Why stay in a sexless marriage

• What is it
• Causes
• Mental health effects
• Is this a deal breaker?
• Tips
• Review

Wondering why there is not enough sexual intimacy in love relationships? Do you want to overcome the drought and revive your sex life? Let's talk.

One of the most common complaints among people in long-term relationships? Asexuality.

Not having sex in a romantic partnership can be frustrating, whether you're someone who wants more sex or someone who doesn't.

But there are many ways you can improve your sex life and improve your relationships in the meantime.

What is sexless marriage?

Generally speaking, an asexual marriage or relationship is one in which there is little or no sexual contact between the partners. There is no generally accepted definition.

Some signs that you may be in an asexual relationship include:

• having less than 10 or no sex per year
• lack of physical and emotional intimacy
• tension between partners over frequency of sex

One 1993 study found that 16% of couples had been sexually inactive in the previous month.

Dr. Laura Wauels, sex and relationship psychotherapist, researcher at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), estimates that between 2 and 10% of marriages today are asexual.

Sexual desire and frequency of sexual intercourse is different for everyone, so if you have a period of dryness or you just feel out of sync with your partner, try not to get upset. This is natural and does not necessarily mean that you are in an asexual relationship.

Consensual sexless marriage

Lack of sex is a problem when the level of desire varies between partners. But for couples who mutually agree that sex is not a priority, sexless or low-sex marriages can flourish.

There are many good reasons why people remain abstinent in marriage, including:

• asexuality
• equally low sex drive
• religious practice
• avoiding STDs and unwanted pregnancies

that sex is necessary for the manifestation and maintenance of a loving connection, strong relationships can be maintained.

Why is this happening?

When it comes to sexless marriages, there are many possible causes, and sometimes the exact cause is difficult to pinpoint. Here are some common reasons why one or both partners may not be interested in sex.

Sexual Desire Divergence (SDD)

SDD basically means that one partner wants sex more than the other. Your sexual desires are out of sync.

One 2015 study found that 80% of people had experienced DDS in their relationship in the last month.

Everyone - regardless of gender identity - experiences ups and downs of desire. However, if your partner wants sex much more than you do (or vice versa), feelings may be hurt and frustration may mount.

Mental or physical illness

Chronic health conditions, depression, joint or muscle pain, cancer and other ailments can significantly affect your sex life.

Decreased libido may be a side effect of the disease itself or the drugs used to treat it.

For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the first pharmacological treatments for depression. But sexual dysfunction is among their most common side effects.

Poor communication

In one study, Dr. Laura Wawels found that dissatisfaction in relationships where partners had different levels of desire stemmed mainly from poor communication and disconnection.

By not making any effort to work with your loved one during periods of diverging sexual desire, you only make the situation worse and can turn into a snowball of complete lack of sex.

Boredom

After being in a committed relationship for many years, it's easy to get bored with the usual, tasteless sex.

If sex is no longer pleasurable and exciting, you are much less likely to make the time and effort to have it.

How can sexless marriage affect mental health?

It is generally true that sex and intimacy are good for your mental health.

One 2015 study confirmed previous findings that frequency of sex is related to people's well-being in relationships. While relationship and life satisfaction remained fairly stable for couples who had sex at least once a week, those who had sex less often expressed lower levels of satisfaction.

The frustration and conflict that can accompany an asexual relationship can take a toll on mental health.

With regard to the person with great sexual desire, “over time, they often begin to feel less confident about the state of their relationship (Does my partner still love me? Are we still stable?) or their own sexual self (I still Am I good enough in bed to make my partner want to have sex with me?),” says Dr. Laura Wawels.

Relationship and intimacy coach Amy Color from Vancouver, BC also explains: “Asexual or sexually impoverished relationships make people feel alone, insecure, rejected and ashamed. Negative feelings lead to negative behaviors: rage, … romance, substance use, overeating, over-shopping, overeating and depression.”

Is this a deal break?

