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The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide Paperback – January 8, 2004
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It is estimated that one of every three married couples struggles with problems associated with mismatched sexual desire. Do you? If you want to stop fighting about sex and revitalize your intimate connection with your spouse, then you need this book. In The Sex-Starved Marriage, bestselling author Michele Weiner Davis will help you understand why being complacent or bitter about ho-hum sex might cost you your relationship.
Full of moving firsthand accounts from couples who have struggled with the erosion of sexual desire and rebuilt their passionate connection, The Sex-Starved Marriage addresses every aspect of the sexual libido problem:
If you're the more highly sexed partner, you'll breathe a sigh of relief. At last someone understands your feelings about the void in your marriage. Discover why your pleas for touch have fallen upon deaf ears and why your approach to the lull in your sexual relationship could be a sexual turnoff. Most important, learn new ways to motivate your spouse to take your needs for more physical closeness to heart.
If you're the spouse with a lagging libido, you're far from alone. You'll learn about the physiological and psychological factors, including unresolved relationship issues, that may contribute to the chill in your bedroom and what you can do to melt the ice. And if you're a man, you'll be surprised to learn that staggering numbers of men, even men whose sexual machinery works just fine, "get headaches" too!
The Sex-Starved Marriage will give you and your spouse the inspiration, encouragement, and answers you need.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 8, 2004
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.5 x 8.44 inches
- ISBN-100743227336
- ISBN-13978-0743227339
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". . . tremendously impressed with Davis's profound understanding of the sexual and relational quagmires so many couples fall into with their misconceptions." -- Dr. Laura Schlessinger, author of Ten Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships
"For couples struggling with sexual problems . . . this is the first book I will recommend!" -- Howard J. Markman, Ph.D., co-author, Fighting for Your Marriage
"It is the antidote to the distance spouses feel when differences in sexual desire wreak havoc in their marriages." -- Dr. Gary Smalley, author, Love Is a Decision
Dr. Laura Schlessinger Author of Ten Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships I am tremendously impressed with Weiner Davis's profound understanding of the sexual and relational quagmires so many couples fall into with their misconceptions. This book will definitely help readers to understand their own feelings, needs, and responses. But even more importantly, it will help them understand the role of sexual intimacy in keeping marriages strong. -- Review
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One: The Sex-Starved Marriage
Dear Michele,
Please, please help me. I am going through hell!! I am twenty-eight years old, married with a three-year-old daughter. For the past three years, my wife has avoided being sexual with me. It has slowly gone from having sex maybe twice a week to now, if I'm lucky, once a month. And even then, it's not really having sex. It's more like her saying, "Hurry up and get in here, and let's do this before our child wakes up." There is no foreplay. She doesn't even kiss me. I'm the one who always is initiating any sort of affection.
I get completely angered, hurt, and resentful toward her because I can't understand how she could be so cruel to me. I want to tell her, "If you don't love me anymore, then we can split up and move on," but we have a child together, and I don't think that's right or fair to our daughter. I want to be there when my little girl wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night. But I also don't want to be with a woman who doesn't want to be with me.
So I struggle every day with what I should do because I can't keep living like this. I'm miserable. I have talked to my wife about how I feel numerous times, and nothing I say seems to change anything. Is there anything else I can do besides getting a divorce? Is there something you could write to her so she hears from another person about the importance of a good sexual relationship in a marriage?
Does any of this sound familiar? Are these things you've thought or said to yourself? Or have you heard words like these uttered from your spouse in an attempt to get you to change? Either way, you need to know that you are not alone. It is estimated that one out of every three couples struggle with problems associated with low sexual desire. One study found that 20 percent of married couples have sex fewer than ten times a year! Complaints about low desire are the #1 problem brought to sex therapists.
