Update 2008-06-01:
Another article:
Update 2008-02-12:
This article just came up today; It’s fairly typical of the literature:
The article is targeted towards women; This contributes to my notion that it’s women who are low-libido in general, rather than men.
“What’s wrong here?” This is a very surface-level prescription. My experience tells me that if someone follows these steps, they’re going to have sex maybe once or twice in the month, and then fall back into sexless patterns.
To really change a sexless marriage, I remain convinced that we have to fundamentally change our attitudes. Anything else, and it’s just going to be shifting sands on the surface.
Just about every married couple I have met is in a sexless marriage.
This doesn’t mean that sex doesn’t happen; It just happens extremely infrequently, and when it does happen, there’s very little “love” to it. One partner (usually the woman) isn’t interested in it, and just doing it to appease the other.
Needless to say, this is a total failure mode for a relationship to operate in. (Though it can easily go on to death.)
I do have some ideas about where sexless marriage comes from, and how it may be “cured.” Essentially, my view has developed to the conclusion that sex is based in inequality and imbalance.
This would neatly explain why Western / liberal / progressive culture sees sexless marriage nearly everywhere, and why we don’t see sexless marriage (so I understand) in other cultures – and in more detail: in gendered societies (societies where sex roles are discriminated.)
It also neatly explains how dominance & submission is a fundamental attribute in just about 90% of porn stories, and how light versions of dominance & submission are near omnipresent in our romances, adventures, and other such fluff in the movie theaters, for those who know how to see such things (see MovieInterpretation.) Off the top of my head, “Starfall” YT WP IMDB (the hero literally chains up his star wife-to-be, at the beginning,) and “When Harry Met Sally” (lighter: he has answers, she has questions and cries.)
I have no conclusions about what we are to “do” about such things. I once set about with my partner to artificially tilt our household in a gendered way. She agreed to it, for all of about, … oh, … 3 weeks. While it’s true that we had some of the best sex in our relationship that we’ve ever had (she agrees) in those 3 weeks, she ultimately decided that she didn’t care, and went back to her usual plain old self. She has no interest in tilting things again, she is satisfied with how things are, and I continue to go crazy and fall into sadness and despair.
This is how it plays out in my family, and looking at my friends and broader society, (and my friends’ wives or girlfriends, and the societies wives or girlfriends,) it is clear to me that this is how it will play out in their families, as well.
Our women simply expect to be treated as equals, and our men (myself included) simply expect to treat them as equals (no matter what bravado we speak, or what we tell ourselves we believe about women.) I cannot change my partner, I have great difficulty even changing myself.
Thus, it seems that we are all doomed to sexless marriages, and the handful of voices that have figured it out are drowned out by the desperate cries of questions from all directions. Our assumption of egalitarianism is simply too deeply embedded, for us to do anything about it.
Now, I am a Jungian, which is to say that I understand that Jung’s ideas are basically true. In this situation, that means: Watch the ZeitGeist. We have an unstoppable force (the progress of egalitarianism) meeting an immovable wall (SexIsFoundationalToMe – minus the “to me.”) Men have lost something of enormous and essential value, but have gained… …nothing.
So: I suspect we will see a radical change here in the next 50 years.
Update: 2008-02-09: My partner & I were discussing this recently, and she proposed that a possible future might be that casual sex, even amongst married people, could become acceptable practice. I think this makes good sense, because it would follow the arrow that led to the present day predicament in the first place (a trend towards greater freedoms.) Combine this with a cessation of marriages (“Men may simply stop marrying women,”) and it makes a lot of sense.
I have no idea what to expect. I just can’t imagine that things will continue like they have been continuing.
I am not married, and my partner and I believed that by not getting married, all the things that curse married people would not affect us.
Well, the legal stuff doesn’t afflict us. But all the relationship stuff does.
It all began when my partner learned that our daughter had been conceived. Immediately, my partners ceased to be the partner that I had known, and became the mommy.
Nothing has changed since.
I often times see articles saying things that seem to imply that it’s not just women who lose all interest in sex– men are often the low-libido partner as well. No detail is given on proportions, but the picture we are left with is of even, or near even, division.
I hold these claims with deep suspicion. It seems just a little bit too PC-oriented, and it meets none of my experiences talking with friends and family friends.
I have found several blogs of women, who’s husbands do not have sex with them.
And yet…
…the proportions seem to be way off.
Without having any hard numbers, it seems to me that in the vast majority of cases, it is a woman who is uninterested in sex, and it is the man that is frustrated. I find frustrated men everywhere I go (and see children,) but where are the frustrated women?
Further, the nature of the sexless marriage seems to be off. Women can easily find a man to have sex with them. But what woman wants to have sex with a married man? They’re all busy trying to find a man who they can get “serious” with.
I may go more into this topic in the future, since I’ve read and conversed so much about it with people. For the time being, though, …
ConfessionsOfaNaughtyMommy? – a book subtitled “How I Found My Lost Libido,” which is basically a fraud. I’ll go more in detail into just how horribly wrong the title is. If the mom is “naughty,” it is in that she hardly cares at all about her husband, who’s basically been left out to hang. Don’t believe me? Read the page.
"Living in a sexless marriage? Here's how to repair your marriage today." Not all people’s thoughts on sexless marriage are equal. Some people have actually figured things out. They’re indistinguishable from the fakes on the surface, but if you’ve lived through this, you can separate the “un-hunh’s” and “ah-hah’s” from the “we tried that, everyone’s tried that, all the frauds recommend it, and it doesn’t work.”
There’s a certain number of bad ideas that get continuous air-time. (They don’t work at all.) Such as: “Well, offer to take care around the house.” Every man who’s heard this idea has exerted herculean efforts to do everything around the house for month after unrewarded month. Women’s response has been near universally, “Oh, gee, that didn’t work. Hm, how about…”
At any rate– the post linked here is not like that, and has some good insights. Note that knowing the nature of the problem does not solve the problem. Understanding the nature of the problem just forces a major shift in thinking. There are many open questions about what to do.
I have much more to say on the subject, but not the time to say it right now. Take care.