@Kamary: I agree knowing if your marriage is based on sex and or love is a big problem. I've read from some authors, in general most men marries to GET SEX while most women marries to GET LOVE. The union are fundamentally based on two very different school of thoughts: Thinking like a man vs thinking like a women.

Toby, I think both needs are legitimate. I also think that men need love as much as we do, but we don't usually need sex as much as they do. LOL. I think it's not good when sex is the basis for a marriage. My ex used to get funny when the frequency was reduced for whatever reason (eg during late pregnancy it always brought on contractions so he had to undergo a short abstinence). I'm sure from speaking to counsellors and my doctor, that he was using sex as a relaxant, not because he wanted to love me. Unfortunately, the more he treated me like an object, the less sex I wanted. Sad. And it wasn't for the want of talking. I told him how his behaviour effected me so many times. Maybe he just wanted something to argue about in that case. Who knows!

I don't have anything to say LOL - I just want to follow you guys.

I'm just following along too. This is when I keep my mouth shut before I put my foot in it and say too much.

Haha. You guys are funny, following along! Hmmmm . . . The ole love vs sex (men and women difference). I'm not sure I necessarily buy into it. Maybe a man has to weigh in on this subject but I don't want to embarrass anyone. Oh well, it may forever go unanswered!

My, this conversation has evolved.

LOL, Di, methinks I was a little too candid? Sorry.

love and hugs
kamary

No you weren't too candid. I just didn't want to admit how long I stayed in a marriage without sex when I thought the ex was having problems. He had headaches, stomach aches, he was tired, on prozac, blood pressure meds, had jet lag. All the while someone else was getting what I did without for way too long. I was too comitted to my marriage for too long.

See this blows my mind....and here I was led to believe that I was the ONLY one dealing with this problem so therefore the problem MUST be me.

My husband has NEVER had a sex drive. Even when we were in our twenties! I have ALWAYS been the aggressor. He just had no interest. Our last 15 years I was lucky if I got it once or twice a year. In the last 7 I didn't get it at all! He never cheated phsycially (emotionally yes) and he has no intention of every marrying again.

I truly believe his problems are from his issues that stem from a VERY overbearing grandmother. In turn his father was a rebellious man and very selfish. He instilled by example, in his boys that women were nothing but dead weight who's prime function in life was to squash a man. So all three of his children fail with interpersonal relationships.

But in the more I open up and learn about dysfunction, the more I see that LOTS of guys have this problem. They talk about sex, but they have way more hangups than my female counterparts. I've yet to have a female friend who was the one denying sex. I'ts always the man.

I must say that I was with Trisha and PsiChi on this one. My ex claims he was the one who was denied but in realit, it was just the opposite. Why? Because he was getting it elsewhere. That is probably true for most of us on here who were the victims of adultery.

Strangely enough, about a month before we separated, he asked me to go on a weekend with him to one of the towns in northern Nevada. I thought it was going to be a romantic weekend to renew our love and commitment to each other. How stupid I was. We did no such thing. There was no intimacy, nothing. I asked him a year later what that was about and he said it was just a chance for him to get away. No thought toward me or anything. So I said, why did you even ask me to go and he had no answer.

Kamary, now you know you didn't say too much. Lol.

If our society has so changed in regards to relationships and its intentions, showing increased selfishness and wanting sexual gratification, just maybe the old school of thoughts has changed too. In other words, they are no longer valid. I do apologize but I'm not looking for gender identification, but rather seek awareness to resolutions to relational problems. There are some very popular gender differences in theory that are known to be repeatable to a high degree of outcome. Look at your social demographic variables, at the physiological, neurologic , and hormonal differences which are gender specific. One can with some expectancy, determine which gender is at greater risk for certain mental and physical disorders. As a fact, look at the criminal and narcissistic thinking minds and their profiles. You can predict who will show fundamentally unsuccessful relationships, causing sexual acting out and adultery behaviors.

I'm a day late....

@ drtexdi: I agree. They don't want to be sexually/emotionally involved at this point. They fear exposure of their dirty secrets if they get too close.

I was the one who had to initiate if there was sex. I happen to like sex a lot. of all things I found that the sex was better when he was cheating.

He'a an N and as my body matured (I'm still very petite) he lost interest. Just when he was put on blood pressure meds he went overseas so I really thought that was the problem. We spent three miserable days in London just before I filed. I might as well have been his mother..in fact he came in once calling me mom and I went ballisitc about that. While he was gone the women got younger and younger and I found his cheating pattern. When I looked at the ex I saw that man I married so long ago. When he looked at me he saw someone who was now too old for him.

I'll be dang, my ex N was too on blood pressure meds. I didn't make that connection until now. All the while, the SOB was crying about the effects of the meds making him feel dizzy. It appears, he was more worried about the idea of losing erection and needed to pursue the "young and innocent" to find out otherwise. It goes to show you, the sickness of trying not get caught.

I have to add this (I learn things every day in my law practice. There's a website called "Ashley Madison" that is for married swingers. My client's husband was listed there. TMI by a long shot; it was hard to look at him after seeing what he wrote.