Reply to If you don't want sex, then shouldn't YOU be the one to leave and divorce?

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Reply to "If you don't want sex, then shouldn't YOU be the one to leave and divorce?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wild post.

You’re framing this like there are two equally sneaky contract violations happening:

Spouse A says, “I don’t want sex anymore.”
Spouse B says, “Cool, I’ll outsource it.”

And you’re asking why only #2 gets torched. Here’s why.

Refusing sex is about what someone does with their own body. Cheating is about what someone does with the **shared agreement** of the marriage.

[b]No one is obligated to provide sex to keep their marriage valid. Full stop.[/b] Even in a perfectly healthy, boring, middle-class, carpool-driving life. You don’t get conjugal rights because you’re annoyed.

But you are obligated not to lie and sneak around if you agreed to monogamy.

Those are not parallel actions.

Now, if one spouse decides they don’t want sex ever again? That absolutely changes the marriage. It may be devastating. It may be unfair. It may mean the relationship can’t continue.

But the honest response to a deal-breaker is:
“I can’t live like this. We need to fix this, open this, or end this.”

Not:
“I’ll quietly violate the agreement and call it integrity.”

You’re also assuming that the person who doesn’t want sex has “broken” the contract and therefore must be the one to file. That’s not how this works. People’s libidos change. Bodies change. Trauma happens. Aging happens. Hormones shift. Desire is not a lifetime guarantee baked into the vows.

Marriage isn’t a sexual service subscription.

If sex is essential to you (totally valid), then you’re the one who decides it’s a deal-breaker and you leave. That’s not punishment. That’s agency.

And the “just sex fling that doesn’t threaten the marriage” line is classic DCUM magical thinking. Affairs absolutely threaten marriages. Secrets rot things from the inside. Even if you swear you’ll never leave.

If you want an open marriage? Negotiate one.
If you want monogamy with sex? Say so.
If you’re sexually incompatible? Divorce.

But the idea that someone “owes” you sex or else they should be the one to file is just resentment dressed up as logic.

No one owes sex.
Everyone owes honesty.[/quote]

Yes, they are. Normal people would reject what you say in bold.[/quote]

Agree. There is something called the consummation of marriage for a reason. [/quote]

You can only consummate the marriage once.  Nothing required after that. [/quote]

Why do you consummate it? Because sex is expected in a marriage. [/quote]

Traditionally consummation was required to ensure the marriage was capable of producing an heir. Not because everyone believed that once people were married, the couple would continue to have sex regularly for the rest of their lives. They might, they might not, society didn't much care. But society had a heavy investment in marriage producing children in order to maintain property and inheritances.

At one point it was even possible to get an annulment after consummation if sex didn't result in pregnancy. Because, again, the interest was not in the sex itself but in children (and also ensuring the children were the actual offspring of the man, again for property and inheritance reasons).

But also, none of this has much to do with modern marriage, which completely voluntary and has very few formal requirements beyond paperwork. It's legal to cheat. It's legal to lie. It's also legal to get divorced for any reason from "my wife won't sleep with me anymore" to "I've decided I don't want to be married to anyone who watches reality television." You can have whatever kind of marriage you and your partner want to agree to. And there are absolutely marriages where the couple never has sex, not even once (e.g. lavender marriage, but also marriage where one partner is disabled in a way that makes sex impossible).[/quote]

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