Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[Bagheera]

There is a characteristic pattern to my life and specifically in my love relationships...it is that they ultimately are sexless. Or as I sometimes say of myself, I seek out women with whom I desire to be sexually intimate and related, whose definition of "success" is if they don't have sex with me.

On the one hand, it may be true that you are sub-consciously attracted to women who are either inherently low-desire (sexually), and who therefore lose much of the sex-drive following the dopamine-laden, "infatuation" stage of the relationship, or perhaps women who have "attachment disorders" of the kind that cause them to avoid intimacy and close physical contact in general.

If you have read through my threads, you will know that I married a woman who was sexually abused in her childhood and who therefore suffers from intimacy-avoidance issues herself...and that there is a psychological link between the woman that I married and a similar history on my mother's part. From what I understand, it's a common phenomena for people to recreate the relationship problems of their childhood within their own pairings/marriages: a subconscious effort to continue the "fight" and finally solve what they were unable to "fix" growing up.

On the other hand, it may be that you have failed to understand and develop the personal attributes and behaviors that keep you sexually attractive to your partners. Sexual attractiveness is not, generally, a function of conscious thought (although it can be affected by it). It is, instead, largely a function of our primal, subconscious drives and reactions to stimuli which have roots going back millions of years in our evolutionary history. Men are naturally attracted to women who have the highest potential for successful child bearing and child care-giving (physical and personality attributes). Women are naturally attracted to men who have the highest potential for successfully fathering offspring and then defending them and providing (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) for those children, and her...again, these are both physical and personality attributes. Even today, in our modern, relatively easy-survival societies, we are still largely driven by old, deeply-rooted primal "instincts" when it comes to what we find sexually attractive in a member of the opposite sex.

Humans, in particular, use sex *primarily* as a way to keep couples pair-bonded together for the many years necessary for child-rearing. From an evolutionary standpoint, this appears to be a relatively recent phenomena, however, and not yet fully developed and "automatic," at least not in a robust sense. Sex-drives in a bonded pair are easily derailed, especially once the infatuation stage of the R is complete (the brain-chemical boost goes away) and the demands of child-care begin to apply stress on the couple. It takes work and effort to keep the "desire to couple" alive and healthy in a long-term relationship.

Might I suggest to you, TEGH, that you begin to make a study of human sexuality and how it functions? There are been a large number of modern studies on the topic, and also on the basic differences between males and females of our species in general, that may help to shed some light on how your relationships have developed in the manner that they have.

-- B.