SamSeaborn asks a question:
a female friend recently asked me over to her place for coffee - she’s like a sister to me and she’s been married for a couple of years. Now she tells me how she’s sexually unhappy in her marriage that she’s wondering about cheating… and obviously felt very guilty about those thoughts. I’ve liberated myself quite a bit from my Catholic guilt, but this is a dilemma for me.
Is there a morally sound way of action for her when she wants to be with her husband (whom I don’t know as closely as her) but he can’t give her what she wants sexually and she can’t even speak to him about this, otherwise she wouldn’t turn to me to talk about these things… her happiness is important to me, and her happiness is very likely tied to a morally sound solution of this issue. So, as someone who has clearly thought about this kind of problem - if you have any idea how to address something like this, I’d really appreciate a brief reply.
First off, let me say that I think it’s important for married heterosexual folks to have friends of all sexes. I think it’s terrific that Sam has a friend whom he thinks of as a sister. At the same time, I’m not the only person who will read his query with a small bit of concern. Infidelity isn’t just about sexual activity with someone other than a spouse; emotional affairs can be as — if not more — toxic than those that are consummated physically. I wrote about the trap of emotional affairs here, and defined it thus:
(An emotional affair is) a non-physically sexual relationship characterized by mutually intense psychological intimacy, accompanied by words or gestures that traditionally are reserved for one’s romantic partner. That’s a vague definition, of course; emotional affairs are notoriously difficult to define. (One thinks of the perhaps apocryphal Potter Stewart remark about knowing obscenity when he saw it.) The slipperiness of the line between “good friend” and emotional “lover” allows those involved in these affairs a great deal of plausible deniability, both to themselves and to those around them. “We’re just friends”; “It’s totally innocent”; “You’re reading too much into this” are the sorts of things that can be said with genuine sincerity in response to suspicious queries from others.
Communicating with a partner about sex isn’t always easy. Clearly, Sam’s friend is unhappy and frustrated, and has every right to feel the way she feels. But Sam’s certainty that she “can’t” talk to her husband about sex is offered a bit too quickly. It may not be easy, it may not be pleasant, but unless there’s a clear and present danger of being physically injured as a result of raising the subject, one of the responsibilities of a married person is to bring ze grievances — in a loving but honest way — to ze spouse. If she “can’t talk” to her husband about it, the inevitable solution will be either prolonged depression or some sort of affair, either physical or emotional or both. Neither is a “morally sound” option. Marriage doesn’t impose a contractual obligation to suffer indefinitely in frustration and silence; marriage also doesn’t impose (as I’ve written before) an obligation to provide sexual satisfaction. Marriage does impose the obligation to communicate, to compromise where possible — and when not possible, to choose to end the marriage through divorce rather than through an affair or “frozen martyrdom”.
I take Sam at his word that he doesn’t have a carnal interest in his friend, and he isn’t (as Job puts it), “lurking at his neighbor’s door” waiting to step in as the answer to a sexually frustrated woman’s prayer. But I think he does have an obligation to call her out on her flat insistence that communication with her husband is impossible. It may be that this woman’s husband is so intransigent and unreachable that any attempt at counseling or conversation will fail. If that’s the case, then divorce is the morally sound and psychologically responsible option. After the divorce proceedings are begun and the husband has been informed that the marriage is over, then she’s certainly free to look elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. But it’s part of Sam’s job as a friend to point out these options.
Good friends listen to each other and affirm each other. They know that sometimes a companion needs to “dump”, and doesn’t need a solution proposed. (We all know the classic axiom about men and women in conversation, and the traditional American male desire to “fix” a problem immediately.) But good friends, true friends, challenge and push each other. They affirm feelings and validate frustration — and in a loving way, nudge one another towards making important changes. Sam’s friend is stuck, and simply talking about her frustrations to him is unlikely to get her “unstuck”. A loving and firm push in one of two directions — towards either counseling or divorce — is the most helpful thing Sam can offer.
