Sexless Marriages And The Men Who Get Suckered Into Them

[JohnP82]

Honestly it seems like a failure on both their parts. Her for not divorcing the husband that she doesn't love and cheating instead. Him for not having enough respect for himself to divorce a sex withholding/cheating spouse. Staying together for the kids is not only a crappy Blink-182 song, but a terrible excuse. My parents divorced and I turned out fine, just like plenty of people I know.

 

I've never been married so I can only share my observations. I believe that some women don't change/mature. For the purpose of the example I'm going to generalize personality types. Their marriages go two ways. They marry the "jerk" who they think will change for them but of course doesn't. He doesn't care, support the family, cheats, blah blah blah. Or they marry the "nice guy" because he's safe. He probably has a steady job and can pay for things like rent, diapers, electricity, etc. In both instances the marriage is doomed to failure.

 

I was recently on another message board and there was a guy that broke up with a women that he was dating because of the fear that she may be this type. I can't remember exactly what she told him but it was along the lines of, "I'm done having fun and I'm ready to settle." He felt what she was really saying was that there were no wild times left to be had with him and that he is now only useful for the security that he can provide. He was well aware of the possibility of being used and decided to cut his loses now instead of maybe 20 years down the line.

 

I think both sides do this. Guys sometimes have a certain type of girl that we deem as being "wife material" and maybe girls do that too with "husband material". I guess the best way to avoid this is to watch people's actions and what they say in order to try to avoid being attached to someone that doesn't truly love you.

[Holding-On]

Who the hell stops bathing? When I was single I made sure to keep myself clean. Does hygeine just go out the window because somebody is married?

 

On the parenting board I frequent, there have been threads and threads about this. I have seen this happen. I have had it happen to me too.

I don't get it either.

 

but it is a good way to turn off a woman without actually doing anything... so maybe that's it. A sort of passive aggressive way to turn off having sex without having to own up to saying you don't want it, since society pushes that men are supposed to want it all the time or they are not men somehow.

[Thaddeus]

Now here, it seems like Thaddeus says people shouldn't choose a mate based on love as that is a misleading fog state that hinders one's ability to choose wisely?

 

Which way is it fellas?

Take a moment and read my quote again:

It's another reason why one should never, ever soley rely upon their feelings ("Follow your heart!" "Trust your instincts!" "Go with your gut!" etc etc) when choosing a partner. Good old-fashioned common sense has to come into it too.

Note the bolded/italicized bits.

 

It's not that love isn't important - it most certainly is - but it should not be the only driver towards marriage. Once can love someone that's completely incompatible (we see it here on LS all the time). Short-term, it might be fun and a thrill and all the rest, but long-term it can be disastrous.

 

Gotta use both your head and your heart. Neither one exclusively.

[silktricks]

Actually what you say is documented by relationship gurus and psychologists. Marriage and the partners in it are reinvented several times and at very specific year markers. After the 5 to 7 year mark, there is the 14 to 17 year mark. After this one, there is another at about the 22 to 25 year mark.

 

I think if we were to look at divorce rates, we'd find that these numbers line up mostly.

 

That's interesting. I didn't know it. (though, of course, I've heard of the 7-year itch....). Is it true only of marriages, or relationships in general - in other words, as another poster mentioned living together.... as many people do now, does the relationship go through those marker years only after marriage?

 

This thread as a whole is very interesting to me, though... IMO, I don't think most people of either gender intend to be deceptive. They do, however, "put their best foot forward" so to speak... that best foot doesn't usually include that fact that they perhaps aren't nearly as interested in sex as they'd like their hopeful future partner to believe, or not nearly as anxious to get a shave and a haircut..

 

But rather than showing themselves to be who they are, instead they show themselves to be who they think they should be... usually with disastrous results to the marriage in general.

[sally4sara]

Take a moment and read my quote again:Note the bolded/italicized bits.

