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Every Monday, The CSPH takes a look at a book or film focusing on an aspect of sexuality. This week, we are taking a look at Bedded Bliss, a guide to so-called “lust ever after.” Written and curated by Kristina Wright, this book is a mish-mash of marital advice and erotica.
Despite the tone of my statements, some of the advice on long-term sexual relationships is practical and useful: Wright normalizes the changes in sexual patterns that happen within a marriage, encouraging acts such as partners touching each other often even if it is in a non-sexual context. She also advises that sharing fantasies in various ways can help keep the “sexy” in a couple’s sex life. The issue of sexual difficulties is addressed only briefly in the context of an erotic story, and Wright fails to address this topic in other sections of the book, such as during her advice section on a couple’s sex life after having a child or where she addresses sex lives and aging. Unfortunately, neither the issue of disability nor any mention of sexual health are addressed in any way throughout the book.
Even though the advice portions of the book use the word “partner,” the stories lack inclusion of LGBTQ couples. There is only a single story featuring a lesbian couple, and no gay couples, bisexual partners, or transgender partners are found in the book’s pages. More than half of the stories in this book were written by monogamous, heterosexual women.
In every story, the woman is wet and the man is rock-hard; only once is lubrication even addressed, but only to ascribe clear value to the husband finding his wife “naturally wet.” The stories themselves vary little in the theme of heterosexual penis-in-vagina sex, though pegging, anal penetration of both male and female partners, mutual masturbation, bondage, sex in public, and—albeit, limited and brief—polyamory do make appearances throughout the text. Within the one story featuring polyamory, the wife has a boyfriend who lives across the country who she barely sees, but with whom she engages in phone sex.
Though this book offers some good practical advice on connecting with a long-term sex partner, a better title would be “Bedded Bliss: The Healthy, Monogamous, Heterosexual, Married Couple’s Guide to Lust Ever After.”
