He's Just Not Up for It Anymore (9 page)

Intimacy Stopped in the First Year

Men Explain Why

Men who told us passion stopped not immediately, but in the first year of marriage, ranged in age from 26 to 76 and had been married for between one and twenty-six years. Conventional wisdom looks at age and number of years married as contributing factors to decreased libido in men and women, but this doesn’t seem to be the case here.

The men who said that the sex stopped soon after marriage did have a few things in common, however.

Many suffered from ED. A 53-year-old man who did said: “You don’t absolutely need sex to grow in life and love.”

Another man, 37, first on medication with a libido-lowering side effect and now suffering from impotence, is caught in a vortex of negativity. His wife, 40, feels she is to blame for his erectile dysfunc-not

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tion and he can’t convince her she isn’t. They have been married for less than one year.

Initially I was on the antidepressant Wellbutrin and that seemed to kill my drive.
[Note: Wellbutrin usually does not have a libido-lowering side effect.]
Then my wife started blaming herself, which put a lot of pressure on me to perform, and I had a lot of trouble getting and maintaining an erection. The main problem is when my wife gets very sad. All I can think of is I don’t want to hurt her again. Viagra helps me but she thinks I’m too young to be on it and thinks I either need a pill or to be drinking to be with her. She doesn’t understand it is a mental problem. I want to avoid the possibility of pain. I think we will stay married, but I think resentment will build in her and she will grow to hate me because I’ve been hurting her.

It is unfortunate that many women cannot separate themselves from their husband’s problems of impotence. Chapter 8 explores this issue in greater depth, let us say here (again) that erectile dysfunction and wife are rarely related, and there is even less possibility of any connection in the first year of marriage. The above situation may have been averted, or at least improved, if the husband’s physician educated the couple as to the way the prescribed medications work, deleterious effects that commonly occur, and possible alternatives.

Other men, not surprisingly, tossed the ball into their wife’s court, saying that their spouses had little sense of adventure and didn’t seem to enjoy sex. One man (52) married to his wife (48) for eleven years, said that the sex stopped immediately and completely because “her lack of interest made me stop.” Another man (29) married for less than two years (his wife is 25) writes:

My wife says birth control pills decreased her desire. I say something else killed her desire the same time she started 70

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taking them. She gained a lot of weight. I don’t care but I know she does. She hasn’t tried to lose the weight. She signed up for a gym but has only gone twice.

Although our book is exploring why men stop being sexual with their partners, if a guy is consistently turned down, he may eventually just stop trying. This may be, at least to some extent, what happened here. Birth control pills can have a libido-lowering effect. This can be for physiological reasons (such as hormonal issues), or psychological ones (for example, she really wants to become pregnant, is angry her husband doesn’t want her to, and is punishing him). It may be a combination of both. It is curious that he seems so certain that something else ended her desire that he isn’t even suggesting they experiment with another method of birth control.

And another man (54) married to his wife (51) for twelve years says that he stopped having sex with her right after their marriage because: “She doesn’t have an adventuresome approach. She rarely made the first move.” Clearly, he didn’t, either.

Women Tell Us What They Think Happened

Fifteen percent of the female respondents said that sex stopped in the first year of marriage. Although some were unsure of the reasons, many felt that libido-lowering drugs for a variety of diseases including high blood pressure, diabetes, OCD, and depression were the cause.

The following woman, 52, has been married to her 56-year-old husband for two years. Before the wedding, they had oral sex frequently, but never intercourse. After the honeymoon, all intimacy stopped. Her husband is impotent and tells her that his doctor won’t prescribe Viagra because of other medication that he is taking. He refuses to seek alternative treatment, or to be sexual without an erection. She writes: “I can live without sex. I just wish he wouldn’t give up, not even try.”

This woman is understandably sad and confused about her hus-not

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band’s reluctance to be sexual now that they are married, since his medical condition and ED did not prevent them from having an intimate life before. He is probably conflicted about the marriage and withholding all contact as a way to demonstrate this. Perhaps he is afraid that his wife will find a man to satisfy her sexually in ways he thinks he can’t, and stopping all intimacy is a way of diffusing potential pain.

