Many married but sexless couples are trapped by hopelessness and are mostly resigned to an uncomfortable status quo. You can tell them from their grumpiness. You can tell by their abject misery.
Some marriages have no more action in the bedroom department due to various reasons, such as ill health, and those spouses tend to hold it together, regardless; there is the knowledge that if it were not for the illness, things would still be hot, so the couple usually comfortably resorts to other sources of intimacy and bonding in the meantime.
Then there are other couples where the sex flies out the window due to a dysfunction or several of them. Madam’s libido is non-existent, or Mister just cannot sustain an erection long enough to be counted.
And there are still others where the embers just died out completely. There is no spark. There is zero interest in each other. Yet they agree to stay married for the sake of the children, the church, business, and so many other factors.
Some even decide to stay married because they realise that sex aside, they are actually good friends and get along famously as roommates. Yet, in all those scenarios, it is possible to wait out the drought gracefully and tactfully, especially if you have decided not to give up on your marriage.
Take a few lessons from those who have been there and done that. Erin’s (not real name) husband had a combination of two of the above factors: he had a sexual dysfunction that cropped up with his midlife but also appeared to no longer be all that into her.
After pulling out her hair and mourning the loss of her pink elephants for months, she resolved not to let him define her functionality.
“I decided my happiness did not depend on him. I picked myself up and started doing things I used to love doing that I had given up upon marrying him,” she told me. “I wore my makeup again, went out with my girls and dressed ‘happy’. Trust me, he noticed. First, the mutual attraction returned, and together we fought to overcome the dysfunction.”
Erin, who is once again seeing all the pink elephants she wants, advises spouses not to tug all their happiness on their other half.
“Maintain a level of independence and don’t lose the ‘you’ he was initially attracted to completely,” she advises.
Insist on your ‘me-time’ even as you balance with the date nights. Don’t walk around the house rumbling like thunder, kicking the kids out of your way and stepping into saucepans because you have an unquenched thirst. Be happy; it is contagious.
“My best man once told me to stop pining for madam after a long period of her starving me with excuse after excuse,” Bruce (not real name) once shared. “He reasoned, if only I could tap into her insecurities, I could strike gold again.”
Bruce stocked up on a new, stylish wardrobe and even enrolled at a gym.
“I looked good. In fact, madam started accusing me of infidelity! I just went about my business even as I suffered in silence, but I was not being unfaithful,” he said. “Women can be funny; suddenly, she started competing with this imaginary rival of hers, even sexually. It was like she was trying to make me too tired for any extra indulgences…”
And like that, his drought ended with rather heavy rains.
Staying on top of your game can bring down cold walls, if not with a hiked libido, with a ‘pleasantly- worried’ response like in Bruce’s case. Being clingy, grumpy, or throwing endless pity parties and letting yourself go will only prolong the sex drought. So, snap out of it.
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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