What do you think of this article? Single people respond as well. Don't shoot me because I read The Atlantic Monthly. It's not always boring About sexless marriages - I cannot say I'm thrilled they exist, but the fact that they do exist substantially increases my income. I don't think I'm qualified to say much more. I haven't been married, and I have no children. Sex is totally different without the obligations and responsibilities of a family.

this article is right up there with Tuesday's beautiful "thought for the day" post in pointing out how disconnected from basic human values our society has become in the all consuming pursuit of money, security, and "accomplishent".

While your honesty in mentioning dissatisfied husbands comprise a decent amount of your business is laudable , this article is a sorry reflection on a society that is increasingly being squeezed between economic insecurity, unrealistic expectations, disappearing social institutions and personal roles, rampant selfishness, and "divide and conquer" gender politics.  So many couples I have known have ended up with the individuals looking at each other as combattants.

I know that raising children is a full time task, and that it changes many a marraige forever.  Also, men are (in general) increasingly poorly socialized to function well inside a married environment, as their necessary roles are changing.  However, it is the individual spouses priorities and desire for communication and self-awareness before the children are born that will determine whether they are able to balance children with desire for their spouse.  As anyone involved in a long term relationship knows, desire wanes with time.  That is a simple human psychological fact.  However, desire can take on different forms.  If someone doesn't ascribe more importance to a "hot lay" than loving your partner in a bigger way and looking inside yourself for areas to grow in, the sex can stay hot forever, if less frequent.  It all depends on what you need to get out of the sexual act as an individual, and what you do to keep that something that isn't chained to your partner's appearance, your own gratification, or whether or not it is convenient to spend quality time with the person you committed your life to.

The best quote in the article, though, was "Marraige is the most efficient engine of disenchantment ever invented."  Classic!

Well, I was married once (very briefly) and we weren't together long enough to stop having sex.....but I did once hear a funny thought about that:  The first couple of years of marriage, you have sex everywhere...the kitchen table, bathroom counter, in a parked car, etc.  After that it's hallway sex.  Hallway sex is where you walk past each other in the hall and say "F*ck You!"

This is nothing new, when I was married almost thirty years ago (there I lost the interest of 90% of the gals on this board) my father told me to put a penny in a jar for one year every time my wife and I had sex. Than he said after one year take out a penny every time you have sex.  He said you will never run out.
Fucked up but so true.

Isn't it interesting all the books and TV shows that try to tell married people how to get the spark back into their sex life, when I can do that in one hour by seeing the provider of my choise.  Any other questions as to why us married men are into the hobby.

IMHO  SlowStart

-- Modified on 8/7/2003 6:40:03 PM

I am relieved(kind of), but saddened just the same, to learn from the article my situation(married with children and absolutely no sex)is not something I live with alone. I have come to appreciate the fact Providers can provide a genuinely wonderful needed service as a result of this. I truly need female companionship and sex is just part of it. I, and Im willing to bet many others, long for a woman to confide in as well as have physical contact with. Marriage today involves people being in a lifestyle completely unknown before the secound half of the 20th Century. Jerked in all directions and by all sorts of new and ever increasing demands. This natually has consequences: stress, resentment and physical exhaustion being three which come to mind. These byproducts, and there are lots more, are never going to help a marriage sex life. You and your peers service is both needed and very much appreciated by guys like me. Thank you for posting the article, raising the issue and being there.  

i'm totally "Sciureas" [sic] it's no joke ... she can't keep her tiny paws off me

Though I'm not married, I couldn't imagine not wanting to have lots of sex with a husband.  It's kind of like water or oxygen to me.

Isn't the real issue with sexless marriages the loss of intimacy between the partners?  

We can go on and on about how circumstances have made it difficult to maintain an active sex life, but in the last analysis we're all responsible for our own destinies.  Granted, if people are in a sexless union and are happy with it, then more power to them.  But if they're not happy with it, then they ought to get their priorities straight.  Do they want physical intimacy?  Do they want emotional intimacy?  Or is it more important to pursue the career, decorate the house, blah, blah, blah???  The article seems concerned with upper middle class, educated couples:  well, those are the folks who have the economic and circumstantial power to run their lives as they see fit...so if they're not enjoying each other physically, I say that it's because they don't want to...

But that brings me to the more fundamental issue:  if people don't want intimacy, why?  The simple answer is that it's scary:  it's scary to expose vulnerabilities, weaknesses and foibles.  For example, I'm a man with a lot of the trappings of "power."  In bed, however, my sexual desires overtake me and I am "powerless" with the right sexual partner.  And I know other men are the same way...which brings me to the next point...

If I'm going to be physically intimate with my wife or S.O., I'm becoming "powerless" and vulnerable to someone who ALSO intimately knows every other aspect of me...so I'm really, really exposed.  If I'm with a provider, I can be physically intimate and vulnerable on that side of me, but I retain my "true" identity and "power."  It's not as threatening.

Now, truth be told, it's not as schematic as all this in real life, but I think that this is what goes on with a lot of couples and guys who see providers....  thoughts anyone?

T.

I think everyone's situation is different.

