H is not happy with sex only once a week

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07/10/2014 09:40

Subject: Re:H is not happy with sex only once a week

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You don't deserve to have your "emotional needs" respected because you don't have respect for your partner. Being required to have sex when you don't want to because the other partner is having an emotional meltdown about it and is throwing a temper tantrum isn't respectful of your low drive partner's needs.

If you can't come to compromise, then you are better off divorced and so is your partner.

As for me, I've been married 23 years in a marriage that ended up with very mismatched sex drives after the kids got here. We compromised and found a way to keep it together, with everyone putting in an effort to make it work.

First of all, your perpetually dismissive characterization of a spouse trying to get their sexual needs met as being childish (e.g. "whiny," "temper tantrum") reflects a huge blind spot. Because your sex drive disappeared, you seem to regard the needs of others in that respect as something trivial and foolish rather than a substantial and intrinsic part of the human experience - like a blind person sneering at art as so much doodling by people who really ought to be doing something more productive.

Secondly, your statement that your drives became mismatched after the children suggests that the lowering of your drive was the change in the sexual status quo. I don't know you and I'm obviously speculating, but it looks like your attitude about the sex drives of others may be sour grapes and/or an attempt to minimize your appreciation of how much pain the change in the status quo might be inflicting on your husband.

Compromising isn't a bad thing -- it might be the only alternative to divorce. Nobody can be blamed for their base line sex drive, only the effort they put into matching their drive to their spouses. But, if you regard the need for sex as childish, how motivated can you be to put forth that effort?

One of the best posts ever deposited in DCUM, IMO, of course. It is a lot easier to be dismissive of those things not important to us, and minimize the importance to the spouse. There are hundreds of these conflicts every day, but most of them are on a small scale. Sex, intimacy, and affection is a huge deal, though. Hard to accept that if you're the spouse being told your needs are childish and unimportant.

You know what's really hard? Having your high drive partner tell you that you are defective because you don't want sex daily? Y'all are quick to say that I have contempt for my partner, but I have never identified his sexual style as defective. Meanwhile, y'all have labeled low drive people as the problem (rather than the mismatch as the problem) over and over again on this thread.

I never said that the need for sex is childish or having a high drive is childish. The amount of contempt exhibited on this thread for low drive partners is extremely childish, however. No wonder so many of you are divorced. Your attitude towards your partner prevented you from finding a compromise.

You are right that the problem is the mismatch. I think, though, the most posters who are in sexually unfulfilling relationships feel like their partners are not willing or able to find solutions or compromises, or really even acknowledge the issue. (The latter is by far the most destructive, in my opinion.) My sense is that the contempt of the posters stems more from their frustration than from actual contempt. My *guess* is that many of them have tried, in their own ways, to address this mismatch. Each situation is unique, but there seems to be some commonality in outcome.