Here’s what I’ve learned being married four times and divorced thrice: relationships founder over and over again on the same damned issues. The old saying that “No one can judge a marriage save for the two people in it” is only partly true. We oversell, I think, the mystery of long-term monogamy. Close friends and therapists can understand the dynamics of one’s marriage very well indeed, and can offer excellent advice. Tolstoy famously said that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Most marriage experts think that dear old Leo had it absolutely backwards. Unhappy families are miserable for some fairly predictable reasons: abuse, entitlement, addiction, and, above all else, the “failure to communicate.” No matter how impressive a facade a couple puts up in public, their private miseries are likely to be fairly common. This doesn’t mean that every friend or nosy family member will fully understand the problems a given pair is having, but it does mean that there are always folks around (MFTs, for starters) who will. As one friend put it to my third wife and me when we were struggling and headed for divorce, “Y’all ain’t as unique as you thinks you is.”
So Sam, if you want to help your friend, affirm where she’s at. Check your own motives while you do so. And then lovingly direct her towards one of two equally sound solutions: the transformation of her marriage through counseling or the termination of her marriage through legal proceedings. Those are the two paths, the only two paths, that can lead your friend to happiness. And above all, beware the temptation to play the part of the good guy, the heroic rescuing friend who “understands”, the white knight standing by. That’s a set-up for an emotional affair, and will do no good for you or for the woman about whom you care.
Why counselling, Hugo? Why are the only two paths divorce or counselling?
Why is it impossible for simply talking and loving and working together to fix the problem? Why is paying someone to help with that conversation so vital?
For that matter, why does the handing over of money sanctify what would otherwise be emotional cheating - the sharing of problems with and asking for advice from someone outside the marriage?
I understand your concern about emotional infidelity. But in saying that the only solution to any marital problem is divorce or professional help, I think you are dead wrong.
Why counselling, Hugo? Why are the only two paths divorce or counselling? Why is it impossible for simply talking and loving and working together to fix the problem? Why is paying someone to help with that conversation so vital?
I don’t think that Hugo said those were the only two paths.
In fact, the first thing Hugo suggested was she talk directly with her husband:
Communicating with a partner about sex isn’t always easy. Clearly, Sam’s friend is unhappy and frustrated, and has every right to feel the way she feels. But Sam’s certainty that she “can’t” talk to her husband about sex is offered a bit too quickly. It may not be easy, it may not be pleasant, but unless there’s a clear and present danger of being physically injured as a result of raising the subject, one of the responsibilities of a married person is to bring ze grievances — in a loving but honest way — to ze spouse.
Counseling and divorce are two fallback options if you really can’t talk to your spouse and work out a compromise through communication.
And I don’t want to speak for Hugo here, but counseling doesn’t necessarily have to be paid counseling. You could get good counseling from a disinterested unpaid third-party. The only problem with that is finding a disinterested unpaid third-party. Most third-parties would either be close friends, who may not be objective enough (too close to one or the other of the married partners) to be a proper counselor; or be so disinterested as to be uninterested… unless they get paid.
Free counseling from strangers isn’t always easy to come by.
“Y’all ain’t as unique as you thinks you is.”
I’m going to embroider that on a pillow and put it in my hope chest.
Also, thanks for talking about this. Besides married people needing to know it, I think it is also important for the possible “thirds” to be aware of this potential in their friendships. Keeping appropriate boundaries is a real dance, but part of what adult friendship means is that you care about someone enough to think deeply about your dynamic and become an active agent in defining the boundaries that will make your relationship a healthy one. Caring about others is real responsibility to some extent.
I think I might have popped a crush today that is somewhat tangentially related to this topic. Le sigh.
There is of course one other solution…….deciding to stay in the marriage even if he won’t seek counseling and the problem doesn’t change. Bleak……but an option.
Hugo,
thanks for your thoughts :) I’m not sure what to do with the “emotional affair” thing, to be honest. We’re close friends, as I said, she’s like a sister to me, and since she’s one of my good friends who helped me get out of my shell we do have a history of talking about such matters - it was just mostly about me before. So coming to me with this seems absolutely appropriate to me.
