无聊的性爱

们翻译这篇文章的理由

在一段关系里面，男人跟女人的需求往往不同。在漫长的关系维系过程中，人们的欲望难以得到满足，尤其是女性。对关系的过度熟悉使得女性的激情慢慢消散。我们开始思考，长期的单一关系是不是造成这种结果的“罪魁祸首”。如果抛开道德束缚，寻求新的“刺激”，难道就能解决这种问题吗？对于下文即将阐述的观点，无论我们赞同与否，了解一下亦无妨。

——徐嘉茵

无聊的性爱

作者：Wednesday Martin

译者：邹世昌 & 邵海灵

校对：邹付容

策划：徐嘉茵

  The Bored Sex 

无聊的性爱

Women, more than men, tend to feel stultified by long-term exclusivity—despite having been taught that they were designed for it.

和单一伴侣保持长期的性爱关系时，女性比男性更容易感到麻木——尽管她们一直都被教导说，女性生来就应当对性伴侣保持专一。

Andrew Gotzis, a Manhattan psychiatrist with an extensive psychotherapy practice, has been treating a straight couple, whom we’ll call Jane and John, for several years. They have sex about three times a week, which might strike many as enviable, considering that John and Jane—who are in their 40s—have been together for nearly two decades. Based on numbers alone, one might wonder why they need couples counseling at all.

安德鲁·戈茨是曼哈顿的一名精神病学家，具有丰富的心理治疗临床经验。几年来，他一直在治疗一对异性恋夫妇，姑且叫他们简和约翰吧。这对夫妇每周有三次性生活，考虑到他们已经40多岁，且共同生活已有将近20年，这样的做爱频率可能会令很多人惊羡不已了。单从数字上看，人们可能会奇怪，他们还需要什么婚姻咨询呢？

But only one of them is happy with the state of play. And it isn’t Jane.

但是，他们当中只有一个人对性生活的状态感到满意，而这个人并不是简。

“The problem is not that they are functionally unable to have sex, or to have orgasms. Or frequency. It’s that the sex they’re having isn’t what she wants,” Gotzis told me in a recent phone conversation. And like other straight women he sees, “she’s confused and demoralized by it. She thinks there’s something wrong with her.” John, meanwhile, feels criticized and inadequate. Mostly he can’t understand why, if his wife is having sex with him and having orgasms, she wants more. Or different.

“问题不在于他们在生理层面上有性功能障碍或无法达到性高潮，也不在于性生活的频率，而在于他们的性生活不是女方想要的，”戈茨在最近的一次电话交谈中告诉我。和他看到的其他异性恋女性一样，“女方对此感到困惑和沮丧。她觉得是她自己有问题。”与此同时，妻子的表现也让约翰很受挫，感到力不从心。大多数情况下，他不明白为什么，尽管妻子在跟他做爱，也能达到高潮，但她并不满足，或者说，她还想要更为不同的东西。

Despite “fears of seeming sex addicted, unfaithful, or whorish” (Gotzis doesn’t like these terms, but they speak to his patient’s anxieties, he explained), Jane has tried to tell John, in therapy and outside of it, what she’s after. She wants to want John and be wanted by him in that can’t-get-enough-of-each-other-way experts call “limerence”—the initial period of a relationship when it’s all new and hot. Jane has bought lingerie and booked hotel stays. She has suggested more radical-seeming potential fixes, too, like opening up the marriage.

尽管“担心自己看起来像个做爱成瘾的不忠荡妇”(戈茨不喜欢这些说辞，但他解释说，它们表现出了病人的焦虑)，简曾试图在私下以及治疗过程中告诉约翰她在追求什么。她想要自己渴望约翰，也想被约翰所渴望，希望他们能有那种“怎么要都要不够”的性关系，专家称之为“蜜月期”，即一段关系刚刚开始的时候，一切都是新鲜而火热的。简买了情趣内衣，还订了旅馆。她还提出了一些看似激进的可能方案来解决问题，比如开放式婚姻。

Jane’s perseverance might make her a lot of things: an idealist, a dreamer, a canny sexual strategist, even—again channeling typical anxieties—unrealistic, selfish, or entitled. But her sexual struggles in a long-term relationship, orgasms and frequency of sex notwithstanding, make her something else again: normal.

简的坚持可能会给她贴上很多标签：理想化、白日梦、一个精明的性爱战略家，甚至——这么说也是为了准确表述病人典型的焦虑——不切实际、自私或自以为是。但是，她对长期关系、性高潮以及做爱频率的纠结其实再正常不过。

Although most people in sexual partnerships end up facing the conundrum biologists call “habituation to a stimulus” over time, a growing body of research suggests that heterosexual women, in the aggregate, are likely to face this problem earlier in the relationship than men. And that disparity tends not to even out over time. In general, men can manage wanting what they already have, while women struggle with it.

