Sexual compatibility, and the lack thereof

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Marian Perera

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I'm curious as to what readers think about this, because I have a situation in a romance WIP. There's a minor character, a young and rather sheltered woman.

She's planning to marry the hero. He treats her wonderfully and they get along well. Just one problem: she's not attracted to him at all.

This isn't to do with him, which confuses her. If he had rotten teeth or was fifty years older, it would make sense, but he's not. He looks fine. She just doesn't feel even a spark of desire when he kisses her.

Then she meets the antagonist, and POW. Chemistry flares. Now she's even more confused, because how can she be so attracted to a man she knows is no good?

One thing I'm trying to do with this story is deconstruct the trope where the antagonist (or at least the wrong man) is the one who can't arouse or sexually satisfy a woman, while the hero provides multiple orgasms effortlessly, no matter who the woman is. But what I was wondering is, does anyone feel that this problem is something the hero and his fiancee could solve eventually?

To clarify, could sexual compatibility and passion develop even though she doesn't feel attracted to him? Or is chemistry simply something that either exists or doesn't between them? Rather than being a problem the two of them could work on together.

This might be something the fiancee discusses with the heroine (who is very turned on by the hero) during the story. What do you all think?
 
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job

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a young and rather sheltered woman. ... she's not attracted to him at all.

Cool. We all have male friends to whom we are not sexually attracted.

But ...

What with Daytime TV and the internet, I'm having trouble imagining a woman who doesn't know what sexual feelings are and doesn't expect to find them with her boyfriend/fiance. In 2015, how does a woman get to marriageable age with no sexual experience?

And coming to it from the other hand ... How would the male protagonist get to this advanced point in a relationship without noticing the woman he's cuddling and kissing doesn't have the hots for him? Is he inexperienced? Oblivious? Uncaring?

how can she be so attracted to a man she knows is no good?

She likes bad boys, obviously/ *g*


could sexual compatibility and passion develop even though she doesn't feel attracted to him? Or is chemistry simply something that either exists or doesn't between them? Rather than being a problem the two of them could work on together.

Historically, most women didn't have a choice who they married. Some of them learned to love their husbands and enjoy sex. Some closed their eyes and thought of England.
Call it 50/50.
So, marrying someone you're not attracted to, you still have some reasonably good chance of getting sexy later.
But that's not a crapshoot a modern woman has to enter, so why would she?
 

Marian Perera

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What with Daytime TV and the internet, I'm having trouble imagining a woman who doesn't know what sexual feelings are and doesn't expect to find them with her boyfriend/fiance. In 2015, how does a woman get to marriageable age with no sexual experience?

My bad. I forgot to mention, the story is set in 1889 and the young woman is very sheltered.

And coming to it from the other hand ... How would the male protagonist get to this advanced point in a relationship without noticing the woman he's cuddling and kissing doesn't have the hots for him? Is he inexperienced? Oblivious? Uncaring?

He's young too, just a couple of years older. Not experienced either, and also has her up on something of a pedestal. When she doesn't respond, he takes it as a sign of her modesty and delicacy and good breeding.

As the antagonist tells him later, "You saw her as the Virgin Mary, when she knew herself far closer to the Magdalene."
 

beckethm

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Well, in Sense and Sensibility, Marianne ends up with the "good" man (Colonel Brandon) rather than the one who gets her hot and bothered (Willoughby), and I think we're supposed to believe the marriage is both physically and emotionally satisfying.

Of course, you have Dorothea and Casaubon in Middlemarch as the example of a passionless marriage that fails.

What I'm trying to say is that you can find precedents in literature, and I'm sure in real life, to suit both optimists and pessimists. My personal view is that two people who enter into marriage with some degree of affection and a commitment to making it work can probably achieve a reasonably satisfactory sex life. But that assumes they know something about technique and are willing to experiment. It doesn't sound like your fictional couple is quite there.