The following 45-year-old woman is married to a man, 53, whom she describes as angry and depressed, with a preference for online pornography. After two years of marriage, they have separated.

I came with a young child, which had a tremendous impact on our relationship. My husband is an extremely unhappy person.

His presence is toxic.

And the following woman, 64, has been married for four years to a man, 65, she describes as depressed. She is in therapy and says although she “loves him very much” she will leave unless he “gets it together.” She continues:

The excitement has disappeared, and the necessary creativity has not taken place. I’m not 16 anymore, but he ain’t a teenager in body appearance, either. I haven’t changed from the first few months when he couldn’t get enough of me. Now he seems to think of it as “work.” What a pity for both of us.

We agree that this is a pitiful situation, for a variety of reasons.

Her husband may have been delighted to get back the intensity of desire that accompanies a new and loving relationship, and disappointed that it didn’t last past the first few months, which is, in fact, often how long that kind of “excitement” does last, especially for a mature man. She is upset because she thinks he no longer wants her.

However, she mentions he is depressed. This is probably lowering his 72

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libido, and certain antidepressants could be lowering it even more, and/or causing erectile dysfunction. Although she thinks it might have to do with the way she looks, and worries that he doesn’t think she’s sexy, this has nothing to do with her appearance. He was aware of her age and body type long before the wedding day and they’ve only been married for a few years. As far as “creativity” goes, it may well be lacking on both their parts. What really seems “a pity” is that she has given her marriage an expiration date, and he is unwilling to try and solve the problem.

WHY SEX STOPS SO SOON: AN ABUNDANCE

OF POSSIBILITIES

Psychiatrist, sex therapist, and author Avodah Offit wrote: “Rather than being surprised at the reduction in sex drive, I am surprised that any remains at all in people bound to one another for better or for worse. So much in life is worse.” But Offit is not speaking of that magical first year when newlyweds believe that better is all there is.

Many of the respondents who claim that sex stopped almost immediately seem to be on medications that are decreasing their sex drive. (It is imperative that side effects of all medications be discussed with your physician. There may be alternative drugs that do not lower the libido.) Others suffer from ED, but don’t seek help, and prefer instead to avoid sex completely. The majority of women report men who are angry and depressed. This could be caused, at least in part, by anticipated humiliation. Then there are the women who pretend to orgasm, perhaps fearful of bruising their partners’ not yet married egos. When they finally decide to confess, the truth may end the passion. Some men may fear an unwanted pregnancy, no matter how unrealistic. We can assume that some simply find sex unnecessary, or frightening; it just might provide more pain than pleasure.

Intimacy is a risky thing. It may be easier to show passion to a transi-not

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tory lover; there is no fear of loss or abandonment. Once the ultimate commitment of marriage comes along, the stakes seem to suddenly be too high.

SOMETIMES, WATER SEEKS ITS OWN LEVEL

A 40-year-old woman who has been in a sexless marriage from the very start, which was eleven years ago, is currently thinking about getting a divorce. She told us that her husband has always avoided intimacy in his life, with her and everyone else. But neither she, nor any other woman, said that a lack of intimacy would suit her just fine, although in some cases this certainly must be true. Some women, when faced with a marriage destined to be without passion from the beginning, must secretly think it a good thing. Often, those with a fear of intimacy and attachment look for others with similar qualities.

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PREGNANCY AND THE

END OF PASSION

It is not uncommon for a man to both welcome the idea of becoming a new father and feel ambivalence once pregnancy is confirmed. It will soon no longer be just him and his partner, and to be more specific, he probably won’t be her top priority for the next eighteen years.

Some day soon his girlfriend is going to turn into a mommy. A first child is an ending as well as a beginning; some men perceive it as an end of the innocence. The sense of impending responsibility can be overwhelming.

And then there’s the sex act itself. Certain positions are difficult.

