THE DESEXUALIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MARRIAGE SYMMETRICAL, COMPLEMENTARY, AND ACCOMMODATING SEXUAL SYSTEMS
Count up the number of items that you scored to the right of the 5 (6,7,8,9, or 10 scores that you circled). Do not add up the values, just count the actual number of items to the right of 5. The sample couple you have been following throughout this chapter, and whose quotes you have been reading, had seven numbers to the right of 5 and both husband and wife scored exactly the same. You would expect that from a couple that is compensated, stuck in a chronic system of interaction.
Next, count up the number of items you circled to the left of the
5 (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4). Again, both spouses in oar example scored identically, and they each circled three numbers to the left of the 5. Subtract the number of times you scored to the left of 5 from the number to the right of 5, and you have your sexual-system score. It is possible to have a negative score not in meaning but in the interpretation of your scores. To understand the meaning of your score in this new systems context, place it on the following line:
ACCOMMODATING MARRIAGE SYMMETRICAL MARRIAGE»» ««COMPLEMENTARY MARRIAGE -10 9876543210+123456789 10
If your score fell in the minus range, your sexual system is functioning in the symmetrical mode at this time. You tend toward an egalitarian, romaticized, nonsexist, balanced relationship. If your score fell toward the plus side of 0, you tend toward a more separated, sexist marriage that has less balance than the symmetrical marriage.
The accommodating marriage is a super sex marriage. It adapts over time. The score of this type of marriage would be near zero. This type of marriage has a high AC, or alternating capacity, going back and forth between symmetrical and complementary in response to external and internal needs in the overall marital sexual system. Like all systems, ease and balance seem healthier than disease and extremes, so a score around zero is the healthier score and a place for our focus throughout this book.
You now understand more about the systems approach and what is meant by super marital sex, a sex that goes beyond the limits of day-to-day patterns, holistically growing and changing with, for, and because of the partners’ interaction. How you find someone to form such a relationship with and how you discover such a relationship for your marriage requires integrating our marital “IQ”, Intimacy Quotient, from Chapter One and your sexual-system score from this chapter. I will show you in Chapter Three how the courtship ritual works in our society and how you can re-court your marital partner by a new set of super sex rules, how intimate systems are formed.
The couple we have been following managed to break their solidified pattern of male-dominated, female-compliant, distant, and misperceived patterns of sexuality and daily marital living. They did so through the steps you will learn in the following chapters. They learned about their own love experiences. They learned the loving. Most important of all, they learned that mutual responsibility within and for an ever-changing system of intimacy was vital to their own personal as well as their marital health. They continue to struggle together with this learning, loving, within a system that gives more room to grow.
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