h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Re Post 13:
In case anyone's interested there is a half hour programme about Professor Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment on BBC2 at 10pm tomorrow (Saturday 11th).

The experiment has apparently been repeated in Britain, for the cameras, and will be shown in four parts over the next two weeks, starting on Tuesday 14th.

I have a friend, (truly - this is not a situation I am in, for once in my life), who is having an affair with a married man whose wife will not have sex with him. No no. Not at all. Not now and never again.

(The wierd thing about that one is that the husband-and-wife had been together for 14 years, and the 'no sex please, we're dysfunctional' thing had been going on for several years when they got married earlier this summer).

My question is - how unreasonable is it of his wife to expect him to be faithful to her, given that there is no sexual relationship for him to be faithful to?

Ben

Your question implies that sex is the central core of any relationship.

Obviously sex is important, but lets say something happened to your other half - an accident, or medical condition, such that they couldn't have sex. Would this justify you having sex elsewhere ?

If your partner went deaf, should you stop listening to music?

If your partner became anorexic, should you stop eating?

If your partner reveals themself to be an alcoholic, should you get blind drunk every night?

If your partner has an abnormality - and a complete lack of interest in sex is abnormal for humans - why should you be affected by it? More to the point, why should you be expected to exhibit the same abnormality against your will?

If your partner refuses sex - and by this I mean consistently, as a policy, over months, rather than just a couple of times because they have a headache - then to my mind:

1. You have a responsibility to yourself to continue a healthy and fulfilling sex life with someone else, someone who HAS consideration for your needs and feelings.
2. Unless your partner is actually literally delusional, they must, as an educated adult, realise that you need it and can get it elsewhere, and should *expect* that.

Either way - sex is an important part of a normal, healthy, adult relationship, and it annoys me more than I can adequately express when people say "well there's more to life than sex". Of course there is, but there's more to life than talking, too.

Here's a thought - imagine if a *woman* came onto the site and posed the following question:

My husband and I have been happily married for seven years. At first everything was great, we had great sex, we were soulmates, hugged a lot, chatted a lot, did things together.

Just lately however, he seems to have changed. He's gone off conversation.

Our sex life is still fantastic. We go out for meals at least once a week, and go out together to the theatre every few weeks. We have an active social life with a wide circle of friends, and he is a considerate and generous man in every way.

But he won't talk to me. At all. He never, ever says a word to me, on any subject, ever. He indicates preferences by pointing, grunts occasionally to answer yes/no questions, but other than that we have not exchanged actual words for almost a year. He did get drunk a month or so ago and allowed me to have a short conversation with him, but it wasn't very satisfying as he clearly wasn't enjoying it.

I know the need for conversation declines as a relationship matures, but I need the intellectual stimulation. Most of my friends have conversations with their husbands at least two or three times a week. One of my friends is even having regular conversations with another man behind her husband's back, and one friend of mine who is single and a bit wild boasts that she once had a conversation with two men at once...

But my husband simply refuses to speak to me. I still love him, but I feel I can't go on. Should I look for conversation elsewhere?



Do you think for even a moment that a woman would be expected to suffer a situation like that in silence?

So why should people suffer a lack of sex?

H.

Christ, Hoo, you have no idea how painful that post was to read, and on how many levels.

Not much here produces tears but - without irony and with no word of a lie - you banged harder on more bruises that I thought had been healed than I would have imagined possible in a single post.

B

Having no idea why...



H.

Same here Hoo. How do you do it? First you bang on the bruises and then you come out with the classic

>> One of my friends is even having regular conversations with another man behind her husband's back, and one friend of mine who is single and a bit wild boasts that she once had a conversation with two men at once... <<

and make me startle the with a sudden cackle.

You know, there are actually people who think that in that sort of situation it IS wrong for the woman to look elsewhere for conversation.

But whether conversation or sex, surely unfaithfulness is a state of mind. Doing anything behind one's partner's back and lying to them is disloyalty. In the Judaeo-Christian/Islamic world view sex outside marriage is anathema but for those who don't subscribe to that particular set of superstitions surely looking outside one's relationship for either sex or conversation is perfectly OK as long as one's partner condones it, but unfaithfulness if it against their wishes.
Any wife who refuses sex would be pretty unreasonable to expect her husband to remain celibate, but then people can be amazingly unreasonable can't they?

(This is probably going to be the latest simulpost in history - someone came to the door halfway through - please forgive me if the conversation has moved on meanwhile)

Ben, you didn't say whether the wife expects her husband to share celibacy with her as a symbol of faithfulness. Surely they must have discussed this before being recently married, as it's been an on-going situation?