尽管大多数处于性伴侣关系中的人最终都会面临生物学家称之为“对刺激习惯化”的难题，但越来越多的研究表明，总的来说，异性恋女性比男性更早遇到这个问题。且随着时间的推移，这种差异趋于不均衡。一般来说，男人能保持自己已有的渴望，女人却对此倍感纠结。

Marta Meana of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas spelled it out simply in an interview with me at the annual Society for Sex Therapy and Research conference in 2017. “Long-term relationships are tough on desire, and particularly on female desire,” she said. I was startled by her assertion, which contradicted just about everything I’d internalized over the years about who and how women are sexually. Somehow I, along with nearly everyone else I knew, was stuck on the idea that women are in it for the cuddles as much as the orgasms, and—besides—actually require emotional connection and familiarity to thrive sexually, whereas men chafe against the strictures of monogamy.

来自内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校的玛塔·米纳在2017年的性治疗与研究学会年度会议上接受我的采访时，简单地阐述了这一点。她说:“长期的恋爱关系很难满足欲望，尤其是女性的欲望。”我被她的话吓了一跳，这与我多年来对女性性方面的内化认识几乎完全相反。不知何故，我和几乎所有我认识的人都坚持这样的观点：女人做爱既是为了获得性高潮，也是为了拥抱，而且——实际上她们需要情感上的联结和熟悉才能更好地享受性爱，而男人则对一夫一妻制的种种限制感到不满。

monogamy [məˈnɑgəmi] n. Monogamy is used to refer to the state or custom of having a sexual relationship with only one partner.一夫一妻制;单配偶

But Meana discovered that “institutionalization of the relationship, overfamiliarity, and desexualization of roles” in a long-term heterosexual partnership mess with female passion especially—a conclusion that’s consistent with other recent studies.

但是米纳发现，在长期的异性恋关系中，“关系的制度化、过度熟悉和角色的去性化”会扰乱女性的激情——这一结论与最近的其他研究一致。

“Moving In With Your Boyfriend Can Kill Your Sex Drive” was how Newsweek distilled a 2017 study of more than 11,500 British adults aged 16 to 74. It found that for “women only, lack of interest in sex was higher among those in a relationship of over one year in duration,” and that “women living with a partner were more likely to lack interest in sex than those in other relationship categories.” A 2012 study of 170 men and women aged 18 to 25 who were in relationships of up to nine years similarly found that women’s sexual desire, but not men’s, “was significantly and negatively predicted by relationship duration after controlling for age, relationship satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction.” Two oft-cited German longitudinal studies, published in 2002 and 2006, show female desire dropping dramatically over 90 months, while men’s holds relatively steady. (Tellingly, women who didn’t live with their partners were spared this amusement-park-ride-like drop—perhaps because they were making an end run around overfamiliarity.) And a Finnish seven-year study of more than 2,100 women, published in 2016, revealed that women’s sexual desire varied depending on relationship status: Those in the same relationship over the study period reported less desire, arousal, and satisfaction. Annika Gunst, one of the study’s co-authors, told me that she and her colleagues initially suspected this might be related to having kids. But when the researchers controlled for that variable, it turned out to have no impact.

《新闻周刊》在2017年对1.15万名年龄在16岁至74岁之间的英国成年人进行了一项调查，得出的结论是：“和男朋友同居会扼杀你的性冲动。”研究发现，“恋爱关系持续一年以上的女性反而更加缺乏“性”致，而且只有女性才有这样的情况”，“与伴侣生活在一起的女性对性生活不感兴趣的可能性高于其他关系类型的女性”。2012年，一项对170名年龄在18岁至25岁之间、恋爱关系长达9年的男女进行的研究同样发现，“在控制了年龄、关系满意度和性满意度之后，女性的性欲，而不是男性的性欲，与关系的持续时间呈现出显著负相关。”德国在2002年和2006年发表的两项经常被引用的纵向研究显示，女性的性欲在90个月内急剧下降，而男性的性欲则相对稳定。很能说明问题的一点是，那些不和伴侣住在一起的女性，性欲也没有像坐过山车一般急转直下——或许是因为她们避开了过度熟悉的可能。2016年发表的一项对2100多名芬兰女性长达7年的研究显示，女性的性欲随着关系状态的不同而变化：在研究期间，处于同一关系中的女性的性欲、性冲动和满意度都有所下降。这项研究的共同作者之一安妮卡·冈斯特告诉我，她和她的同事最初怀疑这可能与生孩子有关。但是当研究人员控制这个变量时，结果证明没有影响。

arousal [ə'raʊzl] n. Arousal is the state of being sexually excited（性欲的）激起，激发

Many women want monogamy. It’s a cozy arrangement, and one our culture endorses, to put it mildly. But wanting monogamy isn’t the same as feeling desire in a long-term monogamous partnership. The psychiatrist and sexual-health practitioner Elisabeth Gordon told me that in her clinical experience, as in the data, women disproportionately present with lower sexual desire than their male partners of a year or more, and in the longer term as well. “The complaint has historically been attributed to a lower baseline libido for women, but that explanation conveniently ignores that women regularly start relationships equally as excited for sex.” Women in long-term, committed heterosexual partnerships might think they’ve “gone off” sex—but it’s more that they’ve gone off the same sex with the same person over and over.

