Below Monday’s post on marriage and disparate desire, “Married Tom” writes:
There are two sides to the incompatible libido/unhappy sex life coin. I would argue that living with the expectation that most advances to your spouse will be met with a “not interested tonight, and since ‘I’ come before ‘us’ that is justifiable” can have equally “soul scarring” results. The sense of rejection, demoralization, and ultimately apathy that builds up over time from constant, predictable rejection is just as real and damaging as the bleak feeling that must come from being “pressured or nagged” into sex. Neither is good, yet you are implying that one is morally acceptable while the other is damning.
You are saying that regardless of whether the decision is mutual, you should learn to accept the situation and be happy with it. Many spouses do just that, I believe it is an example of the factors behind what Thoreau observed behind the “quiet desperation” in many men. Failing to see why the anxious spouse can’t just learn to “deal with it” is not particularly helpful–a strange mix of pragmatism and sanctimony.
Monday’s post was in response to a particularly asinine article. My point was that no one, married or not, is ever “entitled” to have sex with another human being. The “yes” of the wedding day is not a “yes” to every future sexual encounter with a spouse. Good sex is based not on duty but on desire — and when it comes to sex, most folks seem to find that duty makes desire disappear right quick. The author of the article suggested that lower-desire spouses ought to think of sex as one of the many tasks one undertakes to make a partner happy, like taking out the garbage or doing the dishes. I — and most of my commenters — vigorously reject that analogy. Taking out the garbage when one doesn’t want to leads to momentary resentment, while having sex you don’t want can be profoundly damaging to the spirit. Sex is not easily made analogous to any other household activity! Sophonisba makes this point well:
We are all aware that you have to do lots of things you don’t want to do, in life and in marriage. Every decent person does things they don’t want to do, every day–yes, even people who don’t put out on command.
Try stepping away from the easy, comforting “anything I don’t want to do” generalities for a second and put it in concrete terms. You’re not talking about having somebody do “something” or “anything” they don’t want to. You’re talking about having them have sex they don’t want to have. Not quite so vague and fluffy, when you look it in the face.
Before I forget, let me recommend the really terrific Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex with You blog series. If you scroll to the bottom of that linked page, you’ll find some terrific answers on a variety of topics (disgust, depression, childhood sexual abuse, and so forth.) I recommend reading through the whole lot. One particular piece at the WYWWHSWY site is particularly useful in response to Married Tom’s query, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But of course, a personal anecdote first. My second marriage was nearly entirely sexless. I started dating she who became my second wife after we met in a Twelve Step meeting. You know the drill: we started off hot and heavy, sleeping together by the second or third date, engaged to be married within four months. (We only waited that long because she felt, rightly, that I needed to be legally divorced from wife #1 before getting engaged.) And we had a lovely wedding not long thereafter — and bam, the sex stopped. We had sex — and I’m including many things in my definition of sex — more times in our first week of dating than we did in our twenty-month marriage. We had no sex at all, of any kind, during the final thirteen months of that marriage. And until the very end, when I finally did leave my wife (by giving up six years of sobriety in a drunken binge that included being flagrantly unfaithful), I did not go outside the marriage.
During the period where we still thought that marriage was salvageable, we went to counseling together. At 27, I was just starting to teach women’s studies, but that didn’t stop me from playing the part of self-righteous, passive-aggressive victim. I told the therapist in detail about how cold and withholding my wife was, about how she was never in the mood. I was bitter and resentful, alternating between blaming myself and blaming her. My second wife had little vocabulary for her own feelings, or little sense of safety to express them. She couldn’t articulate what was going on well, but was able to admit that we had created a dynamic in which she felt she alternated between maternal tenderness and deep, soul-stirring rage. At the time, I had a hard time acknowledging the ways in which my childishness and irresponsibility (as well as my sense of entitlement) triggered both her anger and her mothering behavior. It was little wonder that sex simply didn’t happen.
