I don’t disagree, farsidejunky. But you are right, there are trade offs. There are lots of studies done on female sexuality that says implied coercion over time will kill all attraction a woman has towards her husband. (I am only being gender specific here because I have read a lot about this in trying to understand the polarity that we have experienced at times in our own marriage). My assessment in our situation is that went into my people pleasing category for some time. If I didn’t say yes I believed it would be detrimental towards me getting love.
For me it had become self coercion and it led to a female version of impotence (which I was in when my affair started until far after it had ended)
I have found as I have almost reached fifty, and have wrangled my people pleasing and now feel I have permission to take a pass now and again if I am tired or just not up for it. My husband is older now and his sex drive has gone down a little which means we are not as far out of sync. He no longer cares that much if we take a rain check until tomorrow.
The freedom I have to say no has yielded a crazy amount of yes’s and a lot more initiating from me spontaneously rather than "well he says I need to initiate more let me do that ".I had lost the pulse on my desire, and being able to feel my desire instead of automatically saying yes has empowered me some how. Sometimes he simply hasn’t initiated enough to keep up with me now.
There are things you can do that squashes a women’s desire or stoke it and a lot of them have nothing to do with whether she loves you.
It can be from the way you initiate to how foreplay is conducted, all the way through the act. And certainly feeling entitled or feeling there shouldn’t be bodily autonomy will do it too. Sometimes you have to figure out a better angle at getting what it is you want other than saying "we are married and it’s owed" Or worse, saying something like "she cheated and it’s owed" is even more detrimental because at that point it’s using her own shame against her.
Falling into the trap of believing it’s about how much she loves you is self defeating, and likely inaccurate. We have different drives and women’s hormones fluctuate throughout the month, where as men are even. A lot of Women tend to need emotional intimacy and safety whereas a lot of men can separate sex from other aspects of the relationship. Stage of life- you have young kids? There is only so much energy for giving to other people one person can do.
There are lots of things that can go wrong. But until it gets discussed you can believe it is unlikely to change spontaneously.
I think sexuality is just more delicate than some of the other things you mention and I think it’s okay for it to be its own thing in marriage. Infidelity raises a lot more stakes to that area.
But as far as deserve or entitle to- I just don’t like that language when it requires action on the other person. I am not entitled to prattle on endlessly and make my husband listen.
However, I am fine if it’s used in this way- "we are all entitled to seek what we what we want from our relationships. And to be with someone who is compatible with the big important things."
We all deserve to feel we are in a loving and respectful relationship. Sex is the one area of the marriage that they can only have that need met from their spouse, and if there is no cooperation in figuring out a way you both can be happy, then it’s just never going to work. It’s true for other things- if you don’t share similar sensibilities on other things in your marriage, the more of those issues there are less it’s likely to work.
All this to say it’s a boundary like all others. And the appropriate way at to think of the boundary is "I understand you do not want to do x, but I feel that now I need to do y." "It’s fine that you have bodily autonomy, and but when you say no 9 times out of 10, that does not work for me. It is too much rejection when all I want to do is bond with you"
You can have feelings about what your partner does or does not do, and if one of them is simply a deal breaker, then it is. We have to be honest with ourselves and with them about that.
It’s a natural consequence of infidelity if the threshold of tolerance on something (especially sex) is lower than it was before the affair. And divorcing because of that comes not only with the lack of sex but that the ws has made that topic far more loaded by having sex with someone else.
[This message edited by hikingout at 9:44 PM, Monday, June 9th]