Most people agree that sex is a necessary part of any romantic relationship. In one Pew Research Center survey, 63% of respondents said that satisfying sexual relationships are important to maintaining a successful marriage.

However, this does not mean that lack of sex must always mean the end.

Dr. Laura Wawels believes that a happy relationship is possible without sex.

“There are people who are happy to stay in a sexless marriage because there are so many reasons why a person might want to stay in a relationship,” she says. “Sex is generally good for relationships and provides a range of benefits for people, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary to still have a healthy relationship.”

However, a decrease in sex and intimacy can certainly have a negative impact on relationships. Whether this is a “relationship destroyer” is up to you.

How can we restore our partnership?

While you may feel discouraged if your partnership goes a long way without sex, keep in mind that there are ways to restore and revitalize your sexual relationship.

Communication is key

Communication is the most important component when it comes to your sex life.

One British study found that maintaining sexual interest in one's partner was associated with ease of communication and emotional closeness.

But what should you talk about? To increase your sex life and enjoy the sex you have, consider these tips:

• Tell them what you want. You don't have to be shy. Research shows that when women are open about their sexual likes and dislikes, they have more orgasms.
• Talk about performance issues. While it may be embarrassing, talking frankly about erectile dysfunction, delayed orgasm, or pain is important.
• Treat with understanding. It may seem that your partner does not want to have sex, but try not to jump to conclusions. Maybe they're feeling sick, they've had a long day at work, or they're just not in the right state of mind to have sex tonight.

Couples Therapy

Although it may seem like a drastic step, seeing a therapist can help break down communication walls and provide the guidance you and your partner need to improve your sex life.

Dr. Laura Wauels uses Emotionally Focused Therapy and Sensitive Focusing with her clients.

“Emotionally Focused Therapy focuses on understanding the cycle of negative interactions and helping couples break out of this cycle and reconnect emotionally with each other,” says Dr. Laura Wauels. “[She] helps couples talk to each other about problems and open up an emotional dialogue about their fears, needs, and yearnings.”

Sensitive focus, she explains, “combines elements of mindfulness (being in the present moment) and exposure therapy (gradually getting used to something that is feared or avoided).”

Get intimate

Being intimate doesn't always mean sex.

Intimacy can include physical touching, such as:

• Massage
• Affection
• hugging
• kissing

It can also mean emotional intimacy, such as having a deep conversation together.

Some research suggests that showing affection, whether verbal or physical, can be an effective way to increase the likelihood of sex.

Raise Romance

If you have kids, a responsible job, high stress levels, or all of the above, finding time for romance can seem impossible. But if your sex life isn't where you want it to be, rediscovering your romantic roots is a powerful tool.

Consider having a date night, going on a weekend trip, or just lighting candles at home. Romance can also be brought into everyday life: love notes, cute messages or small compliments.

Think ahead

For some couples, scheduling sex on the calendar is a useful tool for maintaining a sexual relationship.

You are busy. They are busy. And it's easy to let weeks of mismatched schedules go by without sex.

Knowing the idea ahead of time can not only get you more sex, but anticipation can also serve as a form of foreplay between you and your partner.

Even if you're not in the mood when the time comes, sexual contact can help boost your libido and make it more likely that you'll want to jump into bed (or the counter) next time.

Spice it up

When you're in a long-term relationship, it's easy to fall into a routine. Instead of mindlessly having regular sex, try something new, whether it's a new place to have sex, a different position, or a fun toy.

“'They say relationships take a lot of work. I say the relationship needs to play more,” Color says. “People tend to think of sex as penetration with orgasm as the goal. Sexual pleasure is the most overlooked element of a great sex life… Stay curious, find out what makes you moan with pleasure, and you will never get bored.”!”

Research shows that couples who report higher sexual satisfaction often include more variety in their sex acts.

One study found that reading erotic fiction helped women significantly increase their sexual desire.

Reviewed

Sexlessness can seem like an intractable problem, especially if you and your partner find it difficult to discuss it openly. But with time and effort, things can get better.