And while I shared at least an equal portion of the blame for the sexlessness of that marriage, (being childlike, defensive, petulant, and entitled is very rarely a turn-on), the sense of rejection I felt was overwhelming. I felt ugly, fat, unloveable, deeply undesirable. When the marriage finally ended, I embarked on another period of promiscuity to try and reassure myself that someone wanted me sexually.
My sexual narrative from 17-35 (until the end of marriage #3) was pretty damn consistent:
1. Start dating someone. Sex is good, maybe even great. Get seriously committed.
2. Move in with someone, or get married.
3. Once married, start to get lazy. Start to expect wife/girlfriend to take care of me emotionally. Mother-son dynamic starts to creep in, routine appears. Sex life suffers.
4. Sex becomes less frequent, and Hugo becomes more anxious. Starts to put pressure on in ways subtle and not.
5. Fights start happening over sex.
6. Sex nearly stops altogether. Couple seeks therapy.
7. Fed up and miserable Hugo leaves for greener pastures, or (as in the final couple of relationships) wife/girlfriend decides to leave for same.
8. Repeat steps 1-7, following a period of frantic promiscuity.
That depressing list might not be everyone’s story, but it’s not an uncommon one.
I broke that cycle in my current marriage, even though it still takes a lot of work on both our parts. Learning not to be a child is hard; learning to take responsibility for soothing my own anxieties is hard. The best advice I’ve seen in print is that in David Schnarch’s magnificent Passionate Marriage; the best I’ve seen on the web, aimed primarily at the higher-desire partner in a sexually dysfunctional relationship, is at WYWWHSWY: Being the Hero of Your Own Life. Excerpt:
You are looking at your wife as if she and her emotions are chess pieces you could move around on a board of your devising if you just knew the rules of the game or the “tricks” to try. But the answer is that you don’t “move your wife out of her comfort zone,” you move yourself out of YOURS.
Your comfort zone is the one where you”avoid conflict at all costs.”
Maybe in some part of yourself you LIKE being a quiet, self-righteous sufferer, clutching your virtue to your bosom and resentfully telling yourself how your spouse is so awful to you, how her behavior or personality limits you so fatally, how she makes it just impossible for you to…(fill in the blank).
You break the marital routine by breaking your own routines, especially the routines inside your head, the main one being the childish fantasy that if the other person would just straighten up and fly right –”flying right” defined as behaving in consonance with your pleasure — you would finally be happy in your life.
Bold emphasis mine.
That’s spot on, as is the advice to take sovereignty and responsibility for one’s own life:
So ask yourself (ideally you’ll sit down and write the answers, or at least make a few notes to yourself):
What kind of man are you?
What kind of man would you like to be?
What is the most ideal man you COULD be?
How did you get to where you are and who you are today? What is your family and romantic history?
How would your enemies turn your life story into a movie?
How could you turn your story into an uplifting movie, with the happiest ending possible? (No fair saying “a fairy godfather makes me rich” — the story has to be driven by YOU and your character.)
That imaginary movie is your personal myth, the one you’ll base your ethics and behavior on in the future.
But be careful: you don’t explore your history, your “story so far,” to make yourself unhappy or to give yourself excuses for failure, you’re looking for (a) the real, live truth about yourself — as brutal or ugly as it might be — and (b) the basis for your future story, the one in which you become your best possible self. The one in which you become a Hero.
That’s as good a beginning assignment in men’s work as I’ve seen, and it works just as well for women. Deciding whether a marriage can be changed, whether a sexual dynamic can be altered, whether a divorce is the best option — these decisions can only be made once you’ve taken complete and full responsibility for your own life and your own role in the marriage. Even married, your happiness is still your decision.
God is my compass, my navigator, my best friend. But I become the best husband, teacher, friend, mentor I can be by being the hero of my own damn life. And breaking out of the mentality of the self-righteous victim (such a common role for the higher-desire partner to play) was step one in that process for me. Taking responsibility is the sine qua non for growth. And the happy benefit is that it makes me far more attractive to my wife.
