An End/Beginning of Year Update

[lovethehub]

Tea,

Excellent post, thank you for answering my question. I had the impression you were very unhappy about the choice and that the rest of your M wasn't going well which is why I wasn't sure why you were in the M. I see I was off base.

[RockJC]

I simply want the POV you discuss to be relevant to the post I made and not include any personal insults.

The main point of the post was never even discussed.

//What is the real issue?//

I still don't know.

[Accuray]

Ha ha, I was predicting this thread was heading the way of Godwin's law and I see it has arrived!

[lovethehub]

RockJC,

Tea has made it clear that he respects his wife enough to be okay with her not having sex, therefore, it isn't our concern why SHE doesn't want to have sex. We are here to support Tea.

[MrBond]

"I simply want the POV you discuss to be relevant to the post I made and not include any personal insults."

All of the POVs were relevant to the post you made. You are just arguing against those POVs for whatever reason. If you really want to understand what is being discussed go back and read the responses to you without your ego. And that's not an insult. What I mean is to take away your preconceived ideas and try seeing it from another person's POV. You never know what you might learn.

[Accuray]

I don't want to misunderstand you, so I have to assume you're not including women who are struggling with the aftermath of abuse or rape, or who have difficulty with vaginismus or a host of other problems? What exactly do you mean by "capable of"? If it means the ability to be aroused for comfortable sex, etc., you're almost excluding it only to women who are more or less in a good relationship with you in the first place, making it a tautology.

Thank you very much for clarifying! Let me be very specific, this is the case I don't understand:

You date a person and have an active sex life, you both enjoy and appreciate sex. You decide to get married, among the factors going into that decision is sexual compatibility.

When you get married, you are entering into a relationship with some shared understandings -- you are committing to be monogamous, you are agreeing to more or less stick to the patterns you have established during dating (i.e. if you are a working professional, you won't suddenly become a ski bum as a unilateral decision). You are agreeing to care for your spouse, and to "be there" for your spouse in a variety of ways, sharing chores driving the other one to the hospital, etc.

Ideally, you are also signing up to take the other person's needs into consideration, and making it your responsibility to fulfill them to the best of your ability for the good of your marriage.

That's the baseline.

I am excluding situations where you got into a marriage with an agreement that there would be no sex.

I am excluding situations where there are medical issues that prevent the ability to have sex.

I am excluding cases where there was sexual trauma or abuse where both parties have agreed that the results of that trauma are best dealt with by abstaining from sex.

So referring back to my baseline, you have two people who have established a relationship including sex, agree to get married and be monogamous, and are generally doing a good job of meeting each other's needs where the partners would say that they are enjoying a happy and satisfying marriage.

*In that context* if one partner unilaterally decides there will be no more sex, I find that incredibly selfish and unjustifiable regardless of the fact that they may decide sex is unimportant to THEM or that they want to show their love in other ways.

It is a position of completely disregarding the needs of your spouse. It is not a discussion, it is not meeting in the middle, it is simply "FU" if you don't like it, that's how it is.

My *opinion*, my *point of view* is that you should not expect to stay married if you take that position and are not willing to work with your spouse to see their needs met, just like you expect to have your needs met.

I enjoy the discussion, and I welcome all of your opinions and input. For Mr. Bond's benefit, I *have* read the SSM book and found it immensely helpful. It was instrumental in moving my marriage from an SSM to one with a healthy sex life -- I was able to take the learnings from it and put it into practice.

I have also read many other books on the subject, I would assert that the stack of books I have read about marriage, sex in marriage, relationships skills, etc. would be taller than I am, and I'm 6' tall, so I'm not commenting without having done any reading.

In that stack, I did not come across even one book that suggested that unilaterally ending sex in marriage was acceptable, or a valid POV. I would assert that virtually any unilateral declaration in marriage that negatively affects your spouse is probably not a very good POV to have.

Acc

[lovethehub]

Accuray,

For me, personally, I agree with you and I think it is selfish and I would not want to stay married under those circumstances. I do feel that if Tea wants to, that's his choice. That is why I asked why he stays, his response makes me feel he is ok with it and still enjoying his M. Although, that wasn't what I took from his other posts. Am I making sense or talking in circles?

