S/O what kind of woman neglects the physical and emotional needs of her spouse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a DW and in my long marriage, we have been in situations of drastic uneven libidos (both sides) at times. However, I believe that the needs of the higher libido spouse trumps that of the non-sexual spouse, at any given period, in a marriage. Why? Because I consider sex a basic need of human beings. I would rather fulfill my spouse's need for sex than let him go without, and vice versa.

For me it is an act of caring and love. The same as wiping the drool off your spouse's chin when you are aged and old.

At the very least you need to be able to have frank discussions about it. This is as much a marital issue that needs to be solved TOGETHER, as figuring out your budget, or kid's schooling option. Seriously.

I completely and totally disagree with this. What you are saying is basically that people should have sex, even if they don't want to, because they owe it to someone to have sex. It's not at all the same as wiping away drool when you're old. If you are okay with having sex when you don't want to in order to keep your husband happy, that's great for you, but please do not assume that all of us would be okay with that situation. I know that I would absolutely not be.

NP, and I agree with the PP. Intimacy, including sexual intimacy, is an appropriate expectation in a marriage. When one spouse denies that intimacy to the other who desires it, it damages the marriage. I don't think any spouse should feel required to have sex when they don't want to, but a spouse who doesn't want sex and refuses to work toward better sexual intimacy should be cognizant of the fact that they are putting their own wants, preferences and needs ahead of their partner's. In marriage we make lots of choices and compromises, and we can choose to try to understand and balance our partner's needs with our own, or we can choose to put our own needs first. The latter choice - whether we're talking about sex, money, childcare, or whatever - will always lead to anger and resentment over the long term. So yes, you can choose to not have sex with your spouse because you don't want to. But don't kid yourself that it's reasonable to expect your spouse to accept and understand that choice.

Note, too, that in the above I said "balance". Neither spouse should expect that their libidos or desire for sexual intimacy will be perfectly matched all the time over the course of a marriage, or even any of the time. If your spouse desires sex daily and you desire it monthly, there's a compromise in there that is neither daily nor monthly.

Full disclosure: I am a woman who has been in a sexless marriage for many years. It is my husband who has refused to work toward healthy sexual intimacy, not me. It has been very damaging to both our marriage and to me personally.

[Anonymous]

Do people see refusing intimacy as an inactive choice and cheating as an active choice? Both are active choices and equally damaging to a relationship. You can't commit someone else to celibacy when you've vowed to love and support them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP, and I agree with the PP. Intimacy, including sexual intimacy, is an appropriate expectation in a marriage. When one spouse denies that intimacy to the other who desires it, it damages the marriage. I don't think any spouse should feel required to have sex when they don't want to, but a spouse who doesn't want sex and refuses to work toward better sexual intimacy should be cognizant of the fact that they are putting their own wants, preferences and needs ahead of their partner's. In marriage we make lots of choices and compromises, and we can choose to try to understand and balance our partner's needs with our own, or we can choose to put our own needs first. The latter choice - whether we're talking about sex, money, childcare, or whatever - will always lead to anger and resentment over the long term. So yes, you can choose to not have sex with your spouse because you don't want to. But don't kid yourself that it's reasonable to expect your spouse to accept and understand that choice.

Note, too, that in the above I said "balance". Neither spouse should expect that their libidos or desire for sexual intimacy will be perfectly matched all the time over the course of a marriage, or even any of the time. If your spouse desires sex daily and you desire it monthly, there's a compromise in there that is neither daily nor monthly.

Full disclosure: I am a woman who has been in a sexless marriage for many years. It is my husband who has refused to work toward healthy sexual intimacy, not me. It has been very damaging to both our marriage and to me personally.

DH here and I fully agree. The PP who said that one spouse shouldn't feel any obligation to have sex is just as selfish as the spouse who wants sex on demand. It is really difficult to explain how painful it is to have your spouse reject you repeatedly. And its not the kind of thing I can share openly either- its embarrassing and I'm ashamed at how dissatisfied I am with my marriage. We try so hard to make everything look great, people think we have such a great marriage. But its a lie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And then blames a third party ("the OW") when their husband steps out?

And because I knows the world is an equal place, same goes for what kind of man steps out emotionally and physically on his spouse, and then gets angry when she finds someone else to fill her needs?

I think in both cases, straying spouse should be given credit for at least trying to keep their family together for the kids.

What kind of ADULT prioritizes having sex with someone they're not married to over figuring out what's wrong with their marriage? I don't believe that the straying spouse should receive credit for anything other than fessing up, if they did in fact fess up. Otherwise, suggesting that it's better to cheat and stay married (unless it is an open marriage with clear ground rules and everyone's consent) is pretty ridiculous.

Prepare to be flayed alive on this board.

