What Happens When [Partner A] Says ‘More’ and [Partner B] Says ‘No’

The Wall Street Journal is asking that very question (in a more gender essentialist manner), and swings almost immediately into very specific, gendered claims:

Increasingly, experts believe sex is a more emotional experience for men than for women. Men tend to express feelings with actions, not words. Unlike a lot of women, they probably don’t have heart-to-heart chats with everyone from their best friend to the bus driver, and they often limit hugs and physical affection to their immediate family.

No wonder they miss sex when it disappears. It’s a way for them to be aggressive and manly but also tender and vulnerable. “For some men, sex may be their primary way of communicating and expressing intimacy,” says Justin Lehmiller, a Harvard University social psychologist who studies sexuality. Taking away sex “takes away their primary emotional outlet.”

I’m not even opposed, really, to occasionally invoking gender norms, it can be, like BMI, a reasonable tool for examining populations, or whatever. I’m just surprised it does such heavy lifting in a piece in which one of the main studies used shows “there weren’t significant gender differences” in the idea of sexual communal stength (which is an interesting concept, but sounds more like a naked game of Red Rover than anything else.) ANYWAY, etc., there’s no reason it can’t spark an interesting conversation about sex in relationships. Someone, and I do not remember who, so now I’m hoping I invented it, once said that if the sex is good, it’s about 30% of your relationship with your partner, and if it’s bad, it’s 80%. I think that’s true? Ideally, you and your partner have compatible libidos, whatever they may consist of, and hopefully they decline in congress, if at all.