Dr. Laura Wawels shared encouraging news: “We recently completed a study that showed that people were able to move from anxiety, fear and avoidance to self-confidence and satisfaction with their sexual relationship with a partner. This gives me hope that we can help more and more couples rediscover their sexual selves.

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About love in marriage - ABC of marriage

• Love is development
• Love is not a perfect picture
• Love is care
• Love is work
• Love does not always burn evenly and brightly
• Love is fuel
• Love is communication vessels
• Two-level communication is when the words in the family cease to mean what they mean
• Marriage is a pair dance
• "Time Slower"
• Do not look back at others
• Crises and children

Love is development

The ability of a person to change is absolutely amazing. There are people who can change quite quickly, and there are those who change much more slowly. But changes are possible, and this is connected with understanding, with a change in outlook, focus.

Love in marriage is either transformed or alienated. But if the alienation has not lasted for decades, this may be a repairable situation.

When a child goes to school, we think that everything will be magical: A's, beautiful notebooks, diplomas. In fact, learning can be very different. If a child has diplomas, then we are very lucky. However, this is not the norm, it is the exception. The child learns, something is more difficult for him, something is easier. Today his mathematics is worse, tomorrow he is better. The family organism also goes through different stages of development.

Love is not a perfect picture

In many ways, the question of where love goes is connected with perfectionist ideas about family life in general. But although love in marriage is not like the feeling that happens during courtship in the first six months of life, this is it. This is a difficult piece of the same love. The child, however, studies anyway: at the very least, he crawls from class to class, suddenly a favorite subject may appear, you see - he got ready for the eleventh grade and began to study as we wanted. But this is a very uneven and absolutely not perfect process, which is not always possible to influence.

Love is care

Another thing is that the very love that is supposedly present at the beginning of a relationship, and then something happens to it, needs to be treated very carefully. We often lose attention to our personal relationships, to the relationships of adults, which determine the life of a family, due to chores, worries with children, home and life.

The idea that love should continue by itself is very disturbing.

Should be a) beautiful, even if you shoot a movie, and b) everything should happen by itself.

Indeed, at the beginning of a relationship, everything happens by itself and beautifully enough for people to want to be together, to be a family, and then it happens very differently. This initial period is like a prototype of a good family. This is a sketch of a house, a dream of a house, but while the house is being built - how much will it take! Marriage is a mutual work. And not only economic work, not only work on raising children, but also work in life together with a person who is not ideal, changing, with a person experiencing crises. And this is on both sides.

Love is a job

If a woman pregnant with her first child describes how she imagines her future baby and her first years of life with him, and reads it a year later, she will be very surprised that she thought so. It is good if there is an understanding that in family life, idealistic, even if very correct, ideas may not be related to reality. It's good to keep this in mind when dealing with daily petty stumblings, scattered socks, and the like.

And it's good if this understanding is connected with real, specific "socks" and other stumbling blocks, i.e. when it is clear at the level of practice.

In any marriage, the period of vivid emotions rarely lasts more than one and a half to two years, and sometimes much less. This is what is called the falling in love stage. Very rare are marriages where the flame of love burns all the time. There are couples, looking at which it seems that they have lived in love all their lives, but after all, we see them now, but did not see them in the middle. It is believed that the middle of the path is the most difficult - when it is still far from the finish line, and it seems that you can return, that there are other options. There are certain difficulties in the middle, and this is the long middle of the period of living together.

In men, the idea of ​​breaking up and starting over is more common than in women. Love, marriage, a beautiful woman, feelings, attention, a sense of need. Then children are born, everyday life sets in, feelings fade away, it seems to a man that he is abandoned, and gradually he leaves for a new relationship. This is a male search for the feeling that he is loved.

Love does not always burn evenly and brightly

Now the basis for marriage is love: people fell in love and got married. Then the love passed - why should they be together? It may sound strange, but love, which is understood as a romantic attraction, with burning, emotions, is a very unreliable basis for a long-term union. If people did this with parent-child relationships, how many children would be left with their parents? Indeed, very often it is incredibly difficult with a child, and this is not an episode, but a long piece of life: a period of disobedience, poor learning, adolescence. However, we stay with the children.