Oh I know what's wrong with my marriage. H wants to ration the verbal expressions of love he gives me, he is only comfortable with brief, occasional vanilla sex, his idea of a family does not involve him doing heavy lifting with the finances, household work or kids. But darned if I'll give him 2 million dollars just to get out of my hair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The OW is not the party who's fault it is. It's the married person who stepped out!!! Why did you marry this woman who didn't enjoy sex as much as you (and I say this as a female married to a man who wants sex 1/4 as often as I do), why didn't you go to counseling before? Why did you cheat on your wife?

My husband wants sex a lot less often than I do, just like you. In my case, he lied about his sex drive before marriage. Did you know what you were getting into?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the OP. Often women will lose interest in sex after marriage (well chronicled in this forum). I think my AP allows me to stay married without having to go through a painful divorce. On this forum there seems to be a pat angry and holier thN thou response. I love my wife and children and I get the intimacy I need with the OW.

Agree with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think either spouse deserves credit here, and both deserve some blame.

I have out-of-state friends going through a messy divorce right now. From what I can tell, the wife didn't sleep with the husband very much, for years on end, and the husband kept trying and kept trying and finally walked out and moved in with another woman. I don't know if there was actual cheating. No kids are involved.

I blame the husband for muddying the waters with an affair, but the wife isn't blameless either. (I'm slightly more on Team Wife because of other factors, but again, she's not blameless.)

Unfortunately, I think one of the things you commit to when committing to a marriage is the idea that you should sleep with your husband/wife on a regular basis. "Regular basis" is different for everyone, and obviously there are factors at play, but I don't know many people who would be happy with a sexless marriage that isn't sexless by choice.

Unfortunately?? Sex is an integral part of marriage. If you don't want someone sexually, you shouldn't marry them.

If you do not understand that libido can wax and wane over the course of a lifetime, you shouldn't get married, period.

If it's waning, you still need to put out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP, and I agree with the PP. Intimacy, including sexual intimacy, is an appropriate expectation in a marriage. When one spouse denies that intimacy to the other who desires it, it damages the marriage. I don't think any spouse should feel required to have sex when they don't want to, but a spouse who doesn't want sex and refuses to work toward better sexual intimacy should be cognizant of the fact that they are putting their own wants, preferences and needs ahead of their partner's. In marriage we make lots of choices and compromises, and we can choose to try to understand and balance our partner's needs with our own, or we can choose to put our own needs first. The latter choice - whether we're talking about sex, money, childcare, or whatever - will always lead to anger and resentment over the long term. So yes, you can choose to not have sex with your spouse because you don't want to. But don't kid yourself that it's reasonable to expect your spouse to accept and understand that choice.

Note, too, that in the above I said "balance". Neither spouse should expect that their libidos or desire for sexual intimacy will be perfectly matched all the time over the course of a marriage, or even any of the time. If your spouse desires sex daily and you desire it monthly, there's a compromise in there that is neither daily nor monthly.

Full disclosure: I am a woman who has been in a sexless marriage for many years. It is my husband who has refused to work toward healthy sexual intimacy, not me. It has been very damaging to both our marriage and to me personally.

DH here and I fully agree. The PP who said that one spouse shouldn't feel any obligation to have sex is just as selfish as the spouse who wants sex on demand. It is really difficult to explain how painful it is to have your spouse reject you repeatedly. And its not the kind of thing I can share openly either- its embarrassing and I'm ashamed at how dissatisfied I am with my marriage. We try so hard to make everything look great, people think we have such a great marriage. But its a lie.

I am one of the PPs who has issues with the "entitled to sex" posters. I do not at all disagree that sexual intimacy is a healthy and necessary component of a good marriage, or that it can be incredibly damaging psychologically and emotionally to be sexually rejected, especially over a long period of time, by the person who is supposed to love you.

I have issues with things like the suggestion that the spouse who does not want to have sex should just do it anyway and prioritize their partners' needs over their own and the idea that sex is an "obligation" or something that is "owed." I don't think it's ever okay to tell someone that they "should" have sex when they don't want to, whether that person is in a marriage like yours, PPs, or not. Is that the kind of example you want to set for your daughters, that they should allow access to their bodies out of obligation, even when they don't want to? Is that the kind of marriage you want, that your spouse feels that they owe you their body regardless of what want?

As the PP says, there is a lot of middle ground between "never" and "constantly" having sex. When you start throwing in obligations, it turns the whole conversation transactional and coercive, and that's not okay with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with this. I HAVE tried to figure it out, talk it through, etc. without success. Should I just outright beg him for intimacy? How many years without sex is reasonable? Yet I am not ready to give up on our marriage.

I'm the PP you quoted. I'm a DH (previously divorced over this issue, in part).

