That said, the “Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You” is a much more honest, thoughtful, kind and practical series about mismatched libidos and sexual disagreement in marriage. It doesn’t assume that women and men are identical, which you should approve of, but you may not like the way it doesn’t suggest that the most important thing in the world a wife can do is put out on command.

bmmg - I get the strong impression from Prager that his Jewish heritage is mostly a credential card he flashes when he fawns all over the Christianist right. No, see, I’m a Jew, people, it’s OK!

Waaay back in the day, (early twenties) Cleo’s man, John, couldn’t get enough of the hot monkey love, and he made sure that he kept Cleo’s attention. Time went by, and John still was into the hot monkey love, but it was becoming a trifle one-sided…as in “wham, bam, snore.” Cleo’s subtle hints were lost on John, and when the frank discussion finally occurred, John was pouty and defensive. Apparently, John had found his comfort zone.

But Cleo noticed that when she went out with her girlfriends sans John, John’s motivation returned with tsunami-like intensity.

Happily, John did grow up, and ceased viewing sexual pleasure as male entitlement. Cleo got past her frustration with John’s unthinking selfishness and they have gone on to make a good life together.

Cleo’s hilarious theory? Way back, John was like a dog with a well-chewed squeak toy, ignored unless another (wholly imaginary) dog was around.

The good news is that young men do grow up. The bad news is that sometimes young women have to slog through the valley of bad sex to get up the mountain of mutual appreciation.

Now, I’m all for mutual accomodation in marriage. And that may sometimes mean (if you’re the spouse, man or woman, who wants sex less) having sex when you’re not in the mood - as long as “not in the mood” is of the “not already in the mood but I can get in the mood if we get started” variety, rather than of the “not in the mood to a degree that any sex I can offer right now will make both of us miserable” variety. Or it may mean other things - such as checking into health problems that may be causing your sudden decline in libido, or talking our relationship problems that may be causing said decline, etc. At the very least it should mean some sympathy for the spouse you’re expecting to stay faithful without getting much in the way of sex - even if there are good reasons why the two of you will never be matched in your drive (and to some extent, I think dealing with sexual mismatches is part of “in sickness and in health”). (Jeff Fecke’s response is good in drawing the distinction between this kind of mutual accomodation and what Prager’s calling for.)

But accomodation that’s based on the assumption that sex normally shouldn’t be expected to be much fun for women, but we should put out anyway - yes, that’s appalling and wince-inducing, and yes, I can see why, with an attitude like that, Dennis Prager has had, apparently, both sexually unenthusiatic wives and more than one divorce.

Mismatched libidos can happen to any of us; there’s no magic guarantee that your marital sex life won’t die. Not sleeping together before marriage to see that you’re sexually compatible, because people change. Not trying to communicate with your spouse, or being loving and kind in the ways that they like, or doing things that some entirely different person might find totally seductive, because some people, for various reasons of their own, shut off sexually regardless. Some men - and some women - are going to have spouses who don’t much want sex no matter what they do.

But if there’s no magic guarantee that your marital sex life won’t die, there are certainly things you can do to help it along that path - and assuming both that women just can’t be expected to like sex and that men just can’t be expected to talk about their feelings strikes me as a recipe for failure.

Me, I’ll happily have sex much more often than once a month, but not if I had a husband who thought like Prager.

When pity wars with disgust…

It seems the feminist position on this is that there is no reason whatsoever for a woman to have sex with her husband (in the cases where she has a lower libido). If one instance of denial becomes several, and then a habit, and then the default mode of the marriage, this is the man’s fault too, either because he was inadequately communicative or that he should find other ways to stay in love with his wife without sex.

Call Prager’s position appalling or wince-inducing all you like, marriages without sex in cases in which there are mismatched libidos generally deteriorate into dire situations. If a woman is unwilling to have sex unless she is in the mood and she is never in the mood, then the only solutions are for the woman to change her mind about when she is in the mood, divorce, or a life of having a roommate instead of a spouse. Once you throw kids into the mix, having four divorces becomes a much more painful option.