becoming evolutionary jetsam – the dodos of the new millennium. However, it would be altogether too simplistic to suggest that traditional masculinity is always a bad thing, or is, indeed, rejected by women. Far from it.We can see traditional masculinity alive and well in the character of James Bond, whether played by Sean Connery, Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan. Even in his late sixties, Connery projects an image of the unbending, strong, virile yet sensual man. He appears as a man in control of self, confident, sophisticated, at ease in any social or physical situation. The masculine imagery which Bond/Connery emits is highly traditional yet packaged in a very modern way. And many women find it sexually attractive, not least because it appears both compelling and dangerous, and, as singer Alanis Morissette admits: Women, occasionally, despite themselves, are drawn to the frisson of dangerous men. We can see a similar, younger, version of Bond’s traditional masculinity in the actor Tom Cruise, with his masculine image perhaps best personified in the Mission Impossible films.Always in control, always one step ahead, very physical, Cruise’s character in Mission Impossible works hard to embody a potent, heterosexual masculinity. It is not surprising that Cruise takes great exception to any allusion to gayness in his character. More radical examples of traditional masculinity are apparent in hardcore rappers such as 31


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Ice Cube,actors such asVinnie Jones and footballers such as Roy Keane. For such men in real life, their embodiment as males is central to who they are as individuals.They present themselves as tough, strong, highly competitive, even aggressive. Their relationships with women may well be informed by a simplistic Madonna–Whore syndrome where women are positioned in stereotypical good and bad roles. Despite its appeal to many men, this form of masculinity remains, foremost, an uncompromising, rigidly limited way of being a man. Traditional masculinity should not be seen as the only masculinity available to men, nor as the only way in which men are likely to behave. An individual’s behaviour is a complex mix of patterns. But, for many men, traditional masculine ideas remain highly compulsive. Most men have some masculine model in their heads.They may not follow it obsessively, but they do carry it around with them as a marker, a sort of code by which they understand what a ‘proper man’ is and does. Apart from being a model, this masculine marker can also be heavy baggage, with many men constantly anxious about whether or not they actually measure up to what they perceive to be some ideal form of masculinity,whether typified by a muscular body,success in business, success with women or just a fast, flashy car. However, one of the benefits of the bedroom revolution is that it has made it okay for men not to act out laddish behaviour, even though it still remains fashionable, if not compulsory, for many men to behave like this when in allmale groups. Consequently, while traditional masculinity is probably still the dominant masculine model in most societies, we are seeing shifts away from this,especially in the West.There 32


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Men at the Millennium are signs of change in men; the messages from women are getting through to them. More men do not put their own sexual pleasure before that of their partner. More men are househusbands, more men are involved in childcare, more men recognise that they are equal to women, not better, not worse, just equal. It is the rare man who considers it somehow reflects badly on him if his wife works, or if she earns more than him – as many do. The old-fashioned patriarchal male, the man who considers himself head of the household, rooster in his farmyard, is fast becoming an anachronism – the exception rather than the rule. As new research into men and masculinity, undertaken by the communications agency, Publicis, shows: Increasing numbers of younger men, especially, appear very comfortable with their masculinity and their place in the world.They are happy to be on an equal footing with women. What we are seeing here are the first signs of a new form of masculinity emerging in men – twenty-first century masculinity. It is a way of being a male that does not fear women, does not fear the sexuality of gays or lesbians, does not fear its own emotional depths.It is a state of being that is comfortable with women and their achievements, both in and out of the home. Men who exhibit such attitudes and behaviours do not need women as an adornment, as a jewel to reflect on them.They do not need women in order to protect them, or to adopt a paternalistic attitude towards them.Women are partners, not chattels. It is a masculinity which can still be highly sexual, but not aggressively so. Twenty-first century masculinity continues to signal a 33


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Men,Women, Love and Romance strong physical presence, but it is a masculinity which also has a soft side,sometimes mistakenly interpreted as passivity. An example would be David Beckham, quite an aggressive character on the football field, but also sufficiently comfortable with his sexuality to wear feminine-type clothes and be seen as an active, caring father. Men who display modern twenty-first century masculinity have dismissed the outdated thinking around men which suggested that to be a man you have to be in control of your emotions at all times, you have to be ‘buttoned down’, always strong. Importantly, twenty-first century masculinity is comfortable with intimacy and the display of emotion as love.

Why men are afraid of intimacy If romance is the oxygen of love, then the essence of romance is intimacy, for the romantic moment is first and foremost an intimate engagement. However, true romantic intimacy is not the arid, desperate, functional type so vividly captured in the film Intimacy. It is immersion in another person, often without condition or constraint. True romantic intimacy requires that both parties put aside their preoccupation with self and turn to the other for love, acceptance and approval. And this is one reason why romance is such a turn-on for most women. For romance flies in the face of traditional notions of masculinity. It is about letting go, being in the moment with another person, loving and giving without condition, without fear. In the true romantic moment, women and men are necessarily equals, neither one wishing to overpower or dominate the other. 34


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Men at the Millennium Certainly, traditional notions of romance are, for men, still imbued with dominant ideas of manliness. For example, the notion of a virile man ‘sweeping a woman off her feet’, or the woman in need of a strong man’s protection in the threatening world, the woman waiting for the ‘right man’ to come along as a knight in shining armour.These gendered notions assume a paternalistic approach to women. But the very act of being emotional and intimate, exhibiting feelings for another, acts which are absolutely essential to romantic love, preclude the dominant masculine preoccupation with self, competition, and denial of emotion. Romance is not to be undertaken as an instrumental act. One reason why those men who have placed a lock on their emotions and feelings are not good at romance is that such men have assumed that they always have to be rational, reasoned, and cold and calculating if necessary, that is if they are to exhibit dominant masculine traits.They can do romance, but only if they try really hard. But because it is often undertaken as a conscious effort they inevitably tend to forget the rules, and slip back into ‘traditional mode’. At that point their partners wonder what is going on, and start prompting them to ‘be romantic’ again. But it is often too late by then.The moment is lost. We can only be truly intimate with another when we put aside our preoccupation with self. What is happening in this situation is that such men are afraid of intimacy. They are unsettled by the exposure and threat that comes with allowing oneself to grant control to another. That is the risk of romance, but it is also the frisson which gives romance and love its unforgettable taste.Unfortunately, 35


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Men,Women, Love and Romance from an early age,most males are told not to expose need and weakness, not to cry, not to ‘be soft’.As young men they are told it is okay to desire members of the opposite sex, desire, that is, as sexual conquest. But such desire is not the same thing as letting go, unlocking one’s inner emotions, giving and loving.So we can see that men can have sexual desire and need without ever slipping the anchor of traditional masculinity.As will be discussed below, many men can appear to be romantic, but in fact what they are doing is playing a role, often in a very instrumental fashion. It is no surprise that often the men most attractive to women are those who can also display an easy femininity, while retaining an air of masculine sexual presence.We can see this masculine–feminine ambivalence in past romantic icons such Don Juan, Casanova, Rudolph Valentino and Rock Hudson.In today’s world,it is equally apparent in ‘boy bands’ and teenage pop idols such as Will Young. Whether they are gay (as with Will Young and Rock Hudson) or straight, such men encapsulate a blurring of the gender divide.This is particularly attractive to many women, for it appears safer, less threatening than overt, unmitigated macho behaviour.Those men who have strings of lovers are often anything but traditionally masculine in either appearance or manner.They have something else, an elusive quality which transcends dominant, hard, masculinity, without losing its sexual signals. The ‘Casanovas’ of this world do not hate women, but desire them in a way that transcends sexuality. Many men have never really understood that to love women you have to like them.And to like them you have to be comfortable with femininity, and not see it as something strange, mysterious and to be avoided.As Vicki Woods of the Evening Standard puts it: 36


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Men at the Millennium Men, [like Sam Mendes] who actually like women, who nurture them and cherish them and make them believe they are the only person in the room, are devastating, heart-stopping and almost mandatory. Women can’t resist them. When we are in love we experience an exhilaratingly vivid period in our lives.Yet it can also be a time of deep insecurity and uncertainty. For some, it can be a time of painful, unresolved passion. And yet this is the only way to experience romantic love; not attempting to avoid its consequences but to be engrossed in it fully and without hesitation. For it is precisely this uncertainty, mixed with aching desire and need, which renders it such a compelling, unique experience. If we try to deny the consequences of love, or control the situation, as so many men do, then we inevitably damage both the relationship and limit our capacity for emotional feeling. It is much better just to allow oneself to drift in love. Accept its pleasures, and its pains.To do otherwise is to place a lock on our emotions, and thus on our capacity to love freely and fully. There has to be a letting go in love; being in the moment, being thoughtful but playful, considerate towards the other, but always with an undercurrent of sexuality. It is a unique experience in the human condition, which is one reason why it is so compelling and why we miss it when it is gone.

Why men confront and deny We should not assume from men’s fear of intimacy that they cannot love.They love very deeply.They can love with 37


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Men,Women, Love and Romance a passion and intensity every bit as strong as a woman’s. Men are not incapable of love, of emotional intimacy or of letting go. It is just that many find it hard, and when it does surface they can become embarrassed by it, so to avoid this they often try to suppress it or manage it at a distance. Exhibiting emotion, at least the sort of emotion that comes with intimate relationships, goes against many men’s sense of masculine identity, their learnt manliness. From an early age, men see around them vivid and powerful images of maleness. From distant, work-focused fathers to powerful, irresistible images of Superman and similar media/comic heroes. Even now, in this more enlightened age, countless numbers of boys grow up failing to recognise that gender barriers are coming down. Just ask an eight year old what he wants to be when he grows up. The answer is more likely to be a footballer, fireman, policeman, soldier, than it is to be a nurse, care assistant, beauty therapist, teacher or dancer.The fact is that today’s boys, when adults, are very likely to be working in the education or care professions, for they are the growth industries of the new century. So males are often caught in this trap of needing and desiring to love, but also wishing to deny need for another, caught as many are in this state of mind which strongly suggests to them what men can do, what men are, and what men should expect of themselves. Probably more than any other setting,it is sport that provides the major social arena for men in denial. Sure, the 2002 World Cup was wonderful, exciting and compulsive viewing, but, as the Observer columnist, Barbara Ellen, writes, sport is increasingly becoming a comfort blanket for men and their maleness, a place where ‘lost boys’ can, temporarily, shut out the modern world – and modern woman: 38


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Men at the Millennium For certain kinds of heterosexual men sport remains their single most effective and enduring ‘happy pill’, the only one they’ll ever need … But doesn’t this say something sour and desperate about modern life, and modern man? This conflict within men between wanting to appear heavily masculine and wanting to experience feminine intimacy, can make them very insecure around strongminded, intelligent women. Many men, despite giving out all the signs of being strong and secure, can quickly sexually droop – and get very defensive as a result – when faced with a stronger-minded female.Their traditional masculine posturing is revealed as shallow and inadequate when faced with a woman who is, mentally, always several steps ahead of them. As one of my interviewees, Jane, (a post-doctoral researcher), put it: Many times I’ve found I’ve had to switch my brain off so the bloke can get an erection. What we have here is the inherent flaw in gender. On one hand, we assume it to be a basic piece of who we are, yet on the other, just how we perform and present our gendered selves depends on the social and cultural world in which we are located, and that is a constantly moving entity. Once we recognise this paradox, then we hold the key to why men confront and deny. Research by psychoanalysts has shown that virtually all confrontation and denial stems from a sense of defencelessness, exposure and uncertainty.When faced with your own inadequacies it is often easiest just to deny or confront. Anyone who has experienced intimate sexual relationships 39


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Men,Women, Love and Romance will recognise the pattern. The hurtful things are usually those that are closest to the truth, most telling of who we are. But they can also be the aspects of ourselves we would prefer not to have exposed to light, which tells us that the most critical gaze is invariably our own, not others. It is a rare person who says, when confronted with their own failings, ‘thank you, I needed to know that’. Instead, we deny, get angry and seek to return the favour by pointing out to the other person just what their weaknesses are. Such battles and confrontations are, alas, the stuff of relationships. Surely it is not possible to be in a relationship without, at some stage, experiencing this. For many, this stage can last for years,for others,it may never finish.Yet the hurtful things can, sometimes, be just what we need to reflect, to move on, to positively change. However, for men raised to believe in their ability to master and control, with honed skills of self-management and presentation – men with locked emotions – this moment of being faced with critical questions is highly dangerous and most threatening. For, unlike traditional notions of femininity, traditional ideas of masculinity do not suggest reflection, exposure of self and feelings. So it is easier for such men to attack, rather than face the questions and associated self-analysis; endure long, drawn-out silences rather than talk openly with their loved one of their fears and anxieties. Certainly, many men do face profound questions of self, they go down this path of self-discovery, perhaps motivated by some unresolved inner crisis. There are countless numbers of men in self-help groups, going through precisely this type of exploration, and doing it well, though not necessarily without some pain. But such explorations 40


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Men at the Millennium work precisely because they are anonymous. They are undertaken with others who have also reached this juncture in their life. Or they are done on a one to one with an ‘anonymous other’, such as a counsellor. In these situations all are deemed equal in their inadequacies. No one is more privileged than another.There is safety in this anonymous meeting place of other ‘damaged selves’ or with the ‘professional’ who listens but does not judge. But this is not the case in close, intimate, sexual relationships – just the opposite. For in this meeting place of two lovers there is a long history, one of love, romance, intimacy, deep emotion, but also of expectations not met, of aspirations unresolved and perhaps of broken trust. Such a meeting place of minds is anything but anonymous. For those who know us most intimately are also those who know our weaknesses, our Achilles’ heel. They invariably know us better than we know ourselves for they have studied us at close hand, in countless situations, in our highs and lows.Through their love for us, so have they come to understand us, to see us. They are our other half, our alter ego. As they move on as individuals, increasing numbers of women are moving out. Women who do fall in love with traditionally masculine men should be aware that that which attracts them – apparent inner strength, resolve, determination, instrumentality, control, rationality, management of self – are precisely the characteristics most likely to damage the relationship. Such ways do not sit easily with the emotional roller-coaster that inevitably accompanies love, romance and sexual intimacy. That is why women in such relationships usually end up 41


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Men,Women, Love and Romance doing the emotional labour of the relationship – dealing with their own emotions and feelings, while also ‘protecting’ their partner from his; opting for a quiet life and long silences, rather than the emotion of change. But, as I discuss in the next chapter, in the bedroom revolution increasing numbers of women are forsaking such situations and seeking romance elsewhere. When lovers fight they break the greatest taboo of romance, they break the illusion of perfection. The moments of love are, then, the moments when we are most vulnerable, dangerously exposed.We may not feel it at the time, but in the state of romantic love our lives are being lived out in a slightly unreal world, one where daily activities and concerns are of no account to us as we float several feet off the ground, seeing the world around us in rich colour and fascinating, if surreal, detail. So anything that punctures or intrudes on this state of mind is particularly threatening, especially if it comes from the very focus of our love – our lover. In the moment of confrontation between lovers they let in the ‘real world’. Instead of being preoccupied with each other, immersed in intimacy, they are forced to face the reality of the self and the fact that perfection is unattainable, merely a temporary illusion we must learn to recognise and walk away from. Yet it is precisely in that moment of putting down the expectation of perfection that the possibilities of real romance open up. Such a romance is not based on fantasy, but deep and lasting desire for what is accepted as an imperfect other. 42


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How men do sex, love and romance What follows are descriptions of some of the key ways in which men may approach sex, love and romance. In presenting such a list, I am not suggesting that it is exhaustive of men’s possibilities for intimacy, love and emotion. Far from it. A list that encompassed all men’s emotional– romantic possibilities would be impossible to write.Also, I am not suggesting that men are naturally predisposed to engage in one or another type of approach to romance. Individual men may engage in several of these approaches to romance during the course of their lives – though hopefully coming to see that democratic love is the only way forward for them. What I am saying is that these are the four main ways in which men approach or relate to romance, and that they are closely connected to types of masculinity now apparent at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. Finally, although I am writing this from a heterosexual man’s perspective, I am yet to be convinced that the ways of being romantic detailed below are any less relevant for gay men’s relationships. 1. the traditionalist

All this women’s lib stuff just denies women’s nature. If God hadn’t wanted women to be homekeepers and men to be providers he wouldn’t have made them different. These are biological facts. (Bernard)

The traditionalist can be a man of any age. He could be the laddish young man, wearing the latest designer gear. He could be the middle-aged leathered biker on his ‘mean machine’. He could be the suited businessman. In other 43


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Men,Women, Love and Romance words, it is not necessary to be a member of the older generation to be a male traditionalist. They come in all ages, sizes, classes and ethnic groups. However, unlike the chameleon-like instrumentalist (below), the traditionalist is easier to spot. Most experienced women would only require one brief meeting, or, perhaps, a relaxed evening meal, with the traditionalist to recognise his attitudes towards women. For he sees nothing wrong with his opinions and sees them as the norm, which is why he usually doesn’t attempt to hide them, or not very well. Indeed, he may well wear his views on his sleeve, as a symbol of his ‘independent mind’.The traditionalist takes pride in being just that, conservative, unchanging and masculine in the most obvious, but increasingly dated, way. Having been exposed to his ideas about gender, the woman is able to proceed or not, knowing what she is getting involved with. In short, there are few illusions about the traditionalist. Which is one of their good points: what you see is what you get. Aged 55, Bernard runs his own business, a typical selfmade man. He has been married for thirty years and claims to have always been faithful to his wife. He sees romance as being important for his wife, but less so for him: I have had to work hard all my life. Nothing came easy. I left school at 16 and got married four years later. Jane and I have worked together to build up this business. What can I tell you about romance? I guess I am romantic. I always remember her birthday and our wedding anniversary. Last year we went to Venice for a week. It’s easier now the kids have left home. Jane doesn’t complain. She knows that we have to put the business first. She has

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Men at the Millennium money in her pocket, which she didn’t have when we started out. The days of passion between us have gone, sure, but what we have now is very comfortable. I expect Jane to look after herself, to stay attractive. She does aerobics. We go to a lot of business functions so she gets to show off a bit, her jewellery, that sort of stuff. I do look at other women, all men do, but there is too much at stake. Thirty years is a long time. Men want someone at home, someone who will support them. Romance doesn’t pay the bills.

Many women find the blunt honesty of the male traditionalist quite attractive.When it is mixed with some physical prowess, perhaps a macho attitude, it can appear quite virile, compelling and sexy. Traditionalists are often attracted to the type of women who might be seen as a trophy wife.That is, someone who can assume their place in his strictly gendered world without upsetting his mates – ideally, making his mates somewhat envious of him. However, the traditionalist does not really understand women, he tends to see them as different beings, elusive, mysterious, exotic, talking a different language. He puts them on pedestals, or sees them as underlings – secretaries, cleaners and tarts. Most of his perceptions of women are framed in this simplistic world where women come in two categories – Madonna or Whore. He will invariably seek to marry a woman whom he has first put on a pedestal. Some traditionalists keep their woman there, untouchable, pure, unsullied. Other traditionalists find a masochistic pleasure in exposing what they come to see as the subsequent ‘feet of clay’ of their woman. In other words, they work to demolish whatever pedestal they have constructed for their 45


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Men,Women, Love and Romance woman, being hurt in the process by what they may perceive to be her ‘failings’. Either way, pedestal or not, the real person behind the woman often remains hidden for the traditionalist. He can live his whole life with a woman without ever truly knowing her. In romantic terms, traditional man can fulfil many women’s expectations. He will want to pay for those romantic weekends and meals (which many women may welcome!), and he will remember the flowers and cards (usually).The more well-heeled traditionalist will make it a point of honour to spend lots of money on his romantic attachments. After all, it reflects well on him, the potent, successful male. However, the traditionalist is unlikely to be very imaginative about romance, seeing it as the province of the female, and, thus, outside his ‘natural remit’ as a man. Underneath the traditionalist’s romantic display and macho bravado is a man who is both afraid of romance and the intimacy that comes with it. He is unlikely to be a man in touch with his feelings so don’t expect him to write long, emotional, love letters. His initial exuberance and enthusiasm is likely to slip once the relationship becomes established. In short, romance does not come ‘naturally’ to the traditionalist, he will have to work at it. However,over time,many can be trained to be thoughtful and considerate. A mix of reward and punishment usually works well. But, then, most women know this already, for they have had long experience managing traditionally minded men.They understand that while he sees himself as strong and unbending, which he is on the surface, underneath he is pliable, vulnerable, unsure, even innocent. A further difficulty is that the emotional labour under46


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Men at the Millennium taken by women who have traditional men as lovers inevitably intrudes on the bedroom.You cannot compartmentalise it. What often happens is that the woman ends up having to massage and protect the deep insecurities at the heart of the traditional male. For example, she must never imply poor sexual performance on his part. She must be careful how she makes him consider and recognise her physical needs. She must try to educate him about her body without it appearing to suggest a lack of skill. Few of these men appreciate that sexual technique is not something we are born with, we have to learn it.And, like all other skills, the more we practise, the better we get. Also, there will be times when we are not so skilled, when our technique fails us. We may be tired, emotionally upset, physically exhausted.What is more, both women and men have sexual cycles, times of the month or year when they are more sexually aroused than others. But perhaps the most important aspect of good sex is the ability to be able to communicate and respond to each other’s needs, to listen and learn, and to accept that each of our partners is different. All this needs explaining to the traditional male. He has to learn to stop seeing his sexuality as an arena of performance, a place where he must measure up every time he makes love. He must also learn that sexual experimentation, especially with a loving partner, is absolutely essential if one is to sustain a long-term relationship. In short, sex is just like intimacy, love, and romance – it works best with the traditional man when he has a patient, considerate partner. Someone who recognises his inner weaknesses and vulnerabilities and helps him move on from this state to achieve some deep and lasting confidence, 47


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Men,Women, Love and Romance but without him becoming aware that this is what is happening. So as long as the woman is prepared to put in this effort and engage in the romantic moments as a traditional female stereotype, then few problems will arise with the male traditionalist. Indeed, when both parties are traditionalist, then it makes for a much easier relationship all round. However in the new gender game, more and more new women are finding that they are uncomfortable with traditional gender roles; traditional roles and democratic love don’t mix. In which case, it is likely that traditional men will increasingly be sleeping alone.

2 . the confused male Just what do women want from men these days? It seems as if nothing we do is right. All the rules have changed.Women have it all now. It’s a difficult time to be a man, not knowing whether to be courteous and risk being considered old-fashioned, or to treat women like men. (Trevor) When I was a teenager you knew what women wanted, what they expected from a man. I got married with those expectations quite clear in my mind. Now I am not so sure any more.You’re expected to be a modern man, a new man, but it just feels like pressure to change. It can feel very stressful at times. (Jack) I don’t think women are happy today.They seem the ones who are confused. On one hand they want a steady relationship, yet on the other they appear to want the sexual freedom that men have always enjoyed.Where this leaves men I just don’t know. (Peter)

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Men at the Millennium Most of us, men and women, prefer stability in our lives, not constant change. In this respect one can have a lot of sympathy with those men who are finding difficulty in adjusting to women’s changing expectations and modern notions of masculinity. The bedroom revolution has not gone unnoticed by men, and many are trying to change and adjust.The problem is that there are no clear signposts for them, no clear open avenues to follow. Each man has to find his own way through what seems like a gender maze, sometimes with a partner to aid him, often without. As anyone who has been in a maze will know, there invariably comes a moment of total disorientation, quickly followed by panic – a moment when what you thought was a wellplanned approach turns out to be a dead end.You have to start again, but this time fearful of slipping into total confusion, lost forever.Trapped in this state in the gender maze, you strongly sense that the world is moving on and you are slowly being left behind. Part of you desperately wants to move out of the shadows and into this new world, but part of you tries to hold on to those traditional values and ideas you grew up with.Which way to go? Which path to take? When you think you have the answer it turns out to be going nowhere,so which way now? That is what it is like to be a confused male in the twenty-first century.You know there is a way out of this maze, but progress seems ever so slow. The confused male may be from any background. So while we cannot always visibly identify such men, they are marked by deep insecurities, lack of confidence in their emotional resources, and with an unnerving ability to misread emotional signals, especially those from their partners. However, they are invariably intelligent men, 49


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Men,Women, Love and Romance thoughtful and sensitive.They recognise that women have changed and that it is now their turn.They are just not sure how to go about it. They need guidance. Of course, few would ever admit this – that would be altogether too threatening. But these men are brave in a way, for they are trying to understand about democratic love, how to play this new gender game, but without the help of other men. They are very alone.There are few clubs for these men to join, places where they can come together with other confused males to work through their particular angst. And anyway, rather than admit to other men that they may be confused, it is much easier to opt for the weekly football match or baseball game where, for a blissful few hours, they can put all these strange transformations behind them, and join other men in a very public celebration of oldfashioned masculinity in action. Trevor is a senior manager in the NHS. He is in his late forties, and has been married for over 20 years. He is an intelligent, reflective man who yearns for romance in his life. He is just not sure how to get it: My marriage is like everyone else’s.You know, the passion goes after a while. I spend a lot of time at work, meetings and so on. There is a lot of pressure, but I enjoy it, and Margaret does her own thing. Since the kids went to university we’ve started to have the occasional separate holiday. Maybe Margaret sees someone while she’s away, I don’t know.Actually, I don’t want to know. But romance is still very important to me. I think about it, and what it would be like to be in love like that, like I was once. I miss not having it in my life. Sometimes I’ve paid for escorts, you know,for the sex,but also the companionship.I know

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Men at the Millennium this is just functional, but there was one who I really got close to.We went out for meals,not just the sex.It felt very romantic, we talked and talked.We definitely connected. If I hadn’t been married, maybe something could have come of it. I respect women, though I don’t always understand them. Margaret and I are still okay together, but there is nothing between us,romantically.There was once, but we drifted, like most couples. Maybe one day it [romance] will come back into my life. I’m not sure how!

You might not expect a man so caught between conflicting ways of relating to women to be a good lover,to be sexually confident in bed. But this is not necessarily the case. The confused male is often less confused in bed than out of it. One of the reasons for this is because our brain is our largest sexual organ; we acquire our stimuli from the world around us – smell, vision, hearing and touch. The more sensitive we are to the world we inhabit, so the more likely that we will be sensitive to those nearest and dearest to us – our lovers. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. But when the confused male is caught up in love, then expect him to be attuned to the needs and desires of his lover. He is a man trying to gain purchase on some quite major personal and social transformations, and those moments in bed, or wherever, can be just the time when he can be simultaneously dominantly masculine while also sensitive, yielding and exposed.The mix of these two, contrasting, elements in his life can make for extreme erotic encounters. For in the union of sexual intercourse so the divides of our gender become blurred, our senses heighten beyond stereotypes of behaviour to transport us to a land of sensual pleasure and abandonment. 51


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Jack is a policeman. He is in his early fifties and is contemplating retirement.He is in his second marriage and has three grown-up children. Jack has seen many changes in gender relationships over the past three decades but finds some of these shifts rather bewildering and disconcerting: When I first went into the police force, nearly 30 years ago, most of the women were working in administration, you know secretaries, back-up staff.There were few actually on the beat, or as detectives. Now we have women at the most senior levels in the force.This is a good thing. I’m all for women having a career. But there are times it seems to be going too far the other way. By that I mean we men seem to be the ones who are discriminated against. In the police we are constantly being bombarded with new equal opportunities initiatives and I have to say it does seem like political correctness gone mad. My own career has been very challenging and highly stressful,and I couldn’t have done it without having my wife at home supporting me. Now women want to be earning as much as men, and trying to bring up kids.They can’t have it all. Something has to give.