His assumption that the only people who suffer from spouses who become disinterested in sex are men is telling. Women, too, can suffer from a sudden lack of interest from husbands or boyfriends. But maybe women’s sadness from rejection doesn’t count?
And a lot of people are pointing this out — but I don’t see many men who believe that their wives have claims on them sexually.
The wierd thing is, no-one is saying that it doesn’t hurt being rejected. Of course it does. But the issue being discussed is what one should do about it. Married Tom’s comments remind me of the arguments from PUAs about social rejection, used as a justification for methods of exploitation in social interactions. This issue always comes down to entitlement: feeling hurt by sexual rejection is human; feeling that the rejector of one’s advances is the person who needs to ‘adjust’ (allow you access to their body, simulate desire on command) is entitlement. Being married to a person does NOT entitle you to rights over their body, or ownership, or anything. There is nothing un-sexier IMO.
Amanda: Of course it doesn’t count, because women are supposed to feel inadequate, it’s a sign that all’s right with the world. Whether you feel inadequate because you’re not putting out enough to please your man or because you’re not hot enough to arouse your man’s appetites, as long as you feel bad, everything’s fine.
I also noticed in the other thread that even though I was gender-neutral in my language, for the most part, and made it clear that I was saying I wasn’t entitled to my male partner’s body, the people who took issue with my comments went on merrily talking as though this is all about what men want, and what men are denied, and what women do or don’t do to please them. Because, I guess, the idea that you could have the higher libido in a relationship and yet not be an entitled asshole about it — that you could, in fact, be righteously indignant on your partner’s behalf, that you could be, in Hugo’s terms, the ‘guardian of their autonomy’, in all sincerity, just does not compute for them. So they have to believe that anybody standing up for the right of a person not to fuck on command must be in that position themselves.
The f-word blog has a good response on this as well as linking to a longer (and even more offensive!) piece on the same issue by Dr Spurr, who seems to be all over the British Press blaming feminism for selfish wives:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/
and, as Abby O’Reilly points out there, the gendered response to this issue is completely different to the response given to the women whose husbands experience impotency.
It might be helpful for any husband who thinks his wife is being selfish by refusing sex to ponder on that: how would you want your partner to respond if you became impotent? Would it be fair of them to say ‘well, I am perfectly entitled to seek pleasure elsewhere, at least as far as penetretive sex goes.’ Would it be legitimate for them to consider your impotency as a personal and damaging rejection aimed at them?
If you wanna talk about entitlement. Expecting your partner to remain faithful to you is a form of entitlement.
Beste,
Do you mean that if a woman has higher libido or a man becomes impotent in some degree, it will be “entitlement” from him to expect faithfulness from his wife? Would you think like that regarding your own relationship? Or, in your opinion, such people should break up, not trying to find ways to solve this problem?
If you wanna talk about entitlement. Expecting your partner to remain faithful to you is a form of entitlement.
No, expecting your partner to remain in a relationship is. Expecting you (general you) not to cheat - that’s not entitlement, that’s a basic moral standard. If you want to open up the relationship, then you talk about it and make a mutual decision rather than expect one party to abide by rules another doesn’t. (Because maybe “not wanting sex” means “not wanting sex with you,” and your partner would be happy to seek satisfaction elsewhere as well.)
If you can’t reach an acceptable accord, then I don’t think there’s a legitimate expectation to stay around in a monogamous relationship.
Beste,
Do you mean that if a woman has higher libido or a man becomes impotent in some degree, it will be “entitlement” from him to expect faithfulness from his wife? Would you think like that regarding your own relationship? Or, in your opinion, such people should break up, not trying to find ways to solve this problem?
Apples: Person who has a lower libido than the other who consents to sex at least (or in the ball park of “at least”) as much as they demur AND/OR Person who has lost desire for any sex AND/OR person who is incapable of sex…
Oranges: Person who professes such problems, yet still regularly uses porn, toys for auto-gratification, etc. Such a person is only telling a half-truth (Read: LIE) when they say “I don’t want to have sex” without adding on the whole-truthful “With you.”