He can be terrified of hurting his wife or unborn baby. And although some men find a third-trimester woman beautiful, others don’t. For example, one 44-year-old man wrote that he stopped being sexual with his spouse six years ago when she was pregnant with their son:

“The thought of sex during pregnancy was somehow quite unappealing, and after the baby was born I never got back to trying again.”

Few issues are more important to discuss prior to marriage
than whether or not a couple wants to have children.

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Even if a man isn’t a first-time father, the uncertainty of having more children may be temporarily shutting down his libido. If she wants another and he doesn’t, not being sexual can be a way to express his anger and frustration.

There are men who have such a strong fear of becoming a parent, they avoid sex. A 47-year-old woman, unlikely to conceive, told us her 63-year-old husband has completely stopped being intimate with her when her physician told her she had to stop taking the pill, the only birth control method he considers reliable. They have been married for less than one year.

A 29-year-old woman, married for six years to her 49-year-old husband, had a similar problem, which was revealed in counseling: He finally agreed to therapy and I was elated. The therapist, noticing the large difference in our ages, asked if I wanted children. I do, very much, and he always knew this, but he confessed that he really doesn’t but was afraid to tell me, so he just stopped making love to me. (He knew I was no longer taking birth control pills.) The therapist suggested that he might have considered this would be a problem before he married someone so much younger than himself, and also that this was a very serious situation and needed to be resolved if the marriage was to survive. We made an appointment for the following week, but he canceled it without even discussing it with me. I think the only solution is a divorce. I find myself fantasizing about being single all the time.

Few issues are more important to discuss prior to marriage than whether or not a couple wants to have children. If they adamantly disagree about this, there is little chance that the marriage will be successful. Some people make the mistake of avoiding deal-breaking issues, but this woman didn’t do that. She was clear about wanting a family from the start. Unfortunately, her partner either changed his 76

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mind when faced with the reality of becoming a new father in his 50s, or he lied, hoping he could wish it all away. Now he is bullying her and canceling appointments because their therapist is saying things he doesn’t want his wife to hear, and he doesn’t want to admit.

We have written quite a lot about communication. No two people will ever agree on everything, or want all of the same things, and needs change over time. Honestly and empathetically discussing these differences is the ideal. When honesty and empathy are missing, however, conversation is pointless. This woman thought she was expressing what was of primary importance to her in a marriage, and her fiancé concurred. He told her what she wanted to hear. We think it is an unfortunate example of someone being less than truthful to get what he wants most, ignoring the fact that it will probably, ultimately, cause him to lose it all.

THE SEXLESS STEPFATHER

Women with children from previous marriages told us that the tremendous responsibility of suddenly becoming stepfathers was enough to shut their husbands down sexually. This can be especially true of men who have no prior experience in parenting—the anxiety can be a libido killer. A 47-year-old woman told us that she thinks her husband stopped being sexual with her because he is so angry about being a

“new” stepfather; he had no idea how difficult it would be. He is also resentful, she says, that she’s no longer his “dream girl” now that they’re all living together as a family. A 40-year-old woman wrote about a similar experience:

Things were normal before the wedding . . . sex a couple of times a week. On the honeymoon, I took some sexy lingerie, which he liked, and everything was fine. After the wedding he moved in with me and my 9-year-old daughter and everything pregnancy and the end of passion

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changed. I wore the sexy stuff for him, and he was unable to perform and sometimes wouldn’t even try. I scheduled special romantic nights for us when my daughter was away, and he either couldn’t perform or wasn’t interested. If I initiate sex, he feels pressured and can’t perform. If he initiates sex, he feels pressured and can’t perform. He says he gets excited but is afraid of failing so he can’t perform. Eventually, I threw away the sexy lingerie and gave up on the romantic evenings. (Female, 40, married one and a half years)

A man may be suddenly sexually unresponsive to a woman after marrying her, if she is a mother and her children are now living with them. This may seem irrational; he knew what their lives would be like. But knowing it isn’t living it, and these guys are suddenly facing responsibilities they were clearly not emotionally prepared for. There might be resentment about the situation—toward their wife, her children, or the children’s father. They may be angry. She may not seem so accessible anymore. This can also happen if a woman marries a man whose young children are living with him. Suddenly, she’s not just his adorable fiancée, she’s a mom.

