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][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]

If your entire argument rests on medieval property law and the word “consummation,” you might want to sit with that.

[b]No one owes you lifetime sexual access. That's not what marriage is, full stop[/b], and it disregards all of the very valid biological changes that happen as we all age that may impact someone's libido. 
If sex is non-negotiable for you, you leave. You don’t outsource it in secret and call it moral high ground.[/quote]

You're completely wrong, no matter how many times you use that idiotic phrase "full stop." You're morally wrong, ethically wrong, and legally wrong. What you're describing is literally grounds for at-fault divorce in every jurisdiction. It's called constructive desertion. [/quote]

First, all 50 states and DC have no fault divorce.

Also, there is a lot more to the old timey contructive desertion claim. Otherwise, you could claim it when a spouse has erectile disfunction, or vaginal atrophy, or paralysis, etc. So no, it's not immoral or illegal to have limited or no sexual access.

Spousal rape, however, is very illegal.[/quote]

All states still have at-fault divorce too, dipshit. No one is talking about spousal rape. And the premise of the conversation was willful denial of sex with the other spouse. That is absolutely grounds for divorce.

Is it hard to prove? Certainly. Just like adultery is hard to prove. But it is still grounds for divorce.

No-fault is just one method for divorce and makes divorce easier to obtain, but is hardly a default. [/quote]

But at-fault divorce only comes into play if only one party wants a divorce or if there is a big battle over alimony. Both of those circumstances are rare because divorce has been normalized (people are way less likely to fight a divorce these days), and because alimony is increasingly rare (and when granted, usually it's temporary).

Most of the time, sane people opt for no-fault divorce because it's faster and less expensive and usually less contentious (and thus easier on kids). Even in states where you can so for at-fault divorce, it's unlikely because you will lose more than you gain.[/quote]

I never said it was common. However, in the scenario presented, [b]where one spouse willfully denies the other spouse sex[/b], that is grounds for an at-fault divorce. Is is easy to obtain? No. But can it be done? Absolutely.

In this scenario, presumably only one party wants the divorce. Presumably the person denying the partner the sex would like to remain married because they like the other features of the union, namely the financial security.[/quote]

In the presented scenario, one spouse is alleging that the other "willfully denied" sex. How is that being quantified? If the low drive spouse says, "It wasn't willful, I have reasons, here they are" the tendency is to dismiss those reasons as being irrelevant.

They're not irrelevant.

If your wife doesn't want to have sex because it hurts, that's relevant.
If your wife doesn't want to have sex because you're gross, that's relevant. 
If your wife doesn't want to have sex because her libido as a 45yo woman is different than it was when you met her 20 years ago, that's relevant.
If your wife doesn't want to have sex because reducing her role in the marriage to intercourse is insulting, that's relevant.

All of those things are valid reasons in my opinion. They do not amount to a willful denial.

Maybe I'm wrong though. You seem like you've put a lot of thought into this. How would one go able proving that someone is "willfully denying" you sex in a marriage? What's the process here?[/quote]

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