Casserole Sex

There were no less than 2,000 tab-A-into-slot-B bits of advice, tips and tricks being advertised on the covers of the women’s magazines at the entrance of my grocery store checkout lane this evening. I counted. There were enough bedroom pointers for a different one each night for almost five and a half years.

I find it funny that in each monthly issue, the same magazine finds 100 or so more of the “best” tips. It’s endless, and it sells.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve been married for almost 10 years now, and I have z e r o complaints in this department. Sex is awesome, it should be frequent, and it’s a very integral element to a healthy marriage.

My gripe with the onslaught of shallow women’s magazines is this: Sex is presented is as the be-all-end-all shortcut to happiness. Yet the inundation of the act makes it as ordinary as a dinner menu. Hmm… what will we eat tonight? In fact, I bet that if the word “sex” was replaced with “casserole,” readers would never notice.

Let me just say, from a great deal of experience, that it is easier to have sex than a meaningful relationship with someone. Sex can be a substitute for real intimacy and oneness, rather than an extension of it.

Since most who read these types of magazines for advice don’t understand true intimacy, they will never have satisfying sex. Like a person who lacks cooking skills, they know there is something missing, but they don’t know what it is. It’s easy for them to think that if they just try new things every night for five and a half years, that one of them must be the winning combination to bliss. This mystery makes it very easy for magazines to appeal to the unsatisfied crowd – the same crowd who buys a cart’s worth of prepackaged foods each week.

Casseroles – with endless ingredient combinations of canned condensed soups, frozen veggies, ground meat, mushy noodles, par-boiled rice – are easier to make than the perfect steak (I like mine medium-rare with blue cheese crumbles or a fresh herby churrasco sauce, thankyouverymuch). However, they are not as satisfying.

If you have a deeply-in-love, committed, trusting relationship with someone, the rush of sex is infinitely more penetrating because it’s a mind + body + soul experience. If you’re not satisfied in your relationship, it’s probably not the fault of your sexual abilities as much as it is with the relationship itself. Delicious relationships are not built upon 15-minutes-to-the-table shortcuts.