After living through an SSM myself and helping several friends through it as well, plus reading and researching the issue for many years...I have come up with the obvious solution: don't marry someone who has a different sex/desire level than you do!
DUH!
OK, I'm being silly here. But also serious.
So many people (including myself) just think that the sex will "work itself out" and while they are engaged, they already know there is a problem, but again, they just assume it will "work itself out". How naive is this? Why would it just "work itself out"? There is no reason it should, and we don't have any evidence that its going to.
Love is not enough. So many people don't understand what this means. They meet and fall in love and assume because they love each other that marriage is the obvious next step. OK yeah, there is a little problem in the sex department, but it will work itself out. We love each other, therefore that should be enough.
Love is never enough!
If only I could have understood what that really means.
Now I know there are many couples who my "obvious solution" doesn't apply to, such as:
...Couples who did have great and frequent sex and both wanted it equally in the beginning, but then something changed for one or both partners that caused the SSM later.
...When there is an MLC involved, this kind of thing can't be forseen.
...SSM's due to tragedy, illness, disability...this kind of thing can't be forseen either.
...Marriages where one of the partners is hiding their true sex drive from the other for some reason, or in any way "duping" one of the partners.
But beyond the above types of couples and a few others I didn't mention, there really are couples who know before they get married that their sex drives aren't matched up and yet they get married anyway. It is THOSE couples who maybe could have been saved by an intervention of sorts...
How can we intervene?
This is something hopefully others can share in but to me it seems that there needs to be MARRIAGE EDUCATION somewhere in our socitety. Maybe as a required college course? People need to be educated before they get married about what really causes divorce. Churches try to do pre-marriage counseling but it doesn't seem to be that effective. I think we need to get ahold of people who aren't even necessarily engaged or in a relationship yet - and educate them. Because the person who is already engaged cannot really *see* the truth out there. But people who are not in a relationship are truly interested in learning. How can we reach young people and tell them before they meet someone the ugly facts about divorce?
We need preventative divorce training, for all young people. If they could receive this training, then when they did meet someone and fall in love, if they then found there is a large difference in sex drive, they could call back on their training and realize "oh, I better not move toward marriage with this person without figuring out this problem first".
If all the HD people could be married to HD people, and all the LD people could be married to LD people...wouldn't we be happily married?