MOMMY NOT-SO-DEAREST

Sometimes passion continues until the woman becomes pregnant or gives birth, then stops abruptly. We are not talking about the drop in sexual frequency most new parents experience due to time constraints and exhaustion, which is to be expected, when the father of a newborn still desires his wife, but passion just has to be put on hold for a while. In a healthy relationship, pretty soon new parents get a babysitter, go away for the weekend, leave the child with Grandma and Grandpa—do whatever it takes. (And even so, sex may still be less frequent than it was before the baby.) What we 78

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are discussing here is quite different. Suddenly, a wife has become a mother, and it’s no longer possible for her husband to perceive her as a sexual being.

Some men complained that
they
didn’t change after
their children were born, their wives did.

The following quote is from a 30-year-old woman who has been married to her 34-year-old husband for less than one year. She told us that they met online, fell in love, and she became pregnant two months later. They married two months after that. She went from sex goddess to untouchable mommy in less than twelve months.

I had a baby seven weeks ago. Our sex life was fantastic, several times a day, before I became pregnant. For the last five months of pregnancy he said he couldn’t make love to me because I was pregnant, but assured me that after the baby was born he would want me so much that I would get tired of him.

Now that the baby is here he uses that as an excuse, but he won’t talk about it. I’m the one who asks for sex and he says

“no,” or “maybe later.” He even says “yes, but later.” But later never comes. We used to be so sexual. Now nothing. I feel he isn’t attracted to me anymore. And it is the most painful thing ever. I want my prepregnancy husband back.

Her husband probably wants his prepregnancy wife back, too. He may be terrified of all his new responsibilities—a carefree young guy one year, husband and father the next, with no period of adjustment.

Not having any more sex may be insurance against not adding on additional responsibility. His wife doesn’t think he’s angry, just tired (no surprise there, with a new baby) and bored. But he could be quietly furious.

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The following woman describes her husband’s sexual interest as decreasing when she became his wife. Once she became the mother of his children, it was gone completely.

As soon as we married, even on the honeymoon, his sexual interest in me plummeted. Once we had kids, it was like he didn’t need to have sex with me anymore. Either that was all he wanted from me, or I reminded him too much of “mother” and made him feel old. (Female, 51)

Some men spoke out about their feelings of suddenly realizing their wives were mothers. The following 34-year-old man describes it with clarity:

We had kids and by being in the labor room, I no longer saw my wife as the sexy woman that I married, but as a mother. Between my wife breast-feeding and the baby co-sleeping, it is hard to find the time, opportunity, or desire to have sex.

Whether a man admits it to himself or not, he might become jealous that he has a strong rival for his wife’s love. Softly tender terms of endearment are now often directed at someone else. Or, in a variation of the previously mentioned Madonna/whore syndrome, the child’s birth may confirm that his wife is no longer pure, and therefore undesirable. He may stop being a husband. Or he may be right. Dr. June Reinisch, director emerita of the Kinsey Institute, gives this caveat:

“It’s important for a woman to keep sexy. If she wants to have an erotic life with her partner, she does not want to turn herself into his mother.”

Some men complained that
they
didn’t change after their children were born, their wives did. A 59-year-old man, now divorced, wrote,

“When she became a mother, she stopped being a wife.” The following quote is from a 68-year-old man, married to a 67-year-old woman.

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My wife says she has not enjoyed sex since the birth of her daughter forty years ago. She is not open to oral sex or any other options. I’m not interested in a younger body, only a partner who loves sex, is enthusiastic about it, is uninhibited, and loves to receive as well as give pleasure.

It is not uncommon for a woman to have a diminished sex drive after giving birth. This makes a good deal of biological sense; her immediate focus is on caring for the newborn. Fatigue, hormonal shifts, fear of discomfort or another pregnancy, and insecurity about her appearance may also be contributing factors. This is usually a temporary thing, lasting a few months to a year.