许多女性想过一夫一妻的生活。说得好听些，这样的组合让人感觉亲密又温馨，也被我们的文化所推崇。但，想要有单一的性伴侣，并不等于你能在长期的单一伴侣关系中始终性致盎然。精神科专家兼性爱健康执业医师伊丽莎白·戈登告诉我，她的坐诊经验和收集的数据都表明，与相处一年和一年以上的男性伴侣相比，女方对性爱的渴望程度严重偏低，在更为长期的伴侣关系中也是如此。“这类抱怨历来被归因为女性本身性欲水平较低，但这一解释轻描淡写地绕过了一个事实：在两性关系开始之初，女方对性爱的激情往往和男方不相上下。”在长期且忠贞的单一伴侣关系里，女性或许觉得自己对做爱本身“提不起劲”了——但其实她们更多是对“和同一个男人用同一种方式重复做爱”失去兴趣了。

What does it all mean for Jane and the other straight women who feel stultified by long-term exclusivity, in spite of having been taught that they were designed for it and are naturally inclined toward it? What are we to make of the possibility that women, far from anxious guardians of monogamy, might on the whole be more like its victims?

这对简和其他在长期单一关系中感到乏味的直女而言意味着什么？尽管她们一直被灌输“女人生来就这样”、“这是自然而然的”。如果女性并非急切想要维持一夫一妻关系的那一方，却反而是这种关系的受害者，这种可能性又将带来什么呢？

“When couples want to remain in a monogamous relationship, a key component of treatment … is to help couples add novelty,” Gordon advised. Tammy Nelson, a sex therapist and the author of The New Monogamy and When You’re the One Who Cheats, concurs: “Women are the primary consumers of sex-related technology and lubricants, massage oil, and lingerie, not men.”

戈登建议：“如果伴侣想要保持这种单一性伴的关系，那避免性爱疲劳的一个关键要素……是帮助他们增加一点创意。”性爱治疗专家，《新型一夫一妻制》和《如果出轨的是你》的作者塔米·尼尔森也表示同意：“性爱相关的科技和润滑剂、按摩油、贴身内衣等性爱相关用品，其主要消费者不是男人，而是女人。”

Of course, as Jane’s example shows, lingerie might not do the trick. Nelson explains that if “their initial tries don’t work, [women] will many times shut down totally or turn outward to an affair or an online ‘friend,’ creating … a flirty texting or social-media relationship.” When I asked Gotzis where he thinks John and Jane are headed, he told me he is not sure that they will stay together. In an upending of the basic narrative about the roles that men and women play in a relationship, it would be Jane’s thirst for adventure and Jane’sstruggles with exclusivity that tear them apart. Sure, women cheating is nothing new—it’s the stuff of Shakespeare and the blues. But refracted through data and anecdotal evidence, Jane seems less exceptional and more an Everywoman, and female sexual boredom could almost pass for the new beige.

当然，简的例子表明，光靠内衣恐怕不能化腐朽为神奇。尼尔森解释说，如果“他们的第一次尝试不成功，（女人）往往会彻底关闭自己，或者转而寻求艳遇或‘网友’，结果就是……短信调情或网恋。”当我询问戈茨对约翰和简感情走向有何看法时，他告诉我他不确定他们会继续在一起。与男女双方在一段感情中常见的角色设定相反，是简对冒险的渴望，和简对忠诚于一个伴侣的挣扎，最终将他们分开。诚然，女方出轨不是什么新鲜事——莎士比亚早就写过，蓝调布鲁斯也早就唱过。但从临床数据和趣闻轶事来看，简的情况似乎不算特例，反而更多是每个女性的遭遇，而女性对性爱的厌倦很可能被误认为是新的常态。

It’s not uncommon for women to let their straight partners play in a “monogamy gray zone,” to give guys access to tensional outlets that allow them to cheat without really cheating. “Happy ending” massages, oral sex at bachelor parties, lap dances, escorts at conferences … influenced by ubiquitous pop-cultural cues, many people believe that men need these opportunities for recreational “sorta sex” because “it’s how men are.” It’s how women are, too, it seems.

女性默许自己的直男伴侣“在出轨的边缘试探”，也是屡见不鲜的。男人可以通过一些看似不忠却并未出轨的方式来宣泄压力，比如按摩院的“大保健”、单身派对的口交、钢管舞、脱衣舞、三陪女……受到无所不在的流行文化的影响，很多人相信男人需要这些娱乐性质的“半做爱”来发泄自己的欲望，因为“男人就是这样的”。现在看来，女人也没什么不同。

Women cannot be pigeonholed; the glory of human sexuality is its variation and flexibility. So when we speak of desire in the future, we should acknowledge that the fairer sex thirsts for the frisson of an encounter with someone or something new as much as, if not more, than men do—and that they could benefit from a gray-zone hall pass, too.

女人不能被强行归入某一类。人类性爱的光辉之处正在于它千变万化的灵活性。所以今后我们说到性欲时，应该承认女人也渴望艳遇带来的震颤与心动，渴望新事物带来的新鲜感，就算不比男人更甚，至少也和男人一样——允许女性游走在性爱的灰色地带，可能也会对她们有好处。