To think it's crazy that we hang our stability on sexual attraction?

[NoisyDenimShaker]

This post is about being married (or as good as married).

As I've aged, and seen entire lives blown up over sex, it's occurred to me how completely crazy it is that we organise our entire lives around something as fleeting, whimiscal, and delicate as sexual attraction.

Our life's finances, our children's sense of home and stability, our mental health, our very home, which should be our sanctuary, is all ultimately hung on sexual attraction.

It's. Crazy.

And I don't have a better idea. That doesn't mean our species' way isn't INSANE.

I know people might say, well it begins with sexual attraction but it develops into something more, a shared history, being family, being best friends, deep love. I agree wholeheartedly with that, and it's my answer, too. I'm someone who was made for commitment, and I get more bonded and interested in my partner as time goes on. I'm not someone who gets bored with commitment.

However, after many years together, my husband did not feel the same. The lure of the big wide world beckoned, other women seemed more attractive, and off he went. And he used to be so in love with me. The same thing happened to a good friend of mine. Her husband adored her, until he decided more sex was more important and went off seeking it.

And we've all seen the threads on here about runaway husbands.

YOU might be comfortable with longterm married/committed love, but we really don't have much control over the possibility of a restless or unfaithful partner. And so our entire lives can get blown up, easily, over sex.

The truth is that all our security and stability is hung on sexual attraction, and I think it's utterly insane.

I have no answer, but it does occur to me that the aristo way of doing things - marrying for business reasons - might be more sensible than our way, which is to organise things around often-fickle hearts.

I'm getting divorced after a very long separation and I'm determined that my home and security will never depend on a partner's sexual attraction to me again, so I guess I'm heading for a LAT relationship if I find someone I really like. (Living Apart Together.)

I really miss not having a life partner, but on the other hand, I'm glad that the stability and security of my home isn't built on the bedrock of marriage, which is - according to a divorce lawyer who wrote a book entitled IF YOU'RE IN MY OFFICE IT'S ALREADY TOO LATE (or something) - well, according to him, marriage is all about sex. I had thought sex was a part of it, but he reckons marriage is all about sex.

Well, I don't want my security and stability to be tied to sexual attraction. It's too fleeting.

Sorry for the essay. What are your thoughts?

My man was nice to me until the day he died.

To be honest most men have their affairs while their wives are struggling with juggling work, young kids and 95% of the housework. The women simply wouldn't have the time!

But joking aside it's a totally shitty thing to do to your kids even if you don't care about your husband. Kids can cope with parents splitting up but are badly affected by animosity between their parents. And you pretty much guarantee animosity if you leave for another sexual partner.

As I recall, research indicates that men and women cheat pretty equally when opportunity to cheat is equal. It often isn't - women are more controlled by their partners and more weighed down with other responsibilities - but women are not inherently more sexually faithful.

I'm glad to hear it.

Of course #notallmen .

There are some genuinely good ones out there.

But you have no way of knowing. It's pot luck really what a man will turn out like

Yeah to clarify, I meant in the marriages with no children, if the man is having an affair, the woman should have an affair.

If there's children involved, of course not having any affairs is the best path for the children.

OP I entirely agree. When ex fucked off with ow I was fortunate that I still had a graduate career to support myself and our two toddlers but it still was a massive upheaval from a purely practical, financial standpoint, if nothing else. A decade on and I'm with a guy who is great in every way but I will not live with him, combine finances with him and definitely won't be blending families. If, in another 5 years or so we're still together, once the kids have flown, I might consider cohabitation but only on the basis that retain my property and everything is set up so that if either of us want to leave, we just can.
I actually quite like the fact that we are only tied together by actually wanting to be. Either if us could walk away at any point with no fallout, but we don't. Some on MN see that as a lack of commitment but it's not, it's a level headed, life lessons learned approach to relationships in mid life.

Can I just say one bit of advice to people.

I worked in a bank. Please do not ever have a joint account with your partner. Keep your money separate. Or at the least don't keep any savings in the joint account.

The amount of calls that I received about problems with joint accounts, after break ups. So many

I do think that rather than getting married, most women would be better off buying their own home by themselves and having a live out boyfriend.

I love my dh more each year.
We have a very strong sexual attraction and always have.
It is very important to us both.
We have a deep connection that is expressed through intimacy.
We don't feel as close if we go through a dry spell - time, work, life gets in the way.

That's not really the point of the thread. It wasn't about how much sex a couple have.

It's that a womans whole life is often dependant on a man's sexual attraction to her.

And if he decides to leave her for another woman, her whole life can fall apart.

which is why you take your time over such an important decision.

Or stay single!

How can you really know though.

For example there's a man that I went to school with. He's married.

His wife by all accounts thinks that he's a lovely man. She's always putting up posts saying how lucky she is.

Yet he has asked me for sex and he's asked other women I know for sex. While he was married. I said no.

