As a man I would disagree that men are necessarily more self assured. Sure there are some self centered narcissistic a-holes out there that seem to have it all figured out, but a real down to earth man has alot of insecurities. Am I "man" enough? Am I worthy? Am I a good enough husband, father, worker, boss, son, fill in any identifier here....
Men are taught to tough it out, to step up, and to "be a man". So in essence it is saying suppress whatever is bothering you. That is why women complain that men don't talk about their feelings - because they were taught not to.

As far as the effects of a sexless marriage on a man..it can be crushing. Men are typically so sexually driven anyway. If you have a partner who is not interested in you physically that is a huge blow to your male ego. If it is the man who isn't interested I would be willing to bet money that it certainly is on his mind - see the previous section about being "man enough". And he won't talk about it or address it because it breaks the rule that he has been taught his entire life to just "suck it up".

Men are supposed to be strong and take charge. Though many men may portray it on the outside, on the inside they fear being found as fraud. And think about how an unhappy wife affects that even more....husband is supposed to be the provider and create an environment for her to flourish. If she is not, then the husband can feel like a failure and a fraud. It is a horrible cycle that I believe causes many people to end up alone.

I believe you could be right.

As a kid, I also learned to "tough it out" (handle things myself.....without 'bothering" anyone else) and to "pretend" all was ok. (That was the preference......just ignore and all will go away. Of course it never did work for them either.)

I didn't realize men could have as hard a time as women. Perhaps you all do a better job "pretending" than even I do. (did)

A sexless marriage is crushing and @kdf2330 could not have said it better. Our culture is incredibly tough on men. I would argue that men in America have far more expectations of themselves and are set up with odds stacked against them from the beginning. We have very few outlets - as we're often considered pussies we complain. There are no men shelters in America but yet the government has released study after study shows that domestic abuse is only less than 10% marginal difference between sexes. We're forced to live in the horrible marriage we're in: if we leave we give up 60% of our income, if we commit adultery we can lose custody battles or society labels us as another pig husband.

If the wife cheats, society will ask the husband what he was doing wrong, why he couldn't be good enough for her, why he drove her to find someone better than him...

All these things crush a man, make his self-esteem as low as it could go, begins to question whether he wasn't intelligent enough, wasn't fun enough; if he was capable of giving her what she "deserved". We begin to feel like failures because culture teaches us from day one to make her happy, give her what she wants... If the results are an angry and unfriendly wife, and we have done what we were taught - when we feel like we're accountable for the failure in the marriage.

Moral of the story is: YES, we feel stupid, not good enough, weak, fat, ugly... When she does not want us. We feel no differently than a needing wife feels. Also, I do not believe women are from Venus and men are from Mars. I believe we're no different and as long as culture keeps telling us this lie, couples when to continue to think they're different and insist their partner meets them where they are. If we begin to understand we're in the same place, we will begin to empathize.