It is obvious to me she loves her husband and does not want to leave him. I don’t think she is actually interested in cheating - she was hardly able to handle the thought of it. But when I wrote she said she “can’t” talk to him about this I forgot to mention that she said she tried, on occasion, to do so. And to experiment - all the stuff that couples therapists would likely recommend to keep things interesting in bed, stuff most guys are reported to *particularly* agree with according to polls - but, according to her, he wasn’t open minded at all, he didn’t want to do, but he also didn’t want to talk.
So I wonder if suggesting therapy would do any good at this point.
As I said, I don’t know him that well, but I can’t really understand that. I had my Catholic and my feminist guilt to deal with, and it took ages to get over my sexual inhibitions, but I was always eager to talk and at least verbally explore things. I have a suspicion that his problems may be related to sexual shame issues, but I don’t see how it would be possible to address this if he isn’t interested on his own and she’s not willing to actually put some pressure on him.
If necessary, I’ll present her with the options you mention. But, since I think she is only intellectually entertaining the cheating option, I suppose she’s possibly accepted lifelong sexual frustration as a third option… at 29. And it’s at that point that I wonder if physically cheating could never be seen as some form of physical “therapy”. I don’t know. Difficult.
And it’s at that point that I wonder if physically cheating could never be seen as some form of physical “therapy”.
It’s at that point that I’d suggest that, among difficult and unpleasant alternatives, telling your spouse that if the sexual problem doesn’t get solved soon, other people are going to start looking really good is still a preferable option to physically cheating.
And, bleak though the choice may sound, if I personally see my only two options as cheating vs. lifelong sexual frustration, I’m going to try my hardest to live with lifelong sexual frustration. Not ideal, but I’m thinking in order for there to be a happy resolution to this problem, it’s going to have to be a not cheating resolution.
For me, in a marriage, cheating is not an option. Once you take that off the table, the options are about where Hugo put them. Now Lynn has a point, telling your spouse that for you long-term celebacy is not an option puts the ball in the other’s court.
David Scharch, author of “passionate Marriage” argues that the problem in marriage is often not so much that we are not communicating, but that we don’t like what we are hearing.
Sam’s friend is hearing loud and clear that her husband refuses to even try to satisfy her need for more sex. He is hearing that she wants more and it is important to her. There is no lack of communicaton on that point.
Each of us has to maintain our own self in a marriage (or any relationship). Schnarch speaks of it in terms of maintaining differentiation. We have to have our own limits and integrity demands we live in congruence with them and in marriage we should be honest with each other about where our boundaries lie.
She can and should tell him that what he is offering isn’t good enough and that she will not live a sexless life. She can and should tell him that if he wants to stay married to her he has to deal with her needs or she will satisfy them elsewhere.
If you tell your partner that you are going to get your sexual needs fulfilled at home or elsewhere and they don’t step up, then they have made a choice in favour of a compromise of sexual fidelity within marriage - it’s not cheating in my view (since there is no dishonesty). His choice is to step up, watch her step out, or end the marriage.
We each have to own our own choices.
I love Schnarch, and have recommended his Passionate Marriage in posts before — it’s why I put the “failure to communicate” in italics, not merely to make the cultural reference to Cool Hand Luke but to make Schnarch’s point; we are always communicating.
Telling someone else about a problem like this in terms SS’s friend did, with all the avenues supposedly explored? That’s often a way of closing off those avenues because they’re too scary to fully explore.
I won’t say she’s wrong that her husband will never be sexually open to her again. But it’s rare that such things fix themselves quickly and easily.
He doesn’t want to talk. Fine, he doesn’t have to. She can talk. She can tell him more than once that she is there to talk to if he ever decides he wants to. She can write him letters or emails if talking to him without getting a response is too frustrating.
If she shows she’s dedicated to working this out rather than just letting it die, that might eventually get him moving in that direction, too. It is telling him that avenue isn’t closed off, even if he hasn’t traveled it in a while.
I’m not going to say she’s going to succeed if she does this. But it sounds like she’s giving up. It’s normal to want to do so, since we’re not given the tools to handle sexual problems by our society, and sexual frustration added to emotional frustration added to communication frustration is particularly, well, frustrating.
I believe Hugo has mentioned David Schnarch. She might want to try his books.