What do you want to happen? Do you want readers to believe these two are doomed by sexual incompatibility? You can probably spin the story in either direction.
 

Maryn

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In that time period, I suspect there were plenty of marriages which began with no spark, but grew one as love blossomed. It's something like the arranged marriages which still happen in some cultures. Your new wife or husband is a good person, likeable, reasonably attractive, but you just don't click and the physical attraction simply isn't there. But as you get to know them better, bond, and come to love them, you see attractive traits which were not apparent before. This is real handy as a couple ages and becomes less physically hot, because those traits are still there.

And, of course, many, many women of that time knew nothing of sex when they married, never experienced arousal, married men who had no idea what foreplay was or why it might be a good thing, and literally endured the marriage bed because it was expected of them, both as wives and for the purposes of makin' babies, taking no pleasure in sex and not comprehending that such a thing was even possible.

Maryn, whose MIL, b. 1913, once wondered aloud what an orgasm must be like
 
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CrastersBabies

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Bridget Jones: Wait a minute, nice boys don't kiss like that.
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My probably-not-so-helpful experience:

I dated a guy for a year and a half who wasn't good looking, but the better I knew him, the more attracted to him I was.

He was tall, but awkwardly proportioned. Thin lips, crooked smile. Not one of those guys who stands out. I remember noticing him in the cafeteria once or twice before we got to know each other, and there was something about him that caught my eye a little, maybe the energy with which he was telling the story, but I didn't think he was attractive.

And honestly, I didn't really care. I might not have exactly thought he was attractive, but still, as I fell in love with him, I found he could really kick my heart up a notch...though he was a bit of an awkward kisser, tbh.

I think attraction can be something that develops over time, that could accompany emotional intimacy, but it's hard for me to think of it as a problem that can be solved because you can't force it if it doesn't happen. You can't make it work, but it can develop where it wasn't there before.

Just my opinion.
 

Viridian

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I remember I read a similar story when I was a kid. I can't remember the names of the characters, but it was one of R. A. Salvatore's novels.

The story starts with a young woman, who we will call Alice. Alice is a simple but beautiful country girl. She falls madly in love with a peasant boy, Bob. Bob is gorgeous. Charming. Somewhat dramatic. But he's broke, flat broke.

So then along comes Lord Rich. Lord Rich is a wealthy lord who rules over the area; one day he sees Alice and falls madly in love with her. She's the most beautiful person he's ever seen. So he goes and introduces himself, explains he's her rich lord, and asks for her hand in marriage. The thing about Lord Rich is, he's not handsome. He's not charming. He's just very, very wealthy. Alice doesn't care for him much, but her family is poor and her mother needs a doctor, so she agrees to marry the lord.

But she still loves Bob the peasant boy. So before the wedding, she sneaks out and loses her virginity to Bob. One night together. It's beautiful, but she decides she wants to end the relationship there. So she goes back to the rich lord.

Alice and Lord Rich start actually spending time together. And he's kind. Instead of forcing her to marry him, he gives her family money and pays a doctor for her mother -- before the wedding. Alice starts to see that Lord Rich isn't a stuck-up noble, he's kind and generous and a little bit naive. She begins to fall in love with him.

Meanwhile, Bob loses his fucking mind. He's handsome, he's charming -- how dare Alice pick someone else over him? So he refuses to let her end the relationship. He threatens to tell everyone that she's not a virgin. Slowly, his melodramatic, controlling side comes out. He comes to her wedding and threatens to kill himself unless she elopes with him.

He stands on top a cliff and threatens to throw himself off. He doesn't really intend to do it, but he gets too close to the edge. It's clear he's going to scream out her secret, but instead, he falls to his death.

Anyway -- it was all very well done. The theme throughout the book was that Alice had a strong sexual attraction to Bob, but that sexual attraction went away once he began acting like a prick. Meanwhile, she became sexually attracted to Lord Rich once she became closer to him. I thought it was a very original take on the whole "penniless lover vs rich guy" story. So yeah. If you're good at what you do, you can make it work. And I think you, personally, can make this work easily.
 
