It's really odd to me when people say the partner who wants sex less frequently or no sex at all is "withholding" sex. This connotes some kind of intent that probably just isn't there.

I know that when I had a period of wanting sex less, I didn't really change. I always had sex when I felt like it (unless my partner didn't, of course), and I just happened to not want sex. I don't know the reason, but it wasn't a conscious decision at all.

I think it's really rare that you can legitimately assign blame to one partner for libido mismatches. People have lower libidos when they're stressed, when their partners stop praising their bodies (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you just aren't as wowed by your partner's body as you used to be), when hormones change, etc. And pestering somebody for sex...well, that's not exactly an aphrodisiac. I just typically see a place for blame when somebody doesn't desire sex; it's just an unfortunate confluence of circumstances that takes a lot of work on behalf of both partners to overcome.

Cheating, on the other hand, seems pretty intentional, and doesn't seem like a proportionate reaction to a low libido. Personally I think open marriages and divorces are better options because people deserve honesty, as difficult as that may be.

I don't think people cheating really care that much if they get a divorce. They are cheating..

Maybe they don't want to divorce because it is expensive and inconvenient, but it isn't as if they will be heartbroken.

OP, sorry you were cheated on. But move on

Anonymous wrote:^if they do leave it won’t be with a fellow AM cheater. If they divorce they get much higher quality on the free market. They affair down for the false “safety” of cheating with a married person they don’t know or have connection with IRL.

That and they don’t have to spend $ in this type of affair. With her being married there are no trips, dinners or gifts. Just an hour here or there.Pretty good gig for a guy.

^if they do leave it won’t be with a fellow AM cheater. If they divorce they get much higher quality on the free market. They affair down for the false “safety” of cheating with a married person they don’t know or have connection with IRL.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not just men having relationships on the dl without their spouse knowing. More that a handful of comments on here from women happily doing so.

That's a given. There are tons of whores on Ashley Madison.

As someone who studies dating statics including matching sites there are some statics. Ashley Madison hires what is called "dating consultants" let me be frank when I tell you the bots out number the real woman by a long shot. The goal is to keep users online for time max. Men are hired to correspond as women to engage and encourage the men to keep using the site. The reality is the breakdown of users vs. matching. If men are not receiving matches or conversations they are less inclined to continue to use the service.

Guy match with 47% of profiles, while women match at a rate of 12%. 61% of men want something casual, while 8% wants something serious. 87% of women want something serious, while only 13% want something casual.

Imagine there are 100 people on a dating app, 80 men and 20 women. In reality maybe 5-7 of those women are worth pursuing, because obviously not every woman is attractive. This is where the bots or "dating consultants" fill the void. Men have a hire chance of connecting with a woman in real life.

Those statistics in bold are what make these AM affairs ticking time bombs. We had a stalker, crazy situation. The women will profess—oh I just want to have some fun—but they are looking for an exit out of their marriage into someone else’s.

Ha! So true. And,conversely, those 61% of men lie right back that they are looking for something. The women falsely assume the men are in there for the same reasons they are. It’s really gross. Men get the sex and the women get burned. They don’t get their new husband. They get dumped when they turn up the heat/pressure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not just men having relationships on the dl without their spouse knowing. More that a handful of comments on here from women happily doing so.

That's a given. There are tons of whores on Ashley Madison.

As someone who studies dating statics including matching sites there are some statics. Ashley Madison hires what is called "dating consultants" let me be frank when I tell you the bots out number the real woman by a long shot. The goal is to keep users online for time max. Men are hired to correspond as women to engage and encourage the men to keep using the site. The reality is the breakdown of users vs. matching. If men are not receiving matches or conversations they are less inclined to continue to use the service.

Guy match with 47% of profiles, while women match at a rate of 12%. 61% of men want something casual, while 8% wants something serious. 87% of women want something serious, while only 13% want something casual.

Imagine there are 100 people on a dating app, 80 men and 20 women. In reality maybe 5-7 of those women are worth pursuing, because obviously not every woman is attractive. This is where the bots or "dating consultants" fill the void. Men have a hire chance of connecting with a woman in real life.

Those statistics in bold are what make these AM affairs ticking time bombs. We had a stalker, crazy situation. The women will profess—oh I just want to have some fun—but they are looking for an exit out of their marriage into someone else’s.

Anonymous wrote:The open marriage guy is annoying and brash but he isn't wrong to the extent that sexless marriages have an expiration date. It's not that an affair saves a marriage but it makes it possible for the marriage to continue and potentially continue in relative peace rather than stewing in resentment.

Sure, the affair can be discovered and the marriage could blow up but no sexless marriage will ever survive long term. An affair gives the marriage a chance.

Also, I don't get why people get so invested in debating him. Who on earth sees a cheating spouse as a the bad person if they were the one cut off from sex and intimacy?

What gives the marriage a chance is honesty and not being a coward by directly facing the problems with your spouse and recognizing your own shortcomings and contribution to the problem. The behavior of the cheater in the marriage is a lot of the reason a bedroom grows cold. Years of emotional abuse, anger, hyper-criticism, lack of respect, yelling will cause a person to wall themselves off.

The problem with the falsehoods spread by sexless marriage guy is what stigmatizes a betrayed spouse. He/she must have done something wrong. They must not have given him/her enough sex, enough love, enough validation, etc. As is well-known and documented, 63% of cheating males are happy in their marriages and still cheat. They ARE having sex at home. The reasons somebody cheats are what is going on inside of them. They tell themselves lies. They have internal trauma. They are afraid of getting old. They are entitled. They are depressed. They have unaddressed childhood trauma. They didn’t achieve in life what they thought they would. They are narcissistic or any one or a combination of these things.

