Sexual Relationships 
Sexual Health 
Why do guys have sex with some women, but want to marry others?
In popular culture, your average woman can be divided into one of two categories: the Madonna or the whore. Think about the women in your life, unknowingly you've probably already sorted them without you realizing it, but where did this dynamic come from? The Madonna-Whore complex as it's often called, can first be attributed to the father of modern psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (yes the same man who thinks that all women wish they had penises... what can you say, they can't all be winners) who stated that a woman belongs to one of two camps: the "saintly and pure" Madonna or the immoral "bad-girl", the whore.
I think you can already see the problem here: people, women included aren't as simple as black and white, we don't all fit neatly into one of two little boxes. You can't really blame Sigmund can you? I mean times were different back then, we knew a lot less than we do now...
Then why are we still having this conversation now in 2016?
“Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love,”
That's what good old Siggy had to say about the subject, meaning a man in a good, loving relationship cannot feel true sexual arousal towards his companion, and a man cannot form a good, loving relationship with someone he sexually debases. You have women you admire and women you find sexually attractive and never the two shall meet! But surely in this new enlightened age we have done away with such frivolous labels, you cry! Surely we know that it's quite possible to love and be sexually attracted to someone in this day and age! Except, the idea that men still sleep around with the “whore” while searching for their “Madonna”, their marriage-option, still pervades modern culture.
But why the dichotomy? Why do you sleep with the “whore”, but you don't want to marry her?
I believe it has a lot to do with religion as a whole. Think about the Madonna, the mother of Christ in Christian religions: so virtuous and pure that she conceived a child without ever having sex! The Madonna is the antithesis to modern female sexuality, and for the more conservative lad, the epitome of the sort of woman he sees himself marrying. This directly correlates with the belief in stricter monotheistic religions that sex is inherently wicked, and that sex outside the confines of marriage is even more so. Of course you have the men who believe in no sex before marriage, but overwhelmingly it appears that it's supposed to be women who abstain, while men give into their “baser” desires with the “whores.”
Which leads me to another likely culprit perpetuating the Madonna-Whore complex: slut-shaming.
I can hear the angry cries already, but put down your pitchforks for just a second and hear me out, because slut-shaming is a very real thing.
With the Madonna-Whore complex you have a valued psychoanalyst saying that yes women can be sexual beings, but because of this, we cannot respect them; just sleep with them until you find your wife and then settle down with a “good” girl. This idea that “good” women aren't supposed to be sexual creatures persists to this day, though I can't imagine why. You have studies that show that women like sex as much as men, masturbate as much as men, and yet any woman who shamelessly pursues sex is a slut, or a whore.
Let me let you in on a little secret, sex is not bad. Regardless of what your religion and what your parents said, there is nothing inherently wrong with sex. Between two consenting adults (or more, I don't judge) it can be a truly beautiful thing. Not having sex doesn't make you “good” any more than having sex makes you “bad”; not that there's anything wrong in saving yourself if that's what you truly want to do, but there IS something wrong when you begin to think less of others for not.
I would say this comes back to Christianity but slut-shaming is something that a lot of people, not just Christians are guilty of: I do believe this all still stems from some religious guilt in regards to sex itself. This idea that men are sexual and women are not needs to just disappear: humans like sex, if we didn't our species would have died out long ago. You will have sex with your wife, and it won't make her any more “dirty” than any other woman who had sex before they were married.
Sex isn't bad, you got that?
So my final thought on the Madonna-Whore complex comes from good old Sigmund Freud yet again, (what can I say, even a broken clock is right twice a day), and stems both from his belief in the Oedipus complex and the actual psychological definition of the Madonna-Whore dynamic. In psychoanalysis the Madonna-Whore complex often arises when a man is unable to see his wife as a sexual being (arising from what I said previously, about men wanting to marry the “Madonna”) and usually manifests itself when their wife has a child: because their wife is now a mother, she is no longer viewed as a sexual option.
But wait, you say, didn't you mention Oedipus?
In case you don't know, Oedipus was a man in Greek mythology who killed his father and married his mother. Freud took this a bit further and developed the Oedipus complex, which was his belief that all boys want to have sex with their mothers at a certain stage in their development. Now Freud was known for spouting some crazy stuff, but this one is rooted in a little bit of reality; men want to marry their mothers just as women want to marry their fathers.
Their mother is often the first experience young boys have with women, and as such they often placed on a pedestal (see my other Take) and idolized as the peak of feminine perfection. Their mothers, their ideal woman are not a sexual being (how can they be, when they are the Madonna personified?) and so they are turned off by the idea of being intimate with another literal Madonna, their wife.
Now I'm taking the Madonna-Whore complex beyond it's mere psychological definition to extend to the idea that women are either sexual or not- using the Oedipus complex, a man wants to marry his mother, and as his mother is not a sexual being, he does not want to marry a sexual being, a “whore”.
So, what can we do about this?
Well for starters, we can stop the idea that sex is a bad thing; it's this idea that sex is “evil” that causes some people to paint women that enjoy sex as wicked (I say women because men are not usually shamed for having promiscuous sex). We can stop the idea that we have sex with some type of person and marry another, when both are valid sexual and romantic options. And lastly, we can realize that humanity is much too wonderful and complex to break down into one of two categories; people are not black and white, we're various shades of gray, and it does us a disservice to shove us into a box, especially when neither box is mutually exclusive.
We're all Madonnas, we're all whores, and we're every little thing in between.
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