 

It's not that love isn't important - it most certainly is - but it should not be the only driver towards marriage. Once can love someone that's completely incompatible (we see it here on LS all the time). Short-term, it might be fun and a thrill and all the rest, but long-term it can be disastrous.

 

Gotta use both your head and your heart. Neither one exclusively.

 

Sorry for picking on you but you are more level headed than who that post was intended for.

I never seem to make a dent (prolly because I'm an evil female ) when pointing out that if women WERE to pick a husband based on who would be stable and a good provider, they would be doing the same thing women did well before any feminist movement. It is those sort of qualities that people married for back in the day and much less often out of love.

NOW if a woman picks a man for those reasons, the man is suckered and it is because of the feminist movement .

I used your post to point it out that simple blinded love isn't always the smarter more fool-proof marriage ingredient. (and because they might listen to you for having a penis ) It would be like me getting upset and thinking my SO picked me only for my cup size just because he said he liked my bazooms. And if I tell my SO that he amazes me because he weathers the hard times with me rather than taking off, it doesn't have to mean I don't find him sexually appealing too.

I just find it highly unlikely that the majority of people, male or female, get married for ulterior and unscrupulous reasons. I DO believe, however, that people give up on marriage more easily now than they use to; the options are more and the stigma attached has become less.

[angie2443]

You bring up a good point - doesn't almost every marriage hit this wall at some point?

 

In my husband's and my case, it was the "bieng taken for granted" wall. Once my husband felt he had me, he didn't have to work for me anymore. To be honest, I don't know if I started taking him for granted. I've asked him, and he says things are great. Maybe we just have had a differant experience of things. Anyways, I had to convince him that just because their is a paper saying we are married, that doesn't mean we'll stay married. If we grow apart, the marriage is doomed. Date nights and other ways of staying connected are important things to continue if the marriage is to keep strong.

[Demosthenes]

I am in this type of marriage. I am her rebound no, no wait, her meal ticket marriage.

Tried to post it, but it went a another direction. I am the provider husband. Hooked me with a son. Stepdad to 3 disrespectful stepkids. Will not let me parent them. Heading for the big D.

[mem11363]

Whenever I read Angies comments about her ex, I just feel sad. What he did was so wrong. I have given much thought to this subject of marital commitment. I really feel strongly that it is too simplistic to say that divorce is only an option in cases of physical abuse, drug/alcholol addiction or infidelity. I think divorce is also an option if one of the partners simply stops making an effort to make the marriage a healthy place.

 

Sally4Sara talks about why women used to marry men. Stability/security/etc. If you go back even 500 years humans were much, much poorer and there was no real government safety net. So if you married badly, the chances your children would not survive to reproduce were quite a bit higher. In the US today very few children die from true poverty/starvation so the equation has changed.

 

My wife was definitely not in love with me when she accidentally got pregnant. We were dating. But after our daughter was born and my wife realized how committed I was to her and our daughter, and that I was willing to support her wish to be a stay at home mom, she did fall in love with me. I mean there were other factors but that was a very big one. I don't mind being loved in part for being a good provider. But I do also wish to be desired like any person does. I realize now that some of the tension in our early/middle years was due to the fact that my wife felt that providing me sex was a big part of her job as a wife. But sometimes she resented the "obligation" and found little ways to "punish" me for having sex with her so much more frequently then she really wanted.

 

I do think many of the men on here, myself included, find it offensive when a wife takes all the emotional and financial support from her man, but does not care enough about him and does not respect his needs enough, to sexually fullfill him.

 

I know that the reverse is also frequently true - and I think the male refusers are also very parasitic monkeys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my husband's and my case, it was the "bieng taken for granted" wall. Once my husband felt he had me, he didn't have to work for me anymore. To be honest, I don't know if I started taking him for granted. I've asked him, and he says things are great. Maybe we just have had a differant experience of things. Anyways, I had to convince him that just because their is a paper saying we are married, that doesn't mean we'll stay married. If we grow apart, the marriage is doomed. Date nights and other ways of staying connected are important things to continue if the marriage is to keep strong.