And if you've been thinking that low sexual desire is only "a woman's thing," think again. Many sex experts believe that low sexual desire in men is America's best-kept secret. Just read what women have to say about what really goes on behind closed doors:
I am so tired of reading articles in women's magazines and watching talk shows that perpetuate the myth that men are always more interested in sex than women. This is a bunch of hooey! There are many, many women who would love to have a spouse who wants to have sex, touch, or kiss.
I've spoken to many women who have this same problem....Their husbands simply aren't interested. I cannot believe my circle of friends is so different from the average. None of their husbands are "getting it on the side"...they simply are not interested. In my case, my husband of 26 years has never been as interested as I in sex, and during the last 5 years our sex life has been nonexistent.
***
This lack of sex is more than just a lack of physical attention....It goes deep into a woman's heart. I think in a normal marriage, a couple can fight about anything, but then they can make love and soothe the bad feelings...sort of like a rebirth...a forgiving ritual. But when you are deprived of even that, bitterness and resentment and desperation accumulate. I have a husband who is a good guy, great father, good provider, but I have no lover. I'm angry about the wasted years, the years I could have been loving, but spent agonizing about why I was being deprived. It's so much more than sex. It's feeling wanted, and sexy and desired by the man that you are committed to for life.
As you can see, women have no corner on the low libido market. Maybe you're asking yourself, "If low sexual desire in men is commonplace, why are they so closed-mouthed about it?" That's a good question. When a woman lacks sexual desire, although it may be troubling to her, she's not likely to start questioning the core of her femininity. After all, she's almost supposed to have "headaches." Men, on the other hand, are thought to have only three things on their minds: sex, sex, and more sex. To be disinterested in sex is to feel less than a man. Just thinking about low libido, let alone talking about it, strikes terror in men because it threatens the very foundation on which their feelings of self-worth are based. No wonder they're tight-lipped. But make no mistake about it: there are millions of people, women and men, who just don't feel turned on.
It would be one thing if these lustless men and women were married to each other; they could agree to go off into the sunset, basking in platonic bliss. But as fate would have it, it rarely works that way. People with low sexual desire are generally married to partners who desperately yearn for more sexuality, intimacy, physical closeness, and connection. And this chasm between them - a desire discrepancy - spells trouble. How do I know?
I've been a marriage therapist for two decades. I've been privileged to hear the real stories of people's lives: the joys, the pain, the challenges, the payoffs. I've had a bird's-eye view of what truly happens to marriages in which one spouse has little or no desire for sex and the other yearns for it desperately. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that a marriage void of sexuality and intimacy is a marriage doomed to fail. Take Debra and Tom, for example.
When I met Debra and Tom, they had been married for ten years and had two sons, ages eight and five. They were strikingly handsome individuals, devoted parents, financially well off, in good health, and surrounded by loving and attentive friends and family. It's easy to understand why outsiders believed that they were the perfect couple. Yet despite all of this, their marriage was precipitously close to ending.
Debra spent much of our time together in counseling complaining about Tom. He was angry all the time and impatient with everyone in the family. His short-temper was poison to her soul. He snapped at her over the littlest things. He yelled at the kids "for just being kids." According to Debra, everyone always felt as if they were walking on eggshells. Debra also complained of Tom's lack of involvement at home. "He never seems to want to do anything as a couple or even as a family anymore. It's as if he's given up on our marriage," she said. "He never talks to me or even asks how my day was."
Tom had no shortage of negative things to report about their marriage either. He was quick to tell me that he didn't like being around Debra because all she ever did was complain. Whether he was completing a home improvement project or helping the kids with homework, Tom felt that Debra always found fault with him. Tom also talked about a deep disappointment in Debra as a companion. He wistfully recalled their early years of marriage: "She used to be fun to be with. She had a great sense of humor. She made me feel like I was the funniest man in the world. Now, everything is serious." And after a moment of silence he added, "We don't have anything in common anymore. She does her thing, and I do mine. At this point, I actually prefer it that way."