The confused male may have problems, but he is capable of deep love,particularly towards a partner who he feels understands him, and is able and willing to support him, even mother him a little.Intelligent enough to know that misogynistic attitudes are increasingly off-putting for a lot of women, but not confident enough to explore other ways of being a man, the confused male hovers in some middle space,desperately trying to learn the rules of this new gender game.This man is not a womaniser, he would be very loyal 52


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Men at the Millennium and true, not least for fear of the consequences if he wasn’t. He might flirt,but it doesn’t feel right for him,he’s just practising a form of masculinity which he thinks is expected of him. What he really wants is stability, certainty, direction – and love. If none of this is forthcoming, the confused male can easily slip into victim mode, especially when a relationship breaks up. He often lacks the inner resources to move on,a factor so essential in dealing with the grief invoked by a lost relationship. Instead, he can slide into almost pathological despair, angry at women, confused by what he sees as mixed messages from them about sex and gender, and frustrated at his own inability to work his way out of the maze. Secretly, he hankers for the old gender game, when things were much simpler, clearer and less confusing. Peter is computer programmer. He is in his late thirties and is divorced. He has a ten-year-old son who he sees every other weekend, and a girlfriend. Up until my divorce I used to support women’s lib. Now I’m not so sure.The divorce was very traumatic and I felt I got the worst of the deal, what with only having limited access to my son and having to pay maintenance to my ex-wife. The courts are definitely biased against men. Now I am much more wary of getting into a serious relationship with a woman. My girlfriend and I have a good relationship, but I won’t be asking her to marry me. I don’t think I am confused as a man, but I do admit to being a little angry at women sometimes. I even feel harassed by the expectations and demands of women today.We hear so much about their needs, their problems, but not so much about how difficult it is to be a male. Look at what’s happening in the schools, with boys

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Men,Women, Love and Romance underachieving.There has to be a reason for this. I’ve discussed this with my girlfriend, explaining to her that men today don’t have the certainties enjoyed by their fathers and grandfathers. She’s much more optimistic for the future than I am. But then she would be.

Despite the emotional difficulties that surround him, the confused male does romance very well, at least in the beginning of a relationship. He is in his element at this stage in the romantic game, for this is a time when it is okay for him to act manly, to play out some dominant masculine role. Both partners value and expect it. He can buy the meals, buy the flowers, but also allow his tenderness and sensitivity to come to the fore, both in words and deeds. He can be attentive, and at times a little macho. He is a genuinely considerate man, and that in itself is a particularly attractive quality.And these characteristics fit well into the early stages of a relationship, that time when we pay most attention to how we present ourselves, both in language and dress.We care because we are unsure of the other, of ourselves. So we work that bit harder.The rewards for this are usually great: great sex, great passion, great love, but also great illusion.As we tiptoe around the other person’s feelings, we still don’t really know them, or them us. But that is fine, for there is the unstated knowledge that we are in the early stages of the game of love, and it is going to take time. The confused male is less confused during this stage of love, for he is clear about what is expected of him romantically. And because romantic engagements and moves have traditionally relied on a strict division of gender roles, the confused male gets to be the man he thinks he is, the man he thinks his partner wants. 54


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Men at the Millennium Bliss. So long as nothing changes. But it always does. And in relationships what changes most often is that which we are attracted to becomes that which we find most difficult to live with. What the confused male wants is the security and certainty of long-term love and commitment – with the woman he married. But the woman he married does not stay static for ever. She moves on, and in the past decades lots and lots of women have been striding out for themselves in terms of education, employment and sexuality. In the process, they have been leaving behind a lot of bewildered men.

3. the seductive instrumentalist Love and romance is the ‘great game’. Some get good at it, some never learn the rules. (Andrew)

There is a type of male who has obviously noticed that increasing numbers of women are ‘up for it’, but they use this knowledge to their own ends. For such men the dominant message of masculinity is ‘never let your guard down’, always keep one eye on the main chance and never emotionally expose yourself to others. Such men adopt an instrumental, often competitive, approach to relationships of all types. Rather than just enjoy the process of the relationship they are constantly looking for the payoff. It is not within the remit of this book to suggest why certain men are like this, beyond that is the powerful messages contained in dominant notions of manliness. It is worth being aware that quite often it may not so much be sex or material gain that is being pursued here, but love.The seductive instrumentalist may well want to be loved, but cannot return such love with the unmitigated 55


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Men,Women, Love and Romance commitment it demands. Their instrumental engagement with love is rooted in a deep fear of intimacy.They live in a world of control, rationality, checks and balances – a place where nothing gets done without a reason. As this book reveals, a lot of men do not take such an instrumental approach to relationships. Not all men constantly police their movements, their words and their feelings. Not all men consciously embark on a strategy of pursuit when faced with the affections of another. Not all men fear or avoid emotional exposure and intimacy. However, enough do to make the seductive instrumentalist a common character in romantic relationships. One such character is Andrew, a 41-year-old solicitor. Married, with one young child, Andrew admits to having had numerous affairs, most of which have been brief and functional. His view of romance is equally succinct: The thing is,I understand women.I know that the modern woman is looking for it [sex] just as much as I am. Of course, they won’t admit it, but women are like that.They want the romantic bit, but really what they want is good sex.And I am good at sex.You can tell with women.They give off signals, it’s in their face, the way they approach you. Once I get the message then I start to pursue them. It doesn’t always work, but that’s part of it, the chase, if you like.Romance is just the name we give to the pursuit of sex. I guess it started after our daughter was born. My wife went off sex and I have always been randy. In this job you come across lots of women, but I stay off the secretaries, they talk too much.You have to learn to say ‘I love you’ as if you mean it.Women always want that. Sometimes I do mean it when I say it, but then I get bored.

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Men at the Millennium Andrew’s instrumental approach to romance is the very antipathy of love and anything but romantic. The seductive instrumentalist presents a predatory pursuit of the other using the cover of romantic love as camouflage.The aim is to achieve yet another sexual conquest, or to have yet another person fall in love with him. He will be well versed at demonstrating romantic love – flowers, letters, weekends in Paris, remembering anniversaries, treating the other person as special and unique. He will be skilled at giving the appearance of feeling to his actions and behaviour and thus can be highly seductive, dangerously so – for the ‘victim’ of his attentions may not see the sting until it is too late. The instrumentalist is also a chameleon, in that he will blend in to whatever surroundings his love pursuit demands. For example, he could be the public school gentleman,the academic,the poet,the banker,the politician.In fact, at some point in time he is likely to be all of these, for he is especially skilled at adopting different personas – enhancing different sides of his personality in order to seduce women. His real skill, then, is in not revealing himself to anyone. The instrumentalist is likely to be comfortable with new technology. He will demonstrate some knowledge of most forms of communication, understanding only too well that the mobile phone and email are both essential tools in the armoury of the ‘cheating heart’. So, having achieved their aim of sexual conquest, just what type of sex will the seductive instrumentalist be good at? First, it is important to recognise that the process, the chase, seeing the strategy succeed is for them of equal if not more importance than sex itself.These men may be 57


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Men,Women, Love and Romance somewhat addicted to sex, to chasing sex, but that does not necessarily make them good lovers. To be a good lover a man must not put his own needs first. Instead, he must appreciate how his needs are irrevocably connected to the enjoyment experienced by his lover. He must relish pleasing his lover, devoting time and attention to her physical and emotional needs and taking time to enjoy intimate moments without hindrance and without concern over his sexual performance. Only this way can good sex really be achieved.The problem is,however,that despite his apparent success with women the seductive instrumentalist has never really found himself comfortable with femininity and with the earthy sexuality that women can exude. He desires it because he sees it as a challenge, a way of feeling good about himself as a man. But when faced with it, he often crumbles, becomes unsure.That is why the seductive instrumentalist so often disappoints in bed, although you can expect him to be well versed in the techniques and mechanics of sex, for he will have had plenty of practice. So enjoy it at this level – orgasms to order, not orgasms of exultant passion. In short, the instrumentalist is first and foremost a smooth seducer. However, this in itself may not inevitably be of concern to the person they are pursuing. Indeed, that person may enjoy being pursued, while being well aware that their pursuer has other, more basic, agendas.Also, many women are well able to handle this type of man, being ‘up for it’ just as much as they are.The danger is in falling in love with such a man.To fall for such a person, a man not only with a lock on his emotions, but who seeks to engineer emotional expression for his own ends, is to risk serious hurt. 58


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4 . the democratic male I don’t see myself as a ‘new man’. I hate that label. I’m no different from many other men. Just because I clean the loos in our house I don’t consider myself a wimp.Who’s bothered, just so long as the job gets done? (James) Yes, things have changed between men and women, but they had to. I don’t see any problem with a woman earning more than me. In fact my present girlfriend earns nearly twice my salary. But what the hell, that’s progress. When I date a woman we very rarely talk about money, but we nearly always end up talking about relationships. It’s much more interesting! (Mike)

There are no ‘new men’ out there.That notion was never more than an interesting but over-simplified tabloid take on the different ways of being a man that became apparent in the 1990s. But we can identify a group of men who have either moved on from traditional masculine values, and understand the meaning of democratic love, or, being of the younger generation, have grown up naturally seeing women as equals, not as an exotically different and strange species. Quite often, such men have mothers who have pursued careers, or sisters who are every bit, if not more, qualified and successful as they are. Importantly, their partners will be comfortable with the bedroom revolution and well able and prepared to voice their needs and desires. Such men can be described as ‘democrats’ in so much as they are comfortable with what women have achieved and feel that none of this threatens their sense of masculinity. For them, this is how gender relationships are in the new millennium: women and men as partners, sexual or 59


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Men,Women, Love and Romance otherwise. It is a given. Theirs is a modern, twenty-first century, masculinity. James is a 34-year-old self-employed architect. He is in a long-term relationship with a writer.They have one child from his partner’s previous relationship: There was never any chance that I would be traditional in my views.You see, my mother had always been keen to promote positive female role models.We weren’t a traditional family, but we were very close. Claire is my best friend as well as my lover.We won’t get married, but we do love each other. Sometimes we just take off for a weekend, maybe Norfolk, or to a European capital. I think romance is best when it is spontaneous. Neither of us are workaholics, so we make time for each other.We tend to share housework roles, but I must admit I don’t like cooking, but then Claire hates cleaning the house, which I do.We both work from home a lot, so that helps. I think men are changing, but it is slow going. I used to go down the pub once a week, you know, for the quiz nights. But I’ve stopped doing that now. I just get fed up with the sexist banter that goes on across the bar.

Whether gay or straight,the Democratic Male offers the best hope for positive change in gender relationships. He may well have issues to resolve in his life, particularly concerning work roles,perhaps childcare,and trying to generally achieve a balanced life amid all the demands on his time from loved ones and work responsibilities. But at least he is able to talk about them with some degree of openness and honesty. And in this respect he carries few of the unresolved anxieties of traditional man. The heterosexual Democratic 60


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Men at the Millennium Male is likely to prefer women’s company to men’s, or enjoy it equally with men’s,and will be capable of resolving most of the concealed sexual tensions in respect of his many platonic friendships with women. He can be quite competitive, focused on work and material success, and quite boyish when it comes to sport and sexual escapades. Do not expect him to be naïve in terms of sexuality and sexual explorations. He is not an innocent. He can be a bit naughty at times.In that respect he is like all men – an often confusing mix of multiple masculinities in action. Where he is different, especially from Confused Man and the Traditionalist, is that he is a man who is emotionally literate, comfortable with exposing his most intimate emotions and thoughts, revealing of himself to others, and who is flexible enough in his attitudes towards sex and romance to be an equal player in the new gender game. Mike is a building surveyor. He is aged 29, single and lives alone. He has had two serious relationships since leaving university and is currently dating a solicitor. If you ask me what is the biggest difference between my generation of males, and that of my father, I reckon I can sum it up in one sentence: I use face and hand cream, my father would die before he would. I know it sounds pretty basic, but I often think how modern males, especially the younger ones, feel about themselves as men, comes down to how comfortable they are doing things that women always have.The rules have changed, there’s no doubt about it.The women I date don’t want to hear you talking about sport all night, they want someone who can relate to them as individuals, not as stereotypes.The biggest change for me probably occurred during my time

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Men,Women, Love and Romance at university.You couldn’t help but see that women students had a different approach to sex and marriage.They are much more confident, outgoing, and realistic about what they want from a relationship. And very frank in expressing their needs! I have as many if not more women friends as men friends, platonic relationships that have no sexual undercurrents. I like my mates, but I am just as comfortable, if not more so, with women.

In terms of actual romance, the Democratic Male can be both traditional and modern. He will assume a sharing of the cost of meals, nights out, holidays and so on. He won’t expect to be the only one to come up with the romantic weekends, being well aware that his partner is equally capable of organising such surprises. But he will buy her flowers, and simple, thoughtful gifts that indicate his deep feelings for her. He will be happy with long conversations, often deep into the night, and lingering intimate moments which may or may not lead to sex. Sex and romance for the Democratic Male is more spontaneous than for traditional men. There are no set rules for him and his partner to follow; they work it through for themselves, doing what feels right for them, when it feels right for them.They are comfortable with the bedroom revolution. They are not fighting change.They are the change.

Where are men going now? It is clear from the above account of men and masculinities that we are at a fascinating, if not unique moment in gender relationships.We are in the midst of a new gender game and it is uprooting our old ideas about how men – 62


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Men at the Millennium and women – should behave. Like any social revolution some will be more comfortable than others with that of the bedroom, and the democratic love it is ushering in.We can see quite clearly that many men are not responding well to the new expectations of women – it is altogether too threatening to who they think they are as men. Expect such men to go into denial or retreat, all the while complaining loudly that ‘women have it all’. For these men a bleak future looms, a future where they increasingly seek solace in those traditional male pastimes of work, sport and male bonding. But, like the dodo, there can be no retreat from environmental reality. It is either adapt or perish. For other men, those out of the gender maze, it is clear they have comfortably adapted to twenty-first century masculinity. Indeed, they exemplify it. Those men still struggling to understand and come to terms with these changes will eventually have to ask themselves the following questions: 1. Do I have the emotional capacity to change or am I more comfortable being trapped in out-dated ways of being a man? 2. Am I in retreat or denial, feeling confused and threatened by the new-found confidence of sexually aware women? 3. Can I cope with being at the periphery, not at the centre, of a woman’s world? 4. Do I have a gender, and if so what is its name? These questions are fundamental to modern, twenty-first century masculinity, for in asking them of himself each man is recognising he must change and adapt. 63


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Whatever the changes going on between individual women and men, what is certain is that romance between the sexes will continue. Indeed, there is every possibility of it being heightened as a result of having relationships founded on equality and sexual openness. For many men, such personal change will come from waking up to the fact that they have to change or get left behind. However, we should not presume a crisis of masculinity here. Rather, what we have is a disrupting of a particular type of masculinity – traditional masculinity. This masculinity, while still dominant in many relationships, is being questioned and thrown into confusion as a consequence of the bedroom revolution. As more people come to see that democratic love is attainable, then we can expect many more changes around men. We can expect more men to become comfortable expressing their emotional selves to loved ones and others. We can expect more men to engage in intimate relationships for their own sake, not for instrumental gain.We can expect a heightening of the romantic possibilities between women and men, but based on gender equity, not inequity. We can expect many more men to come out of the gender maze, a little shaken, certainly, but generally intact and ready to make their own particular contribution to the new gender game. Here are two sets of questions about men; one for men to answer, and one for their partners to answer. They are designed to give men some insights into their sense of masculinity, and women some points of discussion with their male lovers. In answering them you may well get a sense of how well you are playing the new gender game, how much you are part of the bedroom revolution and how close you 64


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Men at the Millennium are to twenty-first century masculinity – and being a democratic lover!

10 questions on men, for men 1. Which individual men, living or dead, do you most admire, and why? 2. How would you feel if your boss was a woman? If your boss is a woman, how do you feel about this? 3. What is the most romantic thing you have ever done? 4. Does romance turn you on, sexually? 5. Do you share the housework with your partner? 6. If you had a choice to date any woman in the world, for one night only, who would it be? Why that choice? 7. What do and don’t you like about women? 8. What do and don’t you like about men? 9. Which jobs do you think are unsuited for women and why? 10. Which film do you think most captures the mind set of twenty-first century man – Fight Club or Billy Elliot?

10 questions on men, for women 1. Which individual man does your husband/partner/ boyfriend admire most? 2. Would he feel comfortable working for a boss who was female? 3. What is the most romantic thing he has ever done? 4. Who would your husband/boyfriend/partner most like to date if he had the choice of any woman in the world? 5. Given the choice, who would your partner prefer to spend an evening with:Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman? 6. Does your partner expect to be ‘rewarded’ with sex if 65


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Men,Women, Love and Romance he is romantic towards you? 7. Does he see women as equal to men in every respect? 8. Does he share in the housework? 9. Does your partner know you in every way? 10. How would you categorise your man? Is he a Seductive Instrumentalist, a Traditionalist, a Confused Male, or a Democratic Lover?

for both Having answered these questions as best you can, you might now consider discussing them, and what they mean, with your partner. This should not form the basis of any ‘critical engagement’ (ie argument!) but might help you both explore and think about some of the hidden but important intimacies in your relationship. For these intimacies, these ways in which we know and love our partner, hold the clue to both our long-term love prospects and possible future difficulties within the relationship.

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chapte r ii

New Women, Different Women

Women have traditionally been seen as the gender that wants to be romantic, that wants to be wooed. Men, on the other hand, have been seen as the gender that does the wooing, sometimes with aplomb, sometimes clumsily. Woman surrenders to man, eventually. Or in other words, man pursues woman with woman demurring, though not too much to put him off completely. While recognising that women have often been the ones doing the choosing, this not too subtle double act seems to have gone on throughout history. And why not? It worked for our parents, and countless generations before them. But what about us, the men and women of the twenty-first century? How accurate and appropriate are these rules of romance today? In order to answer that question we need to look at the experiences of women in love or seeking sexual and romantic attachments with men. Only this way can we get some sense of the dramatic changes in women’s sense of their sexuality and new-found confidence to play the gender game. But first, we have to find out where these new aspirations of millennium woman came from. We have to find out just what it is that drives the change in ‘New Woman’. 67


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Men,Women, Love and Romance

The dreams of New Woman If you ask many people what the differences are between women’s and men’s experiences of modern life, they will say that men seem confused and women seem on the ascendancy.Yet why do so many people believe this to be so? Why has it become commonplace to suggest that women now have it all and that men are in crisis? If there is one straightforward answer to this complex question it probably concerns choice. Simply put, twenty-first century woman has more choices open to her, many of which impact on areas of life previously assumed to be the sole province of men.Yes it helps if she is educated, middle class and able to earn a decent wage, but, then, this is precisely the position of millions of Western women today. What the bedroom revolution has done is to open up choices for women. It has made it okay for women to exercise personal choice and to aspire to different lifestyles from those experienced by previous generations of women. Whether contained in the pages Cosmopolitan, the lives of female pop stars such as Madonna or the gender studies course at the local university, the message to women has been ‘this is what men have, you can have it too’. As the new millennium dawns, we can see women have taken up this message with enthusiasm.Yes,there are many unresolved issues for women faced with multiple choices in how to live their lives, but in believing they can be financially, sexually and emotionally independent of men, so women have ushered in the greatest, most profound revolution ever. Our dreams come true only if we believe in them. To believe in them we first must believe in ourselves. 68


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New Women, Different Women The first step on this journey of change was for women to believe that things could be better for them than it was for their mothers and grandmothers. It was to challenge the old gender ideas that said women should find a man, marry him, and then spend the remainder of their days looking after his needs and those of her children: be faithful unto death; love, honour and obey.This is the reason why marriage is in decline, indeed why it is one of the first casualties of the new gender game – because increasing numbers of women no longer want it. More precisely, they no longer need it.Women have come to realise that being stuck in a boring, loveless marriage is not for them. As novelist Jeanette Winterson puts it, writing in the Guardian: Marriage isn’t for life any more – life is too long. Marriage is for love. Many women now see marriage not as an aspiration, but as a trap. Rather than walk down the aisle, they hang back, asking themselves: ‘Why promise life-long commitment when I’m not sure what I’ll want, or who I’ll be, in ten or more years’ time?’ Marriage used to give women some status as wives. It offered them a level of security and social position denied them as spinsters or single mothers, and, because up until the late 1970s most families were headed by male breadwinners, wives got an important financial benefit also. But there was precious little freedom for women who signed up to traditional marriage, because marriage was never designed to give women freedom. Marriage has been the most persistent and powerful social institution ever, but it has never been democratic. Any democracy for wives has had to be fought for. 69


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Since the 1970s, women have woken up to the fact that marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be.They’re now deserting it in droves. By 2021 a third of all British couples will be unmarried, with many preferring to be ‘semi-detached couples’ or LATS.These ‘live apart togethers’ are rewriting the script on commitment and togetherness, sharing love but not households. By contrast, marriage is good for men. It always has been. For one thing, married men live longer than single men.Which is not surprising, because most married men get a regular sexual partner, a mother for their children, a full-time homeworker, and someone to nurse them when they need it. Not only do many men get all this from their marriages, they also now have someone who can pay the mortgage. Many women have spotted that marriage is not an arrangement made in heaven, it’s an arrangement invented by men, for men. And women have noticed a further anomaly in marriage – sexual fidelity. The sexual fidelity that comes with monogamous marriage is a male invention – meant to keep women at home, preferably fully occupied with childcare and domestic duties. It is rooted in a past age where women were tied to the house, allowed no power or influence in the public world of men; their sexuality hidden, rendered invisible or unclean by puritanical beliefs – something in need of control. Any power women had came from being the ‘hand that rocked the cradle’. But while marriage effectively kept wives at home, husbands enjoyed the freedom to roam, to stray beyond the confines of the marital bed, to the extent that in many countries the ‘mistress’ has become a social institution in its own right. But the wives didn’t stray, at least not openly. They were trapped by marriage vows, lack of 70


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New Women, Different Women economic freedom, and the guilt that comes with notions of being a ‘good wife and mother’. No, women were not allowed the sexual leeway that men assumed to be their birthright as males. In many countries they still aren’t. New Woman is exercising choice in every area of her life, but especially maternity. She is having fewer children and later, and is increasingly likely to have them outside marriage. One in five women born since 1960 is childless. What we are dealing with here are myths of femininity which, while still powerful, don’t have the same resonance for modern woman as they did for her mother and grandmother. For example, the old idea that women must stay virgins for their husbands-to-be, that is, if they are not to be seen as sluttish, and therefore left on the shelf, seems bizarre today. While getting married at 20 and staying faithful to this one sexual partner for the rest of one’s life is not an option many women are choosing in the modern age. Sexual fidelity as a compelling social code of behaviour is now consigned to the cultural scrap heap.Yes, many, if not most women may well prefer to be in an exclusive, loving relationship with one man. But being in a sexually exclusive relationship is now a lifestyle choice for women – at some points in their lives they’ll want it, and at other times they won’t. Research into changing patterns of sexual behaviour, published in The Lancet in 2001, proves this point about monogamy. It showed that a quarter of all women under 30 first had sexual intercourse when they were under 16. Fifteen per cent of women will have had ten or more 71


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Men,Women, Love and Romance sexual partners by the time they reach 24. For women aged 25–34 the proportion with ten or more partners rises to 23 per cent. Seventy-five per cent of all women have, so far in their lives, had two or more sexual partners. In the 1950s, 60 per cent of women had sex for the first time to the man to whom they were engaged or already married. Today, that figure is only 1 per cent.This is not a generation of women that believes in the purity of virginity. The dreams of New Women are to have the social, sexual and economic freedoms long enjoyed by men, while still retaining their sense of femininity.And this is precisely what many millions of women now have.They have come to realise that it is very sexy to have power, to be able to exercise choice in one’s life about relationships, sexuality and lifestyle. Men have long known the aphrodisiacal quality which comes with having freedom to roam. Now women have tasted it too. Divorce used to be taboo in China. Now nearly 2 million Chinese get divorced every year, a figure that’s rapidly increasing. Like their counterparts in the West, it’s mostly women who are opting for divorce. But there is a price for all this.Nothing comes free.The first dilemma confronting New Woman is that most men are hardly changing at all. Many men are still rooted in the past, unable or unwilling to come out of their masculine comfort zones of work and sport and into this new world. This has left women with some uncomfortable choices. Does she settle for what she knows to be second best in a man, or does she keep hoping for a more enlightened, emotionally mature male to come into her life and love her 72


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New Women, Different Women in a committed relationship, maybe one that will produce children? Second, in being sexually adventurous does she risk losing the chance for a long-term relationship? If she has multiple sexual partners does this mean men will still see her as ‘easy game’ and therefore choose not to pursue her in a romantic, and committed, fashion? What is more, having come to enjoy sexual adventures, does she become a little addicted to the excitement they offer her? As my interviews with women show, they’ve not lost the desire for long-term committed love, but many are now caught between wanting to be treated in a traditionally romantic way by men, and wanting the freedom to pursue their own life journey, not reliant on any man. New Women may be more like their fathers when it comes to pursuing sex, but they’re still their mothers’ daughters when it comes to wanting love and romance. In the following three sections I look at a number of different women, aged from 25 to 63, all of whom were interviewed for this book. Their comments about love, relationships, sex and romance reveal something of women’s changing ambitions and expectations, now apparent not just in Britain but across the world.Although there is a 40 year age gap between the youngest and eldest, these women have one thing in common:They are all part of the twenty-first century bedroom revolution. These women have shaken off many of the gender stereotypes that constrained previous generations of women. They don’t necessarily buy into strict moral or social codes which might inhibit their sexual expression, freedom of choice and pleasure.They still want to appear feminine and 73


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Men,Women, Love and Romance attractive for men, but equally, if not more, important is feeling attractive to themselves.They are confident individuals, engaged in their own life journeys and not totally reliant on any man. Significantly, they are not financially dependent on men. For these women, some of whom have been in traditional relationships in the past and come out of them by choice, there can now only be democratic love. Anything else is temporary and to be dipped in and out of as the fancy takes them – just like men in fact.

Twenties – playing the market Female, feisty and forward – that’s the twenty-something woman of the modern age. The twenties used to be the decade when girls became women, when they took on the responsibilities of life: work, marriage and motherhood. Not any more. Now the twenties are for experimentation and having fun. Young women are more likely to travel the world for a year or so than they are to settle down to marital bliss.They are more likely to be committed to their education and a career than they are to a partner. By the time they get to 30 the majority of women will have had three or more sexual partners. And if they are in a settled relationship the chances are it’s as a LAT (living apart together) or as a cohabitee.Women, and men, are using the twenties to find out about themselves, release their sexuality and discover the world. Most, especially the educated ones, are deferring having children till much later in life, if at all, preferring to enjoy the freedom which comes as a DINKY couple (double income no kids), or as a SINTY (single no ties). 74


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New Women, Different Women The handbag of a twenty-something woman is just as likely to carry a condom as it is lipstick. The advertisers have come to recognise the power of the twenty-something woman. They are the target audience for most women’s magazines where a relentless diet of nocommitment sex is the message. Not surprisingly, sexuality now informs the self-image of those in this age group.Are they having enough sex? Is it good sex? Are they sexy? These questions are poured over and analysed to exhaustion. By the time they reach their late teens, young women must have learnt many of the tricks of sex and romance if they are to compete in this sexual marketplace.They must display a sexual confidence far beyond their years. It is now not possible to walk down a High Street without being hit by the message that sex is out there for young women to partake in and enjoy. Even Marks and Spencer, the archetypal purveyor of pragmatic British lingerie, now markets Agent Provocateur underwear. From late night ‘adult’ films on Channel 5 to the ubiquitous condom machine in the ladies, the message to the twenty-something woman is ‘be sexually available’. But, paradoxically, there is a countermessage – that marriage is still the end-game.The hype and media coverage given to the weddings of Posh and Becks, and Madonna and Guy, suggest that marriage is still the ultimate validation of love and romance for many twentysomething women. Similarly, the British TV soaps rarely let a heterosexual romance continue for long without bringing in the sound of wedding bells. So the media has mixed messages for the twentysomething woman. Be sexually active, even predatory, but don’t forget that what you really want in the end is marriage 75


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Men,Women, Love and Romance to a steady, reliable, loving and hopefully romantic man – a relationship that not only lasts but also produces children. This paradox of being a twenty-something woman is vividly captured in the accounts of two women described below, Dawn and Julie. Each woman reveals how she engages with sex, romantic liaisons, and expectations of love. They also highlight the conflicting desires many women have to be sexy, available and ‘orgasmic’, yet also maternal and traditional.

dawn Dawn is aged 25, a journalist on a regional of newspaper. After finishing university Dawn returned home to live with her parents. Although quite successful in her chosen career, Dawn does not see it as the most important thing in her life. She has many friends of both sexes and enjoys socialising, which for her means visiting clubs, discos and bars in her home city. Since losing her virginity at 14 she has had many boyfriends and lovers, plus ‘lots of sexual encounters’. Her one heavy relationship lasted a year. I asked her about monogamy. My girl friends and I don’t tend to use that word so much. I see it more as loyalty. But then, there’s been many times when I’ve not been faithful to a boyfriend. I can be very loyal, but it depends on how deep the relationship is. I can get bored quite quickly with men.