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Viridian

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I subscribe to the theory that emotional attraction and sexual attraction are two different things. And I think that most people can become sexually attracted to others over time. It's not always instantaneous.

Anyway -- the point is, it can happen. But in order for it to work, your heroine must become attracted to the hero to the point where she prefers the hero over the antagonist.

Actually, I guess it's not just the heroine. The reader needs to be convinced. By the end of the book, the reader needs to believe, truly believe, that your heroine has developed genuine feelings for the hero. And meanwhile, you need to make the antagonist less attractive.

In the scenario I described above, one of the things that I really liked was the development of the antagonist. His feelings were shown to be shallow. By the end of the book, the heroine had reasons to hate him. Good reasons. It wasn't a decision where she liked one guy, but the other was rich; she now preferred the rich guy. Bob the penniless peasant was a dick. It took time for that to develop.

Anyway... I guess I'm rambling and giving a longer answer than what you actually asked. I'm sure you know what you're doing. Yes, I think sexual attraction can develop over time. You just need to convince the reader it can happen.
 
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Marian Perera

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I thought it was a very original take on the whole "penniless lover vs rich guy" story. So yeah. If you're good at what you do, you can make it work. And I think you, personally, can make this work easily.

Thanks, Viridian. :) I'll just fill in a few more details to show what I was going for.

The hero and the villain are best friends (think Othello and Iago). The hero plans to marry this girl. The villain seduces her, and when she gets pregnant, he takes full advantage of that to mess with her mind. How could she get married now, and inflict another man's child on the hero? Especially since she has not just given away what should have been her husband's alone, she was low enough to enjoy it.

And so on, until she breaks down in a messy reveal. Then the villain, comforting his shocked best friend, works on him. Maybe she didn't tell you the father's name because she doesn't know who he is. Maybe she's marrying you instead of a man of her own social and financial class because none of those men wanted her, and here's why.

The hero believes this and refuses to speak to her when she comes to him, so she kills herself. Of course, once that happens, the truth comes out. But it's too late.

The story actually begins six years later, in 1895, when he meets another woman (the heroine) who offers him the opportunity to go back in time, to the point before his fiancee broke down and he pushed her away. He seizes the chance, and when the heroine takes him back there, he makes the right choice. He sets his fiancee's mind at ease and tells her he'll marry her and be the child's father. Her life is saved.

But then it turns out he and the heroine are stuck in 1889, and the way he felt about his fiancee when he was a love-struck young man is not the same way he feels about her now he's six years older and a hell of a lot wiser. Plus, now he's got enough experience to realize his fiancee has no attraction to him - and instead he has intense chemistry with the heroine.

I think I could make the point that sexual attraction, while not always predictable, doesn't necessarily need to be completely random. It could grow out of emotional intimacy or admiration, as you and LJD point out.

That intimacy develops between the hero and heroine as they talk to each other and work out how to deal with the villain, whereas his fiancee is unwilling to confide in him (although that's partly due to the villain's mind games). He also realizes his fiancee is someone he needs to protect, whereas the heroine is his equal, someone who's got his back. And he finds that a turn-on, even though the heroine isn't as beautiful or upper-class as his fiancee.

ETA : I'd really like to read the Alice-and-Bob-and-Rich book.
 
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Viridian

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ETA : I'd really like to read the Alice-and-Bob-and-Rich book.
Sure thing. It's called The Spine of the World. It's not really a romance/fantasy novel, more like a fantasy novel with a romance in it.

The love triangle storyline is only half the book. The other half is about Wulfgar (one of Salvatore's main heroes) wandering around drunk. I don't quite remember what his half of the plotline was about, because honestly it wasn't that interesting.
I think I could make the point that sexual attraction, while not always predictable, doesn't necessarily need to be completely random. It could grow out of emotional intimacy or admiration, as you and LJD point out.
I think that's exactly the point you need to make. It sounds like it's going to be a theme in the story, so it may as well it addressed.