We met for several sessions, and very little changed. I was unable to help Debra and Tom find their way out of the exasperating labyrinth of blame versus counterblame. They were both more intent on being right than finding solutions to their long-standing problems. Nonetheless, Debra and Tom still claimed that they wanted to stay together. Yet I could see that unless something drastic changed, they were headed for marital disaster. Confused, I asked the couple, "What's the glue holding the two of you together?" and Tom's response offered the first real inkling of what had been really troubling them and why they had been so stuck.
Tom's tone softened considerably as he spoke. "I've given this a lot of thought, and besides staying together for the sake of our boys, I think I'm still holding out hope that some day we'll be able to recreate some of the feelings we had earlier in our marriage." And Tom proceeded to describe what he saw as the progressive unraveling of their intimate relationship.
Tom said that when they first married, he was passionately in love with Debra and found her irresistibly attractive. Their sex life was wonderful; they made love frequently, and he felt extremely close to her. His ability to satisfy Debra sexually made him feel good about himself as a lover and as her life partner. He recalled how their close sexual relationship reverberated throughout the rest of their marriage. They often snuggled on the couch while watching television, held hands when they walked, and kissed each other affectionately. He loved their time together. Tom felt that Debra was his best friend. All that changed after the birth of their first child.
Debra became extremely focused on her new role as mother, and when she wasn't caring for their baby, she felt fatigued. Sleep, not sex, was the only thing Debra found herself craving. Tom's need for companionship and intimacy was not one of Debra's top priorities. In fact, to hear Tom tell it, his needs were not a consideration for Debra at all.
Initially, he spoke to Debra about his hurt with this change in their lives. He told her that he didn't feel important anymore. He wondered why she wasn't into sex. He kept asking, "What's wrong? Did I do something wrong? Aren't you attracted to me anymore?" But because Debra was sleep deprived, hormonally altered, and overworked, she found herself having little compassion for her husband's feelings. In fact, she commented, "I couldn't believe he was complaining. I had so much to do with very little help from him. I felt like I had two babies, not one. It just seemed like he was jealous of our child, and I found that unfathomable. I never thought the man I married would be so selfish. After a day of taking care of our son's physical needs, the last thing I felt like doing was having one more person's needs to think about. I needed to think about me."
As the years passed, Debra's repeated rejections of her husband's advances hurt and angered Tom, and as a result, he stopped investing energy in their marriage. He focused on himself, his work, and his friends. And the more he distanced himself, the less inclined Debra felt to touch or kiss Tom, let alone have sex with him. "After all," she told herself, "why should I have sex when I don't feel close to him at all?" Now their infrequent sexual encounters, too often tainted by feelings of resentment and hurt, left them both feeling empty.
Finally their incessant blaming, their lack of empathy for each other's feelings, and their cold, inflexible body language that permeated our sessions made complete sense. Their marriage had become sex starved.
If you're asking yourself, "Now what does that mean?" I can see why. After all, the phrase, sex starved typically refers to a person, not a relationship. Sex-starved people are generally thought of in one of two ways: they're either so highly sexed that sexual satisfaction is a moving target, or they're people who, for a variety of reasons, haven't had sex in a such a long time that they're obsessed with it. But a sex-starved marriage is different.
Contrary to what you might be thinking, saying that a marriage is sex starved tells you virtually nothing about how much or how little sex a couple is actually having. It's not about numbers. It's not just about sex-less couples who have slept in separate bedrooms for years. In fact, it includes couples who, according to national surveys, have an "average" amount of sex each month. Since, unlike vitamins, there are no recommended daily requirements to ensure a healthy sex life, a sex-starved marriage is more about the fallout that occurs when one spouse is deeply unhappy with his or her sexual relationship and this unhappiness is ignored, minimized, or dismissed. The resulting disintegration of the relationship encapsulates the real meaning of a sex-starved marriage.
Sex is an extremely important part of marriage. When it's good, it offers couples opportunities to give and receive physical pleasure, to connect emotionally and spiritually. It builds closeness, intimacy, and a sense of partnership. It defines their relationship as different from all others. Sex is a powerful tie that binds.