Yes, honesty is hard. Dishonesty is so much easier. At least in the short term. It doesn’t actually fix anything, but it is easier.
Short answer - yes, in the case of oranges, it is entitlement. He or she who loves it less is not entitled to win anything but a Pyrrhic victory.
then you talk about it and make a mutual decision rather than expect one party to abide by rules another doesn’t.
And just how often in a case of “I don’t want sex “with you” is it that said partner is not getting their itch scratched elsewhere already? I mean really, not the Rube Goldberg “Well it is possible….”
And just how often in a case of “I don’t want sex “with you” is it that said partner is not getting their itch scratched elsewhere already? I mean really, not the Rube Goldberg “Well it is possible….”
I’m failing to follow your line of reasoning here. Are you trying to say that the people who don’t want sex with their partners, but want sex generally, are all cheating already? Or that they don’t want sex with their partner because the partner is cheating on them? Or that the partner they don’t want sex with is always going to respond by cheating?
This makes me curious … has anyone read the book “I’d Rather Eat Chocolate”? I thought it was an interesting take on this topic, although I take issue with the author’s supposition that women just don’t have much in terms of sex drives in general. I also question her quick dismissal of seeing a psychologist about the issue, as she attends one or two sessions and quits because she doesn’t care for the counselor. But, like I said, it’s interesting.
The Gonzman is right to point out that there are many different reasons why someone might not want to have sex, as he puts it, different sorts of apples and oranges. But Dr Spurr never mentions female impotence at all, even though the symptoms she describes in some of her patients DO fit with that. She focuses only on the effects on the male partner.
She doesn’t mention the I- word because to do so would possibly create sympathy and understanding, not the blame and warnings that her article was intended to evoke.
Male impotence = medical problem
Female impotence = selfish wife!
Katie,
1) Dr Spurr doesn’t mention impotance because it has absolutely nothing to do with the point that she was trying to make.
2) There is no such thing as “female impotence”
Katie,
I take that back. Dr Spurr did mention it….Sort of. it’s in the other version of her article.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I never encourage or excuse infidelity. But when you hear story after story of men feeling sexually neglected by women who find it perfectly natural to put their own interests before their husband’s - and not for a good reason such as a medical issue or a traumatic event like a bereavement - I can’t help but feel that some men have little choice, bar ending the relationship. After all, the human sex drive is a powerful thing, and requires careful care and consideration between two people.”
” and not for a good reason such as a medical issue or a traumatic event like a bereavement”
Hugo,
Even though I don’t exactly agree withyour take on it.
I actually think that this is one your better posts.
I’ll have read Julie Grey entire blog before i can really form an opinion on it.
First of all, Beste, it’s Kate; the Katie commenting above is a different commenter.
Second, to say “there is no such thing as female impotence” - I hope you are being facetious here…well, ok, to give it the ‘correct medical terminology’ it is called “female sexual dysfunction.” According to the BBC website up to 40% of women are estimated to suffer from FSAD:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/486081.stm
I think it’s problematic to overmedicalise private behaviour - but the point I was making before still stands, which is the way the issue is presented by Dr Spurr places ALL the blame onto women. From what Spurr says about her patients - eg “When Olivia found that the stress of their differences diminished her sex drive, she felt completely justified in suggesting separate bedrooms” - she is connecting lack of desire to issues such as stress, here - a common cause of impotence/FSAD.
If you accept that stress can cause impotence in men, can you not see that it might also do so to women?
I don’t see the advice innational newspapers to impotent men being “you’d better sort it out - and fast - otherwise your partner will either a) cheat or b) leave you, and who could blame them?”
Such advice would not only be cruel, but it would also be INEFFECTIVE. You can’t cure a stress related condition by adding to the sense of failure and piling on more worry.