You can't REALLY know very much in this life....but you can do due diligence.

I think OP thought she had the same thing! Her partner was the one who left for sex…

I think I was quite level headed in making my choice of who to marry and I've stuck with him. We're 30 years married. The sex life sadly died a decade ago due to his health issues but he is my best friend and I know that I'm am happier with him than I would be without.
I would hope that we have enough love and respect for each other that we would have an adult conversation if either one of us became so unhappy with the situation that we would look elsewhere for sex or romance, before any betrayal occured. I know that might sound a bit pie in the sky to some but his parents were in an unhappy marriage which included infidelity and ended in divorce so he has pretty strong opinions on that.
I do miss sex, but not enough to blow up my life and cause tremendous hurt to my favourite person by having an affair.

Tale as old as time. This only recently occurred to you?

Religious people have affairs(and far, far worse). Not just the godless atheists.

People have always been sexually attracted to each other. We are programmed to have sex because that's how the population continues. The woman ( inevitably in precontraception years) would become pregnant and,if she and the child survived, she would need a provider to create a shelter and hunt for food. She couldn't efficiently do the child rearing and the hunting for woolly mammoth. So people paired up.
Then we brought religion into it all and decided that people who wanted to have sex had to be married ( and whipped them down the aisle double quick if they found themselves pregnant because theyd done the sex bit first). In all of this there was a huge chance that childbirth, disease, accident,animal attack would end your life before you got to 30. People were constantly concerned with survival ,divorce wasn't available, rape wasn't a crime within marriage. Its only now that we are surviving for longer,we can divorce without being shunned etc etc that we can be so bothered about fancying someone forever. In my parents generation( dad dead ,mum now 85) you got married and you stayed married until death and that was that . My exhusband left because he no longer fancied me and didn't fancy being a dad to our 2 small children.Years before he'd have had to suck it up. In modern times he didn't have to. The good thing Iis that women don't have to remain in misery either

This!

I married my husband because he's my best friend. We share very similar views, morals, values and ideas about raising children. We laugh together, feel relaxed in each others company, enjoy similar things, and love being together. We want to grow old together not so we can have rumpy pumpy in the old folks home! But because we want to hold each others hand, feel safe with each other, know we can be ourselves with each other, we can comfort each other, make each other laugh, chat together...

Sex has got nothing to do with why my husband and I are together. Like the previous poster said, it's just a good bonus!

Completely agree. My husband is away this evening and the degree to which I found the Sainsbury's delivery driver attractive horrified me. I pretty much wanted to rip his clothes off. Of course nothing happened but even to have such a thought cross my mind, crazy!

I've never really been free enough to make a decision without thinking through the consequences. (Or maybe not independently rich enough). I'm just too risk adverse to throw away my children's stability for a fling.

And I agree OP, I've seen lots of men (who were married to wonderful women) rip lives apart in the most unthoughtful because they fancied someone.

Yet, every time, it's them (the men) who bury themselves in work, or shunt all the boring childcare to their wife or just retreat all their emotional intimacy and fun. And then proclaim they couldn't stop the unstoppable force with another person. But it was their withdrawal that caused the problem in the first place! There is never an acknowledgment of this.

I really enjoy meeting a chap who really loves his wife. But they are rare.

If you are dying to hump another person you probably should either tend to your relationship or separate civilly.

I think about this too, it is weird in a way, isn't it? It would make SO much more sense to marry someone for how good of a co-parenting team and housemate you think they'll be. At least, those often seem to be sticking points for a lot of couples.

Have you read that Alain de Botton essay on marriage? Sorry it's paywalled, but I can't find a full copy of it anywhere else. (BTW, in some of the US publications they changed the sentence "How are you mad?" to use crazy instead - it sounds better to a British ear with mad, IMO.) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html

I thought it was really interesting.

The problem is that it sort of does make sense for your spouse to be your sexual partner, partly because of the convenience but partly because of the intimacy. And a lot of us do have a really strong sense of sex being linked to exclusivity and it being too intimate to do with someone else. So how do you square that one if you change what marriage is about? I know some people believe monogamy is not actually the "default" we try to pretend it is, and maybe there should be more openness about that, but it does seem to work for some people (I certainly have no desire to look for sex elsewhere).

I don't actually think it is a bad thing as someone said that marriage is not seen as for life any more - I like knowing that we are actively choosing to be together. Of course I might feel differently about that one if DH did choose to not be together any more. But at least while it remains hypothetical, I don't think I'd want him to stay out of duty, anyway.

Again you're missing the point. That's not at all what the OP said.

She said that she had a life like yours, then all of a sudden her husband got sexually attracted to someone else , and left her for another woman.

Did you read what she said?

This. I used to work in the wedding industry and hear grooms say “Kate is beautiful inside and out” and you think yes but let’s be honest the beautiful outside is why you got together. It’s only after that that you realised she’s nice too.