"I've never found him attractive"

[starfro]

I've seen this both in real life and on here. Women will marry guys they don't find attractive, just because they want someone to support them and their desire for babies.

Then 10 years later they are in an awful sexless marriage, and either splitting or "staying together for the kids".

AIBU to find it totally dishonest and selfish from the women that do this?

Yep. Biologically it’s the alpha male we are programmed to find attractive but unfortunately this is the type most likely to cheat and or behave entitled & selfish.

We could just get rid of societal expectations. That would do everyone a world of good. What is the point of settling and not being happy? It's easier to be miserable alone than in company and both of you being miserable.

not necessarily getting at you but hell this is depressing - for both men and women involved in such a pairing.
Personally I think sexual physical attraction vital - plus personality/meeting of minds/spirit - both vital - otherwise why bother?

I agree, I think it's selfish

I have a male friend who this happened to, he's a lovely kind and considerate guy, met a woman she moved in, got married had two kids, moved into a lovely big house and then she divorced him. She now constantly uses the dc to get more money from him and has made it nearly impossible for him to see the dc on a regular basis. He's distraught but the whole relationship was like watching a car crash in slow motion. A lot of people could see it happening but he refused to see her as anything but good.

I don't think I've ever heard a friend say this - "we've grown apart" or "we're like friends now", yes.
I have had friends who leapt into relationships and indeed marriage with attractive, abusive men (and also those who weren't attractive and were abusive - mainly those who didn't seem able to be single).
I don't hold with the "we're programmed to find alpha males attractive" evo psych bollocks. I don't find alpha males attractive, they are just too OTT.
I can however see why some women end up with total shits. Dad was like that. Society says you have to hold the family together if you are mum. Etc. etc.

I have always assumed that women who married someone I thought looked like a piece of washed string, were just into the washed string type.

I don't hold with the "we're programmed to find alpha males attractive" evo psych bollocks. I don't find alpha males attractive, they are just too OTT.

I agree with this. I find confidence attractive, of course, but true confidence often goes hand in hand with kindness.
That kind of swaggering stuff on the other hand is total overcompensation.

What is an 'alpha male'?
A man's supposed to be a provider. That means doing stuff for his woman.
Selfish men who do nowt are such a big turn-off.
Who is attracted to these jerks?

I was friends with a woman like this. She was very attractive and her husband was not remotely, though he was very nice. When she introduced me to her husband, she told me (not in front of him) that he was 'not the best looking creature!' I could understand why she was with him as he was really nice and they did appear to be quite loved up, but I always wonder if he knew that she thought he was ugly.

Don’t you think the more likely explanation is that the women did want sex in 2013 but 10 years later they don’t any more?. Maybe they have hormonal changes that has decreased their sex drive. Maybe they are knackered from raising children.

Maybe they are sick of a partner who always puts themselves first and doesn’t bother to find out what the problem of their problem is. Who just wants to play the blame game.

I know if you had accused me of selfishness and dishonesty, sex would not be on the cards for the foreseeable future, no matter how attractive you were.

YABU. How attractive a man is in his 20s has nothing to do with whether a couple is in an unhappy marriage 20 years later. I don't know any woman who openly says they married someone they didn't fancy. And attractiveness is influenced by many things, not just physical.

You are conflating a lot of different issues and blaming women for failing marriages. Think there is some internalised misogyny you need to work on.

Attraction wears off anyway over time so your marriage could be in tatters anyway. Plus the men often find partners less attractive after a certain age anyway so it works both ways. Marriage isn't just about from the chandeliers I'm afraid. There is more to it than that.

There's at least two motives that can drive "settling".

1. Women are conditioned to believe that a bad marriage is better than no marriage. "You're too picky, you'll end up old and alone" narrative with "old and alone" regarded as a bad thing when it's actually not.
2. The woman who wants children doesn't have time to spend searching for "Mr Right" so she has to settle for "Mr Right Now" to father her kids and then divorce him later.

The thing is men are far less picky and have low standards when it comes to the casual (I.e. sex). Most women can very easily attract most men for sex. It doesn't mean the man wants more than that though.

Alpha males don't exist

There was definitely an era 25-30 years ago where if a woman wasn’t married by 30 she started panicking. Older people would warn her that she’d be left “on the shelf”. I know lots of people who sort of settled, because spinsters did exist and were scorned. It’s so different now. Yes some were lucky but they were super attractive. Plain girls often did settle for someone who wasn’t repulsive, but where the chemistry was fading.

Did she say she thought he was ugly, just those words, or did she say more about his looks.

Not the best-looking doesn’t automatically mean ugly.

Exactly this ^^ whether you marry with your head or your heart (or more likely other regions), it's a risk as to whether it works out or not. You could marry someone you don't find attractive physically but your bond grows and you have a happy marriage. Or conversely, you could marry someone you are besotted by and find as the years go by, you are not suited. There are no guarantees. Everyone has their own reasons for their choice in partner - one person might have had a really insecure upbringing and find a safe, secure, compatible partner with low attraction at the top of their list of relationship needs. However, for another, attraction might be on their list of non-negotiables.

I do think there's a difference, again, between "I want to marry a handsome man", and "I want to marry a man I am physically attracted to", and that seems to be something that gets confused here. Like some people have difficulty unpicking their own attraction from what society deems good looking.

I never heard anyone saying this.

Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Anyone is attractive if the right person lays their eyes on them.

oh the horror - does love and lust in a less than "respectable" area score anything? Have you plotted the respectable areas in rightmove's next world map?

It is funny you should say that. I secretly play a game in my head to pass the time while at children's parties where I imagine I am a single woman again, at a house party, and wonder which one I would try to catch the eye of. It is always, always the one who looks most like my DH, and I have, to date, never come across a bloke in these scenarios that I would rather shag than my DH.

I am lucky in that I have always had a clear type (brown eyes and dark colouring have reduced me to putty since my mid-teens) and my DH is conventionally attractive in a tall, dark and handsome kind of a way.

We met when I was 21 and he was 25, have been together 15 years and celebrate 10 years married soon, and I love and fancy him more, and want and have sex with him more than I have ever done before. Sure, time will change our bodies but I do believe there will always be a spark if we bother to keep at it. The spark and the deeper intimacy can very much co-exist.

They’re not doing it once a week though, that’s the point. You said so yourself in your OP - these marriages invariably end up sexless or with such low frequency of sex they may as well be sexless (in a recent thread a woman said her and her husband hadn’t had sex for 5 years). Women in this situation are only gritting their teeth for a couple of years until they’re married/pregnant. For some that is acceptable to get the baby and financial security they want.

It’s the men who walk straight into these situations that you should direct you concern/pity towards, the women are being rational and realistic in order to get what they want in the timeframe they want it.

Well sometimes you have a great sex life initially and then after a couple of years it dwindles down with kids, work stress, health issues, irritating personality, infidelity, ED etc. So there is no guarantee that even if you married someone who you found attractive at the time that they would stay attractive to you for the rest of your life. Or your spouse might lose interest for the reasons mentioned above.

Not always.

I am still v attracted to dh and him to me.
I still get butterflies when he winks at me.
It can wear off but not always.

Yes, and what’s more, these women are not having sex they don’t want once a week. If the threads on dissatisfying/sexless marriages are anything to go by, it’s closer to once a year after kids are on the scene.