Hoo, your scenario makes a good point in a typically twisted fashion. However, the people that Ben was talking about got married *knowing* that sex was not a part of the equation. I'd say it depends on what understanding they had going into the marriage. By their standards the husband might not be being unfaithful. Especially if sex is the only thing he's looking for in this extra-marital relationship.

My understanding, from the man's mistress, not from the man himself, is that his wife expects fidelity. Certainly he was burbling about not breaking his marriage vows for a while immediately before the wedding.

B

Personally, I think of unfaithfulness on a broader scale... it concerns all relationships, including friends, and it occurs when you stop being truthful to the promises you made to that person. Unfaithfulness in my world is one thing with betrayal. It is not merely a physical fact, although clearly it's not nice to know your partner is flirting with somebody else!

I don't mind a partner flirting, so long as they are pretty. If he flirted with dogs I would worry that he was undiscriminating!

B

How worried would you be if he flirted with *actual* dogs?





H.

Well my ex used to flirt with actual cats - or tease them with bits of rope, at least. He would get completely caught up in it, never seemed to mind the scratches when they cuffed him, appeared to think that if they growled when he got them really wound up it was a sign that they were enjoying the fun.



B

Looking at Hoo's comparisons - listening to music, eating, drinking are activities which one can do alone anyway.
Sex & conversation require another participant. Conversation does, anyway. I think Hoo has actually described very well (without much exaggeration) the state of many long term relationships.

I wonder why people put themselves in these sorts of situations. I guess a lot of people just need to keep their lives 'interesting', in a Chinese curse kinda way.

Back to the original question of how unreasonable his wife is for expecting fidelity. I don't think she's unreasonable if those were the terms they recently agreed on. I think he was unreasonable to marry her if he still wanted sex in his life. I can picture a number of reasons why someone with a functioning libido would knowingly enter a sexless marriage, but in The World According to MoG it doesn't justify his current behavior.

Very simply put, once someone breaks vows of fidelity by being unfaithful, then they have broken their promise.

I have a friend whose husband stopped having sex with her many years ago and given the 20-year age difference (he's older) she felt for a time she had to put up with the situation. And then she met someone who also had an unhappy marriage and they started an affair.

I don't judge her at all. Because I felt her husband had somehow broken his vows by no longer having sex with her.

If one totally removes all sexual activity then I think the partner left standing out in the cold, as it were, is quite likely to look for sexual satisfaction elsewhere. And why not?

I guess the only thing I have trouble with is the inherent deceit that accompanies this sort of thing.

In my friend's case I felt it was totally unjustified for her husband to remove all sort of physical affection yet expect she should be satisfied with maintaining the house and looking after the children. A woman twenty years younger than him.

In this case I don't consider my friend to be 'unfaithful' since her husband had already broken those vows between them.

I just think it is a shame that they cannot communicate and agree to another sort of life whereby she gets what she needs physically and emotionally from another man (which the husband does not provide at all) while still looking after the husband, the kids, etc.

Instead, she has to 'sneak around' and see her new beaux whenever she can. And keep up pretences that the 'house and family' are solid. Bearing in mind she is the sole breadwinner for the family.

Does anyone else think she is being 'unfaithful'?


az

Well, I am not the best person to ask about that. She clearly is being unfaithful, on the other hand he did break his implied or actual promise to her "with my body I thee worship".

I think she is fully justified, and doing an ok thing in the right way.

But I would think that, wouldn't I?

Ben

OK... I'm hoping that the line "Bearing in mind she is the sole breadwinner for the family" is a misprint, and you in fact meant HE is the sole breadwinner.

I have two responses:

1. IF you meant HE is the sole breadwinner, then as I've already said, no, I don't consider her to be being unfaithful, as she should not be expected to be abnormal simply because he is.

2. If you did not commit a typo, and you in fact mean that she is expected to be the sole breadwinner, look after the house, children etc. and do all that without getting any sex... Not only is she not being unfaithful, she's being unforgivably stupid. She should kick him out. Given what you've described, what actual use is he?

Women need men because they provide:
- sex
- companionship
- money
- help with childcare
- support with life's mundane requirements

If he's providing NONE of the above, what, may I ask, is she still doing anywhere near the loser?

H.

The first time I read that post of yours Hoo I was shocked at the cynicism. The second time through I found that I tended to agree with it.

I have a slightly skewed view on money and matrimony, preferring to be entirely non-dependent on anyone financially, especially not on someone I am in a partnership. I have always been like this - never even had a joint chequeing account.

Even so, I want to think about what you have said.

B

It wasn't a typo. She is the breadwinner. And she doesn't chuck the loser because it seems he does act as a good father and help out here and there in that manner.

No, she isn't a stupid woman. At all.


az