“What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity” (nytimes) gives some color to the statistic “Only 48% of married women want regular sex after four years.” (Good Housekeeping).
A few years ago, while living in London, I dated married men for companionship … After being married for 23 years, I wanted sex but not a relationship. …
What surprised me was that these husbands weren’t looking to have more sex. They were looking to have any sex.
Maybe the reason some wives aren’t having sex with their husbands is because, as women age, we long for a different kind of sex. I know I did, which is what led me down this path of illicit encounters. After all, nearly as many women are initiating affairs as men.
One thing that is interesting is the author’s (and editors’?) faith in the power of words and conversation:
I am not saying the answer is non-monogamy, which can be rife with risks and unintended entanglements. I believe the answer is honesty and dialogue, no matter how frightening. Lack of sex in marriage is common, and it shouldn’t lead to shame and silence.
In the end, I had to wonder if what these men couldn’t face was something else altogether: hearing why their wives no longer wanted to have sex with them. It’s much easier, after all, to set up an account on Tinder.
One of our neighbors divorced her 50-year-old husband in order to spend more time having sex with her 30-year-old boyfriend (she kept most of the cashflow off the husband’s paycheck, fortunately, as she did not work at all and her new lover was only minimally employed). Would this fit woman in her late 40s have regained her interest in the 50-year-old given some “dialogue”?
Women have a remarkable ability to rationalize whatever they are doing.
I know of a case where a married man slept for 3 years on the sofa downstairs (with all that implies). Basically it was a form of abuse IMHO.
Roger: That’s because, in the words of the great philosopher Hertzog, “Women don’t think.”
Roger: Offensive! #NotAllWomen
Perhaps Elon Musk’s new company to create wizard brain hats will help drill into the hippie generation’s head that there are always trade offs? In order to have a sex market where the 40 year old woman can live off an ex husband and have sex with a 30 year old, there will inevitably be losers to go with the winners.
It turns out quite a few losers: Disney dads, doctor wives with slacker ex husbands, young actresses who can’t outrun 65 year old Harvey, incel husbands, incel non-husbands, single moms who didn’t read Real World Divorce before picking the dad, women whose fertile years are flying by with a boyfriend who will perpetually propose in 2 years, most children, all the victims of the social issues that followed the death of the family, etc)
Not so many winners: High status men(with a brief interruption late last year/early this year), women who’ve arranged Tibetan style polygamy, slacker men who’ve somehow married Doctor wives, divorce lawyers, divorce civil servants, divorce “therapists”, single moms who’ve read Real World Divorce in time)
I for one, am disappointed in these men’s lack of basic decency and bravery. As this lady said, they just needed to have an honest conversation and face up to their manifold inadequacies to find out why their wives didn’t want to have sex with them anymore.
Surely it was that and not the consequences of divorce that they were worried about.
@phil
“Would this fit woman in her late 40s have regained her interest in the 50-year-old given some “dialogue”?”
I think it’s well established that nothing builds attraction like prostrating yourself before a woman and trying to pacify her by doing whatever she wants!
anything the New York Times publishes related to sex, particularly from a personal point of view, is of sociological interest, as it pertains to how some people think about sex. It is likely of little interest for the philosopher interested in getting to the heart of the matter.
Richard Feynman is a good starting point for a philosophic approach. His most memorable axiom: you won’t get laid if you buy the lady a drink.
“I had to wonder if what these men couldn’t face was something else altogether: hearing why their wives no longer wanted to have sex with them.”
It might be menopause. Or maybe she got fat. It might be every time the husband brings it up the wife sobs and becomes an insta-victim instead of having “honest dialogue” about the problem. No it’s definitely the husbands fault. It has to be! The law of the land says the preponderance of evidence criteria already means the woman is 51% right and the man only 49% right before the discussion even begins.
It seems to be a biological feature of almost every women (maybe every woman?) to lose sexual attraction to any man she’s been living with for 4+ years, no matter how perfect he is or how good their “dialogue” is.
See
http://www.blackdragonblog.com/2013/09/29/women-get-bored-with-their-monogamous-men-even-more-scientific-proof/
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/unexcited-there-may-be-a-pill-for-that.html
for details.
This is one of those things that women and society lie profusely about. Of course, most women are unaware of their own nature…they wrongly assume the man is to blame for their lack of desire, rather than realize that losing desire for a particular man is simply programmed into the female organism.