The decision to end a marriage is a very serious decision on both sides, no matter who makes it. Just as the decision to marry one must test oneself at different times, so the decision to end the union cannot be fleeting. You live together for a while, and after a period of idealization, a period of re-idealization begins - you see everything bad. You already know the person and you focus on the bad. This is a great time to break up, as inconsistencies are found in many ways. But I think this is not the last layer. Most likely, something else can be found behind him that you did not see during the period of falling in love and that absolutely corresponds to some other things. On the discrepancy layer, it is precisely the pairs that break up. But there are many such "skins". For example, a mid-life crisis has approached, and you notice that your spouse has no personal growth, and, on the contrary, you have grown very spiritually. And then something happens that shows that you, with your personal growth, are no match for a person who seemed to you spiritually or mentally completely undeveloped.

I don't try to persuade anyone to keep marriages. Nothing comes of this, as practice shows. But you can, with a feeling of inappropriateness for each other, look at some other things that will become visible a little later. A society with traditional values, where marriage was not built on the feeling of romantic love, helped families in many ways to survive difficult moments. Parting was simply not discussed: this is your husband, so live with him, or this is your wife, and that’s all. And people understood this. If a child is inattentive, illiterate and rude, we do not throw him away! We accept children as our continuation.

Love is fuel

Parent: So family is one thing and love is something else?

Ekaterina: What is love like? This is a difficult conversation. I can tell my understanding at the moment.

Falling in love, acute romantic love, which is constantly present: you get up with it, fall asleep, have dreams - such a period happens more than once in life; it is a very good state, but it is transitory. It is necessary for people to fuse, to be able to be together. It can't be all the time. Love is present periodically, even in a very problematic marriage, but it does not burn constantly. There must be other types of fuel. If people have not discovered anything else for themselves - no fuel, no food - of course, it is very difficult. It is difficult to keep yourself in this degree. And it is very sad to look at a person who, at the age of thirty or forty, is chasing love, ignoring the first gray hair, wrinkles. Because he doesn't know how to feel alive otherwise.

Remember that preschool children are great at playing - they have fantasy play. Then there is no such game. Children still sometimes play, but in a different way, sometimes they remember their childhood, but they are no longer constantly in the era of play. And they don't lose anything. They got everything that this era could give them. Perhaps then they will be able to play like this with their children. Also, the period of falling in love can give a lot to a couple. But being in it all the time is one of the illusions. We are all under the illusion of romantic love, that this is the only good love.

Communicating vessels

When rejection, aversion to a partner appears, this can work as insurance. You understand that this is no longer your partner, that you don’t need one, but the person feels this reaction, for him this becomes a reason to change, see and change. And then everything can unwind in the opposite direction. At first, this is a negative relationship, but if a person understands that perhaps this is not about a break, the direction changes. Communicating vessels are a system that supports itself. Can support. And it may fall into complete decline.

Love is communication

It happens that people live together, are a family, but cannot talk. The amount of small misunderstandings, errors, the amount of dissatisfaction and destabilized intimate relationships, resentment lead to the fact that words are no longer perceived normally. You say: “Go wash the dishes,” and he: “You always reproach me and force me.” You say one thing without meaning anything, and they answer you differently - and vice versa.

It should be noted that very often spouses do not consider it necessary to somehow solve problems within the family and difficult situations, expecting that everything will happen and resolve itself, because this is how it should be in a happy marriage. It seems that people should understand each other, do it better and better every year, and this should happen by itself. Compare: you sent your child to learn English in a large group with a not very experienced teacher - will he know English by himself? It is clear that help is needed here. Or: the car is very dirty, because there is slush and dirt on the street, which means that it needs to be taken to the car wash. In order for life to be at a certain level that suits you, certain efforts are needed. And everyone understands this very well, as long as it does not concern marital relations - everything should be by itself, because you have love. And if not by itself, then there is no love.