I’m failing to follow your line of reasoning here. Are you trying to say that the people who don’t want sex with their partners, but want sex generally, are all cheating already? Or that they don’t want sex with their partner because the partner is cheating on them? Or that the partner they don’t want sex with is always going to respond by cheating?
That would be door number one.
And breaking out of the mentality of the self-righteous victim
Let us not forget the mentality of the externally impacted LSD self-righteous martyr. We feed into one another. As pointed out in the initial thread, I’ve been there, and it is so destructive.
But on a related note, I would also like to point out something that needs to figure into the discussion…fertility.
All the Better Half has ever had to do was leave his shoes under the bed. Chemical BC was out, for solid health reasons. And I like him, alot…but after two in eleven months (consciencious use BC failure) for a total of three early on, and two subsequent planned pregnancies resulting in heartbreaking stillbriths…I became freakishly uptight.
I can only say that coming into truly stressless, free lovemaking in the marriage entailed the loss of fertility. The empty nest ain’t hurting either.
Please know that natural processes can figure heavily into LSD. I was all over the hot monkey love for the decade+ we were “building” our family…not so much when pregnancy was no longer a desirable option.
We’ll get into the “snipped” wars later, (utterly stupid) but a few years ago, long after we were on back track and likin’ one another again, the BH admitted that the “snip” changed us for the better.
Back when I was in Catholic school, we were told that women “gave men sex” in return for which the man “gave woman love”. This used to be called the “double standard”. Think it is still in effect?
I think it’s interesting that there’s so much discussion of what the more-interested partner should do, but so little of what the less-interested partner should do. Isn’t it a sign of something wrong in a marriage when someone’s OK with a one-sided lack of sexual interest in their spouse? It seems to me that there’s a place to say, on the part of the lower-libido partner, “I’ll try to increase my desire” - not because it’s his/her spouse’s “right”, but because we want to bring pleasure to those we love. When the answer every night is ‘no’, the couple should be able to create an option other than ’stop asking’ and ‘apply coercive pressure’.
It seems to me that there’s a place to say, on the part of the lower-libido partner, “I’ll try to increase my desire” - not because it’s his/her spouse’s “right”, but because we want to bring pleasure to those we love.
Actually, Lisa, I think it’s helpful to reframe the question. We always ask “Why doesn’t so-and-so want to have sex with me?” The question to ask is “Why SHOULD they?”
Seriously, it’s a question for the married and the single alike: Why should we have sex? What’s so great about it? What does it give us, what does it signify, what does it help or heal or relieve? Our default assumption should not be “have sex”, our default should be “no sex unless there’s a damned good reason.” And the only damned good reason I know is mutual enthusiasm and unmanipulated desire.
We assume that there’s something wrong with the lower-desire partner, as if high desire is normative in a long-term relationship. That’s a fundamentally flawed assumption.
Lisa,
“When the answer every night is ‘no’, the couple should be able to create an option other than ’stop asking’ and ‘apply coercive pressure’.”
Yep, the more-interested partner shouldn’t be reduced to begging for it
What astounds me, is the supreme arrogance of the people continually denying their partners sex…. If the shoe was on the other foot. They’d be the first ones cry foul.
Beste, see my response above. And bud, you’re on a short leash — pick your words very, very carefully.
Okay hugo
All I am trying to say is that the “why SHOULD they?” argument could be applied to plenty of aspects of a couples relationship and not just sex.
Interesting further discussion here. I think Hugo’s comment about “no sex unless there is a damned good reason” sums up his one-sided perspective on this, as I had suspected. That the higher libido partner should expect nothing short of what he can do to seduce his spouse that night. Regardless of the circumstances, and despite the spouse’s role in falling out of a regular sex life.
I can not identify with four attempts at making a marriage work. I have been married for almost twenty years to the same lovely woman. With four children, my options are significantly lowered and, since I intend to stay with my spouse, we had no choice but to find a way to work things out. That said, if was only through mutual effort, prayer, and rebuilding of trust that we were able to get through a tough time in terms of our disparate sex drives and frustrating years.