[Woggle]

I was recently on another message board and there was a guy that broke up with a women that he was dating because of the fear that she may be this type. I can't remember exactly what she told him but it was along the lines of, "I'm done having fun and I'm ready to settle." He felt what she was really saying was that there were no wild times left to be had with him and that he is now only useful for the security that he can provide. He was well aware of the possibility of being used and decided to cut his loses now instead of maybe 20 years down the line.

 

.

 

Good for him. Don't you just love women who expect the good men they used to treat like crap to just come in and clean up the wreckage left behind from their trysts with bad boys. I hate to tell them but the nice guys they rejected back in the day have gotten hip to the game and want nothing to do with them.

[JohnP82]

Good for him. Don't you just love women who expect the good men they used to treat like crap to just come in and clean up the wreckage left behind from their trysts with bad boys. I hate to tell them but the nice guys they rejected back in the day have gotten hip to the game and want nothing to do with them.

 

I don't disagree with you. I have seen it where a woman falls in love with the "jerk", gets pregnant, jerk leaves and then she tries to get a stable guy to take care of what the other dude left behind. I kind of feel bad about saying it but it has happened to me. Last summer I was clerking at a law firm and was immediately the focus of the secretary. She was just a little bit younger than me but had a kid with a guy that was of course no longer in the picture. She seemed like an ok person, but I just didn't want to get involved with someone that had a child and take on that responsibility.

[Woggle]

I don't disagree with you. I have seen it where a woman falls in love with the "jerk", gets pregnant, jerk leaves and then she tries to get a stable guy to take care of what the other dude left behind. I kind of feel bad about saying it but it has happened to me. Last summer I was clerking at a law firm and was immediately the focus of the secretary. She was just a little bit younger than me but had a kid with a guy that was of course no longer in the picture. She seemed like an ok person, but I just didn't want to get involved with someone that had a child and take on that responsibility.

 

These women will always get bored of the stable guy and end up cheating with a jerk and even sometimes the one that hurt them in the first place. They are not capable of a healthy and happy relationship.

[allina]

I don't even think that this is due to marriage. I think that many relationships are miserable and have no solid base. I've often looked at relationships in shocked and wondered why two people are even together.

 

People usually enter relationships based on what someone can do and provide for them. It's all about taking from others and feeding your own ego

[mem11363]

I agree with this 100%. And I laugh when people say it is all about good communication. THAT is the ultimate lie of the 20th/21st century. Communication is me letting you vent and me validating your feelings. Hey that is fine - and that is a core part of a healthy marriage. But all these situations we are talking about - the idea that the parties "don't understand" what each other want is a joke. There is a perfectly good understanding of what each spouse wants. There is simply a totally imbalanced commitment level. One of them is highly committed to the marriage and that means to the other persons needs, and the parasitic spouse simply wants their needs taken care of without having to do any heavy lifting.

 

This is why when someone says 'our relationship is great except for the sex, they are either lying or simply wrong".

 

You can ask a simple question. How committed is the low drive spouse to trying to make things better for their very frustrated partner. And if you measure commitment in terms of actual tangible behaviors, what you find is that they are not. Communication without commitment is actually very, very toxic. It allows people to simulate forward progress when actually nothing is happening at all.

 

 

 

agree. Question to ask is....

 

How would you rate your marriage on a scale of 10 ? (do this to both the spouses)...and correct response is the one from the spouses who rates lower.

 

(not just the sex, communication, respect..but the complete marriage).

 

I believe you either have a great marriage or a bad one. I don't think there are two many in betweens.

[Demosthenes]

One of the answsers to that question is from my experience is that as long as I keep providing or keep being the provider Husband my low drive spouse does as little to as possible to "commit" much less communicate. I agree with mem11363 on that one.

[allina]

 

I think this thread will be a reminder for me, of where I do not want, and where I will not allow my future marriage to go.