Effort directed at relationships is impossible, unnatural, because it seems to be evidence of a lack of love. And this is the action of the romantic notion of love and marriage. It seems that the usual logic should not work here, but the fabulous one should work. Usually we understand the cause and effect, the investment of effort and the result: the car is very dirty - it needs to be washed, the child does not know English well - he needs help. With a romantic idea of ​​​​marriage, fabulous logic works: the feather of the firebird, Emelya and pike, etc. Where this comes from is not clear, but it should be so. We do not invest forces, but the same normal error accumulates. You, for example, went away for a month to the dacha, came home, and there was dust on the floor. Likewise, if you don't do anything, misunderstandings build up naturally in most marriages. And little by little, drop by drop, communicative dissonance can arise if there is no communication - daily conversation, daily interaction at the level at which you need it. For some it's talking, for some it's sitting next to you, for some it's delicious food - these may be different manifestations, but this is communication. If this is not the case, then dissonance accumulates, and further two-level communication may occur.

Two-level communication is when the words in the family no longer mean what they mean

Suppose there is such a text: “Call my mother”, then the subtext will be: “You don’t care about your parents”, “You don’t love my mother ", etc. And if the text can be positive or neutral, then the subtext is always negative. And in dysfunctional families there is a large amount of two-level communication, and this leads to an even greater decrease in communication. You can't just say anything anymore. Let’s say you didn’t mean anything, maybe you repent and want to move in the other direction and simply ask: “Please pick up a piece of paper from the floor,” and you can get an absolutely asymmetric answer. A person who produces two-level communication is often not even aware that he is doing it. Children who live in such families are at the subtext level and understand it very well. At first they just feel it, then they already formulate that mom doesn’t really love dad. Or a grandmother - at least she speaks politely to her, but, in fact, she cannot stand it. Children have a very strong sense of subtext.

This trend can be outwitted. You need to understand that getting out of the trap of two-level communication is difficult because the text has migrated to the subtext for a reason. And you can't get this message anywhere - it's really what you want to say, but you can't, you don't have a way; for some reason, all this became impossible, or do you think that it became impossible.

You need to formulate your difficult feelings, say: “I feel very uncomfortable when I ask to clean the floors, but this does not happen. And I feel so bad that I don't want anything." Need to speak.

There are situations when it is impossible to change the partner's views on something or some of his attachments, and you need to accept his choice. And here the moment of acceptance is important. If you, knowing that his views will not change, growl inside yourself, this can lead to two-level communication. For example, your husband loves hockey, and you love romance. For both, this cannot be changed, and this cannot be changed, but at the same time there is respect for the features, for the choice of the other.

We lack three basic qualities that are needed in marriage: patience, wisdom and flexibility. ..

Marriage is a pair dance

Both girls and boys are now brought up in the same way - with the same models to achieve, achieve, realize their own. It turns out a bet on leadership, on achievement. If, for example, there are two male models in a family, then collisions can constantly arise for various reasons. Nobody wants to swear, people just clash because women look like men, and men, on the contrary, look like women. And very often women's adaptive behavior is labeled as something unworthy. This is one of the levels of complexity - public expectation.

Marriage is more like a pair dance than a race. A harmonious marriage is what people do together, adjusting to each other. And very often in marriage a model of some kind of competition in running or even in boxing is realized. Or work alone. If people in families of origin had a model where people knew how to adapt to each other, where there was a place for women and men, this is very cool. Our school has a completely genderless upbringing. In girls, femininity does not develop in any way - the ability to yield, to listen. Rather, on the contrary, in all, without exception, the school brings up competitiveness, rigidity, and gives an orientation towards leadership.

Very often in pair relationships, and even in parent-child relationships, a bias is also visible: mother, wife - coach or house manager. Moreover, all these qualities can be useful at certain moments. For example, managerial abilities are very necessary for a family when it is necessary to gather everyone on vacation or move, leadership qualities will come in handy in force majeure, extreme situations. It is important to choose when to use them or not to use them, sometimes turn off the “coach”.