It only happened through mutual effort. While I understand and agree with the proactive element of your recommendation–to rebuild yourself out of a comfort zone in an effort to improve the situation–I don’t think this recommendation alone is adequate. Without a willing spouse who is making an equal effort, the higher libido partner’s effort will begin to quickly look like fruitless windmill-tilting rather than dragon slaying.
Hugo, given you are a fitness nut, let me attempt an analogy. Before other readers get bent out of shape, let me say up front that I know my analogy is imperfect (yet hopefully better than the rhetorically boneheaded “taking out the garbage” analogy that kicked up this issue). Let’s assume that a couple are both runners. They met on a trail run and things just clicked. They trained together and entered races together. Their mutual commitment to fitness created a wonderful bond–a common thread on which the relationship was built. At their wedding, people give them gift certificates for Brooks shoes and their cake was adorned with two figures holding hands as they break the tape together.
Flash forward ten years. She is still in excellent shape, but her husband has really let himself go. It started years ago–one morning he was uncharacteristically lazy and felt like sleeping in rather than do the regular 5-miler that they do on Thursdays. Months go by and the husband’s discipline–his ability to “just do it” which was so admirable during the courtship–continues to dwindle proportionally to his interest in ice cream. Before long, he is out of shape, overweight, and his interest in runs has diminished almost completely. Worst yet, he has taken up smoking and leads a generally unhealthy lifestyle. While she would love to run regularly, he will reciprocate only occassionally for a walk, and it does not really seem to interest him.
At this point, your advice is akin to telling her to emulate Jack Lalanne or Richard Simmons. Her job is not to become an excellent personal trainer–to make him WANT to get back into shape. Get out the megaphone and the Jane Fonda tapes. Enter him in the Bay to Breakers and your favorite races from the past so he has to resume training. Be as positive and proactive as possible in persuading him to get back into shape.
An excellent, proactive step and ameliorating the situation. But what if it does not work? What if he lacks either the motivation or the desire to get back in shape. No injuries or obvious reasons to avoid the exercise, but a constant “I don’t feel like going to the gym… I am too tired… I don’t have time”. In his mind, I am out of shape and I am NOT going to exercise unless there is a “damned good reason”.
Since my wife isn’t going anywhere, he ponders, I can get as out of shape as I want. I have known smokers who live to 100 and runners who have heart attacks, so the fitness angle does not seem so compelling to me anymore. So, barring extraordinary circumstances, I do not see a “damned good reason” to resume exercise.
By your rationale, the problem lies not in his changed commitment to exercise but in her inability to motivate him to start exercising again. It is “his body” and you do not have the “absolute right” to expect him to run with you.
The “why did he stop running” question is interesting, but not crucial. Is there really such a thing as a good reason? Perhaps if she is ridiculing his gait, or hitting him over the head with a dumbell, he can be excused from the runs. But more likely his ego was bruised because his wife was getting faster than him, so better just to quit. Or perhaps she was flatulent during the runs, or sang off key to her iPod. Perhaps every time he runs he can’t help but recall the time in junior high school when he lost in the mile run and his disappointed girlfriend dumped him–a painful recollection he would rather avoid. At the end of the day, regardless of the reason, he still deliberately exercised his free will and decided not to run anymore. And the more out of shape he got, the easier it was to say no.
Is this what she expected when she married him? Sure, there were other things she loved and still love about him, but running was so important. It was a fabulous bonding experience, a mutual commitment that now is gone. There was no guarantee that he would continue to value fitness and your runs together. He does not anymore, and she can not force him to run, even though he knows how much it means to her, because he does not want to put forth the effort.
Of course, she can always run alone, which accomplishes the fitness goals that she retained but with no bonding, no friendship, no laughs. She can find another running partner, but there are circumstances that make this hard as well (such as the double running stroller which slows her down).
I would ask you two things, Hugo. If this happened to you, would you not be deeply, profoundly disappointed? Would you not feel that the now overweight spouse that changed his values has some culpability in the matter? I think most people with emotions would feel this, and few would be so philosophical as to say “well, it is his life and he can do what he wants” without feeling some pain.