If you are in an unhappy sexless marriage you make the false assumption that that is everyone else’s reasons too. You are myopic. It’s not. That’s far from the truth. If you had the selflessness and the self awareness to realistically look at your own behavior and actions, you would see what others see. You can’t and your spouse is better off of you did leave.

So not only do betrayed spouses face the trauma of being lied to, deceived, have their health put at risk, they are also stigmatized and looked at as a person that had to have done something wrong or not been good enough.

higher^

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not just men having relationships on the dl without their spouse knowing. More that a handful of comments on here from women happily doing so.

That's a given. There are tons of whores on Ashley Madison.

As someone who studies dating statics including matching sites there are some statics. Ashley Madison hires what is called "dating consultants" let me be frank when I tell you the bots out number the real woman by a long shot. The goal is to keep users online for time max. Men are hired to correspond as women to engage and encourage the men to keep using the site. The reality is the breakdown of users vs. matching. If men are not receiving matches or conversations they are less inclined to continue to use the service.

Guy match with 47% of profiles, while women match at a rate of 12%. 61% of men want something casual, while 8% wants something serious. 87% of women want something serious, while only 13% want something casual.

Imagine there are 100 people on a dating app, 80 men and 20 women. In reality maybe 5-7 of those women are worth pursuing, because obviously not every woman is attractive. This is where the bots or "dating consultants" fill the void. Men have a hire chance of connecting with a woman in real life.

The open marriage guy is annoying and brash but he isn't wrong to the extent that sexless marriages have an expiration date. It's not that an affair saves a marriage but it makes it possible for the marriage to continue and potentially continue in relative peace rather than stewing in resentment.

Sure, the affair can be discovered and the marriage could blow up but no sexless marriage will ever survive long term. An affair gives the marriage a chance.

Also, I don't get why people get so invested in debating him. Who on earth sees a cheating spouse as a the bad person if they were the one cut off from sex and intimacy?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sexless Marriage guy will never be convinced. He thinks with the sophistication of a 15 year old. He says men need to "get sex" - this vocabulary belies a very immature view of adult relationships.

Convinced of what? I’m not wrong. You don’t like what I have to say, or maybe how I say it, but I speak the truth. Read up thread: others agree I am right.

God- it’s painfully clear why your wife is not attracted to you and does not want to f@ck you.

You mean in addition to the fact that the guy is an idiot? Can you imagine having a rational discussion with this guy? What kind of connection or intimacy can you have with a guy who won’t listen to another person?

I found the data to be interesting but it’s futile to reason with this guy.

Just from the way he writes I can tell he's either an extremely selfish lover or a 18yo virgin.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sexless Marriage guy will never be convinced. He thinks with the sophistication of a 15 year old. He says men need to "get sex" - this vocabulary belies a very immature view of adult relationships.

Convinced of what? I’m not wrong. You don’t like what I have to say, or maybe how I say it, but I speak the truth. Read up thread: others agree I am right.

God- it’s painfully clear why your wife is not attracted to you and does not want to f@ck you.

You mean in addition to the fact that the guy is an idiot? Can you imagine having a rational discussion with this guy? What kind of connection or intimacy can you have with a guy who won’t listen to another person?

I found the data to be interesting but it’s futile to reason with this guy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sexless Marriage guy will never be convinced. He thinks with the sophistication of a 15 year old. He says men need to "get sex" - this vocabulary belies a very immature view of adult relationships.

Convinced of what? I’m not wrong. You don’t like what I have to say, or maybe how I say it, but I speak the truth. Read up thread: others agree I am right.

Aren’t you embarrassed to have an internet identity as Anonymous Sexless Marriage Guy?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sexless Marriage guy will never be convinced. He thinks with the sophistication of a 15 year old. He says men need to "get sex" - this vocabulary belies a very immature view of adult relationships.

Convinced of what? I’m not wrong. You don’t like what I have to say, or maybe how I say it, but I speak the truth. Read up thread: others agree I am right.

God- it’s painfully clear why your wife is not attracted to you and does not want to f@ck you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is worth repeating.

Secret Affairs do NOT save marriages.

Five years after undergoing therapy, only 43% of couples who revealed and worked through their past indiscretions had opted for divorce, while a whopping 80% of couples whose marriages contained secret affairs were no longer together. This means the spouse never found out about the secret affair---yet 80% (80%!!) were divorced 5 years later. These are very unhealthy marriages.


On the surface, these numbers seem a little bit surprising. After all, if the betrayed partner doesn’t know about their spouse’s infidelity, it can’t hurt them, right? Wrong. As it turns out, lies and deceit don’t exactly make for a healthy relationship. Furthermore, when a cheating spouse admits to an affair, it usually means that the affair is over. By confessing to the infidelity, the unfaithful partner is often indicating that they are ready to live their life in a committed relationship once again. If their spouse can find forgiveness and also move on, then there might be a lot of hope for the relationship yet.

In a sexless marriage, there is no such thing as “living in a committed relationship once again”. That option was removed by the sexless wife. Her avoidance of sex has doomed the marriage to certain divorce, because normal healthy men do not stay celibate.

Why is this so hard for you to grasp? If a husband isn’t getting sex from his wife ... that marriage is 100% certain to divorce. The one and only way to avoid divorce is he gets sex elsewhere. In other words, his affair enables their platonic room mate marriage to continue (ie, the sexless marriage is saved from divorce).

When a man starts suffering from erectile dysfunctional, is his wife no longer living in a committed relationship because her husband took away the option from her when he stopped having sex?

There are many ways to have “sex” which don’t depend on his erection. If he’s refusing all forms of sex, then Yes: the wife may open their marriage.

Alternatively, if a man is still getting handjobs from his wife, but that’s it, all’s good there, to.