While at university, Dawn rented a house and advertised for five male flatmates. It was during this period that she was particularly promiscuous. 76


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New Women, Different Women I chose these five blokes very carefully, knowing I wouldn’t even snog any of them. I certainly didn’t have any intention of fucking them. It would have got too complicated. But I did get it on with their mates, and other blokes I met, especially those who came out with us on the piss. My flatmates used to joke about seeing new blokes come down for breakfast.They called them my ‘breakfast pals’. It was a bit of a joke when we went out – like ‘Who’s going to be your breakfast pal tonight?’ But in the end, some of my flatmates got a bit sick of seeing different breakfast pals every morning!

Dawn recognises herself as something of a sexual predator. She admits to pursuing men she fancies, being quite determined to get them into bed if the mood takes her. If she’s out with her work friends and they bring along some new bloke to join them for the night out, they’ll always warn her if he’s taken.Yet despite the sexual urges she undoubtedly feels, and responds to, Dawn does sometimes feel pressures to be in a settled relationship. Sex and love has come in waves for me. I’d be seeing one person, then someone else would get interested and so it went on.They’d all come along at once and I’d not know which one to choose so I’d try them all out, but then it’d get a bit messy. I’ve seen loads of men. I’ve been a bit slaggish at times. But then I’ve thought, Oh God! It’s time to settle down. It was when I was feeling like this that John came along.

John has, so far, been the big love of Dawn’s life. She met him when she was 23 and they were together for a year. It 77


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Men,Women, Love and Romance was during Dawn’s relationship with John that she came closest to marriage. Six months into the affair she nearly asked him to marry her, on 29 February of a leap year, but she didn’t go through with it. ‘I didn’t have the guts,’ she recalled.Although at the time very much in love with her boyfriend, the relationship fizzled out during the next six months. I asked her why. John was getting more and more involved in his work and I guess I felt neglected. I was fed up, sick of it.We weren’t going out. Not only was there no romance in my life, we weren’t having sex very often either. I loved him but wanted more.I was involved at that time in a work project with a group of people. I clicked with someone on the project and that was it. For the final few months of my relationship with John I was having sex on and off with different people. I’m really glad I didn’t ask him to marry me. It seemed a good idea at the time, but my lifestyle was changing. I like to be out and about, with the lads, my blokey mates, talking dirty and whatever. Having a few beers and a laugh. I couldn’t do that with John.

Dawn’s parents have been married for over 30 years and are still together. She sees their relationship as a model for her, but is torn between wanting to be in such a loving, committed and exclusive partnership, and wanting to pursue her own life journey, which inevitably, for her, means having different lovers. She’d like to have children ‘sometime in the next ten years’, and would prefer to be married when she does. But she doesn’t sense any ‘biological clock’ ticking. At least, not yet. I asked what was the appeal of marriage for her. 78


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New Women, Different Women Because I want a big wedding! I want a big party! I want to have the full traditional stuff, be the centre of attention. All that. But it’s also because I want to be loyal like my mum.And marriage is about loyalty.Also,I definitely want to have kids, lots of kids. I’m quite a traditional girl like that. I want to be married when I have children. But if I was married now I know I couldn’t be faithful to one person for the rest of my life. Definitely not. I still feel too young for that sort of commitment. I’d like to have a companion for life. But I’m not sure what kind of partner or husband I’d like.

For Dawn, there are two types of men, the ‘nice boys’, and the ‘bad boys’. She finds both types attractive, but recognises that she is constantly pulled between wanting to fuck the bad boys and wanting to settle down with a nice boy. I go from bad boys to nice boys.When I’ve been a bit slaggish it’s been with the bad boys, you know, the ones you can’t really trust.The bad boys are the ones who are likely to be unfaithful. But they attract me, because you feel like you’ve got to work a bit harder with the bad boy, to keep him. It’s the chase. I like the chase. I like knowing that he’s mine but I have to keep working at it to keep him. But I haven’t met the bad boy that I’d be happy with yet. The nice boys are the ones that dote on you.They’re the ones that like the quiet life. You can trust the nice boys. But I like to be out and about. My ex-boyfriend, John, was a nice boy. He was faithful. He couldn’t be anything but. He did love me. I think the nice boys are a bit predictable. I like the strangers, they’re more of a challenge I guess. Sometimes I think a traditional wedding

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Men,Women, Love and Romance with a nice boy would be ideal, but then I still want to shag about everywhere!

(Dawn has recently embarked on a relationship with a 50 year old, the oldest man she’s ever been out with. She describes him as ‘experienced, mature, romantic – but nicely naughty’.) julie

Julie is aged 28. She is a successful self-employed interior designer and owns her own house. Julie got married at 22, but after two years the marriage ended and she is now divorced. There were no children. Since her early teens she had been very focused on both her education and her career. It wasn’t until she went to university that she had her first sexual relationship, with a man she was to marry. She was 18. It was during her marriage that she came to sense that she was missing out on ‘lots of fun’. My work has always been my life. I’ve had to be so determined to succeed. It’s not been easy. But I’ve always known I wanted to be an interior designer. I seem to have a natural aptitude for it. Paul, my husband, was always very supportive, but maybe I got married too young, though I did love him. I’d never had another lover, only him, and things started to change for me when I got a chance to go abroad to work for a year, after university. He came with me, but it introduced me to a different lifestyle, and different types of men. I came to realise that although I enjoyed what I had, it wasn’t enough. Maybe I was being selfish, or greedy, I don’t know.

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New Women, Different Women After a year abroad, Julie returned to the UK to set up her business. Paul came with her but by this time she’d started to have the occasional fling. At first, she managed to keep them secret,but eventually Paul came to realise that her nights away on business were not always what they seemed. I’d be in a hotel somewhere, on business, and there’d be some bloke I’d meet in the bar. Sometimes it would be completely innocent, but every now and again I’d end up in bed with them.Although I felt guilty, I liked it. It gave me a sense of freedom.I never intended to hurt Paul,I just realised I wasn’t cut out for an exclusive relationship. At least not at my age.

After establishing her new business and getting divorced, Julie chose not to settle down with any one partner, but to ‘play the field’ for a while. She occasionally responds to newspaper personal ads and has dated several men she’s met through that medium. Every so often she meets someone through work who she fancies, and dates him for a while. But she is not looking for a larger commitment from a man. The thing is, I start to feel trapped by it all. I love my home, I’ve got a successful business.Yet part of me wants my freedom, and part of me doesn’t. Given my hectic job, I relish coming home to the peace and quiet of an empty house. But then there’s times when it’s lovely to wake up next to a man in your bed. I just don’t want the whole thing to become expected and routine.

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Men,Women, Love and Romance I asked Julie what attracted her to certain men. She identified criteria that she usually goes through at the beginning or fairly early on in the relationship. I look at a bloke – is he attractive? Is he attractive visually? I’m big on eyes, if he’s looking at me and making eye contact, good thing. If he’s smiling, looks like he’ll have a laugh, that’s good. If he’s a miserable git, just out to pose, then sod off! If he’s wearing nice clothes,that would tell me that he’s in a good job. He has to be intelligent and mature, and I usually end up with blokes about ten years older than me.Attractive isn’t about being good looking, it’s about the way they act. For me, an attractive man is someone who looks a bit naughty. Someone who has that sparkle in their eyes which suggests they like sex.That’s important. Plus a nice sized thing! Size is important to a woman!

Given her sexually adventurous lifestyle, I asked Julie whether she had any regrets about having been married and divorced, by the time she was 25. No, no regrets at all. My family were very traditional and maybe I’d just accepted that marriage was what you did if you met someone you loved.Also, I was too busy studying and getting my career on-line to be bothered about sleeping around. When I think about it, I reckon you’d be pretty sad if you ended your life never having got married. I’m glad I did. I do regret having been unfaithful in my marriage, not because it ended the marriage, but the damage it did to the trust.

And children? 82


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New Women, Different Women That’s not on the cards for me for a while. I have too much to do in my life. I want to build up the business and get financially secure before I think about having children.There’s plenty of time. I look at my friends who’ve got kids and I think, Oh no, I couldn’t cope with that! I know I would if I had to, but not just yet.Whether or not I get married again we’ll have to see. I see no reason why I should. I’d like the father to play a major role in the upbringing of any children but that doesn’t mean being a married couple. I’ve done that, got the t-shirt as they say, why repeat it?

I asked both Dawn and Julie about romance, having it or not having it in their lives. Their responses were very similar. Romance was important when they were embarking on relationships with a man, but not so important if they were just out on the prowl for a sexual encounter.Yet, although each woman could be sexually predatory, they did relish being pursued by a man, receiving cards, love letters, flowers. Dawn recounted how she once burst into tears after receiving flowers at work, sent by John. It had been his way of making up with her after a row.Yet, as she recounted, she went off and had affairs mainly because she felt he was neglecting her:‘In the end, the flowers were not enough. I needed more from him – I needed his attention.’

Thirties – juggling love, children and career For both men and women the gateway to adulthood is not 16, 18 or 21. It’s 35.Before that we’re still discovering who are we are. 83


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Men,Women, Love and Romance By the time they reach their mid-thirties most women are set on distinct paths of career, family and long-term relationships.It is the decade from which to lay foundations for the rest of one’s life, whether it be further study, pursuing a career or being a wife/partner and parent. It can be an exciting and fulfilling decade, a period of both consolidation and personal development.The big questions can no longer be ignored:Who am I? What am I? What do I want from my life? Who will be my soulmate through life? Do I need one? This decade is a time of major decisions and complicated lifestyles, with many women having to juggle conflicting and multiple roles as mother, wife/partner and careerist. For such women, while romantic desire doesn’t disappear altogether, it gets shelved for a while, brought out on special occasions, though rarely to the extent that it interferes with their career, or being a ‘responsible’ wife and mother.Those women not in heavy relationships may well be assessing boyfriends as prospective long-term partners or even possible fathers for a yet to be conceived child. Many single (and married) women will hear no biological clock ticking at all, being quite content to pursue a challenging and rewarding career, or merely an unattached lifestyle. For others, the thirties is a decade of serial monogamy, a stream of relationships, sexual adventures and romantic attachments. For over-stretched mothers of young children, starved of leisure and free-time, any romantic love life is likely to be intermittent and temporary, but no less enjoyable for that. For thirty-something single mothers, their real love is saved, not for the roguish male sexual predator, portrayed by Hugh Grant in About A Boy, but for their children. Copping off is great, but there is 84


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New Women, Different Women nothing as intense, emotional or satisfying for a mother as when her young child cuddles up to her, and whispers in her ear ‘I love you Mummy.’ For women, having a child is like suddenly being plunged into a volcanic eruption. For men, it is more like being caught in a strong wind. One gets permanently changed, the other gets ruffled. Whether married, single, a LAT, careerist or dedicated mother, the thirty-something woman is the living embodiment of the feminist aspiration to ‘have it all’ – financial independence, sexual confidence, family, love and longterm relationships.The choices open to this age group are multiple and expanding. However, nobody ‘has it all’, there are always sacrifices to make, prices to pay. For example, recent research undertaken in the US shows that 42 per cent of high-salary women are childless, though only 14 per cent said they didn’t want to have children. Careerminded women in their mid-thirties will put in ludicrous hours in the office, just like men have had to for years – the difference being that male managers usually have kids and a wife at home to look after them.For those ambitious, but also maternal, thirty-something women working in highly competitive male-dominated work places, becoming pregnant may be wonderful, but it’s certainly not going to help their career. While those women moving towards their late thirties, and not interested in either marriage or children, may well have to cope with the puzzled looks of their parents wondering whether or not they’ll ever have a grandchild to spoil or a traditional wedding to splash out on. 85


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Men,Women, Love and Romance In the US today, one third of women earn more than their husbands. For most, their thirties are when they establish these careers. Despite often being pulled in different directions, what the thirty-something woman is doing is exercising choice and living out the consequences – something that can be very exhausting! Her sexual libido may well be in overdrive, but so may her career ambitions and/or her maternal instincts. She may relish being in a long-term partnership, settled with a family, but does she really see herself as ‘mum at home’ for the next 20 years? If she’s decided to take the career path, and leave her children in the hands of others, can she handle any subsequent feelings of guilt? Should she feel guilty anyway? Is her life journey now planned out by 35, as it was for her mother, or will it have some twists and turns, challenges and excitements for her to face? How would she cope if it did? Something of the sexual and emotional maelstrom surrounding many thirty-something women is captured in the words of Rachel and Sheila.

rachel Rachel is aged 35. She’s a single mum with a 12-yearold boy. Rachel left school at 18 with good qualifications, but chose not to go on to university. Instead, she started work, eventually finding herself involved in a very intense relationship with Simon who was 15 years older than her. By the time she was 23 she was married to Simon and had a young baby to care for. Although she started out loving her husband, she came to find the relationship too stifling. She had money, a house, a child and a husband. But, as she says: 86


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New Women, Different Women I felt my life had stopped somehow. I had all this but where was I going? I wasn’t happy. The love had gone from the relationship. In fact, it had started to feel quite oppressive for me.When I met Simon I was so innocent really. My childhood hadn’t been that happy and marriage to Simon seemed to offer me the security and family life I craved. But eventually that security became a trap. He was quite a jealous type. He wanted to know all my movements, where I was, who I was with. At times I felt a prisoner in my own home.

Rachel’s situation was made more difficult by the fact that she had a very poor relationship with her mother (her father had died when she was a child). She felt unable to confide her feelings to anybody. But as her marriage deteriorated so her determination to move on grew. Eventually, she packed her bags and went, taking her five-year-old son with her. She was 28. Once her son was settled at school, Rachel decided it was time to get back into studying. She went to college to do media studies as a mature student. She loved it.What is more, she met a man who was to help her move on even more – intellectually, sexually and emotionally: her tutor. I remember the first time I heard him give a lecture. I just thought My God, who is that! He had this presence and I knew then I’d have to get to know him better. I’d not been in a sexual relationship since leaving Simon. I’d lost a lot of confidence during my marriage, but I was slowly getting it back. I guess going to college, and being around mature students, many like myself, gave me back my selfbelief. It was a great time.

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Men,Women, Love and Romance Rachel recognised there was a danger in being attracted to another older man, someone who, in her words, was ‘no innocent’. But the budding affair was for her a way of validating her womanhood and sexuality. She felt she was owed whatever pleasure it might bring. He didn’t have a chance really. I could tell he was attracted to me, but to be fair to him he tried to keep a professional distance. One afternoon I was having a tutorial in his office and I came over to his chair and knelt by him, ostensibly to show him some of my work, but it was electric.There was a real sexual presence between us. But he shied off.Told me it was getting too close for comfort. He was right! But it was inevitable we’d sleep together. We first had sex three weeks later.At my place. It had been a few years since I’d slept with a man. It felt so good. I felt like a teenager. I acted like a teenager, though I had the libido of a 30-year-old woman!

What particularly attracted Rachel to her tutor was the fact that he was already in a relationship and didn’t want anything too serious.This suited Rachel fine – the last thing she wanted was another heavy relationship, at least not while her new life was starting to take off.The other attraction was that she trusted him. He was sensitive to her needs and understood her situation. It wasn’t just the sex, though that was great, it was the intellectual connection I felt with him. He was mature and he made me feel good about myself. For a while he was not just my occasional lover, he was my best friend. I was going through a time when I still had a lot of

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New Women, Different Women emotional hang-ups to deal with and he helped me enormously. Of course, I could never trust him to be faithful, but that wasn’t part of the agreement. I could trust him not to deliberately hurt me.That was more important for me.

The affair with her tutor drifted on for another 18 months, long after Rachel had given up studying. She started a new career in advertising and life was good. It was time to move on again. I was ready for the big one. No more clandestine meetings with my ex-tutor. So I started replying to one or two lonely hearts adverts and very quickly found David. He was divorced and had a child. He had a softness and gentleness to him which attracted me. We hit it off immediately. But this time I had the confidence to handle any hurt that might come out of the relationship. He was not as worldly-wise as my ex-tutor, so I knew I could handle him okay. It’s a good relationship. He’s romantic and very loving.We’re still together.

(Rachel is currently back at university, doing a part-time MA. She and David recently bought a house together. She doesn’t want any more children.)

sheila Sheila is aged 37. After leaving college she did a variety of jobs before applying to be an air steward with a major international airline. After a lengthy interview process she was accepted on to their training programme, eventually working on long-haul flights. It was a job she’d always 89


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Men,Women, Love and Romance wanted and she loved doing it, though at times it was ‘absolutely knackering’. When she was 28 she married Scott, a hairdresser with his own salon.Although her work often took her away for days or weeks at a time, their lifestyle gave them many material comforts. For a few years they lived this hectic, but nevertheless satisfying life as a DINKY couple.Then, aged 32, she found herself pregnant. This was completely out of the blue. I’d had a nasty miscarriage some years before and at the time the doctor had told me the chances of me conceiving again were pretty remote. Scott and I had discussed having children, but neither of us were that keen to start a family.What with our jobs, and my medical history, we’d sort of put this idea out of our minds.Also, I guess we were a little selfish, we were enjoying our lifestyle too much.

Their lifestyle changed with the arrival of Joshua. Scott continued to run his salon, but for Sheila things were different. Being an air stewardess is not just a job, it’s a way of life. You get into the routine of travel, airports, hotels, exotic locations, so though it’s hard work, I never found it boring. Unexpectedly finding myself pregnant brought me down to earth quicker than any 747 I can tell you! … When we were expecting Joshua I’d had this idea of being a part-time mum, paying for childcare and returning to work.This idea held until he was born, and then it started to crumble.What was the point of me working just so I could pay someone else to have the enjoyment of being with my son? It didn’t make sense.

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New Women, Different Women With Sheila at home full-time with Joshua, and Scott absorbed in his business, their married life took on a different character from before. As a first-time mother, nothing prepares you for the impact of a baby. He was so small and vulnerable. He needed me and I wasn’t at all sure I could cope. Scott was good, but as a mother you tend to feel responsible much more than the man does.The nights were terrible at first, what with colic and breast-feeding. And looking back now I do believe I suffered from mild post-natal depression. My family, especially my mother, rallied round, but for over 18 months everything felt too much. It was a real struggle.There were many times when I resented having this baby to look after constantly. I was missing the freedom I’d had in my job.

Sheila and Scott’s life as a DINKY couple had been hard work but glamorous. Nights out in good restaurants, visits to the theatre, weekend city breaks, holidays abroad and an enjoyable, satisfying sex life. Under these circumstances, romance and love came fairly easily. However, like countless numbers of other couples dealing with being first-time parents, they were having to adjust to a new reality. Our sex life took a hammering after Joshua was born. There were many reasons, some medical, some emotional, but the end result was the same – little or no sex for weeks at a time. I just wanted to be held, cuddled – and then sleep! After Joshua I started to put on weight and I felt, well, unattractive really. I know I wasn’t but I’d been so used to keeping in trim, being slim, and buying size 10

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Men,Women, Love and Romance clothes that it came as a shock. We had some bad rows during this time. It was a very stressful period.What with less money, and Scott working flat out. Looking back, I was quite bitter at having given up my career. What’s more, I didn’t feel Scott really understood what I was going through.

By the time Joshua was three, Sheila and Scott’s relationship had been forced to undergo some major changes. Sheila took a part-time job as a hotel receptionist, ‘just to get out of the house’, and they put Joshua into nursery for four days a week.Also, Scott agreed to go with Sheila to the relationship counselling organisation Relate, where many of the issues that were troubling their relationship got aired and discussed.This proved a turning point. I guess it’s taken us four years to get ourselves sorted out. Having Joshua has been the best thing that’s happened to me, and to Scott, but going from air stewardess to mum, in less than six months,proved tricky to say the least! It’s possible I could get back into my career, but, to be honest, I don’t think I will.Though I miss it, my old job would be too demanding. Scott and I have had to reform our relationship. We’ve had to take time out for each other, get some romance back into our lives. Having eight hours’ sleep at night has been a good start!

I asked Sheila what she’d learnt about herself during the past five years. Interesting question! I don’t know really [long pause] I think I’ve learnt not to expect too much from myself. I’d

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New Women, Different Women always been a perfectionist, still am, but you cannot impose that on children, or relationships.You’ve got to go with the flow. Be flexible. I’ve also learnt that I can be a good mother, but it takes time and only by doing it can you learn it, but you get there. I still feel very guilty at times about having Joshua in childcare when I’m at home by myself. But I needed some life back. You see other couples come to grief when kids arrive, but Scott and I have been okay. But we’ve had to work at it.

(While completing this book, Scott rang me to tell me he and Sheila were expecting their second child. They were both ‘absolutely delighted’.)

Forties, fifties, sixties and beyond – freedom at last In this section I draw on interviews with six women: Linda, Pam, Sarah and Allison, all in their forties, Bridget in her fifties and Liz in her early sixties.As the stories of these women reveal: Ageing no longer withers us, it makes us stronger. It also wakes us up to life’s opportunities. Time was when being 42 was considered middle aged.The 55 year old had only retirement to look forward to, and the 60 year old was,well,old.How dated these stereotypes seem today. Such assumptions about age have been kicked into touch, helped along by high profile sex icons such as Rod Steward, Sean Connery, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, and Liz Hurley, Madonna, Jerry Hall, Catherine Deneuve and Joan Collins. But one doesn’t have to be a media star, or a 93


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Men,Women, Love and Romance multi-millionaire, to feel, and be, sexy at 40, 50 or 60. Increasing numbers of people working out at your local fitness centre are 40 plus, many of them women. It’s no rarity to be a 45-year-old woman, dressed in shorts and a tshirt and pounding a treadmill – and feeling physically and mentally good about oneself as a result. Neither is it a mental aberration to want love and romance, and to experience sexual desire – and orgasms – in your fifties, sixties and seventies. On the contrary, it is clear that as we get older not only are we behaving younger, we’re relishing it! The twenty-first century is going to be a good time to be forty plus. People in this age group produced the Swinging Sixties and far out Seventies, decades which have had an enormous impact on modern culture and living. These are the generations that changed the rules. Now, they have produced a new revolution, this time around love, sex and romance. Of course, much of this change is to do with health and longevity.As we learn more about our bodies, and how to look after them, so we are turning back the years. As we realise that life is for living and we only come round once, so we are spurred on to new adventures. In our later years we are returning to youth, but now armed with confidence borne of maturity and experience of life. It’s a potent combination. The fitness boom that took off in the mid-1980s has certainly helped. Like millions of others I joined in, in my case taking up running, and I’ve done regular exercise ever since. The result is that at 52 I can run further and faster than I could at 25; my resting heart rate is lower, my blood pressure is lower, and I’m generally stronger. I’m not overweight, and my muscles are toned. But ageing well is not just about fitness.When my 28-year-old son and I go 94


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New Women, Different Women shopping we buy almost identical trainers. We have very similar tastes in shirts, trousers and jackets.We listen to the same music.We sometimes go on holiday together. He and I are growing older together, but as friends with very similar tastes, rather than as father and son, generations apart,as I experienced with my father.But it is not just men doing this. My sister, Liz, frequently goes shopping for clothes with her 20-year-old daughter, Sarah, and often joins her on nights out in town. My sister is 47, but for her that doesn’t mean endless evenings in watching TV. Her children are adults now and for the first time in her life she has the time, and the money, to enjoy life. Like many women of her generation, Liz is now a FFOKS (forty, fit and free of kids), and she is enjoying every minute of it – proving that, for many, our life stories are not ending when we reach 40, they’re just beginning. Actress Andie MacDowell, 43, captures the mood of this generation of women: I feel I’m much sexier now than I was in my thirties. I even look hotter, and it’s because I feel safe. I am so much more secure. I don’t feel vulnerable any more. Up until the latter part of the twentieth century the typical 40-something woman was seen as settled, domesticated, married; more likely to wear an apron than a thong, more likely to use a ladle than a dildo. Locked into middle age and a comfortable, but often restricting domestic routine, she was preparing herself for finally vacating the wonderful, exciting world of sex and romance. Indeed, for many such women, especially if their marriage had lasted 20 years or more, love and romance were already distant memories, to be recaptured only in Catherine Cookson novels read at 95


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Men,Women, Love and Romance bedtime or in glossy films.What is more, the fifties and the menopause loomed, and women weren’t supposed to be sexy and alluring in their fifties. But all this is fast becoming history for women of all ages. Zelda Curtis, a 78-year-old widow, quoted in the Observer, proves this point: I’m delighted to say I still have an active sex life. At the end of the day we are all sexual beings, right up until rigor mortis sets in. As the stories below reveal, the modern 40-plus woman increasingly craves sexual excitement, experimentation, freedom and importantly romance. Her sexual desire is not lessened; on the contrary, it has heightened as the years go by. Moreover, if she cannot find those special moments with her husband she is increasingly likely to seek them elsewhere.The 40-plus woman is listening to the messages given to the twenty-somethings and saying, ‘this is my time, for me, and I am not going to waste it’.These are ‘new model’ women, no longer inhibited by the inexperience and insecurities of their twenties and thirties, but confident, financially independent and desirable. They are the true beneficiaries of the feminist – and fitness – revolution. Not only do many have the bodies of women decades younger, they have the sexual magnetism that only comes with age and experience. Increasingly, women in their forties are emerging out of the dated gender/age stereotypes in ways not available to those in their twenties and thirties.The combination of free time, sexual experience, self-knowledge and sexual desire is very powerful. And many women in their fifth and sixth decades have all this. For these ‘new model’ women, FFOKS such as Linda, Pam, 96


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New Women, Different Women Sarah, Allison, Bridget and Liz, sex and romance, and freedom of choice, are not only desirable, they are essential parts of their lives. Research shows that post-menopause women are happier, healthier, and have better sex lives than when they were younger.

linda Linda is aged 44. She is married with three children. She and her husband, Mike (also aged 44), run their own business, a franchised retail outlet.They have been married for 23 years. Linda has always enjoyed sex, but it wasn’t until she was nearing her forties that the desire for a more exciting sex life really started to grow in her. It’s not that I don’t love my husband, I do, but as every married couple knows, the routine of sex with the same person can become such a turn off. Mike is not unattractive, but his sex drive seemed to diminish as he got older, while mine got stronger,especially as the children got more independent and generally easier.When you’re busy producing kids it’s usual not to see yourself as a sexual person, which is quite ironic really when you think about it!

As with many people who go through long periods of being ‘sexually dormant’, or not seeing themselves as sexually attractive to others, Linda experienced what is known as a ‘critical incident’ in her life that made her re-evaluate who she was and what her possibilities were. Linda’s critical incident changed her perceptions of herself, and did it quite unexpectedly and completely. 97


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Men,Women, Love and Romance A young man, in his late twenties, used to come in the shop quite regularly and he’d look at me in a way I’d stopped recognising as being to do with sexual interest. Then one day he was telling my husband that he’d just broken up with his girlfriend and I overheard him say that the problem was there were so few attractive, mature, young women in the area. He told Mike that he thought he was very fortunate to have a wife like me, someone who was attractive and also mature. He joked with him about where did he find me as he’d start looking there.

Although fairly innocent at the time,this young man’s comments took Linda aback. For probably the first time in her adult life she felt the potential of her mature feminine sexuality, not just as a means of reproduction, but as a vehicle of pleasure, excitement and satisfaction. A long-time friend had been badgering Linda to join her and her friends for Friday nights out.After this incident Linda agreed. At first I’d just sit in the bar, having a drink and a laugh with the girls, but occasionally you’d see men looking at you and you’d think, oh, he’s nice, so you’d smile back. That’s how it started. I didn’t go with lots of men, just the occasional man, now and again. But I always kept it totally on my terms, there was never any danger of me getting too emotionally involved with anyone. I was looking for uncomplicated sex. After a while it becomes so easy. Maybe you give something off when you’re looking for sex. I’ve often wondered about that!

I asked Linda how she felt about herself after embarking on these sexual adventures. 98


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New Women, Different Women It’s been quite amazing really. My whole outlook on life has completely changed. I suddenly realised that I wasn’t just a mum, I was my own person. I suppose I realised I could do it. It’s fun! What’s more, I’ve discovered I can separate sex from intimacy.Women aren’t supposed to be able to do that.

Did she see herself as very different from other women, especially her mother? I’m not sure I’m that different from other married women of my age, many of my married girlfriends have men they see on the side. But I am completely different from my mother! I can distinctly recall, when I was about ten, this man chatting my mother up. I was with her at the time. He suggested they went swimming together. She was absolutely horrified! As soon as she got home she told my dad about this man who’d had the effrontery to do this. I remember feeling vaguely unsettled by the whole thing.

