I don't like sex, so I guess no one must!

Bruno sent me this rather depressing link on a woman who doesn't have sex with her husband and is here to spread the word that not having sex is faaabulous.

Now, I've got nothing against sexless marriage if both partners agree, to each your own and if that's your kink. But the article has some hints that this situation is, ah, not entirely straight up.

She admits she stays in her sexless relationship for the sake of her children, aged nine and 11, and will remain celibate until the day they are grown up and she feels able to leave. At which point, she confesses, she will probably abandon her husband and begin a sexual odyssey to find the satisfaction that eludes her.
Okay, so she doesn't have a low libido--she just doesn't want to fuck her husband. (And is saying so in a place that her husband and kids can read.)

"In the meantime, I want to tell other women that they are not alone in not wanting to have sex with their long-term partners. I don't think it's possible to maintain the passion of the initial chase. But it doesn't mean you won't experience those feelings again with someone else."
Hey, she's certainly not alone in being unable to have long-term sexual relationships. I wish someone would tell her that the entire world doesn't think that way, though.

But Carrie goes one step further. She believes that marriage and motherhood are simply not conducive to having a sex life at all.
"Providing a stable home for children is totally incompatible with having an exciting sex life. The two things are violently at odds," she adds.
I don't have kids, but what? It's incompatible with having an unlimited sex life, obviously your days of doing it on the kitchen table every morning are at an end, but Jesus, I'm pretty sure you can still figure out how to have sex occasionally if you want it.

Also, "a stable home"? I understand people saying kids tire and stress them too much for sex, but it's not like having sex is going to make you lose your job or get evicted... is it? Jesus, what kind of sex are we talking about here?

Well, sex with someone besides her husband, clearly. Which means her situation isn't unique, but it's not one of disappointment with sex itself, just with poor Hal. "I wanted a divorce but didn't for the sake of the kids" is a pretty common situation, she's right, but it's really not about sex.

The couple still share a bed, though physical contact is strictly off limits. "We've never discussed the demise of our sex life," she says.
Ouch.

Unbelievably, her poor, unsuspecting husband is not only unaware of her plans to leave him. He also, she insists, has no idea that she has written a book or posed for these pictures. She seems as confident of him not finding out as she is that he is understanding of her feelings.
OUCH. This is either a publicity lie or it's going to end really, really badly.

"Children need to be brought up by parents in a monogamous marriage. I wouldn't want to blow that apart, and I certainly wouldn't want the burden of being a single parent. I know from taking the kids on holiday on my own once when Hal was working that having sole responsibility for them is exhausting."
Jesus, that's lazy. I can understand wanting your kids to have two parents, or not wanting to separate a father from his children, but she seems more concerned about all the work she'd have to do otherwise.

So what of her sexual history? It seems that Carrie wasn't always this uninterested in sex. She admits to having 23 lovers before she married. "Ten were proper boyfriends," she recalls. "I regretted having sex with six of them, loved three of them but only one of the 23 ever gave me an orgasm.
Digression: I've heard other stories from women who only orgasmed with a tiny percentage of guys and I don't entirely understand it. It seems like if you're capable of orgasm you'd be having them all over the place, right? Maybe if you take a lot of work some guys will never bother, but more than 1/23rd will put in the effort. Is it some mystical connection that sloppy old anyone-orgasmers like me can never understand?

Carrie admits that part of her envies those authors who claim to be having lots of sex and, more significantly, love it. The other part of her just doesn't believe them. "I do wonder if they are just writing what they think the audience wants to hear," she says. "I read their accounts of wild sex lives and then ponder my own sexual encounters and wonder: 'Where was the fun, the screaming ecstasy, the fireworks?'"
Well, honey, you're sexually dysfuctional and kind of a terrible person. But trust me, the entire world isn't. You think no one has screaming ecstasy from sex? Just ask my downstairs neighbors. (Hell, ask my neighbors three blocks away.)



I have no problem with someone being in a sexless marriage. Someone being in a sexless, communicationless, desperate-to-cheat marriage with absolutely no remorse or insight... that's a little more unsettling.