Occasionally a woman’s sex drive never returns after having a baby. Forty years ago, the woman described in the preceding quote may have experienced a female variation of the Madonna/whore complex. Her child eclipsed her husband completely, leading to a shift that made physical intimacy inappropriate. She may have believed that sex was for procreation only, and once she became a mother, it was irrelevant, or even wrong.

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PREDICTABLE, BORING,

UNADVENTUROUS SEX

The message I get from sex is get it in, get it over with, and don’t come back any time soon. (Male, 60, married to his 60-year-old wife for forty-one years)

When a sociologist interviewed twenty-two hundred American women in the 1920s, 25 percent of them said that when they had their first sexual experience, it “repelled” them. Even if they came to enjoy married sex, they were embarrassed to admit it. It just wasn’t the ladylike thing to do. Passion was something base, something to be hidden; if a woman felt aroused, it was her secret. A radical Vassar College professor instructed: “a woman may conscientiously allow herself to feel passion to the same extent as the man, if she controls its expression.” In spite of female lust hidden under the covers, there were surely wives who thoroughly enjoyed making love with their husbands or, perhaps, their lovers. In another survey, 25 percent of American men
and
women admitted to having experienced at least one affair.

It was a Faustian bargain. Men had a lot of reasons to want women’s sexuality suppressed, and women, in general, seemed willing to 82

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at least pretend to suppress it. A lusty female was a threat; she might stray or become impregnated by another man who wouldn’t have to foot the child-rearing bill. She might demand more in bed, expect a partner with skill, or have experienced a more talented lover. She might even have had “a past.” Far better to invent a world in which a wife endured rather than enjoyed sex, even if she wasn’t all that exciting a bed partner. If a man could afford it, he had a mistress or visited prostitutes; either was preferable to masturbation, an act that many social, political, and religious reformers of the time considered one of the most heinous things a man could do. (That belief lingered on for a long time. “Self-abuse” was considered harmful until the fairly recent past; in the 1950s, both the American Medical Association and the Boy Scout Manual stated it was something to be avoided.) Since having sex with “good girls” was out of the question and masturbation was considered hazardous to one’s health, prostitutes became the middle-class man’s sexual rite of passage. These were the women from whom he got his “experience” and how he became a man of the world. In 1918, Dr. Marie Stopes (daughter of the feminist Charlotte Stopes who was the first woman in Scotland to graduate from college) wrote a wonderfully radical book titled
Married Love: A
New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties.
She had a hard time getting it published. It stated marriage should be an equal relationship between husband and wife, and birth control readily available to all who wanted it, and it contained perhaps the most radical theory of all—those “good girls” who became wives were not only capable of, but longed for, intense sexual pleasure; for a happy marriage, their husbands had to give it to them, and she would explain how.

Stopes eventually found a small publisher in London, where the book went on to be a big success. (After it was a bestseller in England, it was published in America, where the courts quickly declared it ob-scene and it was banned.) In the following passage, Dr. Stopes warns male newlyweds about confusing bought-and-paid-for sex with real life. In other words, don’t think that because your wife doesn’t act like predictable, boring, unadventurous sex

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a hooker, she doesn’t enjoy sex, something some men in this century seem to forget to remember when they watch pornography.

Many men, who enter marriage sincerely and tenderly, may yet have some previous experience of bought “love.” . . . They argue that, because the prostitute showed physical excitement and pleasure in the sexual act, if the bride or wife does not do so, then she is “cold” or “undersexed.” They may not realize that often all the bodily movements of the prostitute are studied and simulated because her client enjoys his orgasm best when he imagines that the woman in his arms has one simultaneously.

Of course, women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not oddly lacking in libido; the times just made it convenient for them to pretend to be. “Hysteria” (from the Greek word for womb) was a commonly diagnosed “disease,” and those with money to pay for sex but nowhere to shop went to popular hydrotherapy centers for “the cure.” There, strong blasts of water aimed below the waist gave relief. Doctors also frequently massaged a female patient’s pelvic area to help alleviate hysteria—the mechanical vibrator was developed to enable a female to do this on her own.