Have all her encounters with men been somewhat emotionally distant? No, not all. In fact, I’ve now got a regular boyfriend who’s also married,but in a very sexless relationship.We see each other probably once a week. I’m very close to him. He’s very special. I love our time together.At first he found the sex a little difficult, not having been used to being with someone who enjoyed the physical side of life as I do. But now he’s very active! The sex is lovely, though sometimes it’s nice just to lie together and cuddle. He texts me every

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Men,Women, Love and Romance night, to tell me he loves me, which is really great … Once a month we treat ourselves to a day in a good hotel, and just spend it in bed together. It’s like having a secret world that nobody else can mess around with. I’d really miss it if it wasn’t there. It’s quite addictive you know.

I asked Linda how men coped with her being such a free spirit, sexually and emotionally. Not very well many of them! They seem to expect me to be more demanding of them, you know, wanting to see them all the time, and I don’t. As far as I’m concerned that’s it. Or they expect to have some rights over me. No chance! I have control of the situation. I don’t want anything else from them … Men are having a tougher time of it these days. I think a lot of them are flummoxed by women like me! You know, when we look at them the way they’ve been used to looking at women. Many blokes still think it’s down to them to make the first move. Not any more it isn’t.

pam Pam is aged 45. She is divorced, with two children in their late teens, and runs her own secretarial supply agency. She was married for ten years and then, in her mid-thirties, she met Steve who she subsequently moved in with.They lived together for seven years but it proved to be a turbulent relationship. When I interviewed her she had been living on her own, with her two children, for about ten months. I knew within a couple of years of living with Steve that I needed to get out of the relationship but it wasn’t that

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New Women, Different Women easy. I’d left my husband for him and I didn’t want the emotional and physical upheaval of moving yet again, not when I had my two kids to consider. Steve has a good job and with my income we lived well. We had a beautiful house and money was not a problem.The problem was I didn’t love him, though he doted on me. He was very emotionally dependent on me. In fact, although he was ten years older than me, he was really very immature. I suppose you’d call him an emotional retard, and that’s not putting it too strong, believe me!

As their relationship deteriorated, so Steve resorted to emotional blackmail in order to keep Pam with him.This included threatening suicide, to the point that he actually harmed himself on several occasions. His heavy drinking got worse – it tended to be his response to the increasing number of rows he and Pam were having. I begged him to get help, see a counsellor or someone, but he wouldn’t. He was just in total denial about the state of our relationship. I did feel a sense of responsibility but what can you do if your partner is completely emotionally incompetent and unable to see how damaging his behaviour is? At times it was like living with three kids – and me the only adult in the house!

Despite the pressures, Pam remained faithful to Steve until the very end of the relationship, when she had a brief holiday romance. We were on holiday in Bermuda, and I was learning to dive, which I love.The diving instructor was a real hunk,

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Men,Women, Love and Romance but I never gave him any more thought until one of the other women divers, who I’d befriended, said to me, ‘Tony [the instructor] really has the hots for you, you know that don’t you?’Well, to be honest, I didn’t, but then I thought, well, maybe she’s right. It just was so good to think that I might still be fanciable. I was in my forties and I’d begun to think that those days had gone for me! One evening I was sat outside on the beach and Tony walks past. He comes up, we start chatting and he says,‘So you are here on your own with the kids?’ I say,‘No, but I may as well be.’ He says,‘Where is he?’ I reply,‘Propping up the bar or asleep.’ Later that evening we go for a long walk.We made love in the surf. Fantastic.The rest of the fortnight was just wonderful, I can tell you.

Just six months after that holiday, Pam moved out with the children. She was aware it was probably not a good idea to rush into another relationship, so she settled into her new home saving her emotional energies for the aftermath of the split. Eventually, Steve stopped phoning her, threatening to kill himself, and Pam’s life began a new, more peaceful, cycle. I felt ready to move on. The fling with Tony certainly helped me, but I was unsure as to how I’d meet new men. I was too old for the night clubs, and in my job you don’t meet that many single blokes. So I decided to try an Internet friendship site, as some of my friends had done. I chose date.com, really because it was free to initially enrol on it! For the first week or so I just trawled the site, and then I took the plunge, got myself a proper profile, put a couple of photos of me on it and waited. The response

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New Women, Different Women was amazing. I got hundreds of enquiries from men all over the world. Although a lot of them were complete no-hopers, there were some really interesting blokes out there.I started email relationships with a few and just took it from there. I was looking for an honest, open, steady relationship, but with a man who wouldn’t use me as an emotional prop. I had no intention of living with anyone, certainly not for a while.What I did want was some fun! Which I got. Quite a lot of it in fact.

(I kept in touch with Pam as the book was progressing. A couple of months after the interview she met someone through the website and had begun a steady relationship with him. However, she was very much enjoying her freedom as a forty-something player in the new gender game. As she put it, ‘getting out of my relationship with Steve was like being let out of a cage’.)

sarah Sarah is aged 47. She is married, with two teenage children, and works for a large publishing house. She and her husband Gordon have been married for 21 years. Sarah was 43 before she embarked on an affair – with Alan, a divorced man. Prior to this she’d never been unfaithful to her husband, in fact her only other sexual experience was with a boyfriend she had while at university. Sometimes, if you are really lucky, you meet someone very, very special.And I did. I wasn’t aware of looking for it. But it happened none the less.We met through work, though he doesn’t work with me, in fact he lives in the Midlands. We had cause to telephone each other over a

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Men,Women, Love and Romance publishing matter, then exchanged some emails, and it just grew from there. It wasn’t simply about not loving Gordon, I do. And I often feel guilty because he’s a great husband and father, but Alan brings out another side of me, a very sexual side that had never really been present in my life. But equally important is the romance of it all. I love having his emails every day, his special words of love, which are just for me. Just knowing that he is in my life, and thinking of me, is enough. I know there can never be any more, because I won’t leave my family, but I don’t want to imagine what life would now be like without Alan in it.

Although Sarah had never contemplated being unfaithful before, she found that she was quite good at concealing it from her husband and her family.Apart from weekly telephone calls and emails at night,there was the mobile phone by which to keep in contact with her lover. Because of the physical distance between them, Sarah and Alan couldn’t meet up that often. Nevertheless, they were both able to arrange occasional business trips which meant nights away. Sometimes it seems like my whole life is suspended between these intermittent times when Alan and I are together. It’s a form of emotional torture, but it’s also exquisite and beautiful. Our few nights together, alone in each other’s arms,with no one else about,no telephones to interrupt,these have been some of the happiest times of my life.I will never forget them, no matter what happens in the future. I know I am putting my marriage at risk, but I am very careful.Gordon suspects nothing.Alan brings out a side of me which my family never see.When Gordon and I have

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New Women, Different Women sex,usually on a Saturday night,it’s just sex.I very rarely have an orgasm.Sex with him feels like a duty almost.When Alan and I make love it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. But he’s not just my lover,he’s my best friend.

I asked Sarah how she copes with being away from Alan for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. We each have little things, non-descript things which no one would ever suspect were symbols of love, but which we have given to each other, as indicators of our love for each other.We carry these items around with us, or have them close to us when we’re at home or work. For example, very early on in our relationship we exchanged different coloured ribbons, red for me, blue for him. If ever we break up then the other must send their ribbon back.This is how we will say goodbye, if we ever do. But most of all there are the emails.These keep our love alive. His emails tend to be longer than mine, and I keep them all, saved away in an anonymous email address.When we email we don’t use our normal names. I call him my Celtic Warrior, I am his Saxon Queen.You see, we have this romantic idea that we met 1000 years ago, and our love has gone on and on all this time, with us occasionally meeting in future lives.

Did she ever think, when she was in her thirties and looking after young children, that an affair like this would happen to her? Never! I don’t think I ever went seeking it. My marriage was stable, I was in a good job, the children were growing

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Men,Women, Love and Romance up fine. But then, there are other things in life beyond paying the mortgage. Maybe I reached a certain age and decided that this was my one chance for real happiness, fulfilment, before old age took over. My love for Alan is so strong it sometimes frightens me. I have never felt like this for my husband. It’s an obsession almost. But I can control it.

allison Allison is aged 41.She is a nurse and lives with her husband, Mike, and their two children aged 14 and 17.Allison’s story is a little different from those of the other women discussed here, not least because she is in a very settled and loving relationship and is not looking for sex and romance outside her marriage. However, Allison’s story does illustrate the power of the bedroom revolution and its capacity to bring about changes in women’s lives, not just romantic ones, but deep and lasting lifestyle shifts. Allison has a job-share and this gives her time both with her family and for herself. It is this freedom that she most relishes, especially now the children are growing up and becoming more independent. However, like most of the women I interviewed, Allison does feel very restless at times, though for her this does not manifest itself in a desire for a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Mike has only ever been the love of my life. Sure, we’ve had difficulties at times, but there has never been the sense that we would ever split up. He has his own business, and this is doing well, which is good because it’s enabled me to work just part-time. But for some years now I’ve had a real fear of being trapped in routine. I didn’t feel it so

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New Women, Different Women much when the kids were younger, I guess because I was too busy being a mother and putting them first. But now they are older I have a strong desire to travel and experience new things. Over recent years I have tried to deal with this sense of restless by going on holiday with some of my women friends and doing very active things, especially in my leisure time.For example,I do rock-climbing, I’ve run half-marathons, I’ve walked across the Peruvian mountains, I’ve gone trekking in West Africa, and this summer I went on a sailing holiday to Majorca where I gained qualifications for sailing and navigation. But the sense of restlessness does persist and it’s got stronger recently.

I asked how Mike felt about her desire for adventure. How was their relationship coping? Surprisingly well, actually.We have a good sex life and we make sure we take time out together. For example, since the children were very young we’ve always had occasional weekends away together, just the two of us. It replenishes our batteries. I think this has given us a good foundation from which to ensure we can overcome any rocky times. He’s a very understanding man, and we’ve stayed in love with each other. I’ve never really desired any other man but Mike. When Mike was building up his business and the children were very young this was a hard time for us, but we got through. I suppose one of our philosophies has been to share responsibilities but to always respect the other person’s right to have a life outside of the marriage. That way we each keep a sense of freedom and independence, but without it damaging the fabric of the

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Men,Women, Love and Romance relationship.So twice a week I get to do my rock-climbing at the local leisure centre, and go off to the Lakes for a climb with my friends when the chance arises. I also have one holiday a year by myself or with my women friends. It helps that I come from a large family, most of whom live fairly close by, so we always have baby-sitters on hand, and at short notice if there’s an emergency.

So given this good balance that you and Mike have managed to achieve, what makes you still feel restless? This is difficult for me to explain, but it’s been building up for some time, though I’ve only recently recognised it for what it is.The fact is I hate feeling trapped in routine, and I’ve started to feel trapped recently. It’s not the relationship, that’s fine, it’s that I have this strong sense of adventure, of the need to travel, and passing 40 was a watershed I think. I’ve started looking at Voluntary Service Overseas work, as a nurse. I’m particularly interested in going to South America, or to Australia and South East Asia.

But how will you manage to do this and be with your family? Well, the fact is I won’t! It will require me to be away for say six months at least, but if I don’t do it during my forties I’m afraid the chance will be lost.I have good qualifications so I can always get a job nursing when I return to the UK, and my qualifications and experience mean that I can get work overseas, more or less where I want. Obviously I am concerned that my children will be okay,

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New Women, Different Women but I trust Mike and he wants me to do this. Some might say I was being selfish, but I don’t see it like that.This drive in me won’t go away and I must be true to myself.

So what are your plans? Well, I’m not sure exactly when this will happen, but hopefully within the next two years I will take six months out and work abroad, maybe nine months. Mike will stay at home and look after the children, though our eldest, Susan, will probably be at university by then so that will make it easier for him. In the end, I know I have the opportunity to do these things and I want to take it. I will be ever grateful to Mike for understanding and appreciating this need in me and I will encourage him to do his thing when he’s ready. On a practical level, I’ve kept myself fit and I’m very confident of being able to handle most situations that might arise while I was abroad. But if I went with an organisation like the VSO then I wouldn’t exactly be on my own anyway.

Your relationship seems a very modern and democratic one.Am I right? I suppose it is. But it just evolved during our 20 years of marriage, we didn’t sit down and discuss it at the outset. Anyway, we were both very young when we married and when the children came along we had other priorities over and above our own needs. But I do appreciate what I have in this relationship.Without Mike to support me it would be virtually impossible for me to do the things I want to, or to have experienced those things I already

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Men,Women, Love and Romance have. It’s a question of mutual respect and accommodation.That’s the basis of our marriage and hopefully it will continue.

bridget Bridget is aged 53.She is a university librarian and lives with her 19-year-old daughter. From the time she studied at university in the late 1960s, Bridget has always seen herself as very liberal minded and with a young outlook on life. She lost her virginity at 17, since when she estimates she’s had around 50 sexual partners.When she was 18 and at university, Bridget formed a very close relationship with an older man, a Jordanian. This relationship lasted throughout the time she was at university and was one of the loves of her life. When aged 26, Bridget married Ron, a teacher. The marriage lasted for over 20 years. However, after several years of matrimonial life Bridget started to feel restless. I started being occasionally unfaithful when I was in my mid-thirties. I liked the stability that marriage gave me, but I didn’t like the routine. Maybe I’ve got a low boredom threshold, but I didn’t find marriage to Ron very stimulating. He was, is, an intelligent man, and we connected that way, but not physically.With Ron sex was very predictable – always in the dark, certain areas you never touched, no licking or anything that he thought was ‘unclean’ sexually. In fact, the sex was never very good. It got to the point where we were having it just a few times a year. Pretty bad really! And always I had to initiate it, which became tedious to say the least. He was a very repressed man. Basically, I was bored, sexually and emotionally. I didn’t have lots of lovers, just different

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New Women, Different Women people,with long gaps between them.It was opportunism really, when the right man and the right moment coincided, it happened.

When she was 45, Bridget and Ron got divorced, he citing her adultery. So began a period of sexual experimentation, occasional emotional connections, some intense relationships and some casual sexual encounters. How does she feel about this change in her lifestyle? It has not always been easy, but it’s not been boring! After my marriage ended I went to live with a man, someone I’d been having a relationship with, but it was a disaster. He was the complete opposite of my ex-husband as far as sex was concerned,and that was good,but once I started living with him I found out he was a real control freak and I couldn’t handle that at all. I left after ten weeks. I’ve been on my own ever since.This was the low point of all time. Horrendous. I felt quite alone. I was really quite depressed by it, but eventually I got over it … It took me a long time to get used to being on my own. I’d never been on my own really. But after a while I started to find my feet and I got control back over my life. It’s been a long, sometimes difficult, but fascinating journey. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to work and be financially independent.

I asked Bridget what it felt like to be a sexually active woman in her early fifties, at this point in the twenty-first century. Sometimes it’s okay and sometimes it’s bloody hard work! I suppose it depends on what sort of day I’m having! I’ve

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Men,Women, Love and Romance never been naïve, and that’s helped. I sometimes think I was born with a cynical outlook on life, so I don’t have too high expectations. But I won’t allow myself to be messed about by men. The problem is there aren’t that many interesting men out there. A lot of them are Neanderthals, emotionally stunted. So as a woman you have to be careful about the sort of compromises, if any, that you’re prepared to make. I like men’s company, and I like sex (I’ve never been into women), but you want more than that. There are attractions to being in an exclusive relationship, but I need to be with a man who is intelligent and interesting. I haven’t got the patience to sit through small talk that doesn’t excite me. I start making excuses about having to go!

How and where do you meet men? I’ve met quite a few men through newspaper lonely hearts columns, and occasionally at work. I usually go for professional men, academics, doctors, that sort of thing.At least they tend to be interesting to talk to. The point of some of these relationships is not necessarily sex, with some the stimulation I receive is as much intellectual. So what’s happened over the past few years is that I don’t have any one man, I tend to have several on the go at any one time, some platonic relationships, some sexual. Some of the men live near to me, a few are in other parts of the country.They come to visit me, or I them. I have found this works best. So I don’t have a regular partner, but a number of different men that I see at various times. It’s not always ideal, but it’s certainly better than being in a boring marriage. I have choice and I have control and I’ve

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New Women, Different Women come to a time in my life when these are more important. As far as monogamy is concerned then I could do that with the right man, but I think women increasingly want monogamy when they’re having children, but they’re less keen as they get older, certainly if they’re in a boring, unstimulating relationship. For me, the idea of eventually settling down with just one man still has some appeal. I don’t fancy going into old age living alone.

I asked Bridget what her parents thought of her changed lifestyle? My father died when I was a teenager, and I miss him terribly. Unfortunately, I’ve never had a close relationship with my mother. She has a much more dated view of marriage. She thinks that once you’ve made your marriage bed you should lie in it, come what may. I don’t. But then, I do understand where she’s coming from. Women, especially those of my mother’s generation, got used to having their identities and opportunities stifled by men.That’s changing. I’ve not allowed that to happen to me. liz

Liz is aged 63. She has had three marriages: the first when she was in her twenties, the second in her mid-thirties, and the third when she was aged between 44 and 55. She has one son, aged 29.Although she retired three years ago, Liz keeps herself very fit and active. She has a wide circle of friends and is an enthusiastic member of her local operatic society. She admits to having been stage-struck most of her life. I asked her about her current love life. 113


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Well, there’s my long-time friend, Graham, he’s in his late sixties and I see him most weeks. He’s married but there’s nothing there if you know what I mean. He always brings me flowers or chocolates (bad for my figure!) and takes me out for a drink or a meal. Sometimes he just wants a cuddle, it’s his age you know! But he stops over quite regularly.We’ve known each other for a number of years now and it’s nice, but he knows I see other men sometimes.

I asked Liz who else she’s been seeing recently. Two other men, who I met through an introduction agency. And then back last autumn there was Rick. Sexy Rick! Liked him very much, though I don’t see him so often now. I’d not used an introduction agency before, it wasn’t cheap, but one of my friends recommended it, so I gave it a try. They arranged several dates for me, mainly with older men, but at least the men were well turned out. Quite well off some of them. What happened was they’d invite me out for dinner and we’d take it from there. I met Michael and Roy that way and I still see them occasionally. I cannot settle with just one man, I need the variety! I think I wear them out! Michael’s divorced, has been for years, and Roy is a widower. They’re both lovely men,you know,thoughtful and all that.I avoid men who are looking for someone to take care of them, that can be a problem with men in their late sixties, early seventies, who have always had a wife to hand and who suddenly find themselves living on their own for the first time in their lives. I don’t see myself as an unpaid carer to some pensioner! I need to be able to come and go in my own home.

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New Women, Different Women What attracts you to a man? He has to be clean and well-dressed. I hate scruffy men, especially older men who’ve gone to pot a bit. I look after myself and I expect them to. I also like men to spoil me a little. Send me flowers, remember my birthday. Roy is good that way. Whenever he comes round to my place he’ll bring wine and flowers. I have to find a man sexually attractive.There has to be something about them that gets my juices flowing. I used to be a real goer in my youth [laugh] and I’ve only got worse, or better(!), as I’ve got older.A lot of older men can’t keep up with me, which is why Rick was so special.

How did you meet Rick? Well, it’s a bit naughty really. I’d had to get a firm of builders in to do some work on my house and Rick came along to do it. He was here for about a week. A very fit man as they say! But the problem was he is only in his early forties, so I didn’t think I had any chance with him. Just to see him with his sleeves rolled up, perspiring, really got me going, I can tell you! Also, he was married. Throughout the week I’d tried to give off the right signals without being pushy, but I didn’t think I was getting anywhere.You know, bringing him cups of tea, but dressed in something that flattered my figure, a lot of eye contact. Nothing too obvious or provocative – a lady has to have some dignity you know! Anyway, towards the end of the week he was looking particularly down and I asked him what the matter was. He didn’t want to say at first but eventually, after sitting down in my lounge with a coffee,

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Men,Women, Love and Romance he opened up. Basically, it was the usual thing, wife at home, busy looking after children and no time for him. They’d not had sex together for a couple of months.We talked for over an hour and, having had three marriages myself, I’d had some experience of these situations, which he seemed to appreciate. He finished the work that week and that was it. But then, a few days later, he turned up one evening, out of the blue, just to say thank you for listening to him and with a large bunch of flowers for me! Naturally I was delighted to see him. I invited him in for a coffee but as I remember we only got as far as the doorway to the lounge and he had me up against the wall, kissing me very passionately.There was a lot of pent-up passion there, for both of us! We had sex in the hallway, and then later in my bedroom, a more lingering session. It was so good. I’ll never forget the image of him lying on my bed,naked,after us having sex.Me thinking, my God, it’s all my birthdays rolled into one! He was like a vision from heaven. Beautiful, fit, lean body. I was in my element, I can tell you.

How did the relationship with Rick progress? We continued to see each other on and off for about three months. I had to be careful because I started to get quite attached to him. He was spoiling me for other men – being younger, fitter, and better in bed than most of the men I was seeing. But I was realistic. I knew it wouldn’t last, it was just a case of making the most of it.As you get older you learn to take the opportunities as and when they arise. I still keep in touch with him, and he rings me now and again. I’ve invited him to my next show, in

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New Women, Different Women which I have a starring part! I hope he’s able to come. My girlfriends would be so envious if they saw us together.

What women really want We certainly live in changing times, especially around sex and gender relationships. It is no surprise that some men, especially those who are confused and traditional, see women as being unsure as to what they want given the range of choices now available to them. In fact, some suggest that having all these choices is in itself a bad thing for women. For example, one prominent male academic has recently claimed that women have been ‘miseducated’ into believing they could ‘have it all’. Some believe that what women really want is to be ‘submissive’ and to ‘surrender’ into the arms of a man who will protect them and care for them. It has been said that all thirty-something single women really are like Bridget Jones – confused, anxious, lonely and desperate. I think not. Anyone who really understands the New Woman knows that none of these assumptions or stereotypes are true, and nor are they desirable as aspirations. New Women are the stronger species. Not only are they now doing it for themselves, they’re succeeding. Sure, one can understand why some may see women as being torn between a) a biological clock that tells them they should have children, preferably in a committed relationship, and b) a desire to make their own way in the world, financially and emotionally independent of any man. But the women I meet, those I have loved, those who are my friends and colleagues, those I interviewed and who revealed so much of themselves and their lives for this research, these 117


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Men,Women, Love and Romance women are not confused. They may find having so many choices sometimes difficult.They may not always strike the right balance between love,work and family.Their male soulmate may take some time to show himself among the population of males.And they can get extremely frustrated at the emotional immaturity of men and men’s propensity to go into denial when faced with relationship difficulties.But they know what they want and what they need in their lives.Sure, they have to make compromises at times.Yes,they sometimes have to make accommodations with men that they’d rather not have to. And certainly those who are mothers do have very strong feelings of putting their children first. But it is men,not women,who are confused. From my experience and research, the prime movers in this new gender game are not women in their twenties, though they will be beneficiaries. It is women aged 40 and over, the ones rejecting stereotypes of age and sexuality. These women are neither nostalgic for what was, nor too regretful for what might have been. For they are looking to a future which offers them new possibilities and opportunities for life and love.Women such as Linda, Pam, Sarah, Allison, Bridget and Liz are part of a new, and powerful, sexy generation. Although very different, they exemplify what it means to be a New Woman.The over forties may have a career, but they likely established it while in their thirties. They may well be going through a divorce or separation, but they’ll come out of it okay, for they have the skill to network with other women, and to stand on their own two feet. They may well have children, but these children are usually older, more independent. As FFOKS, these women have that unique combination which those in their twenties and thirties don’t yet have – youth and 118


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New Women, Different Women experience. They wear the t-shirt and it says ‘been there, done that, now let’s get on with life’. When we are in love age means nothing, the years fall off us to reveal our inner youth.Whatever our age, we are teenagers. The dream of modern woman was to find her place beyond the confines of the matrimonial bedroom or the kitchen, to discover the thrill of love,romance and adventure,to experience heart-stopping sexual passion,to be a free,independent spirit. This dream is now an expectation for increasing numbers of women of all ages, classes and cultures. New Woman can love with honesty and commitment just like women always have, but she is also strong enough to walk away when that honesty disappears, when trust gets broken, or, quite simply, when the passion, and orgasms, dry up. But there is one dream that still eludes countless women. It is the dream of being in a loving, committed relationship with a man who is not threatened by the fact that she is every bit, if not more, his equal: a man who appreciates that in order for her to live her dream she may well need to strike out on her own journey. Such a man will be strong enough in his masculinity to be caring, compassionate, thoughtful, emotional, and yet still be very, very sexy. Some women,many women even,may have such democratic love and passion in their lives, but I also know from my research that many do not.As one woman said to me: So far as love with an emotionally sorted man is concerned, I’ve learnt to travel in hope rather than in expectation. 119


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Tips for women riding the romantic roller-coaster As a woman, are you on the ride of love or merely intrigued by it? Are you about to take the plunge and join the bedroom revolution or are you still hesitant about what all this might mean for you? Well, whether you are up there riding high, or about to step on, here are twelve tips to help you get the most out of the experience. 1. the re lationship coach

Before you plunge into the game of love, try and ensure you have a very close woman friend to hand,someone who might act as a sort of ‘relationship coach’ to you. I know one 35-year-old woman who has this support and she’s found it to be invaluable in helping her decide her moves in the gender game. She just talks to her friend, usually informally over a coffee, and tells them what’s going on in her love life, and what she’s thinking of doing next. The relationship coach might offer direct advice, or might sometimes just be a sounding board, someone who listens rather than advises. Your relationship coach should be someone who knows you very well and with whom you can share those little intimate secrets without it becoming risky for either of you. So obviously there needs to be mutual respect and a lot of trust between you. 2. don ’t be too cynical !

Although it might be tempting, don’t assume all men are either bastards or Neanderthals! As one woman said to me, ‘Are there any normal males who aren’t complete geeks, or should I just take up knitting for the over forties?!’ Let me assure you there are plenty of ‘normal males’ out there, just 120


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New Women, Different Women don’t expect them to come knocking on your kitchen door (well, they might!), instead you have to go out and find them.This book will show you some of the ways to finding love and romance, but there are many others, and each of us has their own unique life journey to follow as well as particular preferences for finding love. But if you start the journey cynical of men, then it’s probably going to end in tears.

3.

settling for frie ndship

Don’t go into every new encounter with a man expecting that this is going to be ‘the big one’.Chances are it isn’t.But just because you’re not planning the next 50 years together doesn’t mean the experience is wasted – far from it. Recognise that many ended relationships still have the potential to go on to become strong lasting friendships, something we all need in our lives (see tip 11, below). So if you both get on well, but it’s unlikely to lead to long passionate nights in Venice or setting up home together, then settle for being good friends. It works. Many of the women interviewed for this book have retained long-lasting friendships with men, sometimes with occasional sex thrown in, long after the initial encounter. 4. about being hone st

Remember, honesty is a good policy but sometimes it can be hurtful and destructive. Sure, if you are single and dating then it is best to be honest about whether you are seeing more than one person. But if you are in a relationship, married perhaps, and you begin an illicit relationship with a man,then you know you have to keep it secret otherwise the consequences will be very damaging for everybody. But can 121


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Men,Women, Love and Romance you keep such a secret from your partner, not just for a week or two but maybe for months, even years? If you think you can’t, or if you don’t want to be put in that position, then don’t go down that road in the first place.However,from my own experience, and that of many of the women interviewed, there can come a time when one realises a relationship isn’t right and it must end. In this case you have to accept it and be prepared to move on. In the final analysis, the person you should be most honest with is yourself.

5.

the log istics of re lationships

How sorted is your life? Do you have the time and energy to give to a full-blooded relationship? This is something to really think about before you start playing the gender game. Many of the women I interviewed, especially those in their thirties and early forties, have children to look after as well as homes to manage and full-time jobs.That is a lot of commitment and responsibility! If you’re too busy with other things in your life,say looking after children or building a career, then play the gender game for fun and thrills, not lasting love. If you are already in a relationship then there is the added problem of managing the emotional turmoil and free-time restrictions. Whatever your situation, it’s a good idea to think about the actual time you can give to a relationship before you embark on one.What are the childcare arrangements like with your ex? Do you have weekends free or the occasional evening? Can you get a babysitter on a fairly regular basis? What about your own leisure activities – salsa dancing, yoga, exercise classes – which of these would you be prepared to sacrifice for love, and which would you not? Finally,once you reach a certain stage in your life, probably around the late thirties, it’s likely 122


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New Women, Different Women that most of the men you meet will also have some level of childcare commitment to attend to, so weekends can get pretty crowded for everybody!

