Margali, it's not about hanging in without fighting, and it's not about getting used to anything. It's about facing the fight head on, admitting to yourself what the stakes are, and steadfastly defending your own integrity. It's about not giving up and accepting a false choice limited to either sacrificing your integrity so you can accept a sexless marriage on the one hand or pre-emptively walking out because "it shouldn't be this hard" on the other.
Maybe old has-been athletes are just suckers for this kind of "are you WITH me, men?" pep talk stuff, but to me, Schnarch reads like a call to arms.
Captain, what you suggest is possible. But to believe it means to jump to the conclusion that the worst is true about Margali's husband without evidence. You keep insisting that the HD partner has everything figured out and knows what goes on in the LD partner's head. I see no evidence that it happens that way very often. Your insistence that people should just learn to accept that LD partners are just out to deceive everyone is not safe advice for anyone to follow. Again, I'm not trying to pick on you, and I've stayed out of your thread for a long time now. But you're hurting people instead of helping with this constant refrain of doom. Maybe Margali's husband (and your wife) really are just bad, shallow people who only care about appearances and are willing to hurt her (and you) as much as it takes to have the appearances without loving sex, which they hate because of something innate in their personalities and not because of anything they're going through. And maybe it's even possible that your other relationships were with women just as messed up, and that the whole thing was unlucky chance on your part and hers and so there's nothing you or she can do about it. But the odds of that are very, very low.
