Sexual rejection is an issue most men I know deal with on a consistent basis. It’s why most of us are reluctant to approach a women for a date or even approach our wives for physical companionship. Rejection in any form is difficult for any of us, but sexual rejection is something that really tends to hit home for men, so here’s a quick insight into why your man may take it so personally when as a wife, you’re just not “in the mood.”
Men tend to bury their emotions and subsequently store all of those unsaid words and unresolved issues right into their phallic counterparts. Simply consider how often we associate peak male sexual performance with aggression. Much of the frustration, pressure, and basic life burden men must carry must also be disguised under a veil of seeming strength, composure, and alpha-male egoism in order to maintain the public face. Many of us only express our “true” or aggressive selves and allow that pressure to be almost literally released behind closed doors with a person we hope accepts all of our publicly imperfect forms.
When we attempt to make that connection with our significant other, only to be consistently pushed away or rejected, it is very difficult for us to separate the physical act from the personal identity association. In other words, when our spouse rejects our physical advances, they fully reject us as a man – at least in our eyes. I know many women who feel this interpretation by men is totally ridiculous. I’ve heard women say phrases as, “I don’t know why he takes it so personally, I’m not rejecting him, I just don’t want to have sex with him.”
So I’ll try to put it into perspective for the curious – It’s like getting a woman to separate her identity from her physical appearance in America. It’s almost impossible to do on a mass scale. And if you don’t feel we still attach a woman’s value to her appearance, then we probably don’t live in the same country. Many times to dismiss a woman as unattractive or physically unacceptable, is to reject her as a person. It’s one of many misogynistic misgivings we still carry regarding our modern day woman. There are always exceptions to the rule (on both sides), but we’re talking to the masses here.
This feeling of male sexual identity rejection is not necessarily a healthy or validated response to our spouses simply not being “in the mood” or otherwise, but yet it’s still a reality. And we can’t start to address an issue until we seek to understand it first. Men in general will do better to cope with sexual spousal rejection issues once we as a whole begin to include other means of self-expression into our overall communication tools. But in the mean time, we’ll still be silently offended every time our un-evolved attempt at a deeper human connection is rejected – at least in our eyes.