6 . beware the holiday syndrome Once you’ve started a relationship it’s natural to want to spend more time with your lover and the most obvious way of doing this is by going on holiday. Family, friends, work and, not least, children, get left behind for a few days and off you go to that romantic island in the sun.Well, fine. But be aware that such occasions can be very fraught. A lot of budding love affairs come to grief in the sun.Travel is stressful at the best of times, and throw in heightened expectations, not a few nerves, and the inevitable bottles of Chianti, and you can see you have a potent mix. New lovers are more likely to suffer here than those who are in longstanding relationships, because they are still learning about each other and so are more likely to experience disappointment. And another tip: never take your lover to places that trigger nostalgic memories in you of other men, other romances. It is far better for you both to go somewhere new – that way whatever happens it will always be your memories, your experience and no one else will intrude.

7. don’t give up Perseverance is one quality you’ll need to play the gender game. It won’t always go swimmingly for you.You’ll meet men who leave you wondering if they are all ‘complete geeks’,and at times you’ll reflect on whether it’s all worth it.It is.The advantage of age is that it brings experience; it makes us more confident and sure of who we are and what we want and don’t want.The disadvantage is that the more experiences 123


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Men,Women, Love and Romance we have the more likely we are to have been hurt.And let’s face it, only a masochist keeps going back for more hurt! But you can mitigate any bruising to your heart by picking yourself up, dusting down your ego, believing in your inner (and outer) beauty, and going back on the ride. It’s a bit like horse riding.You get thrown a few times,but you keep getting back on otherwise you’ll never get back on again. 8. be pre pare d for change

Whatever your experiences of sex, love and romance, you can always learn something new. In fact, isn’t that what life is about – learning from experience? But as we learn so we change, and so do those we love. Go with the flow of change in your life, especially the changes that come with new relationships and loves. When two people meet and fall in love a third party comes into the frame – the relationship itself.We are likely to be a slightly different person with different people. One lover will bring out certain behaviours and traits in us, with another lover we’ll be subtly different again. And the relationship is undergoing constant change itself.So enjoy the variety! That’s the point about the romantic roller-coaster – it should never be boring nor predictable! 9. heart, head and instinct

Every so often a situation will arise in your life concerning love and sex that will require a quick decision. Do I have a fling with my scuba diving instructor? Do I respond to that personal ad? Do I reply to that flirtatious email sent by the hunk in personnel? No one can give you the right answer here – not even your relationship coach! But what you have to weigh up is whether you’re going to let your heart 124


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New Women, Different Women or your head have sway. If it’s your head then you’ll be rational, planned, reasoned and logical.You’ll balance the pros and cons, you’ll assess the risks, plan a strategy, measure the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Very impressive. However, by the time you do all this you’ll either be too knackered to be bothered or completely confused! On the other hand, if you let your heart have its way then all you’ll be concerning yourself with is date, time and place! My own way through this conundrum has been to believe that there are larger influences around us that we cannot weigh up and measure, but which are nevertheless potent and powerful. So there are times you have to go with your instinct – and instinct is neither heart nor head. It is a little bit of each. Get in touch with your instinct and let it decide. It will usually be the right answer. 10. no illusions, no holy g rail

Whatever may be going on for you emotionally, it’s important to try to keep your feet firmly on the ground when you’re playing the gender game. Illusions may be comforting, but they also can be very dangerous. Let me give you an example. One woman I interviewed had a friend, in her early twenties, who got totally obsessed with a man. This woman told her friends that she and this man were going to marry, buy a house, and have children. She talked about her wedding plans. She even went so far as to say what their children would look like, whether they’d be a boy or a girl, and what they’d be called. She was convinced that this man loved her, and that they were going to live an idyllic life, happy ever after. However, this man had little interest in her.They did have three or four dates, but the ‘relationship’ was over in less than a month.Admittedly,this is an extreme 125


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Men,Women, Love and Romance example of illusion getting confused with reality. But we’ve all done it at some point in a relationship. That is, we’ve stopped seeing what’s really going on – or chosen not to! This is not a stance to be recommended, as reality will out in the end. So remember, don’t go looking for the Holy Grail of a relationship, it doesn’t exist. 11. clo sing and continuing

Let’s face it, sooner or later most couples break up. It’s a fact of life. No point pretending otherwise. How many people do you know who’ve only had one relationship in their life and it’s still going strong years later? Not many. But breaking up need not be all bad.There is a skill to it that is well worth cultivating. First, recognise that both parties have a position. Give each other the opportunity to voice your feelings about closing the relationship.This should not be done angrily or with recrimination, but should be undertaken with mutual respect. If you can’t do it face to face, use email or a letter.Whatever way suits you, it’s really important to get your inner feelings out, and writing them down, even if you never send the email,really helps.While writing this book a relationship of mine came to an end.The relationship had been going for just six months when we came to recognise that the underlying difficulties in it were not going to be resolved.We needed to make a break. Closure didn’t happen overnight, it took at least six weeks, during which time we went away, came back, went away. In the end we agreed on a month-long split during which we sought to resolve our feelings. I guess we had a certain emotional dependency on each other which we needed to wean ourselves off.We communicated during this time but never met. At the end of the month we sent each other a 126


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New Women, Different Women long email, telling of our feelings for each other but why we felt we had to move on. For us, like many couples in this situation, staying friends was really important.That was our aim, that was our closure. It worked for us. Unless you feel angry and bitter about the relationship try to part with an au revoir, not a goodbye. 12. no failure s, only expe rie nce s

Relationships finish, people move on. But try not to see ended relationships as failures.Most relationships have a life span of their own and trying to artificially extend this life is not only going to be terribly hard work, it’s going to be emotionally draining for both of you. So know when to let it go, recognise when the time is right to move on. I always get slightly irritated when people talk of ‘failed marriages’, failed relationships. Is a ‘successful’ marriage or partnership one that lasts a lifetime? I don’t think so. It is one where both parties feel equal, loved and delight in expressing that love to each other. If these feelings last a lifetime fine, but people change and love changes also.This is something we cannot stop and nor should we try to – that way lies oppression of ourselves and others. Instead, recognise that divorce or separation can be the closure on a successful marriage or partnership. It can signal the ending of a successful relationship, but one which changed as the couple did. Sure, learn from the experience, but in looking back on it be generous not only to your ex-lover, but, most importantly, to yourself. And, of course, men might find these tips useful as well.

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chapte r iii


Doing democratic love From the research undertaken for this book, and my own experiences of love, it is apparent to me that relationships today must be based on democratic love – that is if they are to survive and thrive.With democratic love both parties make a pledge to work together for the sake of the relationship while also recognising the unique individuality of the other. Individuality is key in the modern age, for, as discussed in the Introduction, we are each increasingly seeing our lives as a journey, one with exciting possibilities, many shifts and turns, but which we must pursue if we are to be true to ourselves. This means that long-term committed relationships become a real balancing act. They require not only a high degree of self-awareness by each party; they require us to balance our desire for freedom and choice with the selflessness that sustains a relationship. This paradox raises different issues for men and women. For men it requires them to put down outdated assumptions about masculinity, femininity and women’s roles both at home and work. It requires them to adopt a more modern form of masculinity, one which exhibits sensitivity 128


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract and affection, but also, importantly, recognises women to be equal to men in every respect. For women, it requires them to be brave and take on the opportunities now afforded them in this new age. It requires them to balance more traditional notions of femininity (eg being a ‘good mother’) with the modern femininity now being expressed by women such as those described in this book. From research being undertaken in almost every society, not just in the West, it is clear that there is now a massive desire on the part of women for democratic rights both at home and at work. The extent and depth of this burgeoning revolution has become clear to me from my own travels abroad. In the past eighteen months I’ve travelled extensively in South East Asia and spoken to men and women from different countries about how they feel about their relationships. I’ve seen the same trends whether it be in China, Singapore, Thailand or Malaysia. That is, women, especially educated women, are less inclined to settle for a relationship that puts them at the periphery. They are now much more likely to go into a relationship expecting to share every aspect with their partner. In terms of traditional Asian cultures this signals the beginning of a profound and far-reaching revolution in gender attitudes and expectations. Not surprisingly, many men still find this reality difficult to grasp. But there can be no turning back from democratic love – it has a momentum of its own. During my research I came across several couples who appear to have established a condition of democratic love in their relationships. One such couple is Valerie, 38, and Brian, 42.They have been married for eight years and have a son, aged seven.Valerie tells their story: 129


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valerie Can you tell me about the time before you met Brian? For a long time in my twenties I didn’t see any man. I felt pretty asexual actually. I’d had a relationship in my late teens that went on for about eight years. He was a much older man and at times I found it quite difficult to be who I was. So I guess when that ended I wanted time out of a relationship – to find myself again.When I felt ready, that is confident to be able to withstand the ups and downs of a relationship, I responded to a personal ad in a national newspaper and it was Brian. He was living on his own, divorced, and having quite a good time as a single bloke. We formed a relationship and it’s gone on from there.

What makes the relationship with Brian so special? There are no secrets between us. He knows everything about me, about my past, my weaknesses and my little idiosyncrasies. He’s my best friend as well as my lover.There is real humour and fun in our relationship.We share every intimacy.There’s a lot of tenderness and kindness between us.

Can you give me some examples? He is a very loving and caring guy.With Brian, romance is usually unexpected. For example he bought me this ring completely out of the blue. Or he’ll do really totally meaningless, everyday things that are so loving. Like last year, at a time I was feeling very low and miserable, he would email me at work. He knows I love puppies and he’d send me emails with loads and loads of pictures of

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract puppies on them with messages such as ‘don’t feel wough’! That’s so lovely. He’s a very tender man. He’ll stroke my hair if I’m feeling down, and say something like ‘it’ll be okay’. He’s also very patient and never judges me. If something or someone has upset me, and I’m dwelling on it a bit, he won’t say ‘pull yourself together woman’, we’ll just talk about it but without him losing patience with me. I think we all like to feel wanted and loved, and Brian has a way of doing that with me which is so natural.

How did you decide to get married? After we’d been going out for a while I warned him that if he ever asked me to marry him then I would leave him! So he never did. And I got a bit pissed off! I decided he was too nice to let go so I asked him to marry me!

What have you learnt from this relationship? I’ve come to love Brian more as we’ve been together. I’ve changed as a person.I’m a lot more patient and less selfish. Many other things that I didn’t like about relationships, like compromise, listening to someone, putting someone else first, I’ve found I can do. I suspect I was very selfish before Brian. I like myself better now. I’ve really learned to love him, and in a much, much deeper way.

What about your sex life? To be honest, sex is not so important for me. I’ve gone for long periods without having sex. For me to have sex it must be with someone I love, not just any man. I know

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Men,Women, Love and Romance some people can sleep around, but I can’t. I’d rather not have sex than to go with someone who means nothing to me.With Brian our sex life has got better the longer we’ve been together.At first I found the sex a little difficult, as it brought back very bad memories of my first relationship when I was with a very controlling man who played mind games with me. Now there is a lot of passion in our relationship, and it is immensely satisfying. For me, I must be comfortable, sexually, in the relationship, otherwise too many inhibitions creep in and it starts to affect the intimacies between you and your partner.

As Valerie’s account reveals, couples cannot expect to just walk into democratic love without first being prepared to accommodate and compromise. Valerie and Brian both have their own individual lives, histories, and expectations, and like all couples they’ve found that the real skill is in making these differences work for the relationship rather than allowing them to pull the relationship apart. It takes two to do democratic love. In talking to women for this book it became clear to me that one of the drivers behind democratic love, and women’s changing attitudes, is sexuality. For most couples, sex is the glue that holds it all together. Indeed, for many, the search for romance is also the search for perfect sex – the ultimate orgasm, the heart-stopping, exquisite union of emotions and bodies. In this respect sex and romance have their own self-sustaining synergy.They are also alike in that they can be extremely addictive, compelling and mostly irresistible. Yet, as is discussed in the next chapter, sex is increasingly losing any mystery it once had, becoming instead the most successful commercial enterprise of the 132


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract Internet age. But does this mean we have to give up on intimate, free, loving and emotional attachments? Is sex simply another bodily activity we undertake when the need takes us? Does the avid and relentless commercialisation of sex indicate a loss of intimacy between individuals? In this chapter I suggest that the dismantling of sexual mystery is not necessarily problematic for relationships. On the contrary, it signals that we are capable of being more honest and open about our desires and needs: relationships founded not on mystery and tradition, but on open, often explicit, new sexual contracts between couples.

Old and new sexual contracts All contracts are based on a power balance and this rule applies no less to sexual contracts.The old sexual contract reflected a fundamental power imbalance between men and women. Its starting point was the belief, firstly, that men owned women. But it was also implicit that men want sex more than women. It rested on the idea that men were wracked by insatiable sexual urges, and women had to become skilled in dealing with and accommodating these powerful desires or else fall prey to them. This notion enabled women to withhold sexual favours,if they chose to do so, which gave them some leverage in their relationships – and many did this in order to have some control or even improve their lives.There was an exchange in the old contract.Women said, mostly, I want to be engaged, married, have children, commitment, love and to be protected. Men took on these roles and responsibilities in exchange for regular sex, meals and clean clothes. But although it worked in a fashion, the old sexual contract put women in 133


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Men,Women, Love and Romance the position of giving or granting sexual favours in exchange for other services: a form of marital prostitution. It also assumed women to be sexually passive. In fact, it put women themselves in the position of denying that they needed and wanted sexual pleasure. The new sexual contract is quite different. Its starting point is not differences between the sexes in terms of sexual needs and desire, but the recognition that women like sex just as much as men. It accepts the fact that women’s libidos are as strong if not stronger than most men’s and acknowledges that women have almost identical expectations of sexual satisfaction to men. Now women go into a relationship expecting if not demanding that their sexual needs be met, and certainly not expecting to grant them as a favour. Many may well still be looking for the long-term commitment that their mothers and grandmothers sought, but now they also expect that the man will service their sexual needs as well as their emotional ones.What is more,New Woman is much more ruthless at playing the new gender game than her predecessors; social and sexual confidence enables her to cut to the chase in a way that many men find quite disconcerting.As recent UK research reveals, there is a ‘new-found steel’ in women’s attitudes: Ambitious ‘Noughties woman’ is sassy, smart and sharp. She has little desire to uphold old-fashioned values and doesn’t care who she shocks. Today our expectations around sexual satisfaction are much higher than previous generations. Sex is not only important in terms of pleasure, it increasingly defines who we are and how we see the world.Without sexual pleasure life can seem 134


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract dull and mundane.When sex goes out of a relationship so too, usually, does love and romance – to be quickly followed by one or other of the partners in the relationship. ‘Dissatisfaction with my sexual life’ is one of the main reasons given by women for separation and divorce. The sexual contracts that define democratic love are not fixed for the duration of a relationship, but constantly reworked as individuals change. Only in this way can love and romance be sustained, for in the new gender game the sexual needs and desires of individuals are under constant revision, as are the relationships they are in. As a consequence, sexuality is now political in a way it was never understood to be by previous generations. As newspaper columnist Susan Maushart puts it: Who does what in bed – and how often – has become as fraught an issue as the housework. Welcome to the politics of intimacy.

Sexual myths and how women are dismantling them How and why has the new sexual contract emerged? Well, the possibilities for its emergence began with the dismantling of sexual myths during the second half of the twentieth century. The myths were powerful and potent, and had long influenced the minds of numerous generations of men and women.They went something like this: • Men have stronger sexual urges than women. • Women are programmed to want children and 135


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Men,Women, Love and Romance everything they do sexually is geared towards this aim. • Sex in marriage is a duty women should perform (NB ‘wife rape’ was legal in the UK until 1991). • Women are not naturally promiscuous, unless, that is, they are ‘sluts’. • Men cannot do monogamy, it is not in their ‘nature’. • Both women and men become less sexually active as they get older. • Women go off sex after having children. • Men go sexually off their wives after they’ve given birth. Yet despite the fact they limit our horizons, myths do have a certain comfort in them. They give us a set of rules and expectations around how we should behave. By providing some structure to our lives they become social codes that go largely unchallenged and are replicated in countless lives. Sexual myths are especially effective in this way. But if you believe that your sexual desires are somehow dirty, then it’s hardly going to help you achieve orgasmic pleasure. If you see sex as a duty then you are hardly going to want to be sexually experimental. And if you think that all men are serial shaggers and cannot be trusted, then you can say goodbye to much chance of a long-lasting loving relationship. If you enjoy a certain sex act then indulge it, always remembering the golden rule of not behaving in an aggressive or coercive manner towards others while doing so. The sexual revolution of the new millennium is more liberating than that of the 1960s,simply because it is being driven by women and not by men.What we have here is a fundamental shift in how we approach sex and sexuality, an opening up of 136


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract any number of closets, not just one or two. In losing its mystery sex is acquiring an openness and frankness which can only be healthy for individuals and society as a whole.As recent research has revealed, countless numbers of women during the twentieth century never experienced truly satisfying orgasmic sex. Sexual pleasure was considered a need of the man, with the woman performing her marital duty.This was true of women from all social groups, though especially the middle and working classes. Now sexual pleasure is considered a fundamental part of any relationship,more than that even, it is becoming a leisure activity. As Dr Beverley Metcalfe,researcher into gender and identity,puts it: Sex is becoming just another recreational activity. There is evidence of an increase in multi-partner sex, group sex, threesomes. At this rate, by the end of this century we’ll all be swingers. Below are six women who illustrate all that is best about the bedroom revolution and the sexual and personal freedom it offers.The accounts of Jane,Carol, Linda,Diane, Janice and Sarah reveal how each, in her own way, is dismantling sexual myths. In my interviews with these women I asked each of them the same questions around sex and sexuality.These are their answers.

jane (33, engaged to be married.) How many lovers have you had? Not sure, over 50 definitely, but mainly one-night stands.

Have you ever had same-sex relationships? 137


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Yes, several. I like a woman’s touch on my body. I know more and more women are trying bisexuality and finding it offers something extra in their sex lives. It’s not that they’re not having relationships with men, it’s like dessert rather than main course if you know what I mean.

Where did you meet your present lover (her fiancé)? Through an on-line dating agency. I’d gone out with loads of men who’d contacted me through the agency,but Brad and I hit it off immediately.

How liberal are you in sexual matters? Very. For example, while I won’t be unfaithful to Brad with a man, I do occasionally have a woman friend of mine over for the night. She and I have been occasional lovers for a number of years and I don’t see any reason to give her up. Brad knows about her, in fact we’ve been thinking of maybe having a threesome.

Have you ever had a threesome? Yes,a few times,and foursomes,with both men and women. Though not with Brad,though we’ve talked about it.

What has been your most erotic experience? Difficult. I think my most erotic experiences have been threesomes with a woman and a man. I remember one experience I had with two men who I met while on holiday some years ago. It was just a spontaneous thing,

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract nothing planned and that made it very erotic.The three of us were out walking one evening, on the beach, and we had sex. I like having sex outdoors and sex in a public place such as lifts or trains can be pretty erotic.

Is there any sexual activity you’ve not tried? Not many. I regularly use sex toys, both by myself and with partners. I’ve done the swinging scene, but found some of the clubs a bit seedy.You know, one woman and six men wanking off on her. I’m not into anal stuff. But I do like tying up, a bit of bondage can be fun.

How would you describe your sexual relationship with Brad? As open, really. There isn’t much we don’t discuss. He knows what I like, he knows what I need. Sometimes that means sexual penetration, other times it means playing adult games, but most of the time it means feeling close and intimate – touching, caressing, foreplay. He’s probably not as sexually adventurous as I am. He’s not had as many lovers as me, but he’s a good lover. I don’t feel I need anyone else. But when I do, I tell him.

What sort of sexual contract have you with Brad? I suppose it’s one where we both recognise we have sexual and physical needs, and they may not always coincide. It’s based on mutual trust, so if he wanted to go with someone else I’d rather he told me than keep it from me. I do the same with him.

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carol (41, married for 18 years. has a lover.) How many lovers have you had? Not many, about eight.

Have you ever had same-sex relationships? No.

Where did you meet your present lover? (Not her husband.) We met through work. It started out as an email relationship and grew from there.

How liberal are you in sexual matters? Much more so than I used to be. With my lover we’ve done most things and it’s been an education for me I guess.We’ve felt we could trust each other, and the sexual chemistry has been right for experimentation. I was ready for it after 18 something years of at times fairly mundane marriage.

Have you ever had a threesome? Yes, once. My lover and I went away to London for a few days and on one of the evenings we booked an escort to come to our hotel bedroom. She was very attractive and the three of us had an interesting hour! I must admit that I couldn’t get so excited with her being around and my

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract lover having sex with her as well as me. But it was something we tried and I’m not sure we’ll do it again.

What has been your most erotic experience? On one of our trips away, my lover and I had sex on a train. Not the most comfortable of places, but the threat of being discovered added to it a bit.To be erotic it doesn’t have to be physical. I can be highly aroused hours before meeting my lover,especially if we’ve been passing erotic emails back and forwards between us for a few weeks.Then when we do actually kiss and touch each other it’s like series of mini explosions in my pants! At the moment my most erotic experiences are when I meet my lover, preferably in a city hotel and we can spend the day together,in bed.It’s not just the actual being with him that is so good – it’s the waiting, building up the tension,sometimes over several days,before we can actually meet.That is quite erotic.We do this about once a month and it’s the highlight of my life.

Is there any sexual activity you’ve not tried? With my husband, many! With my lover, very few! I’ve found I like being tied up, gently, and spanked, not so gently! That can be very arousing.Sometimes we use a sex toy in those situations, a vibrator.We’ve tried anal sex and enjoyed it. But it’s really just pushing back our boundaries a little, and discovering what works for us. Phone sex with my lover is another little pleasure I have in life.

How would you describe your sexual relationships with your husband and your lover? 141


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Well, quite different as you’d expect! My husband and I make love, but not that often. It’s become fairly ordinary and although there is warmth and affection there, it doesn’t make the earth move any more. Our sex is fairly routine. We don’t do oral on each other, and mostly it’s him who has the orgasm,not me.With my lover it’s totally different. But then we only see each other once every six weeks or so, so it’s not surprising really as our relationship has not had a chance to get routine. Nevertheless, it’s not just that.When my lover and I make love we can spend an hour just being erotic with each other. Bathing together, playing touching games in public places, watching porn movies in hotel rooms if the fancy takes us. So the sex comes from that period of intense arousal. My lover and I love to experiment, it’s part of our relationship.

What sort of sexual contract do you have with your lover? It’s a mix of honesty, truthfulness and a desire to please each other, sexually. If this means experimenting then that’s fine, just so long as we each know what the boundaries are. We talk about sex and our relationship quite a lot. We know each other very well. There’s a lot of comfort in it.

janice (48, married since she was 20 years old. has had several lovers in the past five years.) How many lovers have you had? Well, until I was 43 only one, my husband, but in the past five years there have been another four.

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract Have you ever had same-sex relationships? No, it doesn’t interest me at all.

Where did you meet your lovers? Mainly they’ve lived within the area, or I’ve met them when I went out with the girls on Friday nights.One man I met through work.

How liberal are you in sexual matters? Until I was in my mid-forties, not very liberal at all, or experienced for that matter, though I’d had three children. I find my sex life has got better since I started smoking pot. I find it really relaxes me if I smoke a joint before sex.

Have you ever had a threesome? No! I’d be much too frightened.

What has been your most erotic experience? I like sex in public places,cars,the countryside,that sort of thing. The most erotic sex has been with the men who have been my lovers. Some of them have been fantastic lovers, very sexy and arousing. One of the men I saw liked me to dress up, in leather stuff especially, which he bought for me.That was really sexy. He was into bondage so he’d get me to wear handcuffs with crotchless leather pants. We’d play all sorts of games in an afternoon, round at his

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Men,Women, Love and Romance house or in a local hotel. The thing is, I’d get wet just imagining us doing it, so by the time we actually met and started I’d be raring to go! He posted some stuff of me on the Internet, to a sex site, but my face was hidden, thankfully!

Is there any sexual activity you’ve not tried? Until I was in my mid-forties I’d had a very sheltered life and it was reflected in my lack of sexual experience. Since I started having the occasional fling with men I’ve felt more able to experiment and try new things. It’s become a bit addictive – now if it wasn’t there in my life I’d really miss it. So all this has helped me be more adventurous, sexually. I’m a much more sexually confident person than I was in my thirties. Now if a man wants me to do something then I’m more inclined to go along with it. Or I’m just as likely to tell him of my fantasies, and what I’d like.

How would you describe your sexual relationships with your husband and your lovers? I love my husband very much.There is no way I will ever leave him. I honestly believe that we will be together for the rest of our lives. But I’ve come to need more in my life, especially sexually. Since the children left home I’ve had more time on my hands and I’ve wanted to find out more about life.The sex with Ronnie [her husband] has always been nice, but rarely earth-shattering. But it’s safe and secure and that’s important as well.We have sex about once a fortnight, sometimes less.You cannot compare that with the sex I’ve had with other men.That has been much

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract more exciting, though rarely secure because you always fear being found out.But,then,that’s part of the attraction – the illicit side of it.

What sort of sexual contract do you have with your husband? One where he doesn’t refuse me sex too often! He works very hard and I’ve found that if he’s really relaxed and we have the house to ourselves, then that is when we can have some good times in the bedroom. But it doesn’t happen often enough for me.

linda (44, married for over 20 years. has a lover.) How many lovers have you had? If you count serious lovers, probably about four. The number of men I’ve had sex with is probably over 20.

Have you ever had same-sex relationships? Not relationships as such, but I’ve had sex with women.

Where did you meet your present lover? (Not her husband.) We met in a bar in the town. It was a girls’ night out and we got talking. I’d been seeing a couple of men, nothing serious, but Michael asked me out and our relationship got started pretty quickly after that.

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Men,Women, Love and Romance How liberal are you in sexual matters? Since about five years ago, when I started having affairs, very liberal. I enjoy sex and can see nothing wrong with having fun so long as nobody gets hurt. I cannot go into middle age with my libido switched off! In fact,once I got into my late thirties it seemed to go into overdrive!

Have you ever had a threesome? Yes. I forget how we started it, but I joined in with a couple I know.We met several times. It was really good. I’m not really into women as such, but I found that with this couple I could relax and let myself go. We kept the relationship going for about six months.

What has been your most erotic experience? There’s been many! I once had a lover who insisted on me not wearing knickers whenever we met. Sometimes we’d go to the cinema and he’d finger me while the film was on. Or we’d be standing in a public place and his hand would be up my skirt and his fingers inside me. I once made love with my husband on the banks of Lake Windermere in the Lake District.It was summer,of course! I had a loose skirt on and I just sat astride him while my skirt covered us. I don’t think people could see.We had sex a couple of times that day, in different parts of the Lakes.

Is there any sexual activity you’ve not tried? I think I’ve tried most things at some time or another.

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract Women have said to me that they wouldn’t do this or that with a man, but I just think how can you say that unless you’ve tried it? I was in my late thirties before I ever used a vibrator. Now I wouldn’t be without one! And I’ve found porn to be a turn-on, so long as I am watching it with a lover, not on my own.That way it’s part of our sex life.

How would you describe your sexual relationships with your husband and your lover? Surprisingly good, with both. My husband and I have always enjoyed sex and we’ve tried most things. But with my lover there’s not just the sex, there is real love between us. When I was in my twenties I’d little experience of sexual pleasure, I was 23 before I had my first orgasm, so perhaps I’m a late starter. But with the right man, someone you can trust, then sex assumes different proportions in your life. It’s the physical and emotional stuff all rolled into one.

What sort of sexual contract do you have with your husband and lover? With my husband it’s based on being there for him, sexually and other ways. With my lover it’s based on mutual emotional and physical needs. So I suppose the contracts, as you put it, are quite different. Maybe I’ve wanted a new contract, but I can only get it with my lover. Or maybe it’s just materialised through our love for each other. I’m not sure.

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diane (34, has been in a steady relationship for 7 years. she’s not married.) How many lovers have you had? I lost my virginity at 15, since then I’ve had about 16 lovers, but I’ve always been faithful to Tony.

Have you ever had same-sex relationships? Once, when I was at university. She was a girl friend and it became sexual for a while.We still keep in touch though we don’t have sex now. She’s a good friend. She is actually more lesbian than bi, while I’m basically straight.

Where did you meet Tony? On a blind date, actually. It was set up by a friend of mine and Tony was the date. I’d had a longish relationship during my final year of studying but nothing heavier than that. Tony and I decided to live together after about six months.

How liberal are you in sexual matters? I’d like to think I was, though I’m not sure when I hear what some of my friends get up to!

