Do Women Want To Be Ravished?
As a psychologist and couples counselor, I’ve been asked this question by men, women and couples for the last twenty plus years. Especially since the publication of “50 Shades of Grey” and the upcoming movie version, it’s an even more pressing question for many. Now Anne Rice’s B&D “Sleeping Beauty” trilogy is rumored to become a movie or mini-series as well.
My specialty is helping couples bring back the passion in their relationship and using fantasy is one way of achieving this. The fantasy of being ravished, being lovingly, yet forcefully taken by her man is consistently in the top five female fantasies, often the number one fantasy. This is different than the “rape fantasy” which has often been misrepresented.
Of course, women don’t want to be raped, this is an act of violence and power, not one of love. However, as revealed in the always popular romance novels, the fantasy of a strong, powerful man initiating sex with a woman, not accepting her initial reluctance, and then loving her passionately, is a popular fantasy. This is not about abuse and power; in most of these novels (and fantasies), the couple ends up married and living “happily ever after.”
So what’s the truth here, at least from a psychological perspective? When we first meet someone we’re attracted to we experience that initial chemistry and go into that “honeymoon” period, where our bodies are flooded with chemicals and we are “walking hormones.” To read more about this, you can see my article, “Three Stages of Relationship”.
However, this initial chemistry fades over time and we need to take steps to reignite it! To create sexual passion, there needs to be sexual tension and for this there needs to be strong sexual POLARITY. We need to CONSCIOUSLY create this in our relationship.
Polarity comes from strong masculine energy meeting strong feminine energy. Just like the positive and negative terminals of a battery create electricity, so will the masculine and feminine interact to create PASSION! Now each of us, male and female have an inner masculine and an inner feminine and either sex can express either aspect.
For the heterosexual female “ravish me” fantasy though, we’re talking about the man embodying the masculine and taking charge with those masculine qualities to be focused, direct, relentless in pursuing his goal, in this case, loving his woman into “submission”. This can range from simply initiating sex, to be a little more assertive than usual, to being more aggressive, to being a little “rough”, all the way to role play and using restraints and sex toys.
To use a simple example, I’m 6’3″ and around 200 pounds and have found that many woman have simply enjoyed the weight of my body pressing into them and found that arousing. Perhaps that is enough to begin your journey. I also happen to have large hands (no euphemism here). I’m usually able to hold both of a woman’s wrists in one of my hands and even that small step can often be assertive enough to feed into the submission fantasy. Just consider what YOU can do to orient yourself in that direction, it doesn’t have to be “whips and chains.”
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, women want to know that their man can take care of them, can “hold” them, both emotionally AND physically. I have a female friend who is close to six feet tall and she LOVES that her husband can physically hold her, pick her up, engulf her and make her feel like she’s a little girl sometimes.
If we believe that “form follows function”, than if a man can open a woman sexually with his dominance, than perhaps he can also metaphorically open her heart with his dominance. Perhaps there is part of each woman who wants to have her heart ravaged open, even more than her body? Don’t we all want our partner to help open our heart and experience more love?
Now on the flip side, there are times when a man enjoys his partner initiating sex in a more dominant and aggressive way as well. Being stuck in ANY role will ultimately diminish passion. We need to mix it up. Do men want to be ravished? That’s a topic for another day 😉
These are my thoughts about this question, “Do Women Want To Be Ravished?” I would love to hear your thoughts and comments about this and any other ideas for bringing back the passion in relationships.
Thank you,
Dr. Adam Sheck
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except you are trying to romanticize a word that is not romantic in origin or context at all (unless you are describing it as your response to art or music). It was generally used either as a term to describe females who were so attractive or had such strong feminine wiles/aspects/ features that men fell enraptured before them, unable to stop their own physical carnal lusts in the presence of such a ravishing lady, which would lead them to believe she was willing to accept whatever was going to happen to her unchaperoned body, going out of the house looking that delectable.
it meant the men were powerless to stop their own urges in her presence IE victim blaming for the rape. It would also be used to “delicately” describe a woman or girl that had been acting of her own unchaperoned accord… without the consent of her guardians, to enter into an illicit affair without regard to her future potential as a brokering pawn for her family… again implying guilt on the girl for not controlling her passions, which women were considered to be in no control over, which is why they were never allowed anywhere without chaperones and guardians.
it was also common to refer to women nabbed by vikings and native Americans as having been ravished by the savage ways they were exposed to… and when they did not wish to return home with their families upon offers of rescue. Many a woman reluctant to return to white societies was murdered at by her own family’s hand, because they were afraid of the taint of them having had savage desires to compete with cloistering.
if you want to say consumed by passion for each other, you can say they looked into each others eyes and confirmed they both felt the flames in their burning bodies rising, that she submitted to his consuming of her mouth, her flesh, nibbling away at her determination not to give into her desires at his hands again, the washing tide of his kisses eating away at her resolve…. there are a great many better words that can be used than trotting out poor old rape denoting ravish… which does not imply choice in the matter for the person taken.
Because you choose to think of it as a pretty term you can create the social change by writing about it in books for feeding the ego’s fetishes. I also think it gives a person a misrepresented ideal of a perfect man to hope for, that is in itself a fantasy, a mind reading man who is perfectly able, suited and willing to dictate to a woman’s own desires, far better than her own self, because he is mr perfect right… something that many women enter into physical encounters hoping for only to have time tell them, this fantasy is another illusion to be shattered by reality.
for the record:
rav·ish (rvsh)
tr.v. rav·ished, rav·ish·ing, rav·ish·es
1. To seize and carry away by force.
2. To force (another) to have sexual intercourse; rape.
3. To overwhelm with emotion; enrapture. See Synonyms at enrapture.
[Middle English ravisshen, from Old French ravir, raviss-, from Vulgar Latin *rapre, from Latin rapere, to seize; see rep- in Indo-European roots.]
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ravish
50 shades of grey/gray is nothing like BDSM relationships, which are not based on control and overpowering without consideration and consent for partners. a dom does not own a slave, they take charge of their slave. which means they concern themselves to the wellbeing and needs of their slave before they worry about their own concerns for themselves. doms put aside their desires, and work with expanding the horizons and fetish barriers and boundaries of the person that trusts and entrusts themselves to the dom. 50 Shades of Gray depicts a horror story of a stalking codependent dysfunctional wreck of a human, and his “affect” upon his victim.
Theresa,
Thanks for your well-considered thoughts. Words have power, no doubt. Exploring words has the potential for liberating us from their power and even possibly creating empowerment. The dictionary also has more updated definitions for ravish which may reflect this. Regardless, the phantasy/desire seems to be somewhere in the collective unconscious and surfacing more and more. When not explored, a phantasy can take on more of the shadow energy, which results in much of what you have described. And, yes, thanks for clarifying your take on the BDSM community, that education is way beyond the scope of this small article.
Take care,
Adam Sheck
Absolutely! I want to be taken care of! I’m little, 5’2, 110. I appreciate a very masculine man!!!