“How men and women stay married in this day and age is a mystery to me.”
— Older man in a sexless marriage.
In eight words, here’s how people stay happily married:
They have the courage to address their problems.
Just stick with this essay, you in the sexless marriage. It contains the hard-won wisdom of a lot of people who tried to handle things the “easy” way.
Many of these people have moved on in life, taken down the chronicles of their struggle with a dead bedroom-roommate marriage, and disappeared into the ether. But in six years of running this pub, I read and corresponded with them, and their stories have stayed with me.
Read on. I am the repository of that process called (and quite literally, too): Fuck Around And Find Out.
And I don’t recommend it.
“Ohhhh, but I just can’t, just can’t, just can’t, divorce!”
Get angry and blame the spouse for all the problems.
Look at the marriage as a transaction: “I provide the money, she OWES me sex.”
They think they understand why the spouse has shut down sex. (Really, they have no idea. There are those times the spouse doesn’t either! So, how can you?)
They feel justified in doing whatever they want to do. Massage parlors, call girls, or an affair.
These Fatal Five have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.
Ohhhhh, money!
It’s interesting how the same guys who advise men to stay in a shit marriage because of financial fears change their tune if it looks like the wife in question is mentally ill or abusing the kids.
If you can divorce if she had BPD and was abusing the kids, YOU CAN DIVORCE. Period.
It shocks one to see how many people are okay with never having the relationship they actually want, with a wife who is fun and happy and loves and wants them. They are sacrificing their lives on the altar of money, fueling what’s left of their dreams on righteous anger.
Would you want your son living this kind of life, in this kind of marriage? If you do not handle your life correctly, chances are he won’t, either. Kids are like sponges, and your son/daughter is just soaking up your marriage as “the way marriage is.”
It’s not a happy life to be running around, sneaking sex with someone who loves you but whom you will never actually be with (and, come on, admit it — you don’t really want to be with her anyway), or simulating real acceptance with professionals who are taking the very money you will not divorce because you don’t want to part with!
How expensive is your average call girl or happy ending massage these days? Multiply that by how many times you go in a year, and … how much money is that? You could pay child support with that and find a real relationship. (Or is it easier to just say, “I have to go to a massage parlor. Poor me. Poor me?”)
Remember the “mid-thirties power flip” from Sex and the City? It’s a real thing. Older women outnumber older men on the dating market more and more the older you get. Not to mention the fact that an older man is always considered attractive and you can date younger.
Women cannot. We are “old, fat, and ugly hags,” which is why I retired from dating and hung it up. (Kindly note the superficiality of that attitude. Many women who would treat a man the way you say you want to be treated are deterred from dating because of just that attitude.)
However, you would need to be free first in order to actually score the relationship you say you want. Do that, live your life honestly and above board, and you will actually be FREE when a woman comes along who will treat you the way you say you want to be treated.
Do You Blame Your Spouse for All Your Problems?
I recently read Pretty Kinky for a Love Story, by Anna Eliza Rose, who writes on Medium and has the kind of openness toward sex these sexless marriage guys seem to dream about. Even though she has, count ’em, four kids.
You should read that book. Her husband literally has his wildest fantasy sex life. And yet, reading between the lines, what did I find myself thinking?
Look how this guy treats his wife.
Jesus fucking Christ. Most women would kill to have a husband who participates in the running of the house and the raising of the children the way this guy does, and who does not treat the time she needs for sexual warmup as a personal imposition. Here is a guy who makes it easy, and not difficult, for his wife to find her sexual self without fear, embarrassment, or shame.
As you read, think to yourself every time Rose expresses how much she loves her husband and how grateful she is to have him in her life: Why is that? And, Have I brought my best self to my wife the way this guy does? Why does she feel so safe to tell him who she is sexually?
Marriage Is Not a Transaction
If you are coming to your marriage thinking, “I make the money so she owes me sex!” how loving is that? You want her to express love to you, right?
It goes both ways. Once you fall into this transactional way of thinking, the sex in your marriage is doomed and you are on your way to Roommatesville.
Do You THINK You Understand Why Your Spouse Has Shut Down Sex?
Here’s a good quick video for you:
nobody intends a bait and switch!!
Did you know that the natural state of your body is to have an erection?
No, seriously. If you don’t have an erection right now, it’s because the muscles that govern blood flow to your penis are tight and closed. The moment they relax — boi-oi-oinng! Your penis is hard and ready, and it happens in minutes. (Unless you are older, or you are on certain medications, or you have some underlying health conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes.)
Now … did you know that women have the same amount of erectile tissue you do? Yep. It’s mostly internal, but please google anatomy of the clitoris sometime. Basically, she has the female version of the penis that needs to get just as hard as you do before she is ready to go.
The difference is, our default state is not erection. For us to be ready to go, the body has to switch gears, the mind has to be on sex (not how fat we are, not the kids, not the million things that have to get done tonight before Little Johnny and Little Susie can get to school tomorrow in one piece.)
Our body has to work to fill our erection, and it’s slow and laborious and takes at least twenty minutes most of the time. If we’re twenty-two and have lots of free time because we’re in college and have no responsibilities, and our head is of full of society’s messages about how happy we’ll be in love and married with children, maybe it can happen a little faster, but put some age on us and a couple of babies in us, tons and tons of housework and job work and messages about how we’re no longer a size two, and our … bodies … work … a … whole … lot … slower.
We’re sorry about it. If you make us ashamed of it, or you act put out because we need foreplay … it’s … going … to … work … even … more … slowly.
The upside of that is, when we’re turned on, we’re turned on. We literally can go all night. But most of us never get there, because we never get the kind of lovemaking that gets our erection all the way up. Once it’s over, the body has to start all over again, which is why she can have a fine time one night and then forget about sex for the next three weeks.
