Sexless Marriage vs. Upsetting the Apple Cart
I asked myself many times why I chose to stay in my marriage. In my thirties, when I still had a libido, I toyed with having an affair with a work colleague, but we both chickened out. That should have been a clear signal that my marriage was in trouble, but I ignored it. We had small kids, a good family life, and we were constantly trading up to nicer cars and homes. Why upset the apple cart? Even when my kids were older, and we weren’t having sex or sleeping in the same room, I had a hard time calling it quits. At one point, I created a five-year plan to leave my marriage that I shared with one of my best friends, who was also contemplating divorce.
Sexless marriages are so pervasive in our society that there seems to be an attempt in some sectors to “normalize” the fact that couples stop having sex, especially when they get into their fifties and beyond. Recently the Huffington Post, which is arguably the most sex-positive mainstream media outlet in the US, published an article titled, “Over 50 and in a Sexless Marriage: Don’t Despair.” Essentially, the author’s position was that people could thrive in a sexless marriage. But there was something missing in the article that I feel is important to take into account. It’s true: couples often decide not to engage in sex. However, the majority of the time, the decision is forced on one of the partners. In fact, a common scenario is that one partner loses interest, becomes unresponsive, and starts to avoid anything to do with sex. The still-desirous party keeps trying for a while, then gets tired of rejection and simply gives up. Often this unfolds with no discussion at all, much less a conscious decision.
Where Did My Libido Go?
Unfortunately, for 90 percent of the clients that I’ve worked with, it is the woman who loses her desire to have sex. While each situation is unique, there are some common causes:
•Women are socialized to say “no” to sex
•We hold shame and fear around fully sexually expressing ourselves
•Motherhood transforms us from sexual beings to maternal beings
•Sex becomes boring and rote
•We are not sufficiently aroused and don’t experience enough pleasure
•Women are often not connected to their sexuality
In these and many other ways, we women are essentially programmed to say “no” to sex. In contrast, men literally wear their sexual arousal equipment on the outside of their body. As teenage boys, they were constantly getting aroused and getting erections, often at inconvenient times, but it made their sexuality front and center. Men also receive many more positive messages around sex. “Always use protection” and “don’t get her pregnant,” while you “go out and sow your wild oats.” High-fives in the locker room after “scoring” the night before are part and parcel of male culture. Teenage boys grow up with porn, which turns women into sex objects and creates unrealistic expectations about body parts and what sex really is like.
Given this socialization, there is no surprise that when I ask men how often they think about wanting to have sex, the most common answer is, “Multiple times a day.” Women, on the other hand, typically say that they think about sex at most once or twice a month! Why are we so disconnected from our desire?
“Keep Your Legs Shut!”
First of all, Mother Nature designed our sexual parts to be less visible and accessible. While we have a vast and complex arousal network, it is almost entirely on the inside of our body, with the exception of our nipples. Even a woman’s clitoris is 75 percent internal—the only parts that are exposed (the head and shaft) are covered by a hood. Women need lots of warm-up and touch to get aroused, whereas a man is likely to become easily aroused if he has any physical stimulation on his cock.
We were taught that sex is tied to our menstrual cycle, a subject that for many young girls is painful, shameful and embarrassing. I know I am not alone in having experienced embarrassing “accidents.” Many of the women I have worked with have shameful memories about their periods. The situation is compounded by the fact that many of us did not have mothers who were particularly helpful or empathetic. Being handed a pad and told to read some instructions reinforces the belief that sex and our periods are dirty. This creates further distance between our bodies and our sexuality.
For the most part, sex education for women focuses on preventing pregnancy, protection against STIs, and—for many in this country—abstinence. We are told to “keep our legs shut” because the only thing boys want is to get into our pants. Sexually active teenage girls are called “easy” and are slut-shamed by both their female and male peers. Pleasure is not mentioned anywhere in the sex education curriculum.
For women, fear and shame around sexual expression is rampant. We have a belief that expressing our pleasure by making loud noises is not appropriate or ladylike and threatens our idealized view of how women are supposed to behave. Sexually expressed women are depicted as vixens, sirens, or femmes fatales. Every girl watching Sex and the City wants to grow up to be “Carrie,” not “Samantha.” Historically, sexually expressed women have been burned at the stake or tarred and feathered. And we continue to be slut-shamed in public and in private. When is the last time you heard of a sexually expressive woman being elevated in the media in a positive way and not sensationalized? This sexual atmosphere carries over into the bedroom. It prevents us from being able to fully surrender and connect to our desires and our pleasure, making it impossible for us to lead an orgasmic life.
Good Girl Madonna, Bad Girl Whore
The Madonna/Whore complex is yet another influence that causes women to be disconnected from their sexuality. It also tends to cause sexual problems in long-term relationships. In the psychoanalytic literature, Sigmund Freud argues that the Madonna/Whore complex is caused by a split between the affectionate and the sexual aspects of male desire. Men tend to categorize women as either good girl Madonnas who are pure, innocent, and virginal, or bad girl Whores who are sexually expressive, indiscriminate, and aggressive. Men want to marry and have kids with the Madonna, but are sexually attracted to the Whore.
While much has been written about the Madonna/Whore complex and its impact on men, it also has an enormous effect on women. “Should I have sex with him on the first date?” is a common question single women ask themselves, a question that is made ever more difficult to answer when there is lots of chemistry. We fear that if we do have sex, we will get labeled as the Whore and won’t be considered long-term relationship material. He will disregard our intense passion and chemistry the minute he encounters the nice girl who meets his ideal image of a wife.
The Madonna/Whore complex often influences our choice of long-term partner and how we behave sexually once we are married. Before the wedding, sex is lustful, playful, experimental, and highly erotic. Not long after the wedding, it’s all boring, vanilla sex. I often talk with women who in their single days were fully erotically expressive and enjoyed their sexuality with the “bad boy” types, but ended up marrying a “good boy.” Then, out of fear that their true sexual nature will cause their more conservative partner to leave, they repress their sexuality and succumb to boring sex. No one is happy about that. Ironically, it’s usually the “good boys” who lust for playful, hot sex and often end up seeking it outside of marriage.
The Madonna/Whore complex also shows up as women move into motherhood and often end up disconnecting from their sexuality. Motherhood consumes us, especially in the early years. Our identity as a sexual woman and a lover gets subsumed under our new identity as a mom. New mothers often complain that they used to love it when their husband sucked and fondled their breasts, but it became a turn-off once they had nursed a child. All