Dear James: Is This Sexless Marriage Over?
Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
My best friend has been married to her husband for nearly 10 years, and it’s fair to say that their sex life is dead. Apart from the lack of intimacy, he is, she says, a model husband. He does his fair share of housework, he is supportive of everything she does, and he never complains—except when it comes to her alcohol consumption. She likes a glass or two when she’s depressed, and she’s depressed when he refuses to touch her. It’s a vicious cycle.
They’ve had numerous talks about working on their marriage. Most ended with him saying he would “work on it only if she quits drinking.” She has quit a couple of times, but he didn’t become more affectionate, so she started drinking again. He has rejected going to marriage counseling. And he doesn’t communicate well about his emotions: He tends to shut down when my friend expresses her unhappiness or asks about his state of mind. Worst of all, he says things like “I’m just waiting for the divorce to happen.”
My friend was so happy when she met her husband, and the stakes are high for her marriage not to end. But it’s hard to see her stuck in this kind of rut. She gave me her permission to write because we’re running out of ideas. Any advice?
Dear Reader,
This is pretty bleak. But not terminal.
What do I do when I’m in a rut? I listen, at top volume, to “In a Rut,” by the Ruts: “If you’re in a rut / You gotta get out of it, out of it, out of it.” Should that fail to dislodge me, I will fling myself into violent exercise. Or take a train somewhere.
But these are short-term remedies, mere jolts to the metabolism. They work for me because I am essentially a rather superficial person, one of nature’s lightweights. I don’t think the Ruts can fix your friend’s problem.
She’s got to stop drinking, hasn’t she? She’s got to stop waiting for the magic touch from her uncomplaining, housework-doing, divorce-anticipating, therapy-refusing, comprehensively shut-down, and domestically self-neutering husband and take care of her own business. He, of course, is exactly 50 percent responsible for this mess—and I can see a heat-shimmer of shoved-down anger around him, even from here. Not nice. Not helpful. I’m surprised she still finds him attractive. I can hear him doing the dishes—too loudly—with a kind of boiling, grim-faced stoicism.
But. Sitting there all boozy-sad while he silently and seethingly folds the laundry … no, no, and no again. A marriage can have these moments: They look like stasis, but they’re actually a slow-moving molecular vortex of destruction, a sludgy two-person twister whose power can be broken only if one of those people decides to change. And not being able to change anybody else—you’re not God—you have to change yourself. Change your behavior. And once you do that, everything changes.
“Work on your marriage,” “rekindle your sex life”: recipes for despair! Sort yourself out, rewire your connection to the universe, and then stand back. You won’t be disappointed.
Possibly, briefly sounding like I know what I’m talking about,
James
Dear James,
I’m a woman, and I was recently hanging out with some other women, when one of them—just an acquaintance—started asking highly personal questions like: “How’s your sex life?” and “How many times a week do you have sex?” Everyone was waiting for me to answer, and I felt put on the spot. I wanted to come up with a joke, but I couldn’t think of anything.
Perhaps among men, this sort of thing is considered just “locker-room talk.” But it made me uncomfortable. And it wasn’t the only time this has happened. I’ve been caught off guard by personal questions in other situations, too, including in mixed groups of men and women. So I’m wondering: How to respond? Any suggestions?
Dear Reader,
Who are these prurient people you’re hanging around with? I suggest a nice, firm “Mind your own frigging business.”
Modestly,
James
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