SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

For men, sexual connection typically leads to emotional desire and connection.

So a.man cannot experience any emotional intimacy without having his dick in a vagina...Ugh! I am so with Prissy on this. For a relationship to work both parties need to have a bond BEFORE sex. Sex adds to it but should not be the foundation on which a relationship is formed.

You are reading too much into what I wrote. Of course a man can experience intimacy without sex.

It was a simplistic explanation of how men and women typically vary in marriage.

I was not trying to imply that a man is like hi I'm Dave, then they have sex, and then he feels emotional connection. I thought we were talking about a marriage relationship.

[This message edited by heartneedsglue at 9:52 AM, August 11th (Friday)]

Some quick thoughts ...

1) I think Love Languages play a big part in this - acts of service vs. physical affection. I was amazed at how few dishes I had to wash before my W started craving sex (well, maybe not craving ).

2) I've always thought that good sex would keep my W attached and faithful, even though I knew that proposition wasn't supported by real life experience. But I can't shake the thought.

3) There were and are times my W refuses sex, and that always weighs on me. It always raises the question, 'What's wrong with me?'

But she pretty much always had and has a good reason for avoiding intercourse. IOW, the thing that's wrong with me is that I think something's wrong with me.

When she says 'No,' I feel rejected as a person and as a lover, but that's not what is really going on!

Sometimes, I focus on the times she's said 'Yes' instead of the times she's said 'No.' That helps resolve the fear of rejection.

4) Girls are subjected to a lot of harassment, and many are subjected to sexual abuse. I wonder how much that affects wives' desire for sex. I wonder how many Ws fear being vulnerable enough to open themselves up to pleasure.

5) I think the article hurt a lot of people. If you're in a sexless M and want more sex, it doesn't really help to read, 'Just do it,' and if you don;t, your spouse will cheat.

6) I'm 100% on board with D if you're not getting enough sex and if you've worked and played with your partner to improve things without success. Communication, no cheating.

[This message edited by sisoon at 10:35 AM, August 11th (Friday)]

2) I've always thought that good sex would keep my W attached and faithful, even though I knew that proposition wasn't supported by real life experience. But I can't shake the thought.

Me too. I have the higher sex drive, more experience, and I'm the woman. There was nothing too freaky for me to do, but my WH has always been pretty vanilla and that was okay too. I was always down for sex and initiated often. I did a few things with him that he'd never done before. I was adventurous and open. And yet...he says he was practicing his dirty talk (which he wouldn't do with me much) by talking to escorts and tried to up his sexual confidence by using them. I honestly don't know what I could have done differently in the bedroom to have had any effect on what wound up happening. And I have thought about it, believe me. I didn't pressure him to do anything, I didn't try to change him. I encouraged him and constantly told him how sexy I thought he was. The sex was really good.

I could see myself in this article....but it was after the A....sex never recovered for us...then impotency....

..when this happened in our marriage, it was because H was spiraling down...destroying what was our marriage...cheating long before I knew....I didn't want to have sex with him....we behaved exactly like this article...it was a vicious circle....

So, if sex is so important in a marriage, how are we ever to R, after an A? when sex can be so damaged. Seems an impossible situation for BS. and a lot of pressure to perform, after trauma. "or else"

[This message edited by cancuncrushed at 11:44 AM, August 11th (Friday)]

In alot of ways this conversation talks about one of the many circular struggles that come along with a relationship

The key to me is that both partners have to communicate, be open and work towards each other. Basically both need to work to the middle ground. And if one partner isn't willing to then the relationship is going to have issues.

If we are sticking to the general jist of the article. The man needs to communicate with his wife. Why are you not interesting in me sexually. What can i do to help improve our situation...And when this opportunity comes up. The wife needs to say that i am tired all the time, i am doing all the house work plus taking care of the kids etc, i'm too tired or busy to even think about sex. I need you to help me some of these things, take some weight off my shoulders so i can feel that you are invested in me and our relationship and invested in helping me/us.

I believe at least, that as men, we need to pursue our partner, do things for her, send her texts, show her that we care for her and want to help her and be there for her...And the wife needs to see these efforts...

When i look back on my previous marriage, most of our friends thought we had the perfect marriage. But the truth of it is that we were more like room mates then in a relationship. We did not cultivate our relationship. I did not pursue her, showed her how much i cared for her. I didn't take great care of myself. And she did not make any time for me either or ever show any interest of affection towards me...

It was a two way street we both just allowed ourselves to drift away from each other...I always felt rejected because she never wanted to be intimate and therefore i didn't want to do things for her....And since i didn't do some things for her she never felt connected with me....It was a vicious circle...We got along fine all those years, had fun etc, but we were never connected, the intimacy of our marriage was dead for a decade before her infidelity but the knife through its heart.

Now i am much more cognizant of how i need to show my love and affection to my GF, We talk about these things all the time so we are both on the same page on what our wants and needs are...

Prissy, I had kind of mixed feelings about your first few posts, not that I thought you were wrong, just see things a bit differently than I do. But your post describing how your husband can nurture all aspects of you throughout the day and how THAT is what's "sexy", was kind of powerful, for lack of a better word.

I think that is something some men just don't understand, and I think many women feel it, but can't express it as clearly as you did. So sex starts to seem like a punishment/reward in the relationship even when that's not the woman's intention. If only we could all express ourselves as well as you did in that post.

That's is not the specific issue in my relationship (that I'm hesitant to even still call a relationship lol), I am in a different stage of life than you, all the busy-ness of raising children is behind me. And he willingly cooks, cleans, whatever to run the household, but it's still a lot less work than when children are involved everyday. He has minor children, but having them regularly for days and weeks at a time is still not the same as the responsibilities of them living with you full time.