As with Debra and Tom, when one spouse isn't interested in sex, the touching, kissing, and other forms of physical affection and intimacy often cease as well. Spouses distance from each other emotionally. They carry on their lives together in much the same way that two toddlers might engage in parallel play - involved in similar activities in close proximity but without meaningful connection. Marriage becomes mechanical. Friendship often evaporates. Anger bubbles just below the surface. Misunderstandings abound. Emotional "divorce" becomes inevitable.
More highly sexed partners such as Tom feel confused and cheated by their spouses' lack of interest in their sex lives and try to figure out what's at the root of their partners' rejections. Unfortunately, they often assume the worst: "My wife isn't attracted to me," or "He must be having an affair," or "The kids' needs are more important than mine."
When people believe that their spouses aren't attracted to them, that their marriages or their feelings aren't important, or that an affair is brewing, they feel rejected, suspicious, hurt, resentful, and unloved. They start doubting themselves and their abilities to satisfy their spouses. They often feel deeply depressed about the void in their marriages.
When they try to explain these feelings to their partners, their explanations are often flatly dismissed. "You don't have the need to feel closer to me, you're just a sex maniac," or "If you would go to work in the real world rather than be home with the kids, you would understand why I'm so tired all the time," or "If you weren't so controlling, you would just accept that I'm not as physical as you are and you would leave me alone!" or "It's only sex. What's the big deal?"
However, to someone like Tom - the partner yearning for a better sexual relationship - being lovers is a big deal. It's much more than mere physical pleasure. It's connection, intimacy, closeness, and affection. It's about feeling attractive, feeling masculine or feminine, and feeling whole as a person. It's about being in love. It's about a feeling of oneness. But since people with low sexual desire aren't hungering for a sexual connection, they're not overly empathetic to their spouses' feelings and do little to make significant changes in their relationships.
Eventually, feelings of rejection become increasingly difficult to manage. Sadness turns to anger. Those yearning for more physical closeness vacillate between being distant and unpleasant. And although these behaviors are merely symptoms of underlying hurt, people with low sexual desire don't perceive their spouses' behavior quite so benevolently. Empathy is in short supply. Arguments about sex, or the lack of it, become the norm.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Sex-Starved Marriageby Michele Weiner Davis Copyright ©2004 by Michele Weiner Davis. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.Copyright ©2004 Michele Weiner Davis
All right reserved.
Product details
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (January 8, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0743227336
- ISBN-13 : 978-0743227339
- Item Weight : 7.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #74,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #120 in General Sexual Health
- #197 in Sex & Sexuality
- #526 in Marriage
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Michele Weiner Davis, MSW, is an internationally renowned relationship expert, highly acclaimed speaker and author of several books including the best-selling The Sex-Starved Marriage, and the best-selling Divorce Busting, Healing from Infidelity, The Divorce Remedy, Getting Through to the Man You Love, Change Your Life and Everyone in It, and In Search of Solutions. She has appeared as a regular guest on Oprah, 48 Hours, the Today show, CBS This Morning, and 20/20. Michele is the Founder and Director of The Divorce Busting Center with offices in Colorado and Illinois. Her popular website, www.divorcebusting.com and www.healingfrominfidelity.com offer visitors practical information for making their marriages more loving and lusty. She lives in Colorado with her husband. Watch her TEDx Talk on The Sex-Starved Marriage at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep2MAx95m20
On a personal note, there was a specific reason Michele developed a passion for helping couples fall in love again and keep their marriages and families together. She grew up in an East Coast version of the Walton family. Michele had two parents who loved her and her two brothers. Her parents never fought. Michele had lots of friends and was a good student, so life for her as a child was wonderful. There was a big extended family, so holidays were warm and memorable.