Begging is demeaning and highly counter-productive. I read a bunch of Gottman when I was going through my divorce, and I've come to the opinion (based on my marriage and a few LTRs which had issues around sex) that a lot of these disparities in sex drive aren't really disparities in libido where libido is understood to mean: how often, independently of your partner, do you get horny? Instead, they are a reflection of how much your partner themselves excites you and that is, generally to a stronger degree in women, strongly influenced by your emotional feelings towards them. The big killer in relationships is contempt, which is itself an extreme loss of respect. Begging pretty much cinches that: it's a kind of desperation. Men (and women) love the thrill of the chase; the high-value thing (person) is the thing not easily obtained. This is why "bad boy" jerks are supposedly so magnetic.

I'm convinced the answer - if any - is to make oneself independent, elusive and therefore the desired object again. I actually think flirting with other people and demonstrating that you are attractive to others - a little dose of jealousy - does wonders. But it's hard to titrate: in my ex-dw, this kind of situation merely ramped up her pre-existing insecurity, which made the bed inhibition worse.

I don't know how long - I think a couple of years, tops. I made it 5 years between when I started the divorce clock running and I was out. The first three were "how long" I waited to see if anything really changed. There were lots of instances of "the talk" and not exactly pleading, but expressing what it was I wanted and how I was feeling unfulfilled and how insulting and degrading "duty sex" was. And there were all the promises, and the jumpstart effort (for a week or two), and then backsliding. Three years of the threat->action->backslide->threat cycle. At which point, I decided it was over, and stopped with the threat. It took me two years to work out the best moment for my exit, getting our financial affairs more or less cleaned up, etc. She couldn't have been happier during this period: all our financial deets cleaned up, no expectations or demands for sex...really really happy when I stopped asking for anything in the relationship. That kind of confirmed it for me.

My feeling about all this - especially for all the "just figure out what is wrong with your marriage" types: just spit it out: you don't want to fuck us any longer. Don't play games - be an adult, own up and admit what you want/don't want and face the consequences. Sounds an awful lot like what they preach about cheaters, doesn't it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Divorce is a more honest, respectful solution than cheating and blaming your spouse for it.

PP here. Respectfully disagree that divorce is the better way in all occasions. I also have an AP and our relationship allows sanity for me without getting divorced.

Your spouse deserved to make the decision for him or herself about whether they want to be married to someone who is sexually involved with someone else. Does your spouse know that you are having an affair? If not, you are taking away from your spouse the decision about whether or not he or she want to remain married to you and essentially deciding that your way is what is best for everyone.

If your spouse knows that you have an extramarital relationship and has decided that that's not a problem for them, it's a completely different story.

There's tacit consent and explicit consent. Very few spouses will give explicit consent, but if you ask the lower drive spouse if it's okay if they get to stay in the house, keep the same lifestyle, have 100% access to the kids, with the only stipulation that the other spouse has another relationship, you may well get tacit consent. That's where discretion comes in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a DW and in my long marriage, we have been in situations of drastic uneven libidos (both sides) at times. However, I believe that the needs of the higher libido spouse trumps that of the non-sexual spouse, at any given period, in a marriage. Why? Because I consider sex a basic need of human beings. I would rather fulfill my spouse's need for sex than let him go without, and vice versa.

For me it is an act of caring and love. The same as wiping the drool off your spouse's chin when you are aged and old.

At the very least you need to be able to have frank discussions about it. This is as much a marital issue that needs to be solved TOGETHER, as figuring out your budget, or kid's schooling option. Seriously.

I completely and totally disagree with this. What you are saying is basically that people should have sex, even if they don't want to, because they owe it to someone to have sex. It's not at all the same as wiping away drool when you're old. If you are okay with having sex when you don't want to in order to keep your husband happy, that's great for you, but please do not assume that all of us would be okay with that situation. I know that I would absolutely not be.

So what should your spouse do with his or her unmet sexual needs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with this. I HAVE tried to figure it out, talk it through, etc. without success. Should I just outright beg him for intimacy? How many years without sex is reasonable? Yet I am not ready to give up on our marriage.

I'm the PP you quoted. I'm a DH (previously divorced over this issue, in part).

Begging is demeaning and highly counter-productive. I read a bunch of Gottman when I was going through my divorce, and I've come to the opinion (based on my marriage and a few LTRs which had issues around sex) that a lot of these disparities in sex drive aren't really disparities in libido where libido is understood to mean: how often, independently of your partner, do you get horny? Instead, they are a reflection of how much your partner themselves excites you and that is, generally to a stronger degree in women, strongly influenced by your emotional feelings towards them. The big killer in relationships is contempt, which is itself an extreme loss of respect. Begging pretty much cinches that: it's a kind of desperation. Men (and women) love the thrill of the chase; the high-value thing (person) is the thing not easily obtained. This is why "bad boy" jerks are supposedly so magnetic.