You sound like you've got a handle on this. I'd read it.
 

morngnstar

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Just want to add from a male perspective that I also think attraction can grow with intimacy. There are women that can make me go "wow" at a glance. There are also women who are just okay, but when I get to know them better, even as friends, they equal or better the at-first-sight wows. In case you were wondering, the at-first-sight wows don't go up much more if I get to know them. Probably a little. There seems to be a cap.

I've never really gotten the bad boy fetish, but I understand it's a thing, so I don't want you to make it too easy for the heroine to get over the antagonist. I don't really buy that she will become attracted to the hero just because he's good. She might become attracted to him because of his personality despite his looks, but it will be aspects of his personality other than just doing the right thing.

Right now I'm mostly gonna come up with cliche ideas about what those personality traits are, like say he's an artist. Or say the heroine is fascinated with the antagonist because she goes along on adventures with him. But it turns out that when she has an idea for an adventure, he scoffs at her. He's really only interested in adventuring for himself, and she can come along for the ride as long as she doesn't slow him down. Whereas the hero listens to her interests, and participates in them with her even though he had no inclination toward those interests before he met her.

But it's your characters, and up to you to decide why they fall in love. Just saying neither physical appearance nor good vs. evil should come into it. That goes for any romance novel whether there's a rivalry or not.
 
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Marian Perera

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Just want to add from a male perspective that I also think attraction can grow with intimacy. There are women that can make me go "wow" at a glance. There are also women who are just okay, but when I get to know them better, even as friends, they equal or better the at-first-sight wows.

Thanks, that's good to hear. I think the story will be exploring both these kinds of attraction - the hero's fiancee feels the "instant spark" attraction for the antagonist, but it's possible she could have developed a more slow-growing attraction for the hero, given time.

I've never really gotten the bad boy fetish, but I understand it's a thing, so I don't want you to make it too easy for the heroine to get over the antagonist.

It's actually his fiancee who falls for the antagonist (and realizes her mistake, so she does get over him). The heroine helps him save his fiancee. :)
 

morngnstar

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It's actually his fiancee who falls for the antagonist (and realizes her mistake, so she does get over him). The heroine helps him save his fiancee. :)

Wait, so is it a love rectangle instead of a love triangle? I'm confused. I guess I'll just have to read it.
 

Marian Perera

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Wait, so is it a love rectangle instead of a love triangle?

Four people involved, yes.

The fiancee falls for the villain, because he fits the sexy bad boy trope perfectly.
The villain seduces her to get revenge on the hero.
The hero tries to save his fiancee.
The heroine helps him to do that, but in the process, the two of them fall in love.
 

Marian Perera

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The love triangle storyline is only half the book. The other half is about Wulfgar (one of Salvatore's main heroes) wandering around drunk. I don't quite remember what his half of the plotline was about, because honestly it wasn't that interesting.

Ah, I've heard of that book! I thought it was another in the endless adventures of Angsty Drizzt and I was burned out on him. If I can read the love triangle without encountering Drizzt et al, that would be ideal.

You sound like you've got a handle on this. I'd read it.

Thank you! Working on it. :)
 

sunandshadow

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I'm personally kind of dubious about a character moving from having no attraction to someone to having attraction for them. And I'm STRONGLY opposed to people getting married if they aren't attracted to each other (unless they're both asexual, but even then they should really like each other). Pregnant or not, no woman has any business marrying a guy she doesn't actually want. I could only see it working if the potential love interest changed a lot. Example:
Boring good guy has a crush on heroine for years, but heroine only likes bad boys. Okay, this is valid and realistic. Then something pushes the good guy over the edge and he leaves town, is gone for months, and the next time we see him he has genuinely become a bad guy. Now the heroine feels some attraction to him, but should still be dubious because she remembers how he used to be. She might quite logically be afraid that he would return to his old boring self if whatever pushed him over the edge gets fixed. She would have to interact with him for a few weeks to become convinced that he's really a different person now before accepting her own attraction to him as a fact.
 

