Bad boy appeal

I have some suspicions that my ex wanted to be chased and taken. Chased in the sense of rather predatory and persistent wooing; taken in the sense of someone breathlessly saying "take me" except without actually saying anything. It's not hard to understand. Someone might want to feel they are so attractive that they overcame their partner's scruples. And very commonly people feel like their personal likes are also the limits of decency (as Ozymandias was just writing about.) So a desire to be chased makes considerable sense. Being chased can be considered an enormous compliment. I suspect this is fairly integral to the appeal of "bad boys"; the idea that he'll do what you want, without the need to tell him; and stop at the limit of your likes, again without a need to explain. Note that the chasing and taking I'm talking about is distinct from an agreed-upon form of play, or even an implied kind of play. If one's spouse says "You can't catch me" and runs away, that's obviously implied play. What I'm talking about is the situation where the chase is expected to replace such obvious communication.

There are a bunch of reasons this does not work for me.

I've talked about the first one before. Although I believe in a Christian marriage the partners give ownership of their bodies to each other in a very real sense, particularly a sexual sense, we are to love our spouses and they're still the ones living in that body. We should never harm them and even slightly unwanted sexual activity is a harm. The ownership is a concept to guide the way each spouse should give their body to the other, not the way a spouse may take the other's body. In other words, as a married Christian I would always think of my wife's ownership of my body, but not of my ownership of hers; likewise she should think of my ownership of hers, not of her ownership of mine. If I'm always thinking she owns my body, her sexual use of it will be welcome. But I should not be thinking that I can take hers whenever I want, only she should think that.

The second thing is that it tends to be one-sided in a way I can't handle. One person runs, the other chases. One person gets the compliment. I'm not aware that I've heard of anyone alternating this; if they did I'd expect a case where it's a pretty obvious form of play. I think a man running away from a woman who wanted sex with him would be too insulting a form of play for most people. If you turn that around, that is why I could only handle it if my partner made it obvious from the start that she wanted to be caught; otherwise I find it unbearably wounding.

The third is that I'm just not a bad boy. Maybe with the martial arts and guns and hair I could be mistaken for one. Nope. I'm more Boy Scout and hopeless romantic. If you run away from me I will cry and ask you for one last kiss. (Yes, I did that a few days before the divorce notice came.) If you want me to take you with strength you must discuss it with me first. I aspire to a very different ideal than the bad boy.

"Thou wert the meekest man," says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot. "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature. The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. When Launcelot heard himself pronounced the best knight in the world, "he wept as he had been a child that had been beaten."

(Excerpts from C.S. Lewis's excellent essay on the topic of the modern need for knightly chivalry can be found here; I'd like everyone who carries a gun to read it. And everyone who doesn't to read it too.)