I'm convinced the answer - if any - is to make oneself independent, elusive and therefore the desired object again. I actually think flirting with other people and demonstrating that you are attractive to others - a little dose of jealousy - does wonders. But it's hard to titrate: in my ex-dw, this kind of situation merely ramped up her pre-existing insecurity, which made the bed inhibition worse.

I don't know how long - I think a couple of years, tops. I made it 5 years between when I started the divorce clock running and I was out. The first three were "how long" I waited to see if anything really changed. There were lots of instances of "the talk" and not exactly pleading, but expressing what it was I wanted and how I was feeling unfulfilled and how insulting and degrading "duty sex" was. And there were all the promises, and the jumpstart effort (for a week or two), and then backsliding. Three years of the threat->action->backslide->threat cycle. At which point, I decided it was over, and stopped with the threat. It took me two years to work out the best moment for my exit, getting our financial affairs more or less cleaned up, etc. She couldn't have been happier during this period: all our financial deets cleaned up, no expectations or demands for sex...really really happy when I stopped asking for anything in the relationship. That kind of confirmed it for me.

My feeling about all this - especially for all the "just figure out what is wrong with your marriage" types: just spit it out: you don't want to fuck us any longer. Don't play games - be an adult, own up and admit what you want/don't want and face the consequences. Sounds an awful lot like what they preach about cheaters, doesn't it?

<slow clap>

+1,000,000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Divorce is a more honest, respectful solution than cheating and blaming your spouse for it.

PP here. Respectfully disagree that divorce is the better way in all occasions. I also have an AP and our relationship allows sanity for me without getting divorced.

Your spouse deserved to make the decision for him or herself about whether they want to be married to someone who is sexually involved with someone else. Does your spouse know that you are having an affair? If not, you are taking away from your spouse the decision about whether or not he or she want to remain married to you and essentially deciding that your way is what is best for everyone.

If your spouse knows that you have an extramarital relationship and has decided that that's not a problem for them, it's a completely different story.

Agree. It takes away the vote of the spouse who isn't cheating - note i didn't say blameless. Not getting your needs met? You have a right to ask. you have a right to leave. You do not have a right to mislead your spouse. you do not have a right to withhold full disclosure. your spouse has a right to choose if they want to stay in a relationship where you've checked out and are investing your emotions in someone else. That's dirty, and it unnecessarily adds so much pain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am one of the PPs who has issues with the "entitled to sex" posters. I do not at all disagree that sexual intimacy is a healthy and necessary component of a good marriage, or that it can be incredibly damaging psychologically and emotionally to be sexually rejected, especially over a long period of time, by the person who is supposed to love you.

<snippage>

As the PP says, there is a lot of middle ground between "never" and "constantly" having sex. When you start throwing in obligations, it turns the whole conversation transactional and coercive, and that's not okay with me.

I'm PP @10:47 and one of the people you quoted.

Here's my thing: I don't think anybody is "entitled" to sex-on-demand at any time from any particular person. But we are entitled to have passionate intimacy in our lives. If you don't want passionate intimacy with me, that's OK - it's absolutely your body and your right to say no, married or not - but that doesn't entitle you to force me to be celibate - your control over your body doesn't trump my control over mine. I remain free to go seek out the passionate intimacy I want with someone else - sure, maybe after a divorce.

The huge problem with that "middle ground" is that's the passive aggressive "duty sex" zone: Oh, honey, you can't complain about not getting sex...I lubed up and bent over the bed for you to use my body as a masturbation aid for fifteen minutes last week...we're not due for this week's appointment yet. I'm not actually verbally saying no, but I'm letting you know you touching me makes my skin crawl. Thanks but no thanks...I'd rather pay a hooker for fake sex. I really don't want to have sex you unless you actually want to have sex with me and are turned on by me. I'm a big boy and have moved beyond jacking off to playboy...I'd rather have real sex with a real person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Divorce is a more honest, respectful solution than cheating and blaming your spouse for it.

PP here. Respectfully disagree that divorce is the better way in all occasions. I also have an AP and our relationship allows sanity for me without getting divorced.

Your spouse deserved to make the decision for him or herself about whether they want to be married to someone who is sexually involved with someone else. Does your spouse know that you are having an affair? If not, you are taking away from your spouse the decision about whether or not he or she want to remain married to you and essentially deciding that your way is what is best for everyone.

If your spouse knows that you have an extramarital relationship and has decided that that's not a problem for them, it's a completely different story.

Agree. It takes away the vote of the spouse who isn't cheating - note i didn't say blameless. Not getting your needs met? You have a right to ask. you have a right to leave. You do not have a right to mislead your spouse. you do not have a right to withhold full disclosure. your spouse has a right to choose if they want to stay in a relationship where you've checked out and are investing your emotions in someone else. That's dirty, and it unnecessarily adds so much pain.

The unilateral decision of celibacy isn't a huge lie?