Viridian

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Ah, I've heard of that book! I thought it was another in the endless adventures of Angsty Drizzt and I was burned out on him. If I can read the love triangle without encountering Drizzt et al, that would be ideal.
Hahaha, I know what you mean. Surprisingly, Drizzt isn't in The Spine of the World at all. It's just Wulfgar by himself, doing whatever depressed barbarians do.
 

KimJo

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To spin off Maryn's mention of arranged marriages...There's a TV series on U.S. cable (the FYI network, for those who might have it on their systems) called "Married at First Sight," in which a team of experts consisting of a psychologist, sociologist, sexologist, and spiritual counselor matched up three couples that seemed compatible out of a large number of applications they received.

The applicants had agreed that if they were selected, they would marry whomever the experts matched them with. Each of the three couples literally met at the altar on their wedding days.

Obviously not quite the same as Marian's scenario, but in each case, neither sexual nor emotional attraction existed, because the people had never met. One of the couples had almost instant *sexual* attraction, but never became *emotionally* attracted to one another and divorced after the 6-week "experiment" was over. One of the couples was quite quickly attracted to each other in both ways, though they waited a few days to act on the sexual attraction. They stayed married.

The third couple...the man was emotionally and sexually attracted to the woman pretty much as soon as they met, but the woman spent the wedding in tears saying things like "The experts failed me." The couple was three days into their honeymoon before she even allowed her husband to hold her hand. But over the course of the six weeks, she did develop an emotional attraction to him, and toward the end, she found herself sexually attracted to him as well, despite saying on their wedding day that he wasn't remotely physically attractive. They didn't consummate the marriage until well after the six weeks ended, though... and they chose to remain married.

So even though it might seem strange to marry someone you aren't attracted to, and might seem somewhat unbelievable that an attraction and love could develop after the marriage, it does happen, even nowadays in our society.
 

Lillith1991

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I'm personally kind of dubious about a character moving from having no attraction to someone to having attraction for them. And I'm STRONGLY opposed to people getting married if they aren't attracted to each other (unless they're both asexual, but even then they should really like each other).

I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm not saying the character Marian is talking about is demisexual, but no attraction sexual or otherwise to strong attraction when the person really gets to know someone else is normal for someone who is demi. I can't remember ever having been attracted to someone I didn't know well for example, which is why most of my crushes have been friends.
 

lexxi

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Here's an interesting article I read recently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html?_r=2

It's about falling in love, not sexual attraction. But it does describe a somewhat artificial way to induce love -- and the kinds of things characters in books go through can also have similar effects

I do believe that people you become emotionally intimate with will also become more sexually attractive to you as part of the process. And that that is a natural part of a literary romance plot as well.


On another note, the first thing I thought of when I read the thread title was a scientific article I copyedited a number of years ago, in which the researchers inserted the male plug of an audio cable into the vagina of a female rat. Who knew that stereo systems and rats were sexually compatible?
 
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Put me in the camp of people who believe that sexual attraction can and often does grow over time, even when there was very little or none to begin with. I believe that mostly because that's usually how it happens for me. For me, I actually think the biggest factor in attraction isn't always looks, but a deeper connection, the kind that comes from getting to know someone really well and seeing their vulnerabilities, strengths, etc. up close. That pretty much always takes time to build.

Just my two cents.
 

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I LOVE stories where attraction develops over the course of the book. When the heroine finds herself amazed that she once thought the hero ugly, or the hero finds himself transfixed by the sexiness of a mole or a pair of glasses or the inkstains on her fingers, or whatever made him once dismiss her.
 
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