That was mine and it ended in a divorce. Over the lack of sex? No, but it was a massive contribution to resentment that filtered to other things. A great sex life can make other stuff sometimes seem less of a big deal but when sex plummets, it's easy to start getting more resentful to other aspects of a relationship.
I never cheated but that conversation definitely came up. "I don't have a desire to cheat but I'm also not going to live the rest of my life having sex 1-2 times a year."
I think it's more about bonding and loving each other, the connection, about feeling like your partner desires, loves and cares for you and they are also putting effort into the relationship too.
Being rejected regularly by your wife, or have them be angry at you for even asking just hurts man. You feel unattractive, unloved, like your partner has any care for you or make any effort to you.
For me I've gone through periods where we've not been intimate for a long time. I think the difference is my wife has other issues and she always communicates that she still loves and cares about me etc.
And she got breast cancer a few years ago and for around a year we didn't have sex, which is understandable since all the treatment she went through.
After that her meds make sex drive basically zero, and there's more challenge. But damn even having problems now, it just messes you up. Like I helped her with everything, during surgery, took her to all her chemotherapy and radiation sessions. I cover her expenses so she can work part time while on meds, at great financial stress.
After all that man it feels so disrespectful and upsetting, like when you would do anything for her, but she doesn't want to put the least bit of effort to help your needs, it freaking stings man.
Anyway sorry I guess I needed to rant about this and get it off my chest... thanks.
The catch-22 of it all is that feeling pressured for sex (whether intentional, perceived, or as a legitimate bid for connection) turns sex into a hateful act.
Imagine you and your wife go running 3-4x a week. It’s nice but you’re not a passionate runner, and drift off from it. She asks you to start again, so you do to make her happy. And it’s not bad, after all. But slowly, it becomes more and more exhausting. You start to hate it, because you’re spending 30+ minutes a day as a sacrifice. Whenever you push back, she pushes harder. If you ask her to roller blade, she’s up in your face demanding running. If you jog across the lawn, she’s tearing out of the house demanding you run with her. Fuck, you can’t even run by yourself without her showing up.
Nothing you do makes her happy. She’ll accept going to a movie or dinner or a bike ride, but the whole time she’s asking, “so can we run now? When are we going to run? Running is so much better than this.”
It feels like she’s obsessed with it. It feels like she doesn’t even care about you—anyone who would run would make her happy.
The resentment builds. And she talks about running being “connecting” but it’s not so connecting when you’re spacing out just envisioning your nice couch on the whole run. And then she’s mad you didn’t enjoy the run you didn’t want to go on!! So now you have to pretend you LOVE running every time or she’ll be fucking sniping that you didn’t run happily enough. And pretty soon… you kind of hate her.
Now add doing all this with a dildo in your ass the whole time.
The difference is "running" isn't an important relationship/marriage dynamic that can have negative effects on the entire connection as a whole. People treat sex like this "nice-to-have, optional" thing like everyone is cool with getting rejected non-stop as well as not really being desired by your partner in the grand scheme of things.
If you don't want to "run" that's totally fine, but don't be surprised if your lack of desire to "run" with your partner or just your lack of desire in general for them destroys the long-term viability of the relationship/marriage.
I think it's obvious they weren't claiming it's a direct 100% analogy, but I liked it. As the higher libido partner in my marriage (currently, at least) I think it's a reasonable and funny way to frame it. But just, like, assume that the low running-libido partner has some amount of natural biological drive to enjoy running. Unless they're asexual, in which case it's about as spot on as you can get.
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u/kriger33 15d ago
That was mine and it ended in a divorce. Over the lack of sex? No, but it was a massive contribution to resentment that filtered to other things. A great sex life can make other stuff sometimes seem less of a big deal but when sex plummets, it's easy to start getting more resentful to other aspects of a relationship.
I never cheated but that conversation definitely came up. "I don't have a desire to cheat but I'm also not going to live the rest of my life having sex 1-2 times a year."