Experiencing the Marital Bed

Abstract

This paper examines the marital bed through existential themes of spatial, temporal, corporeal and relational experience. It is a collaborative effort in that it relates anecdotes contributed by twelve people who each described – in writing, in interviews and in conversation – very personal moments of life in the “marital bed”. Through other eyes, one sees that what seemed unique has echoes of a shared experience. The everyday noises and movements, the negotiations, even the sorrows of that particular place, are so familiar that, in recognising them as true to one’s own experience, one wonders, “Is it like this for others too?”