[mem11363]

Allina,

Every once in a while someone posts something that makes me smile. You just did.

 

 

 

 

I think this thread will be a reminder for me, of where I do not want, and where I will not allow my future marriage to go.

[carhill]

IMO, if one's natural setpoint is to live within themselves primarily and only use outsiders (including spouses) for periodic validation and/or functional purposes (sex, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, bla, bla), one will always be at risk for loss of intimacy. Sex is only one of many barometers of intimacy, albeit an obvious one. If one's setpoint is to live outside themselves, and they are generally perceived by many (not just those who validate them) to be a loving and caring person, then, personally, finding themselves in a position where they must purposely pay attention to intimacy and sex will be much less likely. It's simply a function of their intrinsic personality.

 

The key is perceiving the signs of a person who lives primarily within themselves. IME, such perception can only take place over time. People reveal themselves in slices of reality within the pie of social mannerisms honed over a lifetime of lubricating society to get what they want. That's not a bad thing. We're social creatures and society exists as much to serve us as we it.

 

IMO, this is another important 'take-away' from being married. Without that experience, I would not have nearly the understanding of such matters, or my own setpoint and its good and bad qualities. Hope that doesn't qualify as a 'sucker', rather a balanced viewpoint on a mostly positive experience.

 

Good Sunday morning from Newport News. It's mileage run time

[mem11363]

Is this what you meant by not having to purposely pay attention to intimacy and sex?

 

There have been a small number of times where I was able to get my body to suppress its normal "high" desire cycle and tune into my wifes very special radio station WSEX. When that happened, I simply didn't get turned on unless she started transmitting the special "broadcast signal" of desire.

 

But normally that doesn't work - my target frequency and hers are too different. This requires conscious effort to reconcile.

 

I would like to better understand what you are saying.

 

 

IMO, if one's natural setpoint is to live within themselves primarily and only use outsiders (including spouses) for periodic validation and/or functional purposes (sex, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, bla, bla), one will always be at risk for loss of intimacy. Sex is only one of many barometers of intimacy, albeit an obvious one. If one's setpoint is to live outside themselves, and they are generally perceived by many (not just those who validate them) to be a loving and caring person, then, personally, finding themselves in a position where they must purposely pay attention to intimacy and sex will be much less likely. It's simply a function of their intrinsic personality.

 

The key is perceiving the signs of a person who lives primarily within themselves. IME, such perception can only take place over time. People reveal themselves in slices of reality within the pie of social mannerisms honed over a lifetime of lubricating society to get what they want. That's not a bad thing. We're social creatures and society exists as much to serve us as we it.

 

IMO, this is another important 'take-away' from being married. Without that experience, I would not have nearly the understanding of such matters, or my own setpoint and its good and bad qualities. Hope that doesn't qualify as a 'sucker', rather a balanced viewpoint on a mostly positive experience.

 

Good Sunday morning from Newport News. It's mileage run time

[carhill]

Your perspective has actually given me an impetus to thought. Those thoughts are not yet mature, but I will reflect upon them.

 

The essence, the beginning, is that I always thought, in my M, the lack of sexual desire was my responsibility, because my wife told me often that I didn't want sex. At the time, I was thinking to myself "Wha? All I'm getting from you is signals to 'stay away'". Looking deeper, she had long been emotionally distant and I merely ignored it and pressed ahead with sexual intimacy. Perhaps I finally started to get the message.

 

Like I said, I'll work on it and get back. Right now I'm watching the US Open and enjoying my huge suite in VA.

 

I think the hard part to explain will be the personality aspect of living within oneself. I call it "The world is small and I fill it completely" theory. When one's emotional setpoint is thus, it's really hard to let anyone else in nor project oneself out into the world. Behaviors which may be perceived as positive and socially generous are just masking for the setpoint, which eventually pervades.

 

Anyway, more work is needed. Back to the game