But even with our amount of freedom, I have often reminded him that good sex starts long before the actual act. At least for me it does. Usually.

I am the betrayed, but even before I learned that he was cheating, I was struggling with feeling undesired. I enjoy sex (and have the time and energy to engage) and because I was with my life partner, I wanted frequent sex, all kinds of sex. It never quite happened like that, though he claimed to want the same. Even before I learned that he was putting that energy elsewhere, I had started to feel like he wasn't attracted to me, that he didn't desire me the way he claimed to.

I kept talking to him about it, not much changed. And of course now that I know what he was up to I feel even more undesirable. But just for him. I know that other men find me desirable, but letting them show me was never on my radar. Because I was ok with me and halfway confident in what I have to offer, I didn't need another man to prove anything to myself. I just wished that the man I was committed to desired and wanted me as much as I did him.

I know I'm rambling, I'll stop. Very interesting conversation.

Apparently, sex with me was about connection and intimacy, sex with other women was just sex. I can't really make sense out of that.

Didn't read all of thie article but this is me in a nutshell. I wanted intimacy, I am a woman, and I was the one chested on. Go figure!

Didn't read all of thie article but this is me in a nutshell. I wanted intimacy, I am a woman, and I was the one chested on. Go figure!

I am the betrayed, but even before I learned that he was cheating, I was struggling with feeling undesired. I enjoy sex (and have the time and energy to engage) and because I was with my life partner, I wanted frequent sex, all kinds of sex. It never quite happened like that, though he claimed to want the same. Even before I learned that he was putting that energy elsewhere, I had started to feel like he wasn't attracted to me, that he didn't desire me the way he claimed to.

I kept talking to him about it, not much changed. And of course now that I know what he was up to I feel even more undesirable. But just for him. I know that other men find me desirable, but letting them show me was never on my radar. Because I was ok with me and halfway confident in what I have to offer, I didn't need another man to prove anything to myself. I just wished that the man I was committed to desired and wanted me as much as I did him.

I can relate to that. While he was spending his sexual energy on porn and prostitutes, our sex life took quite a dive. I felt undesirable to him and rejected.

WH and my sexless M came about as a result of my going through early menopause and experiencing awful symptoms as a result. Sex would cause me to bleed and that scared me. I had frequent yeast infections that my OB said were probably caused by oral sex and my WH's poor dental hygiene. I told WH about these things but he didn't want to hear about anything that was wrong with me so I stopped telling him. He also didn't do anything to improve his dental hygiene. I took that as a sign that he didn't care about me. I also was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and that affected my sex drive.

WH wouldn't show me any affection except to want to have sex. He didn't touch me all week long and then expected me to want to have sex on the weekends. There was no emotional intimacy or connection. I felt like a hole for him to stick his dick into. He objectified me just like the women in porn movies (he's a porn addict, now in recovery.) I would tell him, in MC, what I needed and wanted but it fell on deaf ears. Again, I felt like he didn't care.

I had arthritis in both hips. Sex was painful for me. He knew that. I told him one time while I was crying my eyes out that there's not a single sex position that doesn't cause me pain, and sometimes I just don't feel like being in pain. You know what he said? Nothing. He thought I was using it as an excuse to not have sex with him.

I was NOT going to have sex with a man that didn't care about my feelings or my health just to placate him. When I did, not only did I feel like a whore, it did nothing to bring us closer. He still remained a selfish, entitled prick.

Our marriage became "sexless" bc of medical issues. He turned the crap around on me and convinced himself that I didnt love him/desire him bc we weren't having sex. Yes, he knew about my issues which caused sex to be painful/uncomfortable for me. He only cared about himself and went looking for an AP.

In the book Thinking Fast and Slow, which is about many things, including how experts form opinions, it referenced a study where experts in marriage assessed marriages and gave their opinions on whether they would succeed or not.

What the study authors showed was that using the simple statistic of ratio of the vents of sex to events of arguing, where if it was greater than 1 then predict marital success, if less than 1 then predict eventual failure, this method beat all of the experts all of the time.

Still plenty of uncertainty, not a perfect predictor, just better than the experts.

I didn't read all of the responses and I think the article phrases some things oddly, however I will give my opinion regarding the overall topic and not to each point made in the article.

I think sex IS very important to marriage. I think it is possible to have a good marriage with little or no sex (in other words I'm not leaving my husband if one day we are incapable of sex). But sometimes when I'm feeling a need to reconnect and we have sex (and time for bonding not just a quickie) that it restores our connection. He feels the same way. There are times when I don't even know what is bothering me and we have sex and life is good again. Simply sex is very important to our relationship.

And regarding HOP post - I guess if I want sex more then have more arguments with my husband, but always have sex one more time than the number of arguments and we'll be good lol

I think the truth to that is that most couples aren't interested in sex if they are mad at one another so if you have sex more often than you have arguments then you probably are more happy with your spouse than mad at them. It's food for thought about resentment, isn't it?

Uhmmm, "withholding sex" is some sort of euphemism for encouraging forcing yourself on an unwilling partner. If I don't feel like it, and you need it so badly, maybe you should up your game. This whole condemnation of "withholding sex" feels a lot like entitlement. At least it would be if the parties were single. Why does marriage mean I am supposed to bed you if you have done nothing that encourages me to feel similarly?

Well said, MissyMisdemeanor!

I also felt undesired for a long time before the A. Since our M is prone to rapid fire descents into negative communication spirals and other stresses in the time of our "first" M, - haha, MC says we're in M #2 - it was not safe to bring it up. It never felt safe to talk about anything like that and still doesn't.

Very interesting conversation.