Have you ever had a threesome? This is a recurring fantasy with Tony and I. It’s something we really get off on at times, though we’ve never actually

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract done it. I did once. Many years ago. But it was just a oneoff thing. I’d been seeing this bloke, we went on holiday and met up with another couple. One night the four of us had some sex play in the hotel bedroom.Weird really, but exciting nonetheless.

What is your most erotic experience? Tony and I play this game. It involves tying up and blindfolding me. I’ll be naked, probably in the bedroom and I won’t be allowed to move. Sometimes he’ll leave me like that for an hour and then he’ll come into the room and have sex with me, or put ice cream on me and lick it off. Or he’ll spank me while he’s making love to me. These games don’t happen all the time, we’ve got to be in the mood. But they are very arousing.

Is there any sexual activity you’ve not tried? Well, I’m certainly not into pain! Neither am I that keen on anal sex. Actually, I’ve never tried it, mainly because I once went out with a bloke who tried to force me and it put me off after that. I’ve done most other things and found them okay, in fact more than okay!

How would you describe your sexual relationship with Tony? Tony is the best lover I’ve ever had. I don’t feel the need for anyone else.We’ll talk about sex and quite openly,even with other couples. I think this just makes for a more relaxed experience. If I had a particular fantasy that I wanted to live out then I’d tell him. Maybe I will at some

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Men,Women, Love and Romance point, who knows.We make love several times a week and either one of us can initiate it.

What sort of sexual contract do you have with Tony? I don’t see it as a contract, it’s just a sort of arrangement that’s evolved during our relationship. If I had to say exactly how it worked I’m not sure I could. I suppose it is based on trust, respect and love. But also on a recognition that we both have sexual needs, not just one of us.

sarah (45, divorced, single mum.) How many lovers have you had? Over 100,most when I was in my twenties and early thirties.

Have you ever had same-sex relationships? No. It’s never interested me.

Where do you meet men? Recently I’ve been using a dot.com friendship site. I prefer it to personal columns in newspapers because the site profiles have photos of men so you can see who you’re communicating with early on.

How liberal are you in sexual matters? I’m quite shy actually, so I have to be relaxed to let myself go with a man. However, once I do I’m dynamite!

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract Have you ever had a threesome? No never.Though it is a fantasy.

What is your most erotic experience? I find all sex erotic. I’m a very sexual animal. I lost my virginity at 15 and since then I don’t think I’ve gone more than two weeks without sex. I get turned on very easily, especially visually. I’m good at massage and with that I can make a sex session last ages. I think three hours is my record. Sex is a fundamental part of my life. I multiple orgasm when a man’s inside me. My record is 20 in one session! What I also find quite arousing is swapping notes about men with my women friends. We do it all the time. Describing men, describing sex with them, describing their bodies and how they performed. In fact, when I was younger we even swapped men sometimes!

Is there any sexual activity you’ve not tried? Well, there must be, but I cannot think of one just at this moment.

How would you describe your last serious relationship, sexually? Like most relationships it started well, though it deteriorated through his drinking.We were together for six years and I was faithful throughout that time. We had regular sex but I didn’t feel close to him. I couldn’t stand the smell

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Men,Women, Love and Romance of alcohol on his breath. He’d come to bed late at night looking for sex, and we’d have sex, but I never kissed him.

What sort of sexual contract would you want in an exclusive relationship? One that gives me lots of love and passion!

Jane, Carol, Linda, Diane and Sarah have different lives, different experiences and different relationships with men.Yet they do have one commonality.That is they are largely free of most, if not all, of the sexual myths which were so prominent up until fairly recently. However, models of the old sexual contract still exist. For example, I came across one woman, Maggie, who had evolved a fairly commercial sexual contract with her husband: Although we have a good relationship, sexually and otherwise, there are sex acts I prefer not to do. This proved to be a bit of a problem when we first got married. At one point I was afraid Tim and I would split up over it. But we managed to resolve it. I’m not sure the way we’ve resolved it would suit everybody, but it suits us. Basically, he pays me to do certain things. We will be making love, and he might ask me to suck him, or to allow him have different types of sex with me, and we’ll agree, beforehand, a rate for it. It might be a meal out, or money, or a new dress. Actually, I think he finds it quite sexually arousing. It’s a sort of sex game we have and to be honest I get turned on by it as well – being the whore.

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Men responding to the New Woman So women are developing new, and sometimes not so new, sexual contracts with their partners. But how do men feel about women’s capacity to be open and explicit about their sexual needs and desires? I interviewed four men, Roy, Graeme, Simon and David, to get their perspectives and to hear them tell of their encounters with ‘new woman’.

roy Roy is aged 39. He has been divorced for five years and lives alone. He’s had a number of girlfriends over the past few years, but nothing serious. He recounted a recent experience with a woman he’d met through work. We’d been in touch through work for some time, maybe six months. I hadn’t thought of her as a potential partner until we met up at my place of work and went out for a drink that evening. Still nothing happened at that time, but it got me thinking! Eventually, I invited her over to stay with me when she was next in the city. She did.The first night we talked and drank wine, and then went to bed – separate bedrooms. I lay there in my bed, thinking about her being in the room just across the corridor. I got this erection! So I thought, fuck this! I got out of bed, went to her room, knocked, she let me in and I stood there, in front of her, stark naked with an erection. I can’t remember what I said exactly, but it was on the lines of ‘look what do you say we do something about this’! She thought it was wonderful the way I’d come across like that.So original she said! It was great.But what put me off was that she proved to be so sexually assertive in bed.

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Men,Women, Love and Romance Wanted me to do all sorts! She wanted anal sex and there was no way I was doing that! Her explicitness took me back a bit. I felt used a bit I suppose.

As with many men, the bedroom revolution appears to have caught Roy by surprise. To be faced with a woman who knows her own mind, knows what she wants sexually, and virtually almost demands it, well, that is a new experience for him. But he’ll adapt. He’ll have to.

simon Simon is aged 55. He is an accountant, married and has three grown-up children. Although his marriage fell on rather barren times he had never been unfaithful, that is until recently. It was last spring, and I’d gone alone to attend a friend’s wedding. It was late in the evening at the reception, and I saw this beautiful red-haired woman,about 40,standing at the bar. She just looked at me, very hard, and I couldn’t help but stare back. I’d never felt anything like it. I had this strong sense that she wanted to talk to me. So I did something I’ve never ever done before, I went up and talked to her, had a drink with her. Then we had a dance. We danced through to the early hours. It was wonderful. I don’t know what happened, maybe I got carried away with the music, drink and excitement of it all, but when it came time to leave she rang for a taxi and asked me what I was doing. I just came out with it. I said, ‘I’m coming home with you aren’t I?’To my utter amazement she said, ‘Yes, you are.’And that was it. I made arrangements to go back up to see her a week later, on the pretence of it being

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract a business trip. I stayed the weekend with her. It was a fantastic time. The sex was the best ever. But she’s a very independent woman and I know I have to be a little cautious. She’s never been married and she’s had lots of lovers. I know I have to be careful because I’m not that experienced in the ways of love, but I feel I just have to go with this. I’m addicted to it I guess. I’m trying to let her decided how the relationship develops, she’s very much in control of what’s happening. But I don’t want to give her up.

From being initially hesitant and unsure, Simon shows all the signs of coming to terms with the assertive attitude of New Woman. He is right to tread carefully, but his instincts are telling him to go with the moment, and not to expect to control either the process or the outcome.

david David is aged 39 and has been married for five years.He has no children. I guess I’d come to assume I would never get married, and then I met Elaine.We met through work, we are both in the same department. I’d always admired her, but it had never come to anything.And anyway,for a long time I was seeing someone else and enjoying that relationship, though it wasn’t going anywhere. And then, one day, Elaine asked me out. No hesitation, very direct, just asked me out. I was surprised really. I found her to be the most remarkable woman. She’d been in a very damaging relationship in her early twenties, come out of that and not had any relationships since. So she was very cautious

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Men,Women, Love and Romance about the sort of man she would get involved with. I reckon she’d spent a lot of time weighing me up before she decided to take the plunge. I am glad she did. I’m not really that confident with women, but with Elaine it’s different.There is a real strength with her and she’s good fun. After a few months she moved in with me and then we decided to get married. It was just something which evolved for us.We are good friends and have a real laugh together. Another thing I really like about Elaine is that she’s not traditional in her views. Many of the women I’d previously been out with, especially when I was in my twenties, were very traditional, and expected me to take the lead in most things.The women wanted me to do the pursuing, and I liked it because it was a bit of challenge, a conquest. But with Elaine she sort of conquered me! When I met Elaine I’d been through a lot of difficulties, especially with illness in my family. I’d moved back home to live with my mother. I’d never been in love before and wasn’t expecting it to happen to me. Sure, I’d liked the women I’d been out with, but there was always something that happened which put me off them. Men are programmed to respond to attractive women, but that was not what made me ask them out. It was usually after I got to know them a bit and they got more interesting. With Elaine, I was interested in her from the outset, but it needed her to make the first move. Now she’s my best friend and I couldn’t envisage life without her.

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract came along who took him out of that and into the drama and excitement of a full and loving relationship. He seems to be thriving on it.

graeme Graeme is aged 34. He is a social worker and is engaged to be married. Neither have been married before. I met Sandy when I was on a training course. She was on the course with me. We hit it off immediately and although we didn’t date while we were on the course, I phoned her later and we started a relationship shortly after that. At first the relationship was fairly straightforward, and then she told me she was bisexual and that she had women friends she liked to keep in touch with. I realised from the outset that some of these relationships were sexual.This took some getting used to on my part. At first I just couldn’t understand what it was that her girlfriend gave her that I couldn’t. To be honest, I think my male ego was very bruised at first, but I’ve come to terms with the situation. In fact, I now think it’s rather sexy. I don’t think any of my previous girlfriends were bi, but they may have been. Since I started seeing Sandy I’ve become very aware that there are a lot of women out there who have occasional same-sex relationships, even though they are in steady relationships with men.A lot of married women for example. This situation with Sandy has meant some real compromises for me, and I guess for her. At the moment we still live several hundred miles apart, so we still live fairly independent lives. I’m okay with Sandy seeing other women, and I know she has one particular girlfriend, but

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Men,Women, Love and Romance I wouldn’t tolerate her seeing men. Her bisexuality has had to become an integral aspect of our relationship.We love each other, but I know she needs her female friends at times. Sandy is very clear about her sexual needs and our physical relationship is great, she is a very sexy, sensual woman. We discuss almost anything, but obviously our families have no idea about this other aspect of our relationship. How it will go on in the future I don’t know. But I love her and need her. I couldn’t change her and if I tried then I’d lose her, that’s for sure.

The revelation about Sandy’s sexuality must have been a difficult one for Graeme to come to terms with, but he seems to be coping very well.This situation raises issues of infidelity/fidelity.Apparently Graeme doesn’t mind Sandy having sex with another woman, but couldn’t countenance her having sex with another man.The gender game is very complicated and for much of it we have to make up our own rules. Judgements are pointless – and harmful. What is certain is that Sandy knows what she wants, and although she may be willing to compromise, losing her female friends is one compromise she’s not prepared to make. As these accounts from women and men show, we are in a new era of love and romance and there can be no going back.As Jackie Jones put it in a letter to the Guardian, sex is returning to its roots: The idea that people had to find someone, fall in love and live happily ever after for the rest of their lives,is a modern invention. Now we have birth control, sexuality is returning to its prehistoric roots: promiscuity is not unusual, neither is multipartner sex. Sex can be all kinds of things.

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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract The failure of monogamy in our society has to do with the claustrophobia of the nuclear family.The family structure hasn’t caught up with the new sexuality, and will probably take decades to do so.

The rules of the new sexual contract The first rule to remember is that there is only one rule: play safe. Sex in the twenty-first century is, in health terms, a high-risk activity.This is not surprising given that in the 1950s 60 per cent of women had sex for the first time with a man to whom they were engaged or already married. Today that figure is just 1 per cent. Serial monogamy, multiple partners over a lifetime, is a fact of modern life. In the UK, one in ten adults has had a sexually transmitted disease, with chlamydia the most common. Cases of gonorrhoea, syphilis and chlamydia have doubled between 1995 and 2000. Public health authorities expect a 50 per cent increase in HIV infections between 2000 and 2005. Some health professions predict that HIV will, at least in Western countries, become as common as diabetes and as readily manageable through drugs. However, in countries such as China, where there has been a veritable explosion in HIV infections, the prospects are very bleak. There are now an estimated one and a half million HIV positive Chinese, up from half a million just four years ago.The situation is even more drastic in Africa, where 9 per cent of the total population has HIV. Worldwide, the age group which shows the biggest increase in HIV and other STDs is the 18–24s. At 21,500, the 25–34 age group has the largest number of HIV and AIDs infections in the UK, 45 per cent of the total. But, the World 159


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Men,Women, Love and Romance Health Organization has virtually no statistics on HIV infection amongst the over fifties. Why? Because they define ‘adults’ as being aged between 15 and 49 – they don’t seem to consider the over fifties to be a very sexually active group! As a result, older people across many continents do not receive regular screening for HIV and AIDs, so no one has any real idea of the size of infection, worldwide, in this age group. However, what we do know is that 7 per cent of total UK HIV/AIDs infection is now in the 50+ age group, and rising. It is little surprise that many health practitioners have begun referring to the over sixties as the ‘Swinging Sixties’. So playing safe is the only rule. Anything else goes between consenting adults. There are however, some guidelines you might choose to follow.

16 guidelines to the new sexual contract 1. Romance can be the most arousing sensation. Loving thoughts and words sent by email, texted, accompanying flowers or just whispered in the ear, can mean so much more than an expensive present bought out of duty not love. So remember, sexual arousal begins with foreplay and foreplay begins with romantic moments and loving thoughts and actions. 2. Women and men can be turned off by a harsh word, a thoughtless action or an inconsiderate remark. To perform sex after experiencing such feelings of hurt becomes a duty not a pleasure. In fact, it compounds the initial hurt.To be exposed to constant belittling in a relationship and then be expected to be loving and sexual in bed is to be subjected to a particularly oppressive regime. It is anything but sexually arousing, at least 160


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract for the person on the receiving end. It’s just a mind game aimed at subduing someone to a stronger will. 3. Communication is vital in any relationship and especially so when it comes to the sexual side. So communicate. Share thoughts, feelings and emotions. Talk and listen, equally. If there is a sexual game or act that you’d like to try then say so.Know what you like and be prepared to say what that is to your partner. If you’re not sure what you like then experiment. Remember, you can’t say you don’t like something until you’ve tried it. 4. Children are the biggest turn off, sexually. The sexual relations of countless loving couples come to grief after children are born.Why? Well, it’s not because women who are mothers go off sex. It’s because young children are exhausting and time consuming. If your partner is up all night feeding or putting crying toddlers back to bed, then don’t expect them to be to that interested in a sexually swinging session. In fact, tiredness cripples sexual arousal.Adequate sleep restores it – and surprisingly quickly.Also, men who don’t carry their share of the childwork – at night as well as during the day – risk building resentment in their partners, and it is almost inevitable that such resentment will spill over into the sexual relationship, making it very hard for the mother to be a lover in bed. So men, do your share of the childcare. That is if you hope to maintain a good relationship, sexual or otherwise, with your partner. 5. One person’s pleasure may well be another person’s complete turn-off. So be it. But don’t judge others simply on your values. Recognise that we all have choices, we all are different.And don’t assume anything 161


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Men,Women, Love and Romance about a person’s sexual character until you know them better – and intimately. 6. Fantasies can add spice to any sexual relationship. Fantasies are also especially arousing when shared with a partner.There is nothing more arousing than making love while describing a sexual fantasy to your lover – words adding juice to the physical act. However, be warned, many fantasies are best left as that – fantasies. When enacted in real life they can be a complete disappointment, perhaps even damaging to the relationship. So don’t be afraid to keep erotic thoughts in the realm of the imagination, not reality. 7. As all those who partake in S&M can confirm, sex and power are very closely entwined. Recognise this, accept it. If being sexually active makes you feel powerful, then fine. Why not? Only the powerful can be liberated.That is why women are driving the bedroom revolution, not men. 8. Illicitness and sex go well together. Some people can only get off, sexually, when they are in an illicit situation.This might be an affair, having sex in a field, in a car, even in their kitchen, but always within possible view of others.The risk of discovery is what makes it tantalisingly arousing for many lovers. 9. Sex toys are fun – use them. Handcuffs, masking tape, blindfolds, dildos, vibrators, all accompanied, where necessary, by a fruit-flavoured lubricant, can be in the repertoire of every sexual relationship. If you are in a relationship it’s nice to choose such items with your partner, perhaps over the Internet. 10. There is nothing innately corrupting about sexual imagery. Erotica, in every form imaginable, has been 162


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract around for thousands of years. Some hard porn is dangerous, sure, some porn, soft and hard, is just plain awful, boring even – but not all. If you are going to use porn and erotica then become a sophisticated consumer of it. And share it. Use porn to enhance a relationship, though obviously don’t force the issue if one partner is unwilling. 11. All sex has an addictive side.The more we have sex, the more we want it, especially when it is a jointly undertaken lovingly expressed activity and mutually pleasurable. However, many of the women I spoke to said that illicit sex was especially addictive – the thrill of the chase, the intense arousal that accompanies new encounters, the excitement of being with an illicit lover.These can be very extraordinary, heart-stopping moments. It is no surprise that we go back to them time and again, often putting at risk other relationships, perhaps even our emotional and physical well-being. Despite its addictiveness, don’t be afraid of sex and of enjoying it – in whatever form suits you and your lover. 12. All relationships go through phases when sex is less important. If or when this happens in your relationship, don’t attempt to lay all the blame on your partner.There is never only one person in a relationship – at the very least it takes two to communicate. Also, if the romantic roller-coaster slows down for you, don’t assume the relationship has no future.Try to establish the cause of the difficulty.On the other hand,there may not be a problem – there is only a problem if one of you or both of you are dissatisfied and therefore unhappy with the situation. Recovering sensuality takes four elements – communication, openness, desire and intent. 163


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Men,Women, Love and Romance 13. Sexual chemistry is an amazingly complex phenomenon. It starts with our brains (the biggest sexual organ) and proceeds to be ‘triggered’ through body chemicals such as phenylethylamine, dopamine and oxytocin. Some research has suggested that the key to sexual chemistry is the pheromones we secrete – our very own personal sex scent.Whatever drives us, the point is that despite the constant bombardment of almost identical sexual images on screen and TV, as individuals we get turned on by very different people, very different shapes, sights and smells. So don’t assume that if you do not fit a conventional sexual stereotype that you are somehow ‘outside the frame’ when it comes to playing the gender game.You aren’t. 14. Nobody feels sexually aroused all the time. The daily toll that work, family life, managing a home and children takes on our libidos should not be underestimated. Feeling rested and relaxed is the starting point for bedroom antics. But also we have physical and psychological cycles, patterns in our life which are still only barely understood in terms of their impact on our sexual desire. And this doesn’t just apply to women, it’s true for men also. So don’t expect to be at top performance every night, every week. Recognise that there will be times of the month when sleep and rest are much more attractive propositions than energetic sex. 15. Remember, the bedroom revolution, and the sexual contracts which are an integral part of it, are about change. So ring the changes in your own life, in your own sexual contract: different clothes, different styles, different positions, different settings, different games. In 164


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Democratic Love:The New Sexual Contract particular, dressing up can be very sexy, not only does it change our image but it also changes our sense of self. 16. Finally, it has taken women many centuries to get this far in dismantling and challenging all those sexual myths which have long stifled their opportunity to freely express themselves, sexually or otherwise. So make the most of this new era. Have fun!

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chapte r iv

How to Find Love

Have you ever been driving alone in your car and suddenly, unexpectedly, a song comes on the radio that carries you back to some romantic moment in your life, to a past love? It has happened to me on numerous occasions. It can be a very emotional moment, but also a very profound one as you unexpectedly recall the feelings you once had, maybe still have,for another.These experiences tell us that our past loves never truly leave us, and that once we find love and romance in our lives it changes us for ever.We can never go back to that more innocent time, for it is in those romantic moments,in our love for another,that we feel enriched and complete.We should always treasure our memories of love, and though the love may decline in time, we should relish finding love in our lives and delight in those days when we are loved in return. But how and where do we find intimate love and romance in this age of the bedroom revolution, an era when being an individual,‘finding ourselves’, increasingly describes our life journeys? What avenues to love are open to us in the hectic twenty-first century? What role does new technology now play in bringing us experiences, and memories, of love? This chapter will look at some of the different ways to find love, and how to deal with 166


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How to Find Love embarking on new relationships in an age of singledom, individualism and cyberlove.

How to find love on the Internet It can be argued that throughout much of the twentieth century the media set the pace of change in terms of gender and sexuality.However,it now seems that the media is trying to keep up with the phenomenal changes taking place in relationships, sex, love and romance. Probably the best example of how the media is now playing catch up with social change, rather than leading it, is the Internet. This is a high-tech media invention, but its content is primarily driven by ordinary people and is increasingly coming to reflect the interests of these people – not just in the West but worldwide.At the beginning of the 1990s the Internet did not exist for the vast majority of the world’s population.Ten years later and there isn’t a nation state that is not increasingly reliant on it, not a business or other agency that does not have a website, and there are relatively few people who can’t get access to it in some form or another. One of the most popular Internet search engines, www.google.com claims access to over 2 billion web pages and increasing – one for every three people on the planet. The information age is well and truly with us. Not surprisingly, one of the first aspects of the human condition to impact on the Internet is sex.With an annual revenue of over $2 billion, the selling of sex has, from the outset, been the most profitable business on the World Wide Web, while it is estimated that the top five US porn sites have over 12 million visitors a month. Moreover, Internet porn is the key driver in the technological evolution of the net, 167


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Men,Women, Love and Romance with commercial sex sites becoming ever more sophisticated in their construction and marketing. You can buy anything on the web and this is certainly true of sex.You can have any sexual fantasy catered for, and many you’d never imagine so long as you lived. These fantasies, or actual practices, will not be to everyone’s taste, but that is the point, everyone’s taste is catered for. No one gets left out. Anyone who doubts that the web can be potentially liberating for women should check out www.cliterati.co.uk. Anyone who doubts that men are slow to change should check out www.ihatefeminism.com. More than any other aspect of the media, the Internet has opened our eyes to the fantastic variety that is the human condition. Moreover, the World Wide Web is changing the nature of communication; making it faster, more direct, more accessible, broader in scope and content. Significantly, the Internet is enhancing the ways in which women and men communicate as potential or actual lovers. Despite its technological dimensions, there is a potential sexual and emotional intimacy to be had in cyberspace as many people have discovered, to the extent that the proliferation of Internet chatrooms and global Internet ‘adult friendship’ sites is a phenomenon of the age. From the comfort of your home you can establish a friendship, or relationship, with anyone in any country. An estimated 17 million US adults visit on-line dating sites every month. 168


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How to Find Love A few years ago Internet dating agencies had a reputation for attracting what one of my women interviewees described as ‘drongoes’ – men, often married or unmatchable, who were using the net to ‘trap’unsuspecting women.Such men will still be out there, but they now form only a minority of Internet daters. Indeed, on-line matchmaking has exploded to the extent that some estimates suggest a third of all Internet users now use the web to form relationships. Research indicates that in just three years’ time more than 50 per cent of singletons will be meeting partners on-line. What is behind this revolution in dating? Well, even though there are more single people out there than ever before, it’s getting harder to meet that special someone. Our highly mobile, fast-paced lifestyles get in the way of traditional love and romance. Being patient, or sitting back and hoping for love,is not a characteristic of the new millennium.We want it now and we’re willing to strike out to find it. This sense of urgency combines with our increasing confidence to use new technology. Just by clicking into our email so we have access to multipartners worldwide. Women like Internet dating because they can express their sexuality, often quite explicitly, without fear of repercussions. Many men like it because they can play the ‘numbers game’ (be in contact with several women at once) thus giving them a sense of control over the whole process while remaining somewhat emotionally detached.What both women and men are doing is selecting a mate,a timeless activity,but one that in cyberspace is speeded up and enhanced. In just four short years Internet dating has gone from being a somewhat dubious if not seedy activity, to become a cool, legitimate way to meet potential partners in the twenty-first century. 169


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Men,Women, Love and Romance There are countless Internet sites offering the possibility of meeting new people, new lovers. Below are a few I’ve looked at and found useful, together with some of their strengths and weaknesses. One of the largest Internet meeting places for potential lovers is www.friendfinder.com. This site boasts over 10 million registered members spread across 97 countries. It offers a free registration that provides you with limited access to the site’s enormous worldwide listings of people looking for love and romance. If you like the site and are planning on taking on-line dating seriously, then upgrading your membership is essential. This site offers various levels of membership depending on how serious and determined you are, though given the small differences in costs you may as well go for the gold membership as this is more likely to highlight your profile among all the opposition! Before you can register you will be required, like all sites, to write a brief personal profile for prospective enquirers as well as submit an email address.Try not to agonise over what to put in this profile, just put down a brief but open description of the sort of person you are and what you are looking for in a relationship. It’s a good idea not to use your normal email address, as it may get clogged up with large numbers of emails, especially if you are a woman looking for a man, so make sure you’ve got another, more anonymous yahoo or hotmail address to hand before you proceed to register. Friendfinder.com is mainly for those looking for more committed relationships, of whatever kind, so if it’s just a casual sexual encounter that you seek then try www.adultfriendfinder.com. This is a fascinating site to browse around as it really opens one’s eyes to the 170


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How to Find Love phenomenal variety of sexual activities, fetishes, tastes and preferences out there in both cyberspace and real space! Another large site worth checking out is www.udate.com, which, along with its companion site www.kiss.com, has some 10 million members. Both these sites do a free ‘fast track sign up’, which takes just a couple of minutes and gets you registered and into the profiles of its members.These sites are vast with several thousand members on-line at any one time.They each do a special section for those who are ‘married but swing’, as well as the more conventional ‘singles’ sections. A site that I found especially useful is www.date.com.It is a more open and accessible site than many. Like most of the more sophisticated sites,date.com provides its own site email service, holding emails and sending your messages to other members.You only get emails from date.com informing you of when you’ve got mail waiting at their site.The site doesn’t have the millions of members of friendfinder.com or udate.com, but no matter where you live you should be able to find someone who matches your profile and who lives within a reasonable travelling distance. One of the women I interviewed, Pam, placed her profile on this site and had enquiries from over 200 men in just four weeks! Finally, something I consider to be a real bonus, date.com allow you to have up to five photos of yourself added to your profile. Having a personal photo on your profile is really essential as it’s likely to treble or even quadruple the number of responses you’ll get. Just make sure you’re smiling! Several friends of mine have had dates through www.match.com, and recommend it, though I’ve not used it myself.Watch out for hidden costs on this site if you go for monthly or three-monthly membership payable by credit card. 171


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Men,Women, Love and Romance It might be that you would prefer the dating site to undertake the tricky task of matching you with potential lovers, in which case I’d suggest you consider clicking into www.cybersuitors.com.This relatively inexpensive site uses a ‘tried and tested scientific method’ based on psychometric profiling of each applicant to find you your soulmate. Personally, I’ve always been a little averse to the idea that love is to be found through a scientific, rational system. Nevertheless, it may well work for you so why not give it a try. Another site that will do the matching for you, saving you the time and trouble of going through numerous profiles, is www.dateline.co.uk. This is one of the longest established on-line UK introduction sites and claims to have the largest membership in the UK. However, the problem with this type of computer matching is that it can limit who you might be introduced to. Dateline.co.uk will only send you lists of potential introductions after having identified what they term ‘mutual compatibility’, which is based on your stated preferences and those of other people. This may seem fine, but can you really be sure you only want to have the chance to meet people who are a particular size and height, or who are, say, no older than 40? I always think that being this prescriptive is a real turn-off. Who knows what they want until they actually meet someone or start chatting over the phone.This is when the sexual chemistry starts to kick in – and usually pretty quickly from my experience. One thing I liked about dateline.co.uk is that whereas many on-line friendship sites can seem a bit false or overly glossy this one has a homely feel to it.This sense of plasticity on other sites is heightened by the fact that the pictures they use of members to promote the site can often seem 172


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How to Find Love like stills from a Hollywood B-movie or an American soap opera. With dateline.co.uk you get a stronger sense of reality. The site does use pictures of ‘satisfied couples’ to show that its services work, but the people profiled look like the sort you’d meet on a shopping trip to Safeway, rather than on the set of Baywatch! However, unlike a lot of sites, dateline allows you only one week’s free membership, and this is mainly so you can check out the site rather than meet potential partners.After a week you have to take out full membership. But although it is initially more costly than some sites, dateline.co.uk is long established and seems well administrated. And, unlike most sites, they are doing the work by fixing the matches on your behalf. Love never comes cheap! Singles connected to cyberspace don’t have to come home to an empty house any more, they can come home to a PC packed with messages from potential and actual partners, lovers and friends. Finally, good hunting! And remember, whether you’re a woman looking for a man for email chat, a man looking for a woman for bondage fun, a swinging couple looking for another swinging couple, or someone seeking a partner for a long-term committed relationship,these sites have it all.Below are three people who have discovered this for themselves.

jane One of the women I interviewed, Jane, had used an adult friendship site regularly over a number of years. Aged 35, Jane had been in a relationship from aged 18 until 27. Over the years the relationship had turned oppressive, with her 173


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Men,Women, Love and Romance older boyfriend constantly denigrating her and undermining her confidence. In the end, she left. She went back to university and is now completing a Ph.D. Rather than get involved in another heavy relationship she turned to an Internet adult friendship site as a way of meeting men while retaining a lot of control over who she met and under what conditions. She joined a site, advertised on it, and then sifted through the hundreds of replies. Over a number of months, Jane went out with over 40 men. She had sex with several, but not all.As she said: I wasn’t looking for commitment, I wanted fun. I’d not had fun in my life for a long time and I was owed it. It was great – so was the sex! The men didn’t just have to be attractive for me to sleep with them, they had to pay for the meal as well! In fact, I found the whole process really liberating, especially after coming out of quite a difficult relationship where I’d lost a lot of self-confidence … I know some people might find it strange that you can feel empowered by meeting strangers, people who’ve replied to your ad on an Internet site, but that’s what it was like for me. It was because there was no commitment, and everyone was looking for more or less the same things that it seemed to work okay.The only trouble was, I found I was spending hours on the computer each day picking up messages from men and replying to them!