Yes, the BEST thing to do is try to come up with novel ways to inveigle your spouse back into the running lifestyle. But would you really feel as though you had no right to expect that things would have turned out differently?
I realize that running and having sex are two different things, but the points that I make about expectations, commitment, and the mutual effect of a unilateral action apply in both cases.
Personally, I have a hard time seeing exclusive blame in the in-shape spouse for her inability to motivate when it is the out-of-shape spouse who, through his own adult decisions, let himself go. The only way the relationship will approach the original expectations is if the out of shape spouse decides to take action, not the fitness nut.
but so little of what the less-interested partner should do.
I like the approach of “getting my head into the game.” And yes, this entails more “work” on my part…and keeping it somewhat subtle…but also putting myself first. Looking back…so much of my LSD was related to “time” issues, and subsequent resentment, and when we began consciously carving out blocks of time that belonged only to me, life “perked up.”
As most folks here appear to acknowledge…all kinds of issues can impact on the sex life…but along the lines of another blogger from way back…
No, it is not fair that some women view the morning woody with dread…do you want to complain about the unfairness of it all or to you want to have sex?
(Altoids and Britta water on the nightstand helped us considerably…)
No it is not fair that many men wake up ready for action. “Do you…of it all,” or would you rather realize the advantages of starting your day with a nice climax?
(Get to bed before midnight, whenever you can…worked wonders for us.)
No, it is not fair that some folks do not consider sex “an apology.” Do you want to complain about the unfairness of it all, or would you rather have sex? (heavy on the sarcasm here)
(Verbalizing the sincere apology before putting on the moves is a good idea.)
And so on…
Lisa…what I’m trying to get at here is that I do believe that the LSD party does have the responsibility to address issues negatively impacting a mutually satisfying sex life, and that sometimes, when issues are addressed, the LSD turns out not to be so low after all.
Tom…I get what you are saying…but the equal effort you speak of requires two partners determined to make it work.
Envision the scenario where one partner has made the decision to stick it out until the kids have graduated, and has informed the spouse to start making other arrangements…because the war of attrition will end the day the youngest flies the coop.
The point I’m trying to make is that LD may not be LD at all…but rather, both the lack of interest in sex with the spouse because you really, honestly do not like the spouse right now AND the unwillingness to participate in intimacies that permit a recalcitrant spouse to believe that it is really allll okay, and that unaddressed issues will simply blow away.
Had Harrison Ford strolled my way in the bad old days, and I’d been willing to toss everything I value and believe into the trash…please trust me that the question of LD could have been resolved right quick.
I get what you are saying, Tom. But you need to know that far too often, “the lie back and think of England” response allows for the assumption that…really, everything is okay, when really, everything is not okay.
AHunt, I understand your viewpoint on this. I was laboring under a couple of assumptions. First, that the partners wish to make it work–that they are willing to try their hardest to take their marriage vows seriously. I realize that assumption is not a given, that divorce is more acceptable and viewed in a more cavalier manner. However, if children are involved, and they are young, it does not seem very rational to simply willingly subject yourself and your spouse to 10 - 18 more miserable years together without making an effort to fix things. Thus, in your “war of attrition”, hopefully there is enough of the spark left on both sides to avoid that is certainly a more miserable alternative.
If both sides are so dug in as to be unwilling to remove a single battlement, then the war of attrition is the only alternative. Here is where Hugo’s advice is good–the HD spouse should leave his or her comfort zone and try to fix things. However, if the LD spouse does not want to patch things up, this approach alone will not do the trick and if anything will create more resentment.
My second assumption is that holding out intimacies for an extended period makes things worse, not better. Does the denial of sex really have the desired effect on the “recalcitrant” spouse? The net result of this approach is either a sexless marriage or a henpecked husband who begs, pleads, and is manipulated like a mouse in a maze searching for his cheese? Or, in many cases, a husband who will go outside the marriage to address the situation. None of these scenarios increase the self-respect of either of the spouses , nor do they make things better.
