Men in love: living with sexual boredom

Abstract

In this article, we provide a discursive reading of twelve men's understandings of sexual boredom in long-term romantic relationships. The empirical study of sexual boredom in psychological arenas has retained a firm commitment to psychological measures of individual performance and has accentuated men's ‘natural’ tendency towards boredom due, for example, to a specialized adaptive psychological mechanism. From a social constructionist perspective we argue that the phenomenon of sexual boredom needs to be seen as a discursive construction mediated through the ideas or imperatives that are currently popular within the self-help genres and other forms of sexual merchandise, which regulate the wider cultural norms and practices of (compulsory) sex, (gendered) sexual desires, (hot) monogamy and (ideal) romantic love. Drawing on approaches from discursive psychology (an approach that attends to how language is used) we examine the tensions and conflicts which characterize these participants’ attempts to negotiate their positions in relation to sexual boredom, and the strategies they adopt in order to distance themselves from (owning) it. Here we discuss how such negotiations are set against ideals of ‘modern’ man's sexual proficiency (readiness and skilfulness), liberal views of sexual relations (embracing a democratic form of intimacy) and romantic (true) love, that the participants propose are required to maintain monogamous long-term relationships. All the participants construct the notion of boring sex (dull, mechanical, over-rehearsed sex) as an inevitable feature of all sexually exclusive relationships, and sexual boredom (boredom with boring sex) as a trade-off for long-term companionship and ‘true love’.