Jane admits that many of the men she went out with were not her intellectual equal. But what the hell, it was their bodies she was after, not their brains: I wasn’t looking for intellectual stimulation. It was clitoral

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How to Find Love stimulation I was seeking! After a couple of months of this shagging around it felt like I was working my way through the trades!

kate Kate is a 42-year-old professional woman. She’s had numerous relationships with men over her adult life, most of which have been sexually enjoyable and satisfying. Kate has always been comfortable with her heterosexuality and has tried out many erotic fantasies,mostly in the safety of a loving relationship. Her last boyfriend and her spent a week in Amsterdam during which they acted out several sexual fantasies, one of which was threesomes.At different times during the week they hired male or female escorts to add spice to their sex.Kate was a little unsure how she’d feel about another woman touching her intimately.However,to her surprise,she enjoyed it.When she split with her boyfriend,Kate decided to explore this side of her sexuality in more depth.She joined an Internet adult friendship site and advertised as a bisexual woman,looking for another woman as lover. Advertising on the web gave me a sense of privacy and protection. It wasn’t like trying it on with someone I worked with or met socially. It was much safer for me. I never went out with anyone who lived near to me, so I kept some anonymity. I still like sex with men, but every now and again only a woman will do. It’s just a different level of intimacy that’s become a little addictive.

dave People are not just finding sex on the web, many are finding true love. Dave is in his late twenties and has been a 175


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Men,Women, Love and Romance computer technician most of his working life. When the Internet arrived in the UK he was one of the first to make use of it and quickly saw how it might enhance his social life. He met Anna through the chatroom of an Internet dating agency. She lives in California. Over several months their initial interest in each other turned to romance, growing stronger and deeper the more they learnt about each other.To the amazement of his family he decided to go out to the States to meet Anna.That was in 1998.They married in May 2000.As Dave says: I remember reading somewhere,before I met Anna,that it was possible to fall in love without meeting that person, you know, to just fall in love by letter, phone or email. I didn’t believe it could happen. But it happened to me.

Pros and cons of Internet dating Still not sure whether Internet dating is for you? Well, here are the main points for and against getting into love, sex and romance in virtualtime. for

1. It is cheap,accessible and easy to put down if it becomes boring or you cannot cope with the volume of interest you generate from potential partners. 2. There are any number of on-line dating agencies most of which offer free initial registration. 3. If you fall out on-line just click off.There are no longterm repercussions, just so long as you maintain your anonymity. 4. By using an anonymous email address you stay in 176


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How to Find Love control of the situation until you are ready to meet face-to-face. 5. You can be very specific about the sort of person you want to meet on-line. 6. Because the variety and diversity of people on-line is endless, you can experiment sexually and socially in ways which would be difficult to replicate in realtime. 7. You can go on-line when it suits you. 8. The fact it’s a bit of a marketplace may not suit everybody, but it does mean that you can dip in and out of it as the fancy takes you. 9. Every reply you get to your profile will make you feel good. It will also boost your confidence to find a lover and partner, something that will carry over from virtualtime into realtime. 10. It’s ten times more interesting than watching TV.

against 1. You cannot trust the profiles of members to be 100 per cent accurate. People make changes to suit themselves, particularly concerning their age, marital status, and physical descriptions. 2. Don’t think that because it’s in cyberspace there’s no emotion involved.There is, or at least there can be once a cyber-relationship kicks off. People can and do fall in love just through Internet contact. So be aware of the emotional risk.Though many would see this as one of its main attractions. 3. Not all those who use on-line dating agencies are out to deceive, but some are.The best way to deal with this is to play the numbers game – contact lots of people, and filter them as you spend time connecting on-line. 177


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Men,Women, Love and Romance 4. In the end, love can only be sustained in realtime. All cyberdating does is set up the connection.You still have to live it out for real. So my advice is if you connect with someone on-line, don’t spend weeks exchanging e-words, make the connection in the flesh fairly quickly. However, remember, love is love in any language, including that of cyberspace.

Finding love in your email Although cyberspace is primarily a visual world, the medium through which many Internet daters find love and romance is the typed e-word – the email. In that respect, email has, in the last decade, become the primary carrier of romantic endearments for millions of lovers. The email allows you to flirt safely, at a distance and without commitment. It gives you control over the pace and direction of the budding relationship.With email you can be as open or as reticent as you wish.The feeling of intimacy can be very real, even though you know it can be over in the time it takes to press delete.With email, you make up the rules, and they can be different every time.This is bonding in cyberspace and it has all, if not more, of the potency and potential of the more typical places where prospective lovers meet (such as the night club, at work or on holiday). As the example below reveals, email romances can spring up from all sorts of e-communiction, not necessarily just with people found via dating websites. More than any other single medium, email has changed the nature of romance in the twenty-first century. 178


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How to Find Love There is a pattern to email flirting. It usually begins with a slightly disengaged curiosity, perhaps enlivened by the tingles in your stomach signalling the first signs of sexual anticipation. You start by taking some care in what you write, how you phrase it; not giving too much away, not being too pushy, feeling your away along.Words are chosen with one eye on any inappropriate subliminal messages, for once posted they cannot be deleted.You respond to messages quickly, for appearing eager is part of the game. And anyway, it’s a great feeling to see new mail in your in-box. It’s exciting. As things warm up so do the messages.They become a little raunchier, the sexual undertones appear more obvious, blossoming and multiplying in surftime. Now you are emailing daily, maybe several times a day. You are anticipating each increasingly intimate message, delighting in your virtual-lover’s special words, only for you.This is a secret e-world with its very own attachments, and by now you are totally immersed in it. This ehoneymoon period can be brief or prolonged, for as with all romantic relationships things can go amiss: you realise the spark is not so sparky after all, that the electricity is only driving the PC, not you. The missives may slow down, wither away. Perhaps you argue, an on-line fall-out that leads to fade out. Perhaps you just get bored.Whatever, one fateful day you log off, exit, delete the attachment: you or your significant e-other has consigned the e-affair, the budding realtime romance, to that boundless cyberspace graveyard for unconsummated e-love. Or maybe not. With email we can go from 0 to 100 in terms of sexual and emotional intimacy with a stranger, in the time it takes to click on ‘send’. 179


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Men,Women, Love and Romance The email is a unique and powerful form of romantic communication. It has the immediacy and intimacy of the telephone, the distance of the letter, and the power of the written word.You can feel you’ve fallen in love with someone just through an exchange of emails. The depth of intimacy which email can elicit should not be underestimated. This love letter of the twenty-first century is physically distant but emotionally close, impersonal yet deeply personal at the same time. Being rejected by email can be just as hurting an experience as being rejected by telephone, letter or face to face. An email that says ‘I LOVE YOU’ says everything. More than any other, the email is a form of communication that encourages intimate expression between people. Even those men who would never dream of sending a love letter will send a love email. Many men, members of the gender least seen as able to express its emotions, find email opens them up to a whole new language of love and romance. Its very sense of distance provides the safeguard through which we feel able to reveal our inner selves. But while our brains drive our sexuality, ultimately we need to touch, feel, taste, smell – and see. In short, if our eromance is going to bond beyond cyberspace we need to meet our e-lover. But what happens when we do? What starts out as cyber-bonding can very well lead to coupling of an altogether different kind.

carol Carol is in her early forties. She has been married for 17 years and has a 15-year-old son. In the summer of 2000 she 180


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How to Find Love began an email flirtation with a man she’d initially communicated with over a work-related matter. From the outset she just enjoyed the communication, having no intention of allowing it to lead anywhere. She’d always been faithful to her husband. Carol and her e-lover, Mark, both gave me permission to reprint three of her emails to him.They span a period of eight months, during which she met her elover, fell in love, and began an affair that was, to become, as she puts it,‘the love of my life’. October 2000 (two months after beginning the email communication) Mark, This weekend I too have been spending some quality time with my family, both my parents and my own family. We went bowling on Friday night, and last night we all went out for a Chinese meal and then to the cinema. I have not been able to get to my computer, therefore.You want to know what I was thinking about, thinking about you. I was thinking what would happen if we met.Would the electricity between us carry us into each other’s arms or would there be one of those awkward, embarrassing moments when both of us wish the ground would open up and swallow us up? When obvious excuses are made, and seen through, and still accepted.When relief is almost palpable.And, know what, I don’t think it will be like that at all.In fact,it probably,no,make that definitely,would be so much better for both our peace of mind if it were. I think that this energy between us will still dominate our lives, and will ensure that we never forget that moment. And I was thinking about you, about what you look like, and what you would think of me,in real life.And why you

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Men,Women, Love and Romance are doing this.These thoughts are driving me mad.This won’t last till autumn, I bet. You’ll meet some other woman in the aisles in Sainsbury’s and that will be an end to this. So I may as well enjoy it till then.And I am. Carol December 2000 (one week before their first meeting) My Mark Today is Wednesday and one week from today we will actually meet, face to face, in person, not just in the ether or over the telephone lines. Since I decided on next Wednesday as the day for us, I have not been able to concentrate on my normal life here or my work. Part of me is already stepping off that train, into your arms, imagining what will happen next. I’m worrying about what I should wear, which shoes, high heels to make me taller, or flat pumps to reveal my petite stature. If I wear flat shoes, where will my head reach up to on you? Stop laughing! These are serious decisions to be taken. Trousers or a skirt? It’s funny you imagined our first intimate encounter with me wearing a dress. I rarely wear dresses, don’t know why not, I just seem to always buy trousers, chinos or jeans, or a skirt.Always a short skirt to show off my legs, especially in black opaque tights. Maybe I’ll wear those.You realise I won’t be able to eat anything in your company because my stomach will be full of fluttering butterflies, and I’ll probably be starving. Better buy something to eat on the way home.You are in my thoughts most of the time now.You have carved a place in my life and I would be so sad to give you up.What we have is so wonderful, I am enjoying it so much.The thought of us makes me smile to myself, and your beautiful words in

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How to Find Love your emails to me hold me transfixed to the screen sometimes.Are you really so in love with me? Do I really affect you so deeply? Only when I look into your eyes will I know the secret of your love for me. Is this real or a dream? Soon. Your Carol April 2001 (Two weeks after having met for the third occasion, the affair has now started in real time) My sweet Mark Sorry I could not email you yesterday, but because I was going out and leaving John at home with the computer, I had to erase all the records of my other account, and when I came home at eleven I could not justify going on the PC. First, I do love you too. I feel exactly the same as you, I know you and I have to make love, soon, or I will die of frustration. I feel the slow ache down below when I tell you about our lovemaking on the phone. Next time we speak, try to be home alone, in your bedroom, so you can express your pent-up desire freely.You will be able to open your jeans and let your manhood out as you listen to my words of love and passion for you. I want you to cum over the phone, I want my voice and my words to bring you to climax as I listen. I have never asked any man to do that for me before.You bring out a side of me that I did not know existed, the other Carol wants to voyeuristically, if it can be called that over the phone, know that you desire me. I so want you too; I am so glad we are lovers. Let me make love to you down the phone lines until that wonderful day in June when we will be able to unite in body and soul. Hope you thought of me when you were

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Men,Women, Love and Romance making love to your wife last night, but didn’t call out my name at the point of climax.That just wouldn’t do!! We are meant to be lovers. Nothing more. And nothing less. And it is great fun. Can’t wait to see you in London next month. I know we can never have longer than two days,one night maximum together, and we can never spend Christmas, or holidays, together. Our birthdays will be celebrated separately.Things like that. But we have London to look forward to. I am so excited. Miss you lots, my sweet Mark Your Carol

Carol and Mark found love in cyberspace, with email as both the catalyst for the relationship, and the primary vehicle for enabling the relationship to blossom. Without email maybe their relationship would never have happened. It certainly seems unlikely. Two people, living hundreds of miles apart, connect through a set of circumstances and, over a matter of months, fall in love. Carol claims she loved Mark before she actually met him. Certainly her emails seem to confirm that. When I contacted Carol while finishing this book, she informed me that she and Mark were now living together and were planning on getting married.

The rules of cyberlove One of the key benefits of using the Internet to find friendship, or sex and romance, is that you can experiment. You might be living in a Glasgow suburb, but through the web you have the opportunity to meet a new friend or 184


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How to Find Love lover in any part of the world. If you’ve always fancied, for example, a Brazilian man or an Italian woman, then the Internet at least gives you the opportunity to contact such a person. Sure, not everyone you meet on the web is going to be genuine, but isn’t that the case in ‘real life’ anyway? Bearing in mind the safety-first aspects (especially important for women), these are the key rules for meeting a stranger contacted via the web or email: 1. Never give your real name, address or telephone number, at least not initially. 2. Always communicate via an anonymous email address, not your main email address. 3. Always insist on a photo of anyone you are planning to meet, though don’t assume it’s a totally accurate portrayal of the person. 4. Always meet the first time in a public place, preferably during the day. 5. Before meeting a potential e-lover for the first time, ensure a friend knows when, where and who you’re meeting. 6. On your first date, you might decide to take a mobile phone with you and arrange for a friend to phone you on it at pre-arranged times, ideally about 30 minutes into the meeting and then perhaps 90 minutes later. This gives you a pretence to leave if you are uncomfortable with the situation. It also tells your friend that things are okay. 7. Never send your potential e-lover money, nor reveal credit card or bank account details. 8. Finally, if you are involved in an e-romance with someone don’t leave it too long to meet.You have to be 185


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Men,Women, Love and Romance face to face to discover whether all those emails were leading you both into a new passionate romance or just clogging up the web.

Texting our love – and desire The email allows us to express ourselves thoughtfully, deeply and intimately, for in our missives we have the whole English language to draw on. Not so the mobile phone text message. ‘Cant wait 2cu2nite’, does not have quite the same ring as: ‘I cannot wait to be with you tonight, the hours are passing so slowly. I am thinking of nothing else but being in your arms, warmed by your love.’ Yet, despite of, or maybe because of, its language limitations, the mobile text message does have its place in twenty-first century romance. If the love email provides the climax, then the text message provides the foreplay. Texting is an even more recent technological phenomenon than email, yet in 2001 some 12 billion text messages were sent in the UK alone.As with the Internet, sex, love, desire and romance are primary drivers for this explosion in texting. It would seem most unlikely that anyone would fall in love on the basis of someone’s text messaging.Yet the text message comes into its own when it comes to flirting, for its very limitations maintain an element of fun, lightness and casualness to the whole proceedings. We can contact someone by text, send a simple but alluring message and then move on.The text can be sensual, explicit or just plain flirtatious. But its subliminal message is very clear – ‘I’m 186


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How to Find Love thinking of you’ – and that’s a message all lovers want to hear. It is estimated that over 2 billion text messages were sent in the UK on Valentine’s Day 2002. Clubs and bars are opening up across Britain that specialise in text-flirting evenings (where men and women strike up an initial contact via their mobile phone) and they are proving very popular. But this is not just a Western experience. In 2001, over 100 million mobile phones were sold in China.These phones will facilitate an awful lot of romance in the East. But perhaps the mobile phone and its texting facility comes into its own with illicit romance; when you need to contact your lover, but very discreetly.As former UK political party spin doctor Amanda Patell says, a mobile phone is a prerequisite for those with secrets: When a man bombards you with text messages it usually means he is in the loo of his matrimonial home, punching away on his mobile phone where his wife won’t hear.Text messages are the first bastion of the cheating heart. So, is the text message an innocent device in our romantic toolbox, or is the mobile best left for the kind of flirting undertaken by illicit lovers, as Amanda Patell suggests? Well, the answer is that the text message can be used in many ways, and not just the obvious ones. For example, from my research it is clear that the text message has a highly sexual side to it, those brief words being apparently very arousing for some people. This phenomenon is known ‘sex texting’. It’s a bit like phone sex, where one or both parties actually ‘gets off ’ as a result of their lover’s sensual whisperings at the end of the line. 187


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Men,Women, Love and Romance I have a male friend who has taken to texting me at night, not every night but quite often. I lie in bed and read his messages to me.They are very, very explicit. He describes himself, how aroused he is – his cock is always hard and ready! – and I become wet quite quickly. It doesn’t take many messages. I have particular fantasies, especially about threesomes and anal sex, so I’ve encouraged him to dwell on these areas in his texting! It’s not that difficult once you get the hang of it, though at first I found the various finger movements difficult to coordinate! It’s much better than reading a book. Gets me off to sleep every time.The thing is, though, we’ve never actually had sex. Probably never will. It’s all in the realm of fantasy, but still very satisfying.

Finding love and romance in the personal ads Despite recent technological changes in how we find love and do romance, one of the most popular mediums for prospective lovers remains the personal column of local and national newspapers. Euphemistically known as the ‘lonely hearts page’, these virtual meeting places for singles have increased in both number and usage over the past decade, to the extent that they have, for many people, become a main route into love and romance; a medium they go back to time and again in order to find either that special someone or just fun and frolics. Although virtually every newspaper now carries them, especially local and regional newspapers, probably the most popular virtual meeting places can be found in magazines such as Time Out and broadsheet newspapers such as the Guardian and the Observer. Since 1995 both 188


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How to Find Love these newspapers have been running a ‘Soulmates’ column, now attracting 200 new ads and generating 9000 responses from over 3500 users every week. Both women and men use this dating method in more or less equal number, first placing a brief written ad and then going into more detail about themselves in a voice personal greeting. Many never place an ad themselves,they just reply to them. The average age range of people using these services is 25 to 45, though people in their sixties and seventies are increasingly using them to find partners. Just as with the Internet adult friendship sites, newspaper dating gives both parties a large element of control. The same rules about safety apply, with both the advertiser and the respondent being able to decide who to meet and under what conditions. Singledom can be great fun, just so long as one knows how to get out of it if one wishes to. (And how to get out of a bad date!) In our hectic, highly mobile lifestyles, newspaper-based dating can be something we turn to when we want to get back into the romance game; it is inexpensive, accessible, and usually good fun.Although those more experienced in the new gender game may use this method fairly regularly to make contact with potential partners, many of the men and women using virtual dating systems will be coming out of long-term relationships and may have forgotten the techniques of dating – how to find partners, how to get back into romantic circulation, how to manage a date and a budding relationship.These things take time.They are skills and the more we do it the better we get at it. Placing an ad 189


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Men,Women, Love and Romance in a newspaper, or responding to one, is a good way to start. It doesn’t cost a fortune and the results can be immediate and very positive. Just how positive may surprise you. Most advertisers in a personal column can expect to receive 12 quality responses. Many women and men will receive two or three times that number. Some people get up to a hundred replies to their adverts. From research under-taken into these ads, it is clear that there are key words which are most likely to attract prospective partners. For women, the key, most successful words to describe themselves are: Physical attributes: Beautiful, green-eyed, brunette, slim, tall, fit, 25. Non-physical attributes:Sassy,passionate,romantic,professional, generous, intelligent, sexy, caring. This woman is looking for someone who is: Goodlooking, tall, educated, professional, confident, honest, kind, funny, clever, witty. And who enjoys: Adventure, restaurants, travel, good food and wine. For men, the key, must successful words to describe themselves are: Physical attributes: Handsome, tall, fit, blue-eyed, Celtic, attractive, 35. Non-physical attributes: Intelligent, confident, sophisticated,generous,professional,warm,caring,dry,sensual,chatty. This man is looking for someone who is: Attractive, intelligent, tactile, romantic, kind. And who enjoys: Modern music, theatre, restaurants, dancing, cooking. 190


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How to Find Love Or in other words, the average man’s perfect date is a slim, attractive 25-year-old brunette, who is intelligent, passionate, sexy, kind and romantic, and who enjoys good food and wine. The average woman’s perfect date is a tall, fit, attractive 35-year-old blue-eyed Celtic male, who is a warm, caring, tactile, intelligent, educated professional, and who enjoys music, theatre and eating out. The above descriptions are, of course, ‘ideal types’, and in that respect few people will match them precisely. That doesn’t mean to say that those in search of love and romance should be anxious if they know or think they are none of these things; love is always in the eye of the beholder and no one can create attractiveness to order, it is something that comes from within us, not from the colour of our hair, our body shape, or what job we do. All these descriptions do is indicate that we all have average preferences. However, they quickly get discarded as soon as we meet someone who touches us emotionally. In my research, I came across many individuals and couples who had used the personal columns of classified ads to find love and romance.Two such people are Marcia and Stuart.

marcia Marcia is a 39-year-old lawyer and mother of a fouryear-old girl. She was married for five years while in her early thirties, but has been single since then.The relationship with the father of her daughter finished during her pregnancy. For over two years after her daughter was born she had no inclination to get back into 191


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Men,Women, Love and Romance romantic attachments, all her energy and time being taken up with learning to be a single mum and managing her full-time career. Then, around the time her daughter was two and a half, she started replying to Soulmates adverts. It was the right time for me. I’d had lovers in the past but I did need my confidence building up again and the Soulmates thing seemed the easiest and most accessible way back into circulation. Sometimes as a mother of a young child you can feel really sexless,just absorbed in the effort of it all. I was missing male company. I’d been out of a relationship for a while and I just sensed that now was the time to meet someone.

Marcia didn’t fancy trawling through countless adverts and subjecting herself to endless dates that wouldn’t be going anywhere, so she carefully selected just two men from their voice greeting messages. I was attracted by the sound of the voice, the way the man spoke, you know, if he sounded sincere or not. But I also wanted someone intelligent and interesting. I was fed up with baby talk!

The first date was a disappointment. She knew within minutes of the meeting that they weren’t suited. The man was pleasant enough but not someone she’d want to meet on a regular basis.The second date was with Dominic, an architect in his late forties. His last long-term relationship had finished the previous year, since when he’d had a few girlfriends but nothing serious.Marcia recalls their first meeting: 192


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How to Find Love Before we met we’d exchanged text messages and spoken over the phone several times, so I felt I knew him a little. I’d got this image of him in my head, what he looked like, how he’d dress when we met, that sort of thing. When we did meet for the first time I was delighted. He was just how I’d imagined he’d be. We went for a lunchtime meal which lasted for nearly three hours because we just talked and talked!

This first date took place on a Thursday lunchtime. They arranged to meet the coming Saturday night. Marcia arranged for her mother to have her daughter overnight.At that point she hadn’t decided whether to invite Dominic back to her place after the date, but at least she wanted the option. Dominic had placed his ad three weeks previously and had been out with several women as a result. On the Saturday night, early into the meal, he told her that there were other women he was seeing, but none seriously. Marcia then had to decide whether she wanted to continue seeing Dominic, given that it was likely he’d still be meeting other women from his ad, at least for the foreseeable future. This was a make or break moment. Did she walk away, or did she allow the fledgling relationship some time to take root? To be honest I was a bit taken aback. I was really attracted to Dominic but hadn’t reckoned on there being other women on the scene. Though I really appreciated his honesty, was I prepared to be one of several others seeing him? I remember thinking,look at this attractive man,he’s here with me right now. My babysitting is sorted, the

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Men,Women, Love and Romance house is empty. Half way through the main course I just looked him in the eyes and said ‘Take me home and fuck me!’

That was over a year ago, during which time Marcia and Dominic’s love for each other has blossomed.They are now planning on buying a house together. Dominic stopped seeing the other women shortly after he and Marcia became lovers. However, as Marcia admits: That second meeting with Dominic was risky, but it was also passionate and spontaneous. I’d never done anything like that before, but it felt right. I let my heart rule my head. I’m glad I did.

stuart Stuart is a 51-year-old architect. Last year he came out of a long-term relationship that had produced two children but also its fair share of stress and conflict. In the end, he and his partner decided that it was best for all if he left and lived on his own. Having not lived on his own since his university days, Stuart was quite anxious as to how it would work out. He moved into rented accommodation not far from his children and set about re-establishing his life. The decision to leave was a hard one but inevitable.We were having constant rows and we both felt if was time to go our separate ways. All my instincts were telling me I had to live on my own, at least for a while.

Stuart’s job is a fairly demanding one and requires him to be away from home for lengthy periods working on proj194


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How to Find Love ects. For several months he absorbed himself in work, trying to deal with the emotional fallout from the breakup with his partner. However, he was determined not to allow work to become his main interest in life, apart, that is, from his childcare commitments. Importantly, he wanted to explore the romantic possibilities now open to him as a single man. I hadn’t planned to advertise in a personal column. I’d just come to the realisation that it was likely to be a good way to meet someone, maybe the only way to meet someone given my work commitments.

Having never used this medium for meeting women, Stuart had absolutely no idea what lay in store for him. He sat down one Sunday afternoon, looked at the way other men styled their adverts, submitted his ad and then recorded a voice message.Two weeks later the ad went in the paper. Within 24 hours of publication he was getting responses from women. He’d anticipated maybe eight to ten replies. In the end, over a four-week period, he got 42. There wasn’t this mad rush of replies, just a steady, almost daily, trickle, but it added up to many more than I could cope with. I tried to reply to everyone, but it became impossible. For about two months my social life was in overdrive. It was fun, no doubt about that, but exhausting.

