Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Since my husband thinks it's "just sex" and not that important, then, theoretically, it shouldn't be important to him if I have "just sex" with someone else. The rest of our marriage is fairly tolerable, and there are a lot of reasons to stay, just this one "little" issue. I'm a good wife in all the other categories. Yet I think forsaking that one promise of fidelity would, indeed, detract from who I am (or, perhaps, thought I was), redefining it to a large degree.

A slippery slope, it seems, as solutions go.

I concur. One could easily rationalize and justify "just sex" outside a marriage with exactly the view your articulated. And not necessaily with just one person outside of the marriage, but with many. It might make a marriage even more tolerable because for the person with the commitment to a non-sexual marriage, that "problem" would be "solved." And for the person who felt sexually deprived, it would also be a way to address that deprivation.

However, it begs a question (one that I've asked myself): Why would one wish to maintain a sexless marriage (with sex and intimacy outside the marriage) when one could hae a marriage or a committed relationship that actually includes sex and intimacy?

The Captain