Should You Have Sex If You're Not in the Mood?

In some couples, sex is political. If one partner wants it, he has to negotiate for it, or go through elaborate rituals to get his partner in the mood, or at the very least try to guess when she is most likely to be in the mood. Some couples even have scheduled sex, with the least-excitable doling out sessions to their sex-hungry partners in valuable increments.

There seems to be an impasse in the case of couples who crave sex at different frequencies or at different times. It seems as though one is either doomed to be sexually frustrated or the other is doomed to have sex when she isn't in the mood.

(Note that this situation can happen with a highly sexed male partner and low-sexed female partner, or vice-versa, and in homosexual couples of either gender. I am simply assigning the highly sexed role to the male and the low-sexed role to the female for ease of writing.)

Back to being doomed. Is it better to be doomed to the fate of having sex with one's partner or not being allowed to have sex with your partner?

The fact is, if couples wait until both partners are "in the mood" to have sex, then what you have is a farce, not a relationship. When one partner is constantly put off because the other isn't in the mood, that can start to feel an awful lot like rejection. However, many people use not being in the mood as a way to control their partner's sexual frequency, or to punish a partner. At the very least, an unwillingness to touch and pleasure your partner is lazy.

That doesn't mean that you should give in to his every whim every single time he wants it. If your partner's sexual appetites are so intense or so frequent that they leave you sore, then you will need some time to recuperate from time to time. And it is perfectly normal to wish to receive pleasure yourself, and be "gotten into the mood" from time to time. But having sex with your partner for no other reason than he want is it...well, it's a nice, loving thing to do.

Now, some people are going to say that having sex when you're not in the mood feels like rape. If that's true, then you have issues that you need to work on. If your partner makes you feel raped, then you may be with the wrong person. However, in this day and age, we are so sensitive about the merest possibility that we may have been sexually abused that we are working on a collective neurosis.

Sex between people who like each other - and sometimes even people who don't - is a good thing and should be celebrated and enjoyed as much as possible. So jump in there and make your guy or girl feel good. Sex is about more than just getting your own rocks off; it's about giving and sharing and plain old physical closeness, which is nice.