Especially for upper and upper middle class couples, there's a lot of demands on them.  Often the constant nature of these demands mean that the people grow apart.  Family, social, and sometimes career responsibilities often make it more expedient to remain together after this has happened.  This is especially true if what's lacking from the relationship can easily be found elsewhere discretely.  This may be sex.  It may be companionship.  It may be a sense of being needed and/or wanted.

I don't think this is anything new.  People of our parents' generation experienced this.  Their parents' generation experienced this and so on.

Having ended a nearly sexless 12 year marriage, I can tell you my experience.

It was not about the two-career thing.

It was not about raising a kid being so exhausting.

It was a control thing, plain and simple.

I bore the brunt of my ex's issues with her father. I bore the brunt of a date rape that happened to her in college, but wasn't recollected until after we were engaged.

My feeling has always been that people do what they want to do. If they are not having sex, it is because they don't want to do it. The reasons why they don't want to do it may vary. But I don't believe it when someone says they want to have sex, but they're too tired, stressed, etc. That is BS.

Well, I feel better. How about all of you?

If you were powerless and vulnerable in the past, and your trust was abused (for example, for some people this happens when they are a child and their parent betrays their trust), you may have difficulty becoming vulnerable again.  

The answer is to explore what happened when you were a child, and gain the self-knowledge that can free you.

Susan I love that.  I thought I was going to read a story about some hot sex in the hallway.  I have been married twice for about 10 years each time.  I can honestly say the sex was always hot.  But I am just a 10 year man.

Don't be stingy give your wife some sex.

Singleton,  we know you make John Holmes look like a cub scout, so no wonder your "wife"???  whats it from you 24/7

-- Modified on 8/7/2003 6:47:39 PM

I've thought many of the ideas expressed in the article, but if a man had written it, he would have been publicly humiliated and cast as a boor.  Feminism has also complicated marital sex by introducing elements of power into an act which if done correctly should be devoid of it.  Having said that, feminism alone is not the reason for sexless marriages; the description of the 1960s-era marriage books only prove nothing other than the fact that this is an age old problem with each generation's own unique take on the matter.  I can tell you for a certainty that none of the women I knew of the "wifely duties" generation were greeting their husbands at the door wearing nothing but saran wrap, even if they owned all the marriage manuals in print.

At the risk of over-generalizing, the experience in my circles has been that men's desire for their partners does not truly wane but a woman's desire for him is very much conditional and negotiable.  That is why sex is great before marriage but once he makes the commitment to marry, sex will probably go well only for as long as the wife needs it to (e.g., to have a family).  The presence of kids in the household is not the issue.  If a married woman wants another child, the couples' sex life has a way of miraculously revving up again no matter how exhausting the little tykes are.  Likewise, I believe that the dual professional dynamic, while undoubtedly stressful, is only a veneer on the same deal.  

Sex for its own sake remains a vulgar thing to a lot of women, especially when they feel they are caving in to nothing more than a physical "need" of their spouse.  (BTW, reducing men to sex-driven animals is really nothing more than a ploy to fend them off.  A review of the posts on this discussion board clearly shows a great many men spending their time and money searching for and spending time with "ATFs" because they miss the emotional fullness that intimacy brings.)  Most men can sense when they are being patronized in bed, do not want to participate in it, and would rather go without.  And yes, the huge void that results is probably why the professional companionship industry exists .

I too noticed the focus on "upper middle class, educated couples".  Well, these are the very people who are obsessed with "success" and "moving up the ladder" at all costs.  And the cost is high.  Like Alice, they have to run as fast as they can just to stand still.

For myself, I'll never own a cell phone or a laptop.  Somehow I just can't think of a device which "allows" me to take the job wherever I go as an improvement in my quality of life.

I anyone wants a statement of what's missing, I suggest going back to Tammy's "thought for the day" thread of Aug. 5.  I particularly recommend this linked post.

How did we ever get to this situation?  Who the hell wants their employer to own them in that way?

I refuse to carry either.

Life is difficult and complex, and we have to deal with it or fail.
The attractions that we had for our SO when we were younger aren't going to be there in middle age.  
Relationships have to be nutured over time because they necessarily change. They are built out of communication and accomplishing things together and not out of physical beauty.
The bottom line is does the sexual relationship work or not. If it doesn't, we each have the responsibility to make it work or have the relationship fail and suffer the loss of everything we have already invested and psychological injury to our children.  Think of it as a lifelong adventure presenting new challanges. And if either partner needs the fantacy of a provider to remember the urges, so be it; just make it work.

Just my opinion.

Very interesting posts here. My wife does not work and we dont have any children. Yet we still have the same problem with a sexless marrage. She says its a medical problem. We didnt have any problems when we first started up. Shortly after we married her attitudes on sex changed.  She doesnt want to do it and I wont press her to. If she doesnt desire me how can I want her?

I am very close to divorce.
I think about it every day.

It's funny, sometimes the thought of being in a relationship, is scarey. Right now in my life, I am comfortable with variety, and I know that I will probably be the one cheating on him, than him me...so, I am doing the right thing by keeping myself as a "Singleton"

Mel