And therapy really is a good option for a lot of people. We only know what we know. Therapists see the same problems, the same roadblocks, the same solutions working time and time again. They have a perspective very few others have.
Sam, obviously the issue is not that your friend is to blame, but “can’t talk” is not at all the same as “have tried to talk and is hasn’t worked out all that well.” If by talking she means hinting, or dancing around the subject, or not making it clear what a problem it is, that may very well not work - certainly not as well as sitting down with your spouse at an otherwise calm time and saying “I am miserable with our sex life and that needs to change. Refusing to discuss this is not optional.”
Intellectually batting around the idea of cheating is the first step to justifying cheating.
From Sam’s clarification it sounds like she has tried to talk gently with her husband about this matter. If that hasn’t worked, well… sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, as others have suggested. Mythago’s phrasing was direct and impossible to dodge.
This is probably totally not at all in line with Hugo’s approach but, people have sometimes been known to make open marriages work well.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts! Mythago and Metamanda, yeah. I think she may not have been assertive enough, and maybe that’s a credible indicator of her de facto resignation… and maybe her talking about this was both a bit of escapism and self-assurance that she has explored all possible avenues… helping her but not actually confronting the issue. Good points. Thanks!
kind of tangential, because it doesn’t sound like your friend necessarily would like to go this route, but i’m a little disappointed no one’s brought up the fact that a marriage doesn’t have to include sexual monogamy in the first place to be a good marriage (not condoning cheating at ALL, just bringing up the fact that plenty of people are in relationships where sexual fidelity is not demanded).
Yes - subtle and indirect communication is not what is called for here. He may be liable to be criticized for being thick, but the obligation to ensure the message is received is on the communicator. I believe men and women are taught from an early age different ways of communicating and this causes no end of difficulty. “He’s not listening, I am not being heard,” a suffering wife will say. “She never told me, I didn’t know,” her husband responds.”
Mythago has a clue. As much as it may seem foreign or ugly, the words need to be spoken in simple declarative sentences. Only then can you excuse your choices on the basis of having tried to communicate. Write, for God’s sake. A challenging and painful letter can be a love letter still.
Sam:
When we are with someone and think we know them it is too easy to attribute changes in sexual behaviour to some kind of sexual dysfunction. But it is equally possible that there is nothing wrong with his sex drive — he just can’t give his wife the kind of physical intimacy she needs and wants for his own reasons.
For instance, she should not ignore the possibility that her husband is not able to express his sexuality with her because he is parking his shoes under another woman’s bed. For a person that is fundamentally monogamous, stepping out while still delivering the goods at home can be very difficult.
The neglected partner only sees the declining sexual interest and that makes it hard to imagine that the same person is passionately sexual — with someone else. But usually, after discovering the betrayal, the wronged spouse is amazed to find that there were many clear signs.
It never ceases to amaze me when people who insist that love their spouse and want to stay married divide themselves like this. But, it happens - a lot.
Before she can confront him about this, it would be best that she have evidence though — a false accusation of infidelity is a damaging thing to drop into the middle of the relationship that is already suffering from wounded trust.
chareth - perhaps because we’re talking about a relationship where (at best) there is very poor communication going on. That is not really a situation where “hey, how about polyamory?” is such a great suggestion.
Randomizer,
I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with his sex drive, it’s just a compatibility issue, in my opinion. As for your suggestion that he may be cheating, I’d seriously doubt that. This isn’t something that has happened overnight, it’s an incompatibility that became apparently more annoying with time (they’ve been together for seven years now).
Mythago,
no, it probably wouldn’t. As I said, he seems closed minded even about stuff most sex therapists would probably recommend to make things more interesting in bed (like toys, films, etc.)…
My guess from the information at hand is that there is sex happening, but not the kind of sex that she feels she needs.
For example, I’m a definite submissive, and PIV-only missionary position won’t cut it on its own. It can happen sometimes, but if it’s the *only* sex that happens I’d be bored too, even though I’m physically sexually fulfilled.
I’m thankful for having a boyfriend that has many different interests in bed and is willing to explore some things I like, while I explore some things he likes (even if we don’t necessarily find the other’s likes thrilling for our own selves - This is compromise, how we both get our share).