Your whole scenario about your wife's "airtight logic" when you bring up sex is exactly how my H operated during his depression to make it impossible to have conversations with him. It's a soul-killing bubble to live in, though, and believe me she's not HAPPY to have trapped herself there, even though she's terrified of anyone popping the bubble right now.
Thanks for the insight. That's useful to know. I have to paint a positive picture of what it could be like. What certainly did NOT work in the past was to criticize my wife for her lack of interest. As you say about your husband, I think depression has been a part of the problem too.
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You ask about motivations for preserving an unsatisfactory marriage--these include all the reasons you gave, but the worst loss would have been the sense of exclusivity we had when we fell in love--divorce would have put an end to any possibility of rekindling our relationship when it WORKED. The thought of any one else meaning as much to H, or him sharing his intimate feelings with another, was excruciating.
I'm curious if your emphasis is more on the physical or the emotional aspect when you say these things. The stereotype is that women are more upset about the emotional "infidelity" than the physical one. That is, they would be less upset if their husband had a one-night stand or a "a little too much touching" with a stripper in the Champagne Room at the local strip club than they would be if their husbands had developed mutual feelings for another woman that made them giddy, unable to stop thinking about each other, sending dozens of text messages every day, etc.
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Face it, a divorce rips apart your known world, facing you to confront all the mistakes and weaknesses and failures and defenses and denials which led to this imperfect result. Even in the most amicable situation, it strips you bare. That's why people who are hiding from what they're refusing to deal with shrink from the thought.