Time Slower

We are all under the myth of speed: more action, more change, better quality of life. And this very powerfully influences and emasculates the family space. Home is a place where you can not run anywhere, where everyone is happy. What if everyone is running? If the husband is at work, you are at work, the children also run around, and there may not be a place of rest where everyone is happy. Except on holidays or weekends. But now there are no days off - there are other activities on weekends. You need a time delay. We all have a shift in activity, in a large number of everything, in implementation. It is important to see how the engine of progress works, how life changes.

Don't look back at others

Some people have a completely normal desire to lose themselves in children for a while, and this is positive and fruitful. But, basically, people are arranged in such a way that they need something else. Optional - work, not everyone has the energy to work. It can be charity, receiving additional education. It may be a change of profession - ten or fifteen years after receiving the first profession, you may want something else. It is important not to wear someone else's dress. It happens that you hear a lot of stories about ideal families, how people combine family and work, and you think that this is also suitable for you. Not always.

The family allows you to realize a lot. If there are not an infinite number of children, you can safely complete the cycle and return to work. We are changing and we live in a changing world. At twenty, one thing was important to us, at thirty another, at forty a third. And for a partner too. It is important that there is an acceptance of the nature of the changes in the other person and trust in the way he lives. It is important that the concept of a certain “norm” does not affect your family in a crippling way. For example, a family believes that it is necessary to go on vacation several times a year abroad, and for this everyone works like crazy, depriving the family of leisure, of themselves rest, setting too high a pace of life.

If a mother works in a family, it is useful to think about what little children lose when their mothers work. Many say: “We have grown up! It's okay." But when we were growing up, there were grandmothers who could not only sit with the children, but also talk. Now not everyone has such grandmothers. The age of grandmothers has changed, the image of grandmothers has changed.

Crises and children

I would like to talk about children whose parents are going through a period of change in relationships. In addition to problems, conflicts or crises, the situation can change in general: after all, people, seasons, the euro exchange rate change, something is constantly happening that can lead the family out of a state of stability.

There are two main types of risk when the family boiler boils and the boiling point rises. Children are always in the know in some way, although adults like to think that they do not understand anything. While children are small, they do not know, but they feel. When they get older, they already know and even in the nursery they whisper about it: “Now mom and dad are arguing, then they will get divorced, and we will go ...”, scrolling through the most terrible stories.

One type of risk is to involve children in what happens between adults. There is a very big risk in family crises to make an attorney out of a child - to start sharing, telling, asking for advice, support. The biggest crisis for a family is a divorce, a change in composition, but with any other serious trials, this risk is also possible.

The child is loaded with what is not for his age. This may include fears in it, increased responsibility for what is happening.

The second type of risk is to never say anything, never explain and pretend that everything is wonderful and wonderful. But behind this text, the child will feel the subtext himself. Children have a special sensitivity, they very well feel the temperature of their parents' marriage, because almost all modern children, at one age or another, have a fear of their parents' divorce.

These are two poles: either the child is drawn into the conflict, or you don't tell him anything. In between there are a lot of options. Which one is yours depends on the age of the child, gender, and personal characteristics. It is very important not to share details and not to ask for advice, not to be drawn in as an equal. Whatever happens, it is important for him to know that this is your relationship with dad, and he has nothing to do with it. If a child has a fear of divorce, you need to say that now is a difficult period, we are quarreling, but we are not going to disperse (if this is true). It happens that people go through a systemic crisis, and children need to be taught to survive in this situation, to understand that this is not a disaster, but just a family overdoing it. It is important to talk, not to lie and not to load adult details.

In general, of course, we can expect support from children. But it is impossible to pull them to the partner level, no matter what happens to the relationship in a pair. If a relationship with a spouse is not possible, other adults should take the place of an adult - friends, relatives, priests, psychologists, anyone. But you can not put a child there, and even a teenager.

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