During that period Stuart was seeing several women. He’d decided the best policy was to be honest with them and tell them there were others he was dating. From the outset, he’d set himself a personal deadline of four months, by 195


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Men,Women, Love and Romance which time he wanted to be settled with one person. Someone special.That special someone turned up within three weeks of Stuart placing the ad. Barbara just entered my heart. It started out as just another reply from a woman and a subsequent date, but very quickly became much more than that. She was very special and it felt right to just see her alone.At that time I still had something like ten dates lined up with women I’d yet to meet, but I rang them all and explained the situation.They seemed to understand.

the 10 rules of dating with personal ads Although the ‘lonely hearts’ ad can be a most successful way of meeting new friends and lovers, it does have risks attached to it, so if you are planning to go down this route to romance, here are some rules and guidelines to follow: 1. Different newspapers cater for different social groups, so remember this when you place your ad. If you are looking for someone from a particular professional background then place your ad in a newspaper read by such groups. 2. You have to decide whether you want to place an ad or merely respond to one. Placing an ad requires you to think hard about your voice greeting message and actually recording it can be a bit nerve wracking.You might feel that the process is a bit false or sterile.However,most newspaper dating systems will assist you in doing this. Think about your voice ad in advance and plan the main things you want to say about yourself. It’s important that your message does not to sound too heavy. Much better 196


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How to Find Love if it comes across as warm, sincere, fun, maybe even a little quirky. It’s usual to give your job, the general area you live,your age,something about your looks,and,most important, the sorts of things you like to do when with a partner (eg walking, dining, cinema, sport, travel). 3. Another risk is that if you don’t get many replies you may feel rejected and disheartened. In which case, I’d suggest placing a new advert, but this time honing your voice message or perhaps trying a different approach, for example, making sure that your voice message has the right romantic feel to it (without going over the top). This is important, because your voice message is the key to attracting interest in you, not the written ad. 4. A further consideration when placing an ad is to recognise that it puts the onus on you to decide who to follow up and who not to meet.This can be time consuming, especially if you get lots of replies and many are from people living some distance away. It will also require you to make sure your personal and work diaries are well organised! However, placing an ad does put you in the driving seat.You’ll almost certainly have many more people to choose from than if you just reply to ads, and you’ll have time to select from the replies. Being the one who makes the return phone call you can pre-plan your dates and this also gives you time to think about the questions you want to ask each respondent. If you wish to be particularly selective then replying to ads is probably a good idea, though you will have to give out a home phone number, or mobile number, so the advertiser can contact you. 5. It’s worth acknowledging that the very anonymity of newspaper dating can attract those who might be less 197


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Men,Women, Love and Romance than honest in their intentions.As with Internet dating, it’s easy through this medium to present yourself as something you’re not. Sure, many people may shave a few years off their age, and all of us like to think of ourselves as caring, considerate and good listeners, but claiming to be unattached, a non-smoker, a light drinker or a high earning professional when you are none of these things is not a good start to a romantic relationship. So do go into your initial dates with an open mind, not suspicious, but certainly be aware that all may not be as it sounded over the phone. 6. If you are the one who has replied to an ad then be aware that the person placing the ad has probably had more than one reply, and may well be seeing several people at once, with still more to meet. Don’t be afraid to ask how many replies they got, not least in order to get a clear sense of whether they are going to be multiple dating for a while. 7. In terms of how you might proceed with your date, it is vital that before you meet anyone you are clear about what you are looking for. Is it just friendship, or a fullbloodied relationship, or friendship leading to a possible relationship? Of course,you don’t know what is going to happen until you actually meet someone, but even so it’s a good idea to have some aims in your own mind,even if they change as the relationship develops. 8. When you meet be as natural as you can, allowing your personality to come to the fore. Don’t be overwhelming, but don’t be boring either, be relaxed and, most important, interested in the other person. On initial dates, try to do more listening than talking. Don’t let your nerves carry your tongue off! But conversely, 198


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How to Find Love don’t be so reserved that the other person doesn’t get to know what you are like.Most people will decide on the first date whether they want to take it further. Indeed, most men and women will decide within minutes of meeting whether they’d consider a sexual relationship with this stranger in front of them. Sexual attraction is usually pretty instant, though some people can take months to get round to the point! 9. During the date take the opportunity to establish each other’s position and expectations. If you are seeing other people, then say so. If you want exclusivity then say so, although most people will be realistic enough to know that no one is being exclusive at this early stage. Don’t be afraid to be assertive in stating what you’re looking for. It’s worth it in the end. 10. Finally,it is clear from the research that a desire for a sexual relationship is a key, though not only, motivator for both women and men who get into the virtual dating game. If it is just friendship you’re after then best to look elsewhere. If you’ve got to your fourth date with someone then, unless there are particular reasons why not,it’s likely that a sexual relationship has started or is about to start. If in doubt about how soon to begin a love affair, always remember the lovers’motto:Carpe Diem (seize the day).

Finding love and romance through an introduction agency For many of us, rather than just plunge in, we maybe need a more structured, supportive and steady approach to finding love. Perhaps we are a little unsure as to how ready and prepared we are to meet new people. Maybe we are out of practice with romance. Maybe our baggage handling skills 199


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Men,Women, Love and Romance are untried and untested. If this is you then perhaps you’d prefer to be introduced to love by a third party. For many people, that third party is the introduction agency. An introduction agency cannot find us love, only we can do that ourselves, but it can set the scene for romance. Introduction agencies, also known as dating agencies, have become an integral and increasingly popular part of the love and romance scene over the past fifteen years. Conservative estimates suggest 500,000 people in the UK are actively using introduction agencies at any one time, with millions having registered since the mid-1980s. In the US the number of people registered with introduction agencies is now in excess of 5 million. One of the first agencies to establish itself in the UK was Drawing Down The Moon (www.drawingdownthemoon.co.uk) whose owner, Mary Balfour, took her first clients in 1984. Her agency is still going strong, attracting mainly professionals. Estimates of how many UK introduction agencies there now are range from approximately 260 to 500+. These figures include on-line agencies such as www.loveand friends.com and agencies that specialise,for example,in gay and lesbian introductions (www.gliagency.co.uk), introductions between Christians (friendsfirst), and in setting up lunch dates for busy professionals (Onlylunch). There is even one agency that only takes clients who are attached (eg married) and who are seeking romance outside their main relationship (www.lovinglinks.co.uk).This agency is fairly recently established but already claims to have hundreds of clients nationwide. 200


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How to Find Love Sometimes we want love and romance, other times only sex will do.The trick is to know, and accept, the difference. However, according to www.whichintro.com (an essential log-on for anyone considering using an intro agency), only about 20 per cent of agencies belong to a Trade Association. This is a revealing statistic, especially when you consider the amount of personal information these agencies carry on their clients and the rate at which they go out of business (about 30 per cent each year). So be a little wary, especially if you are looking for a reliable agency that specialises, for example, in setting up introductions with women from other countries. As many men have discovered, establishing good quality introductions of this type is not without its risks, a point dramatically captured in the Nicole Kidman film Birthday Girl. Of course, introduction agencies must make a profit in order to survive and this means charging clients.The online agencies tend to be least expensive, but then they won’t give you the individual attention, support and guidance that the larger personal introduction consultants will. The big, well-established agencies will charge several thousand pounds for such a service, while a medium-sized agency will have rates of £500 to £1000 per client. If you are in a certain category of client (eg presentable middleaged man happy to meet women of his own age), then you may get away with being charged little or nothing by some agencies because there is a large imbalance of women to men using introduction agencies: 60 per cent of all agency clients are women, most of whom are over 35. However, good news for the ladies – more men than women are now using on-line introduction agencies to find love and 201


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Men,Women, Love and Romance romance, men apparently being more at ease with the relative anonymity of cyber-dating. One couple who found love through an introduction agency are Bill and Norma. Bill is a 66-year-old widower, Norma is a 55-year-old divorcee. Norma tells their story: I’d used different introduction agencies on and off for about five years. Although it was more expensive, I preferred to go through an agency rather than reply to newspaper adverts because I liked having the sense of being supported in my quest for love.The agencies took all my details, and preferences, and began to match them with the men on their books. I have to admit that some dates were a disaster. Men whose only interest seemed to be trainspotting or fishing put me right off! So I moved agencies a few times and then settled on a larger one.This was when I met Bill. He’d lost his wife the previous year so we didn’t rush into anything but the relationship developed as our friendship did. It’s years since I’ve felt as settled in my life as I do now. I’d certainly recommend introduction agencies, but go with the longer established ones, those who have a good track record.

Finding love at your local supermarket Finally, what other twenty-first century routes are there to love and romance? On-line dating agencies, introduction agencies, newspaper advertising, and Internet friendship sites are all very well, but what about the more spontaneous romantic encounters between men and women, how might these come about in the frantic, hectic and often stressful world we all now inhabit? 202


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How to Find Love Well, stressed out or not, we’ve all got to eat and we’ve all got to shop for food, and for most of us the place we do that shopping is our local supermarket. Sure, one is more likely to experience bruising encounters with someone else’s trolley than heart-stopping encounters with the man or woman of their dreams, but be assured, love can be found over the bacon counter, the filleted plaice or the frozen burgers. In fact, believe it or not, there is growing evidence that the supermarket is becoming one of the most popular places to meet prospective lovers.This should not come as such a surprise once you remember that some 10 million adult singles go shopping every week, most to the same half dozen or so supermarkets. So the chances are that one in four of the people you see in Morrisons or Asda, heading down the aisle towards the smallest checkout queue, are either single and/or open to offers that don’t involve a club card. Not surprisingly, the supermarket chains have been quick to spot the potential here.The likes of Asda, Safeway, Tesco and Sainsbury’s started doing singles nights on Valentine’s Day about two or three years ago. In the US, these marketing ploys have long been used by the likes of Wal-Mart. So successful have these proved to be that some stores, particularly those in large city conurbations, do occasional singles nights all year round. The managers set up ‘hot spots’ at appropriate places down the aisles, for example a wine-tasting display, for men and women to meet and discuss the attributes of the latest Australian Shiraz Sauvignon. Having ‘connected’, the potential lovers can then continue to find out more about each other over a quiet drink in the candle-lit café, accompanied only by romantic mood music, not the screams of young children. 203


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Men,Women, Love and Romance But, apart from Valentine’s Day and the occasional singles night, just how does one find love in a supermarket? How does one manage to arrange a ‘spontaneous’ encounter by the Wensleydale cheese? What are the rules to romancing in the aisles? Well, through careful investigation I can reveal the 13 rules of supermarket romance encounters to be as follows:

the 13 rules of supermarket romance (offered partly with tongue in cheek!) 1. Be spontaneous. People tend not to hang around in supermarkets so if you see someone who takes your fancy, who looks special and interesting, act on it. 2. Be observant (a). But before you act, check they are alone and that there isn’t a partner around. Supermarket managers do not take kindly to altercations by the freezer counter! 3. Be observant (b). Before you speak to the person, check for wedding or engagement rings,though be aware that rings don’t necessarily mean ‘I’m attached and unavailable’. 4. Be observant (c).You can’t always tell whether a person is single or in a long-standing, committed relationship just by looking at what they’ve put in their trolley, but there may be clues. For example, if the trolley is piled high and the person is wearing a wedding ring, chances are they’re in a relationship.Though again, who knows what they’re seeking under all those vegetables! 5. Be observant (d). If the person appears stressed and in a hurry, then pass on.Those that linger are more likely to be receptive to a brief encounter. 6. Be flexible. Don’t go by how a person is dressed. After 204


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How to Find Love all, who gets dressed up to go to Asda? 7. Be open-minded. Don’t assume that a person with a child is attached and in a relationship. But also, she or he may not be the parent of the child. 8. Be relaxed. If you do decide to go up to someone and introduce yourself, don’t appear threatening or too pushy. However, it’s okay to be a little nervous – that’s expected. In fact, if you’re not a little nervous you’ve probably done this before! 9. Be prepared. Spontaneity is the thing, but even so you may prefer to have an introduction prepared in advance. It could be quite mundane: ‘The peaches are looking particularly good value, have you tried them?’ Or romantic: ‘Sorry, but I just had to tell you that the bloom on those peaches matches the bloom on your cheeks’ (okay, corny I admit, but you’ll think up your own!). 10. Be careful. If you’ve starting talking, and it’s going fairly smoothly, then you’ll have to quickly decide whether or not to leave a contact telephone number. Don’t leave an address. And don’t give a full name, just your first name. On the other hand, you both could decide to continue over a latte in the café. 11. Be sensitive. If you spot someone who looks particularly enticing, don’t follow them round like a store detective! Much too suspicious and threatening. 12. Be persistent. Don’t expect to meet the love of your life the first time you embark on a supermarket encounter. Try different supermarkets at different times of the week. Most singles shop in the evening and at weekends – for example, on a Sunday afternoon. 13. Be nice. Smiling and an open body language will get 205


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Men,Women, Love and Romance you to anywhere. Eye contact is crucial, even a little staring is okay, just so long as it is not a menacing glare! So, do the rules work? Well, believe it or not, they do, as Carolyn’s story shows.

carolyn Carolyn is a 32-year-old single mum and a teacher. One Sunday afternoon, in the autumn of 2001, she was shopping in her local Sainsbury’s, busily absorbed in keeping one eye on her four-year-old son, Bradley, and the other on ticking off her shopping list.Then it happened. I felt someone looking at me, so I turned around and there was this man, mid-thirties, fairly attractive, about six foot tall, looking at me quite hard – staring really. I didn’t know him, but for some reason I didn’t feel uncomfortable.We looked at each other, for what seemed like ages, and then he sort of blushed a little, and turned away, carried on shopping. I thought, Gosh! I wonder what he wanted? I did think to myself, now there’s someone I’d like to get to know better.In fact, I had this strong sense of needing to talk to him.

Carolyn continued her shopping and then made her way to the check-out counter.Whether by subconscious design or coincidence, she found the man in front of her, already paying for his shopping. I really expected, hoped maybe, that he’d turn round and talk to me there and then. But he didn’t.We noticed each other, and there was definitely something in his eyes,

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How to Find Love maybe mine as well(!), but what with me having to keep an eye on Bradley and everything, the moment passed.

Carolyn went through the check-out and then proceeded towards the exit when she saw the man standing there, just inside the entrance to the store. It had crossed my mind that he might wait for me by the exit or the magazines, and perhaps ask me to have a coffee with him, and that’s exactly what he did. I was very nervous at first, but I had a good feeling about this. He said, ‘I’m sorry, this is really embarrassing, but when I saw you shopping just now I knew I had to talk to you,but I couldn’t pluck up enough courage. It was your eyes, your eyes are beautiful. Something just told me I must talk to you. I hope you don’t mind.’Well, did I mind? Not much! The whole thing was done on the spur of the moment by both of us, but it worked out. Later he said to me that he’d decided it was worth the risk to talk to me as ‘life’s too short to miss these moments’.

So began a love affair that continues to this day. For Carolyn, and her supermarket admirer, that spontaneous moment in the aisle went on to develop into something much more profound, lasting and rewarding. The initial connection between them was not in words,but in the eyes – they said it all.

Baggage handling: being ready to date All these ways of meeting someone have one thing in common, that is they can be fraught with uncertainties: 207


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Men,Women, Love and Romance What should I put in an ad? What do I know about this person I’m e-flirting with? How will I feel on the first date? Will s/he find me attractive? These are all natural questions to ask yourself, especially if you’ve been out of dating for some time. But probably the biggest question around all forms of dating is to what extent you, or your date, are emotionally ready to meet other people for romantic liaisons. For example, because it is so accessible, many people get into virtual dating too soon after coming out of heavy relationships. As a result, they end up carrying unresolved baggage into new relationships, with inevitable consequences. Emotional baggage is unresolved grieving for a lost love.We all experience it at some time in our lives.We all have to handle it and move on. ‘Baggage handling’ is required in all relationships, new or old, and it’s a skill both parties must have.We all carry emotional baggage from the past, that is inevitable. Indeed, our past experiences are what largely form us and we should not deny them but try to understand them.Coming to terms with these emotions, not allowing them to weigh us down with anxiety, tension, bitter regrets or simmering anger, are absolutely vital in helping build solid foundations for new relationships. Just how long it takes an individual to come to terms with their own baggage will vary. The key to this is usually the circumstances of the break-up: who broke up with who and under what conditions. You can spot signs of poor baggage handling very early on in a date or relationship, for example: 208


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How to Find Love 1. Does your date constantly talk about their ex-lover, reminiscing over what they did, when they did it and where? 2. Does your date get angry or overly emotional when talking about their ex-lover, does it even border on hatred at times? 3. Is your date still in touch with their ex-lover, particularly in a negative, oppressive way: ie phoning them late at night, going round to their house, sending irate letters, engaging in threatening behaviour and/or verbal abuse? 4. Does your date constantly compare you to their exlover, either positively or negatively? 5. Does your date blame their ex-lover for everything that went wrong in the relationship? 6. Does your date not want to do certain things with you because they remind them of what they did with their ex-lover? Most of us will do some of the above at some time in our lives. Relationships are emotional, and so they should be. No one walks away from a heavy relationship totally intact. Emotional healing takes time. However, the problem arises when we bring this unresolved grieving into our new relationship. This can lead to destructive, not constructive behaviour. So if you or your new partner answer yes to two or more of the above questions then be aware that the past is not so resolved as you might think. In which case, the future certainly isn’t. Finally, recognise that a lot of people, men especially, try to ‘baggage handle’ by throwing themselves into new relationships, often more than one.Although this may work for 209


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Men,Women, Love and Romance them, it’s unlikely to do much for the person on the receiving end of their attentions.There are a lot of such men out there experiencing unresolved grieving for lost relationships. If only they’d admit it. As one of my interviewees, Fiona, puts it: How do men deal with emotional hurt from an ended relationship? I’ll tell you. By shagging around. I’ve met 30 year olds who are still trying to get over relationships they had at 16.They never actually come to terms with the fact that a woman left them.They seem completely incapable of moving on.

Whatever works for you Although the world in the twenty-first century is a very different place to that our parents and grandparents experienced, some things haven’t changed so much.We still look for love and romance in our lives, and we can still find it, often when we least expect to. However, every now and again we need a little help in which case increasing numbers of us are turning to the Internet, the introduction agency, or the personal columns of local or national newspapers. For braver souls, ‘spontaneous’ encounters in our local supermarket might lead to deep and long-lasting love. Just remember that ‘whatever works for you’ is the first rule of finding love and romance. Doing what comes natural, and therefore what is comfortable for you, is the second. But wherever and however we come across love, it is clear that over the past 100 years the media has had a profound impact on how we see and experience romance in our lives. In that respect, we are no different to previous 210


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How to Find Love generations of lovers. Like our parents we can still cry at cinematic imagery of lost love, pure relationships (especially when they’re confronted with life-threatening events) and the joy of love re-discovered. We still read romantic novels more for what they don’t tell us about our everyday lives, than for what they do.And we can still fall in love with our romantic heroes and heroines, those individuals elevated above the mundanity of our reality to a place we can only dream about. But, then, romance is made of dreams – dreams of a perfect future, of living a life full of love and contentment with our soulmate. Love is conceived in hope and expectation.Every couple,by their very existence,makes a statement of optimism for their relationship and for the future. Nevertheless, despite these constants, love and romance are changing, for the simple reason we are changing. Of course, the media is still a major influence in all this, for they help paint the backdrop to our everyday lives, though perhaps their influence is less so now than it was a decade or so ago.Today, women are pushing back their own frontiers, playing the gender game with skill and confidence;pursuing democratic love at the very least as a standard for what they want in relationships, if not always as a reality. Importantly, the old stigmas about going out and finding love and romance, rather than waiting for it to come knocking, have all but disappeared for women.As a result,newspaper dating, on-line dating, and introduction agencies have proliferated in the past decade,with women being the main users of such services.Women are out there, bonding in cyberspace with lovers and potential lovers, and they are using male-dominated technology to do so. Email, mobile phones, Internet friendship sites, all recent additional tools in our quest for 211


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Men,Women, Love and Romance love and romance, have become essential for those seeking love and romance – illicit or otherwise. Their long-term impact can only be guessed at.

7 love questions The bedroom revolution of the twenty-first century is being driven by individuals no longer prepared to settle for second best in their relationships. Are you one of them? And if you are, are you able and prepared to take on the romantic challenges and opportunities offered by the cyber-age? Are you ready to take your place in the new gender game? Or maybe you have already started playing? To find out how comfortable you are with riding the romantic roller-coaster of this new era,here are seven questions to ask yourself, and your lover: 1. Do you have a home computer and personal email address? 2. Do you have a mobile phone and, if so, can you text messages on it? 3. Do you believe there is a stigma attached to using an introduction agency or advertising in the personal ads of a newspaper? 4. Did you cry a little (or a lot!) at the death of Princess Diana? 5. Would you take Viagra to perk you up? (Applicable to either sex.) 6. Could you cope with a lover who had poor baggage handling skills? 7. If you were looking for love, would money be a factor in deciding how you went about it? 212


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How to Find Love How did you score? The higher your score, the readier you are for love! 1. These are both essential tools in the kitbag of the twenty-first century romantic.To get love, get on-line! (0 points if you’ve neither, 5 points if you’ve just got the PC, 10 points if you’ve both.) 2. Admittedly, the mobile phone can be a pest at times, but without one we are so much less accessible. And lovers need to be accessible.Anyway, it’s so nice to go to bed with ‘nitenite, I love you’ texted into your mobile. (0 points if you don’t have a mobile. 5 points if you’ve a mobile but don’t yet know how to send text messages. 10 points if you do.) 3. Stigma is old-fashioned and dated. As I said in the introduction, the old rules and codes of love and romance are out the window. Now we make them up for ourselves. (0 points for those with stigmas! 10 points for those without.) 4. We should all cry at times, and Princess Diana’s death and funeral was one such time.Admit it, you loved her, at least a little. Didn’t we all? (No tears, no points. 10 if you cried for days.) 5. Although the medical profession would disapprove, think ofViagra as a sex aid. Friday night, after a long hard week might be just the time to try it, and not just if you’re over 65! And remember, recent research shows that women who take Viagra get more orgasms. (10 points if you’ve taken it, or would be prepared to. 0 points if you think it’s only for your parents’ generation.) 6. If you’ve sorted out your own baggage handling, then you should be able to help your loved one sort out theirs. (0 points if you think baggage handling is always 213


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Men,Women, Love and Romance someone else’s problem. 10 points if you’re prepared to carry a suitcase.) 7. If you’d spend £15,000 on a new car, how much would you spend on a new love? (0 points if you’d rather have the new car. 10 points if you believe money is there to be enjoyed and that there’s nothing more enjoyable than love and romance.)

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Summary

The book’s nine themes 1. Changes in how women think and act, and in the many life style choices now open to them, have ushered in a bedroom revolution. The bedroom revolution is marked by a) women’s new found sexual confidence; b) women’s ability to live physically, economically and emotionally independent of men; and c) the demise of traditional gender values and dated stereotypes of sex and sexuality. In short, women have new expectations about themselves, their romantic opportunities, their sexuality, their choices and their lives.They have moved on. 2. Virtually all women are beneficiaries of these changes, and not just the younger generation – those women over 40 are also in the driving seat of the bedroom revolution.These women, the FFOKS (forty, fit and free of kids),are the ones who are pushing back the frontiers of sex and ageing, deciding that life is short so why waste it. As many of the case studies in this book reveal, women in their forties, fifties and sixties plus are the shock troops of the bedroom revolution, eager to 215


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Men,Women, Love and Romance experiment and taste life’s many sensual delights. And this is what makes this gender revolution so unique, because for the first time it’s older women who are benefiting. 3. We can identify a new gender game between the sexes. In this game the old rules of love and romance no longer apply. The traditional romantic game, where men pursue and women demure, no longer holds true today. Now women are more confident of making the running in love, of saying what they want, when they want it. In their eagerness to live life to the full, women of all ages will look for love and romance wherever it may be. It is now okay for women to be sexual predators if they wish, like men have always been. 4. In the new gender game relationships are being put under constant scrutiny.We are becoming more intense in our relationships, subjecting them to constant appraisal and evaluation. Importantly, we are less inclined to stay the course if love flies out the window, romance dries up or sex withers. When it comes to love, we have high expectations both of ourselves and of our partners.As a consequence, commitment in relationships can no longer be assumed. We no longer marry for life, but for love. Marriage is in decline, cohabitation is on the increase, as are the number of people choosing to live apart but together. In the twenty-first century serial monogamy is a lifestyle choice, as is sexual experimentation. Now we are less inclined to ask what can I bring to this relationship, how can I make it work, instead, our first thought is: 216


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Summary What can this relationship do for me? Our second thought being: Is it working for me? This book suggests that the way forward to democratic love is to balance our own needs with those of the relationship. So we still ask, Is it working for me? but we also ask:What can I do to make it better? 5. These changes in sex and gender relationships tell us that we are not the product of our genes or DNA, but that we are influenced primarily by the environment we live in, and that environment is constantly changing. So we have to stop thinking of gender as destiny, but recognise that we all have choices in how we live, and women have never had so many choices as they have today. Sure, having a lot of choices is not necessarily easy, but there can be no going back to the dark days of patriarchy, when women were largely confined to the home, without opportunity for education and financial independence, subject to the whims of their husband. The idea that women will return to being ‘submissive’ wives, choosing to surrender to men’s apparent dominance, is nonsense. It’s purely wishful thinking by those who cannot, or don’t want to, make sense of the bedroom revolution. 6. Finding sex, love and romance in the new millennium is both exciting and complicated. E-love, cyberlove, mobile phones, dating agencies, personal ads, even supermarket romance, these all contribute to the speeding up of the twenty-first century’s romantic roller-coaster. Love, sex and romance are just a text message, newspaper ad or email away for us all. This 217


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Men,Women, Love and Romance book has shown examples of people enjoying the ride – to the full. 7. Women may be moving on,but are men? Probably not. Or, if they are, it’s very slow going. Many men do not see what is happening around them. They do not understand that traditional masculinity is floundering. They do not appreciate that being a twentieth century man has no place in the new gender game.Those men who do not recognise they have a gender, who do not make the effort to become more emotionally in tune with themselves, and who believe that women have ‘gone too far’, well, they are likely to become the dodos of the twenty-first century – evolutionary jetsam. For there is a new masculinity emerging – twenty-first century masculinity – and it is only through this masculinity that men can cope with the bedroom revolution and, importantly, women’s increasing insistence on democratic love. 8. Democratic love is the key to successful relationships in the twenty-first century. Democratic love does not put one person at the centre of the relationship and the other at the periphery. Instead, it recognises that both parties are individuals, people engaged in their own life journeys,but who have democratically decided,in love, to unite and share their journeys through life. Democratic love insists on both partners taking their share in roles, responsibilities, and the emotional labour that all relationships inevitably generate. Democratic love can only happen when men put down out-dated ideas about male supremacy, when they share every 218


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Summary aspect of a union. It can only work with those men who do not fear their emotional depths or the intimacy that comes with love. It can only function when neither partner puts themselves first. So the key to democratic love is men also moving on, as women have done. 9. Finally, there is the new sexual contract. As ever, sex is the key to relationships. Few relationships survive for long in a sexually barren landscape. In the old sexual contract women were deemed sexually passive. But today’s sexual contract recognises that women’s libidos are every bit as strong as men’s. It recognises that female sexuality is no longer burdened with guilt but enabled by power and opportunity.As a consequence, men can no longer assume to control women’s sexuality. Now women no longer go into a relationship expecting to grant sexual favours, they go into a relationship expecting mutually satisfying sex. Anything less and the relationship is in jeopardy.The old sexual contract was written by men, for men. The new sexual contract is written by women for women, but with men in mind.

A personal footnote While writing this book my own life underwent many changes, the most significant of which was that for the first time in my life I found myself living as a single man, and thoroughly enjoying it.And then, in the summer of 2002, I met a Thai woman via the Internet and fell deeply in love once again. My life has not been boring! I got married at 21 and 219


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Men,Women, Love and Romance proceeded, for the next 16 years, to live a contented existence in a monogamous relationship. Then a new love arrived and with it a second marriage and ten more years of sexual fidelity.The relationship which followed my second marriage was turbulent but profound. It lasted seven years, every one of which was marked by joy, some pain, occasional anger, but also self-discovery. I learnt much from it, both about relationships, and about myself. Not all I learnt about myself made me feel comfortable,but they were necessary lessons for me.You see, looking back I don’t believe I really matured until I was around 40 (probably typical of many men). Perhaps I was lucky to have matured at all. Maybe if I hadn’t had that third, profound relationship, I wouldn’t be writing about relationships today. I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t have written a book such as this. Until my early forties I had a fairly limited and stereotypical view of gender and sexuality. I didn’t really know myself, so I had little chance of ever really understanding anybody else. Out of this third serious relationship, and my own selfdiscovery, I came to realise how similar women and men really are. For although there are many differences between women, there are, as this book argues, clear patterns in how women are responding to the changes and opportunities around them today. Unfortunately, there are also dominant patterns around men’s behaviour, and these reveal many of them failing to grapple with the changes brought about by the bedroom revolution.What I learnt is that women are not some exotic, mysterious species from another planet. We all want the same experience from our meaningful relationships.We all talk the same language. It’s the listening that’s the problem, and the assumptions many of us carry in our heads about how men and women should behave. 220


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Summary When I started work on this book, inspired mainly by a desire to get away from dense, theoretical academic writing, and maybe even to get away from a love in my life, I was in the midst of much emotional turmoil. In fact, I now see I was very much embroiled in the bedroom revolution.I was on the romantic roller-coaster,at various times riding high and confident, and at other times hanging on by my fingertips, feeling decidedly queasy. I suppose I’m still on it. Maybe I’ll never get off. Perhaps it’s too addictive, the thrill of it all.Whatever, writing this book has certainly helped me more make sense of it. I hope reading it has helped you to do the same.

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About the Author

Stephen Whitehead is a lecturer in education and sociology at Keele University. His research focuses primarily on men and masculinities, identity, gender and management and organisational behaviour. He is the author of Men & Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions and co-editor of The Masculinity Reader. He is currently researching men and relationships in the post-modern age and masculine rites of passage. Previously he has been a middle manager in a further education college, a pub landlord and hotel manager, a regional athletics coach and a florist. He lives in Lancashire.

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