Michelle, I havent posted for 3 years. I just got your email about the sexstarved marriage. If anyone knows what that can do to a person its me. I read my own words in your article from one of my most painful posts.

"This lack of sex is more than just a lack of physical attention... It goes deep into a woman's heart. I think in a normal marriage, a couple can fight about anything, but then they can make love and soothe the bad feelings... sort of like a rebirth.. a forgiving ritual. But when you are deprived of even that, bitterness and resentment and desperation accumulate.

I have a husband who is a good guy, great father, good provider, but I have no lover. I'm angry about the wasted years, the years I could have been loving, but spent agonizing about why I was being deprived. It's so much more than sex. It's feeling wanted, and sexy and desired by the man that you are committed to for life. "

I agonized over this. It was the center of my life because I was taught that my marriage should be the center of my life, and it really was. But to be so devoted to a marriage that made me so unhappy and rejected only made me crazy.

In that quote I ironically made the statement "in a normal marriage". Mine was not the typical marriage where both people genuinely care about each other but have an issue with sex. I was married to a narcissist and he really didnt care how unhappy I was. It wasnt an issue for him. Sex was a burden, not because of his lack of desire, He had all kinds of desire in his mind for anything but me. I dont think he ever even cheated... He had a profound fear of intimacy and sex to him was something to avoid because it represented more...the fact that I might expect him to love me..and sex was pressure for him to show it. It wasnt bordom..it was fear and loathing the fact that there might be, and should be, more to it than sex.


A narcissist views his wife as an object, not a person and her needs and desires are an annoyance. He genuinly did not care about me and trying to work on it was even more demoraizing and depressing. He gave me endless reasons why I was less than desirable to him and all of them were mearly because I was me. This was nothing short of emotional abuse and when it was addressed it was defended and justified.

You cant change another person if they just dont have the capacity to care about you. For years I tried to become whatever it was he said he wanted...but i couldnt be me. Thats not a marriage...so its over now.

Reading what I had posted when I was in the deepest agony over what to do about my loveless passionless touchless rejected in every way a woman could be rejected marriage brings back exactly what I felt then. Being out of it now I KNOW im better off with NOONE than disreguarded and demoralized for the rest of my life for the sake of a pseudo marriage that was never a marriage and never would have been no matter what I did.

Sometimes its not healthy to stay in a relationship. Lack of sexual desire is not always from those reasons you note. It can also be a pathological controlling manipulative personality disorder and in that case there can be no hope.

I applaud you for your focus on this topic for those who are faithfully involved and not getting those important needs met by the only person that they can legitimately go to, or just go without. Its a horrible position to be in and it hurts into the human soul.
I know.
Sandi