And that’s just one of the reasons we might not be into sex the way we used to be. The routines and work of daily life deaden all of us. One quarter of us have been raped or otherwise sexually abused or molested. Some of us are avoidantly attached. Issues in the marriage from years ago may still be festering and left unresolved. Issues from our childhood may still be festering and left unresolved. Some of us have endo. Some of us are in perimenopause. Some of us had a hysterectomy. Some of us were taught that Sex Is Evil and women who want it are sluts.
Some of this is about you. Some of it isn’t. Some of this the woman herself is completely unaware of.
It all requires investigation you cannot perform with a snap judgment.
You do not know why she does not want sex. It could be that she doesn’t know, either. Many a woman has broken down in a therapist’s office, admitting that very thing.
“She Won’t Have Sex with Me, So I Am Justified in WHATEVER I Want to Do.”
Yeah. That attitude comes with some serious consequences. The phrase, Fuck Around And Find Out had to originate in extramarital sex.
Let me, The Thinking Other Woman, take you on a guided tour. Keep your hands in the boat.
Speaking as a former other woman, this so-called “option” uses the living shit out of your girlfriend, whom you are lying to. “As soon as, as soon as …” WASTES years of her life.
It also wastes years of your life.
You say you want a real relationship with a life partner who wants you sexually. Yet you put your dick in someone you will never make your life partner, and then you will leave her to go back to a marriage with someone who does not want sex with you!
That is what 99% of married men do once they are exposed to the social shame of an affair.
Which kind of sounds to me like what you really want is to stay shackled to someone you’re angry with. It lets you tell yourself you are the good guy and the wronged party while you live a life of hatred and resentment. Because money and social standing, so the story goes, is worth a corrosive inner life.
Women who acquiesce to sex with married men already have bad childhoods in difficult families that made them feel like shit to begin with. I’ve heard from some fifty “other” women and read about many more, and I have never seen a single one who had a good childhood that made her feel good enough to be loved. Not even one.
Now the way you are about to treat her is going to make her feel even more like shit.
She will most likely fall in love, and you already know RIGHT NOW that you will never, ever, ever leave your wife. (“Money, money, money, money.”)
You will justify this by telling yourself, “I told her how it was up front and she did it anyway! It was her job to protect herself, so this is all her fault.”
Yep, it is all her fault. She will accept a stray afternoon of explosive sex here and there in exchange for never hearing from you otherwise except for some furtive texts from the bathroom, and either you saying, “As soon as the last kid graduates high school,” or, “I told you I would never leave my wife!”
What you are really saying is, “I expect you to be there for me, but I will never be there for you. You are to accept this ‘deal,’ or I will be angry with you.” While she is in fantasyland. Over you. And she does not want to believe it.
I have news for you, sir. She has already been accepting this “deal” all her life. Which is why she cannot protect herself from it.
The woman who offers sex and comfort to a married man is already a broken person. She cannot protect herself.
So, all you are doing is offloading your marriage problems onto someone already troubled whom you will now use … until her unhappiness is too much of a drag for you, or until someone finds out you are cheating.
While you tell yourself you are the good guy, and the wronged party!
At which point you will go right back to that same wife. Because you cannot face divorce. Only now, she gets to act like the blameless injured party, and you are right back to that shitty marriage … with an affair on top of it that you must now face marriage counseling or divorce over. Where the two of you will either finally man up and ADDRESS YOUR PROBLEMS, or you will sit right there in shit for the rest of your life.
Because that is right where an affair will take you, only it will be TONS more embarrassing, expensive, and painful. And it hurts someone stupid enough to fall in love with you who was already having life bad enough anyway. (Two of them, in fact.)
Now your mistress has lost years of her life to this affair. She will be ostracized by everyone who finds out. She will be devastated, because she loved you. She offered you what you said you wanted, but didn’t really want.
And now she has no one to turn to, because anyone she tells will smear her for having an affair.
Nice job.
And this is what everyone will tell you once they find out you have cheated. Once they are done roasting you for hurting your wife and children.
It is far, far better to actually CONFRONT your wife and say something like, “If you don’t do something to repair our marriage, I am prepared to divorce you,” or, “I am prepared to step out and see someone on the side,” than it is to just sneak around and use someone else in secret.
At least if the wife consents, it’s not cheating. You’re still going to RUIN some other woman’s life (and these stories are rampant in the affair world, which is why I advise women NEVER to do this), but at least you aren’t cheating.
If you’re absolutely too chicken-shit to divorce or commit to therapy, I strongly advise confining your extramarital sex to professionals only. An escort, hooker, or call girl is only doing it for the money. She will not fall in love. You cannot ruin her life. You are giving her your money!
And I’ve heard from wayyyy too many mistresses whose lives have been ruined. The man gets what he wants until it doesn’t work anymore, and she is left devastated, after years she cannot get back. Ten years isn’t going to do her any favors on the dating market, and she could have met someone else who really wants her.
You do not. What you want is money. And you are prepared to offload all kinds of pain and suffering onto other people rather than live your life honestly and above board with everyone in it.
But … in complaining about your sexless marriage, aren’t you the one going around moaning to other people that what you really want, is someone who wants you?
None of the above bullshit is ever going to get you there.
You have to decide: Do I really want someone who wants me?
Because if you do, only honest, above-board work is going to get you there. And counseling or divorce (or counseling and then divorce) are the only two things that fit that bill.
“Ohhh, I can’t, I can’t!” thinking, putting all the blame on your spouse, unjustified mind reading, and sneaking around on the sly is not going to get you the life you say you want.
However, considering the outcome of most of these situations I’ve read about, I’m beginning to think that a life of money tied to anger and bitter resentment is more the ticket for most of you anyway. And if it is, then you’ve made your bed.
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