If you are the LD or ND person married to an HD spouse, what is your motivation for preserving the marriage when it's been SSM for a long time and the lack of sex has not bothered you?
....Is it the possibility of a future sexual relationship? Is it just the companionship of living together? Is it the public embarrassment of being "dumped" and having everyone wonder why you "couldn't keep your spouse interested"? Is it the jealousy of giving your partner up to someone else? Or is it just a general fear and uncertainty about the influence a new partner of your ex will have over your ex and your kids?
If you're bothered by the image of your ex having passionate sex with a new person, why would you feel that way if you didn't want to have sex with your partner in the first place? As one poster here mentioned, if sex didn't matter to you, why would it matter to you that your ex was having it with someone else?
Or is the premise wrong? Does the lack of sex bother you in the sense that you know you SHOULD want sex, but you know you don't?
...If you truly only loved your partner in an altruistic way, it seems you might even be happy to have them find someone who appreciates them sexually, no?
First, I am new and definately not an expert on relationships. I will share what I have learned from my LD spouse of 38 years.
She is LD, and early in the marriage had a libido equal to mine, but having children and conficts within marriage, plus menopause and aging have left her with a very low libido and self image. I now understand that things (working long hours to establish my career) that I thought I was doing for her and me both were making her feel unloved.
To try to answer one of your questions, since it has been several months since we have been intimate and before that she didn't seem to want sex that often, I don't believe that she is hoping for better sex in the future. In fact during a long talk we had several years ago she told me that she truly loved me and that just because she didn't want to have sex with me, didn't mean she didn't love me. She told me that she showed me her love by washing my clothes, by keeping the house nice, by shopping for food and by her cooking me dinner. It is only since I read the Five Languages of Love, do I understand that she does actively show me her love each day, but in a way that is totally different from how I need to have her express her love to me.
As to compansionship, public embarrassment or jealousy as motives for her staying in a SSM, I think that there may be some elements of that. My wife really feels that I am HER husband and that even without sex, we are still friends, partners in a household, parents of adult children, co-investors in various retirement funds, and housemates who take care of each other.
She feels very strongly that I am the father of her children and that I am the man who will take care of her if she looses her job or if she becomes ill. Those are big things on her mind right now. Several friends of hers have been coming down with life-threatending medical conditions and/or are being forced to retire for medical reasons. One close woman friend had kidney cancer and removal of a kidney, but now seems OK. Another woman friend was diagnosed with advanced Type 2 diabetes and is struggling with weight-loss and eye disease issues. Still another couple we know, the husband sneezed one day and that cause a blood clot to break free that cause a stroke that left him temporarily unable to walk or speak. He is also doing much better, but my wife is keenly aware that she needs someone who will be there for her when and if she has a medical problem. About a year ago, she had a medical scare, where she had some hearling loss and they thought it might be a brain tumor, but it wasn't. In talking about some of her friend health conditions, my wife has made it clear that she counts on me to be there for her in case something happens. She has also this past 6-months been quite nervious about her job in this bad economy. She has said at dinner with firends that if she looses her job, at least she will have me to support her. At other times many years ago during a heated exchange she has told me that if I ever divorced her, she would take all my money and posessions to the point that I wished I had not divorced her. I believe she would, but I also think she would fight to avoid divorce.
The thing that I am coming to terms with is that I need sex and touching to feel loved and that my wife needs quality time from me talking to her and listening to her to feel she is loved and she needs me to perform obvious acts of service/devotion for her to feel loved. When I ask her about what is going to happen to her during the day at breakfast and when at dinner I ask about how each of those things went during the day she feels that I love her. When I do the dishes after dinner, when I vaccum the house on the weekend or run a load of my underwear throught the wash, she feels that I am showing her the love that she needs. When she is feeling loved or when she is feeling like I don't show her an love, sex and touching are not a motivating factor to her. Sex is just something she doesn't seem to be interested in.
I read something interesting which said that for some women, the normal patern of desire, then foreplay to cause arousal, then intercourse is not how they operate. This other small group of women have no desire for sex, until after they have had foreplay and are physically aroused. Then and only then do they want to complete the sex act. For these women, they have to start to have sex, before they can experience a desire to have sex. For them once the act is completed they again have no desire to have sex until they are in the middle of it. For them it is difficult to express sexuality unless it is as an act of devotion, submission or gift to their husbands. It is my hope to gradually find out, if this is how my wife feels about sex.
Part of my wife's low libido, I attribute to her being raised by two parents who I never saw show much physical affection for each other and who were both alcoholics, but not to the point of not being functional. They were also very cruel to their children and verbally controlling and verbally abusive. I also attribute part of her inhibitions to being educated in an all girls catholic middle and high school, where there was a huge pressure to inform young women that "nice girls don't, until after they are married." When, we have discussed this later point, my wife has informed me that the nuns had no idea the kind of disgusting things that husbands wanted their wives to do and so she rejects the "until after marriage" part of the educational lecture.
Another part of her low libido, I attribute to aging, menopause, and possibly some health condition that I am hoping to try to talk her into having a medical check up about.
Still another part of her low libido I attribute to stress over her job and fear of loosing it. I also feel that over the course of our marriage, I may not have been there for her showing her my love for her, in the way she needs it expressed to feel loved.
That is kind of a long-winded explaination for why I feel that my wife is content in a SSM at least for now. It has been good therapy for me to get it off my chest, so thank you.
I on the other hand, am not content and am desparately working to GAL, loose weight, get in shape physically, learn more about relationships and myself. Until I found this forum and read certain books, including SSM, I felt that I was alone and that divorce or celbacy were the only options. Now I have hope that at some time in the not to distant future, I may also get the physical love that I need from my wife. I am also coming to the conclusion that I will try to make my marriage better, with create situation where my wife can help in making it better (or not) and if I can't make our marriage better, I will make myself better. Then I will let the future decide if I stay married or I divorce, but that will be a decision point off in the future after I have lost the desire to try to improve things.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
