Lil EVERYTHING is great but the sex. Can this be true? In many R's the poor sex is the squeakiest wheel. The part of the R that bothers us as individuals the most.
I found DB by Googling "no sex" "bad sex" or something like that.
I would have said everything was there, in place, and good except that we weren't having sex. I remember a long list of other details that were missing. I also remember you saying, if the sex was there at least once a week, you could overlook bf's other short comings.
Personally, I don’t expect everything to be great even if the sex was good. For me the problem is some things are good, some not so good and the lack of satisfying sex creates resentments that carry over negatively into other areas of the M.
Maybe it is the lack of cooperation in the sexual area that dampens the rest of the R? I know it is all tied together.
I think it may appear to be true for some people. I asked cac last night if he thought it was true for us "before." While he wouldn't use the the word "great," he thought things were fine except for the sex.
But I didn't, and my unhappiness went way back to before we were married. I wasn't chronically unhappy with our R, but there were things about the R that were problematic for me pretty much from the beginning.
And if one partner is not happy with the R in general, everything is not great. That's going to spill out in other areas of the R besides the SL. But because a bad SL looms so large, some HD folk may tend to not register other problems with the R because, to them, those things pale in comparison.
But I guess there are avoidant LD people, like Ms.HD and Mrs.Choc who might say that everything is great except for the sex (meaning except that their SOs WANT it from them).
Still, I think it's an illusion. So, my answer is no, it's not really true.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, does it matter? Even if everything is hunky-dory everywhere else, it would take a saint to be able to compartmentalize the sex conflict and not allow it to bleed over into everything else ... primarily, their attitude. People who feel guilty about considering leaving or throwing down gauntlets because "It's just the sex; everything else is great" are missing the fact that it won't *stay* "just the sex".
K, amen. "everything is great but the sex. Can this be true"? is a question for deeper philosphers than me. Perhaps it CAN be true for a pair of matched LD's, but otherwise, given a couple with grossly mismatched levels of desire, who can tell? The lack of a satisfying sexual relationship "bleeds", as you put it, into other areas - loss of intimacy, repressed feelings, etc. etc. to the point where it's hard to say if "it can be true" or not.
So if your partner is a great parent (which my bf is), a great child to his/her parent (which my bf is), shares your interests, likes the same kind of lifestyle you do, shares or at least is interested in your religion... but doesn't reach for you sexually in the most intimate kind of sharing... how great can it REALLY be?
Ahhh...now this is a dilemma, isn't it? Here you have a person who has everything you want, except for that one thing. I can play devil's advocate and say that any one of these things can lead to the exact same outcome as lack of sex. I can tell you from first hand experience that you can have buffet-style sex but still want out. Makes you wonder if you are just chasing the rainbow. OTOH, maybe what one really needs is the general purpose partner, not really outstanding in any areas but will not create a vacuum. I don't know.
Ask 100 middle aged couples who have been happily married what the f'n secret is. Diminished expectations? No credit limit? Mistress/pool boy? A wine cellar? Multiple hobbies?
Lilli, I hear ya girl. I used to ask myself that all the time. I don't know the answer, maybe its different for everyone. We (hubby and I) seem to have reached a plateau where I just don't care anymore. The only problem with that is, I actually could care less if he came to me today and said he wanted a divorce. I would probably jump for joy.
If PM is correct in the statistics they throw out, 50% of marriage end in divorce, but 80% of marriages fail. This means that even of those that stay married, more then half have failed marriages. 20% of marriages are considered PM's, and thus successful. Considering that 85% of women have issues with desire(according to a recent poll), this means that roughly 15% of women are real HD's. This roughly cooresponds with the number of PM's.
If PM is correct in the statistics they throw out, 50% of marriage end in divorce, but 80% of marriages fail. This means that even of those that stay married, more then half have failed marriages. 20% of marriages are considered PM's, and thus successful. Considering that 85% of women have issues with desire(according to a recent poll), this means that roughly 15% of women are real HD's. This roughly cooresponds with the number of PM's.
PM = Passionate marriage??
Cemar, this is the trouble with manipulating statistics to conveniently fit your own theory. IF 15% of women are real HD's, they do not necessarily comprise the 20% of PMs. Consider how many HD women on this board have non-PM marriages and how many have divorced.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? ~Albert Camus
If PM is correct in the statistics they throw out, 50% of marriage end in divorce, but 80% of marriages fail. This means that even of those that stay married, more then half have failed marriages. 20% of marriages are considered PM's, and thus successful. Considering that 85% of women have issues with desire(according to a recent poll), this means that roughly 15% of women are real HD's. This roughly cooresponds with the number of PM's.
I was going to keep my head down and wait for the email-flame blast wave from responses your post to subside, but where'd you get the 80%/85% numbers? Is PM Passionate Marriage?
true. But think the opposite, how many women that have problems with desire can actually BE in a PM. By the definitions of PM from the book, I'm not sure that a women with LD can even be IN a PM, it requires the physical desire of your spouse.
Something about that book is that all the success cases invloved women that only had repressed desire, meaning that it was not a physical problem. For women that have real physical problems with desire (and that is a high %), I would have no clue as to how they could have a PM.
The 85% of women that have problems with desire? That came from a poll that was done of 1000's of women. It bascially said that 85% of women will essentially be ND at some point in life (some temporary, some permanent).
As for PM, it does have somewhere in that book the statement that only 20% of marriages can really achieve the status of PM, mainly because it is so hard to achieve. Since 50 % of marriages end in divorce, this means that 3/5 of the couples that don't divorce, essentially just give up on the PM, and just stay together, like COMPANIONS.