[ssmguy]

Accuracy, thanks for the detailed post. I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. And I've also read SSM, a whole bunch of other books, and gone to three separate marriage and sex therapists with my wife over the years. They have been very helpful in improving our relationship overall, except for sex.

But life always has realities and wrinkles that are hard to anticipate. I'm sure each of our situations are complex, and it's easy to think that one can enumerate all possible conditions that others would encounter too.

So, to take what you wrote and apply it to my situation, the wrinkle is that my wife first revealed her sex abuse to me years AFTER we got married. Apparently a lot of feelings about it came back later. She thought it wouldn't affect her at first, and it didn't. So I had what I thought was your "baseline" and then one of your exclusion exceptions was thrown in AFTER the wedding. So how do you deal with that? In any case, that's water over the dam at this point.

So, even aside from the SA, you would say my wife's POV is invalid. OK, I agree, and you and I can assert that until we are blue in the face. But just what am I supposed to do about that?

So then the simple logic that everyone dishes out to others, when it's not their own marriage of course, is, well, just get divorced. OK, any dunce head can come up with that solution. Get a new wife, problem solved. As if wives are just interchangeable units, independent of in-laws, property, children, healthcare plans, memories, friendship since college, and more. And when you have all that and a GOOD friendship with your wife, the advice to SIMPLY divorce just for sex seems absurd beyond belief. So I would get new step kids, new property alignments, health plans, vacation homes, in-laws, wills.... just for sex from a new woman who might herself be hitting menopause soon and also lose interest? Not to mention the even high divorce rate for 2nd marriages. Doesn't seem very tempting, I have to tell you!

There are so many other solutions, FWB, etc. that is now virtually assumed to be commonplace, and it is. But that's not what I'm here to discuss, because I haven't given up on my wife just yet.

[ssmguy]

As you would say, what I wrote were facts. It's that simple. Go back and reread them.

RockJC, sarcasm aside, I believe you mean well. But you have a style of wording and dialog that irks more people. I have easily made comments worse than any you've written here in my day, but I don't see the cost of just saying, OK, that wasn't the best wording and I can see why you would think that way, etc. But yo can't even see how an intelligent and sensitive reader who understands good english in context can make those interpretations from what you said. Everything we say is in a cultural context, it's not just the bare words by themselves. And so what's implied depends on the reader and the culture. I'm sure you know all this. But you're sure not showing it, and instead wasting a lot of time flaming (as I'm perhaps doing now). You've achieved Godwin's law status at this point.

[Accuray]

Accuray,

For me, personally, I agree with you and I think it is selfish and I would not want to stay married under those circumstances. I do feel that if Tea wants to, that's his choice. That is why I asked why he stays, his response makes me feel he is ok with it and still enjoying his M. Although, that wasn't what I took from his other posts. Am I making sense or talking in circles?

No that makes sense. I do believe that some people can find peace in a sexless marriage.

I also believe that some people cannot, and that they spend their lives trying to spackle a thin veneer over their discontent, and no matter how good they are at "act as if", I'm sure their spouses are impacted by their dissatisfaction, and that to me feels like a relationship cancer.

I did not read that The Captain is okay with it and still enjoying his M -- far from it.

I read that The Captain greatly misses having sex as part of a loving relationship, that he took great pride in his ability to please, and that he is NOT happy in a "friendly roommates" arrangement, but that *for now* the situation is not bad enough to leave.

Sometimes we say things are okay and we are just kidding ourselves or trying to convince ourselves when in fact we are not okay with it at all. I don't feel The Captain falls victim to that type of thinking, I think he is extremely self-aware and knows what he's doing, but is also very frustrated by the fact that despite his best efforts and commitment, his W will not move from what is effectively a selfish position. I also understand that having her move from no sex to duty sex would not be enough or even interesting.

In terms of ssmguy, my heart breaks reading that story because he is so far from "okay with it" but there is literally nothing he can do but leave to improve the situation, and in his case he does not see that leaving will be or could be an improvement in any way, so he is forever stuck. It frustrates me deeply because of how I would feel in that situation, but I know that it shouldn't, because it is his life and his decision and I respect that.

Acc