"The mistake was getting married." That's how the post begins. Under the handle forever monkey, the 40-year-old woman continues, "It took almost a month to consummate the marriage," she writes. "We went from twice a month, to once a month, to twice a year, to once a year." Eventually, she resorted to an affair. "We've had sex maybe 4 times since then, over a year and a half ago," she says. "Here's the thing: we are close. He holds my hand, he loves me, he does nice things for me. We have the same interests, we talk all the time. But i'm just sad, there's this huge part that's missing. The kids are almost grown. What do I do?"
All over the Internet, there are thousands of posts just like this from men and women in sexless marriages. Generally, a sexless marriage is defined as one in which sex happens 10 or fewer times a year, which applies to a whopping 15 to 20 percent of married couples, according to a Newsweek estimate. Despite the popular mythology around "lesbian bed death," it's predominantly heterosexual couples that are flocking online to count the days, months and years since they last had sex.
The social networking site Yuku has a popular sexless marriage community. There’s a section to rant, to talk divorce, to get advice on finding romance outside of marriage (that particular board comes with the caveat, “REMINDER: THIS IS NOT A DATING SERVICE SITE”) and to share fantasies. There’s even a forum for users to arrange to meet in person to talk about their sexless marriages. Reddit, of course, has a thriving community, DeadBedrooms, with more than 24,000 subscribers. As with most Reddit communities, it has its own language and shorthand. There’s “DB,” short for dead bedroom, “LL” for low libido and HL for high libido. Even general relationship forums, like LoveShack.org, are filled with threads on sexless marriages. Subject lines are fraught with desperation and resignation: “Sexless marriage driving me crazy!!!,” “So sad - sexless marriage” and “Yet another guy stuck in a sexless marriag...
That's to say nothing of the angst found in the posts themselves. Consider this one from a Yuku community board: ""I feel ... like I die more everyday. I have so much love and real passion to give and it's not wanted, appreciated, or returned. ...The man that loved me is dead. He is like a zombie. ... I know my husband is a porn addict and is on sex hook up sites yet doesn't want me. I have men flirt with me everywhere. He makes me feel like an ugly old woman just sitting out in the country waiting to die.” Rejection is a common theme: "But even when I think the mood is right and I try to initiate, she just brushes me off like I'm a dog trying to hump her leg," writes one man. So too is low self-esteem as a result of the rejection: "I guess since I have gained a few stretch marks and dimples along with my pudginess, I am no longer attractive to him." Some admit to turning to infidelity: "I have sought the physical and emotional intimacy I require outside of my marriage. Please do not condemn me for this."
Most posters describe a relationship that started out with a healthy sex life. "In the start, sex was ok," writes one woman. "After two years or so, things dwindled and died away." Often, things take a turn after the relationship reaches a cozier stage: "Once the honeymoon phase ended (basically right after she moved in) sex went from a couple times a week to once every other month," writes a 27-year-old man. Often, it seems to come out of the blue: "Early in our relationship the sex was passionate and amazing so I really didn't see this coming."
Typically, there’s a desire differential in these relationships and it’s the partner who wants more sex who is posting about it. That's generally the case with the sexless couples that New York therapist Ian Kerner sees. "If they’re both content with not having sex, they’re less likely to see a therapist to deal with it," he points out. That's true for sexless message boards too: If someone's content with having sex 10 times or less a year, they're not going to be posting to the Internet about it. Kerner says it's not uncommon for him to see couples in truly sexless marriages, but more common are general issues around desire. "As a sex therapist, desire is certainly the number one issue that I deal with." So where do these desire differentials come from, anyway? It's notoriously hard to diagnose, because there are so many potential factors -- environmental, relational, medical, you name it. But Kerner has identified some common causes. "When couples get together, there is that infatuation phase where there's a neuro-chemical cocktail stoking feelings of desire. As couples move into a long-term relationship and into the attachment phase, the neurochemistry starts to change," he explains. "A lot of couples no longer know how to manufacture desire, because they’ve been relying on infatuation hormones."
A major cause of bed death is simply too much stress. "Whether it’s parenting issues, work issues, family obligations, financial stressors, most couples that I work with that aren’t having sex are not in theory against the idea of having sex," he said. "They’re too tired to have sex. They don’t have the time to have sex." Indeed, in a post titled, "Not sure if my relationship is slowly descending into DB. How can I tell? How can I fix it?," a woman writes, "I feel like my SO has been rejecting me more and more, the classic I'm too tired or not in the mood. We both have busy and stressful schedules but not more or less than the start of the relationship."
Another factor is the responsiveness of female desire, meaning the tendency for women's desire to arise in response to sexual activity rather than to precipitate it. "Male desire tends to be more spontaneous and female desire tends to be more responsive," he says. "Very often in a relationship there isn’t a context for female sexual responsiveness. Men will tend to respond to a single sexual cue. For women, there needs to be a context of multiple sexual cues." Sometimes, he'll see "a guy who at one time was always experiencing spontaneous desire, but his desire has begun to change and wane and now you have a couple where both experience responsive desire." Again, if neither partner knows how to deal with responsive desire, the bed death begins.
All that said, one cool thing about these online communities is that they quickly disabuse you of the stereotype that it’s only women who are withholding sex. They do, to be sure, but so too do men. Bed death simply isn’t the gendered phenomenon that our culture would have you think. Indeed, there are women who, after soliciting advice from the community, post an update with subject lines like “Mental high-fives” to announce, “I totally got laid.” That woman in particular is struggling with a husband who has withdrawn from sex following the devastation of a miscarriage. There are ladies lamenting that their husbands frequently beg out of sex because of a “headache.” Role reversals like whoa! There are the predictable bits, though: Plenty of women lament that the hubs watches porn but shows no interest in having sex.
Kerner says it's "absolutely a toss of the coin as to who’s going to have the lower libido" in a heterosexual relationship. "I meet many, many men with low desire, whether they are bored in their relationships or not attracted to their partners or stressed out at work or insecure about their position in the world." Research is increasingly showing that men who have low desire in their relationships don't necessarily have low desire outside of the context of their relationship, he says. "They still have desire that leads to masturbation or that may lead to sex with other people, but many men actually have low desire for their partners," he says.
Many message board posters are already to the point of considering divorce. "Do I end 5 year marriage with a person who really is my best friend, or do I accept that I may live my life only having sex a couple of times a year," writes a 32-year-old woman. Kerner sees lots of couples move beyond sex ruts with the help of therapy and what he calls "behavioral homework," but these message board conversations tend to encourage posters to get out of their sexless marriages. As a Yulu poster writes, “Other than those members who have moved on and out of their marriages, there are very few success stories.” Another poster, who recently filed for divorce, writes, "I've browsed this subreddit for a while … by and large, it seems the answer is to, 'Get out.'"
But there is the occasional happy ending. After posting to DeadBedrooms, a woman with the handle whinebitchwhine decided to try something simple: Explicitly asking her husband for sex, rather than waiting for him to catch on to her attempts at seduction. "Each time has gotten better," she writes. "It was rigid, mechanical, but slowly we're cuddling again. It's been a long time since I could just melt in a man's arms, in his arms, and lose myself in a moment of kissing." She continues, "The solution was communicating verbally and directly. Maybe one day we'll sync up again. Maybe one day I'll have more self confidence and not have to psyche myself out to get into it. That'd be nice."
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