If everything is not OK, withholding sex from the HD partners will not fix things. It is self righteous to justify not wanting to have sex with him or her to avoid sending the wrong message. First, decide what the “right message” is and then talk about it. The passive-aggressive use of withholding sex hoping that he or she changes and addresses “unaddressed issues” is as “recalcitrant” as anything the disappointing spouse is doing, but he or she is powerless and has no control over the decision every night while going to bed.
I disagree, respectfully Tom…because the case is not about “withholding” sex until until one gets what one wants…but rather, an honest antipathy to having sex with a spouse who appears to have no respect for one…
I think we are talking about two entirely different dynamics…one where the marriage has already deteriorated to just shy of retaining legal counsel…and another that is floundering, but not yet totally characterized by anger, martyrdom, stonewalling and profound distance.
Tom, I’m so glad neither of us got to indifference. So very glad.
Tom:
You went through a hard time. I get it. I do. But it seems to me that you are not listening to what other people are telling you. They are asking you questions, trying to get you to consider other situations, and it seems that you simply come back and repeat that you had a hard time. You were hurt, dammit, and we all need to acknowledge that sufficiently.
Well, I do acknowledge that: you were hurt. And so was your wife. But frankly, I am irritated, a little bit, by your insistence that unwillingness to have sex amounts to a personally-meant withholding of something a partner is entitled to in order to inflict some sort of insult or injury. Here’s why.
For several years, and for reasons I won’t get into, my then-partner (now husband) was not very sexual. I (a woman) was the partner who was desiring sex, and he was the partner who was not interested. And it was really difficult for us both. And feeling rejected (though I would differentiate that from necessarily *being* rejected) was difficult, especially since it’s so easy to internalize the paradigm that “men are always interested in sex, so if they are not interested in sex with you, it’s something horrible about you.” So I felt bad, and blamed myself, and we went through rough times.
But even with all that self-recrimination here is what I did not do: I did not get angry at him for *withholding* anything from me, as though I had some sort of entitlement to the use of his body. I certainly did not accuse him of deliberate mistreatment of me. And I tried really hard (we both did) to treat each other *better*, not worse– we both made a conscious effort to show love in any way we possibly could, since it wasn’t possible in the bedroom at that time. And I did things to express my love for him not as some sort of quid-pro-quo… ie, “well, I was nice to you all day and *still* no sex?” but because at base *I loved him* and *I knew he loved me* and so we found ways to care for each other.
I guess that’s where you have been losing me. I get that it is difficult and painful… believe me, I really do. But the fact remains that people are not entitled to each others’ bodies, and getting angry about being ‘denied’ what is ‘rightfully yours’ is really rather creepy when applied to sex. Sex, and relationships generally, operate best as a gift economy, not as a contract-based system.
So, according to you, wife says no, so, what, the only recourse is immediate divorce?
By all means, let’s go straight back to 1950. She won’t put out, you put her out.
Hell, I even LIKE that idea.
ENOUGH already with the sanctimonious woman-as-victim-of-lust game. Don’t like the game women? DON’T PLAY!
Lie to your SO about your idea of ’sharing’, get bobed for fraud in divorce court.
Time for expedited divorces, 5 minute filings and no fees.
That “Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You” site always amuses me.
Ever notice that there’s no “Why your GIRLFRIEND Won’t Have Sex With You” site? Ever wonder why that is? Perhaps because women are very careful about picking their time to decide they have Deep Emotional Issues that simply MUST be worked out and you’ll just have to wait until they are, Buster. And that time, of course, is always some point after a man is legally obligated to have sex with her and only her and will potentially face serious legal and financial consequences if he strays. After all, if a girlfriend decides she doesn’t want sex any more, she’ll most likely be told “take your toothbrush and your DVDs, go back to your own apartment and find somebody else to not have sex with.”