All this came to a screeching halt when she turned 16 and was a senior in highschool. Her mother sat the whole family down and told them that she had been unhappy for 23 years of marriage. Needless to say, this was a shocking revelation because Michele's parents never fought. Then her mother announced, "There comes a time in everyone's life when you have to throw in the towel." Those words changed Michele's life forever. Not only did her parents marriage dissolve, her warm, nurturing family disbanded completely. Her mother had been the hub of the wheel in the family and when she divorce, she resigned from the position. Michele left for college shortly after this announcement and as she did, her home, her family fell apart.
As a result, Michele has been determined to make her own marriage work and to learn everything she could about what it takes to have a healthy and loving relationship so that she could teach it to everyone who crossed her path. This fire within her led her to specializing in work with couples and writing the best-selling book, Divorce Busting. She feels blessed that she has helped hundreds of thousands of couples to renew their love and decide to make their marriages work. She's convinced that people don't just fall out of love, they simply don't have the skills they need to make love last. And these skills, she believes, can definitely be acquired. Visitors to her web site www.divorcebusting.com find resources to resolve conflict and reconnect. This is her mission in life- to help people restore their love.
For more information, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Weiner-Davis
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This book also really shows how the push and pull in a relationship works..and that my actions will cause her reactions.. which could be good or bad. Seems really simple.. but it goes so much more deeper than one would think. Things like constantly doing things for your spouse, will cause them to never think about doing it themselves eventually. If a wife always takes out the trash, eventually the husband literally will never think about taking the trash out. Seems ridiculous.. but its quite true. If i literally never think about it, eventually it could led my wife to feel i am lazy and not willing to help out around the house.. its completely not the case, but reading through this really helped me realize. How important communicating more effectively is. She could ask me to take out the trash.. and if I am busy with something and say "i'll do it in a bit" and literally forget about it. its seems like i am just not doing it. I really don't mind taking out the trash and actually do this quite often.. but there have been times in the past where a task was requested of me and I literally forget to to it.. It was very profound to me that we are basically continually rewiring each other to think and do things based on how we interact with out spouse.
My wife is one to bottle stuff up and not say anything until things come to a head.. which is really tough for me. Feeling blindsided when she finally voices her issues. Being blindsided also, causes me to see the situation as far more grim than it might be. This in turn will cause me to over question, and i guess pester her trying to get her to open up..figuring this is my only chance to get her to finally voice her opinions..... where sometimes she might be just venting and not really want to talk about the problem..but rather just be heard. Its funny how basic this seems but how easily i've missed the mark.
I might consider reading more stuff by this author. I seem to understand easily what is being said. There were many things that finally clicked. When talking with my wife about my new insights, she immediately said "i've told you that before, many times" which really proves the point that we weren't truly communicating. I wasn't really completely understanding the issue at hand. It could also be that a problem presented without talk of a solution.. which is part of understanding. If she has an issue and voices it to me, I basically need her to assume i'm a complete idiot and need her to tell me what the solution looks like to her.
lol, just read the book. i would recommend it to anyone. and just might recommend it to everyone lol
I bought this book to help deal with my inhibition, and this was not the book for that, but I will say that this book is fantastic.
It is addressed to couples whose frustration with their sex lives is extreme, and negatively affecting their marriage. The first part of the book addresses the low-sex partner, talks about how the high-sex partner feels, gives many possible reasons for low-sex drive, and then many varied solutions. The next part talks to the high-sex partner, giving him insight into the low-sex spouse, then another extensive list of possible solutions. The last part talks about communication and general marriage advice.
The book is very practical, very thorough, and strikes a good balance between being sympathetic and proactive. The author is very hands-on and solutions oriented. This is not a psychoanalytic book. It discusses emotions and feelings enough to be helpful, and is jam-packed with practical solutions.
Ulimately, the moral of this book is that if you are willing to put in the work and be emotionally mature, you can help your relationship.
I highly recommend this book for anyone whose sex life causes them severe pain.
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Thanks! I will defiantly recommend this book!