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?

This is how most people view their marriages, including me when I was still married. It's not the point, the point is that our stability and security (both men and women's) is based on sexual fidelity, which doesn't seem to be a very good way to organise society, especially when it's often us women who come off worse because we often earn less/work part-time/are SAHMs.

Yes. I saw marriage as for life and that marital love transcended something as earthly as sex. (I did say I was a romantic.) Turns out, not so much, not just for me but for other couples I've known a long time too.

People often talk about love and attraction as if they are completely separate things, but I don't think they are in the context of a relationship.

The love between a woman and a man just isn't the same as the love between, say, a parent and a child. It will never be completely unconditional in that way. If one person stops feeling any attraction to their partner, then the love soon follows.

I've never believed in the concept of marriage because you just can't promise to love someone forever. Most people don't have that much control over their feelings, and people and feelings change with time.

Like many women, I also feel that sex is only one part of marriage and that all the deep stuff - family, love, connection, shared values and goals, and a shared history - is more important than sex.

It's not really just about 'sex' though. Nobody leaves a marriage just for sex. It's about desire. I think love and connection are intertwined with desire in a romantic relationship.

All the other things, shared values, goals, shared history etc have a place, but these are things that you can have with friends and work colleagues. They don't make a relationship or equal love.

People do very much leave marriage over sex. A sexless marriage is considered such a problem that it's grounds for divorce.

People who are deeply sexually neglected leave because they can't stand it anymore. People leave marriages because they want to make a new sexual relationship official. People leave because their partners have had sex elsewhere, even when the errant partner said it didn't mean anything. And people leave because of sexual incompatibility.

you might
reckon my funkt up head didni even realise people done emotional ties to sex....til i was.....18/19.
even then....i considered them clingy.
reckon-based on that and a succession of the wurst cunts...right up til the (inconvuenant)one whos only gone n died....
my stability is me. hardest lesson is- only person who wont letchu down is yourself.
honest-ive kind went right off them(sexual partners)i do NOT put myself "out there".....my stability,my kids,so ours
is entirely based on trust love emotion n kick that door shut we are home.forever...

I think this is conflating sex and desire/attraction. If your partner desires you then of course they can go a few weeks or whatever without sex. Problems usually occur when one partner no longer desires the other.

OPs original post also talks about sex and sexual attraction as if they are the same thing.

‘It's simple biology though isn't it? Men aren't designed to be monogamous and the sooner women realise that the happier our lives are. Marriage is a social construct that doesn't fit at all with our biological urges’

Well then they shouldn’t commit to marriage in the first place?

That's really splitting hairs. Sex generally follows from sexual attraction. They're part of the same whole.

I was with DH for five years before we got married. It was clear that there was a deep and enduring friendship beyond any initial sexual attraction and honermoon phase.

Same here.

Women aren't naturally monogamous either. It's just that the potential penalties for women are higher. Humans of either sex can choose whether to be monogamous or not because biology is not destiny and we all have free will. Anybody can feel attraction and desire, yet resist doing something about it. Women tend to resist those urges more because they don't have the same sense of entitlement about sex as men do. Male entitlement is a powerful thing, much more powerful than the sex drive actually. With men sex is often more about ego and power than it is physical pleasure. It's like that for plenty of women as well. To them getting a man to fuck them is proof that they are "hot." It's silly, but then those who use sex for an ego boost are silly people.

Not to quibble, but the thing is, we can't know for a fact the depth of another person's feelings. We cannot see inside another person's mind. We can only interpret behaviour, but we can of course be mistaken, possibly because that's what the partner wants us to think so he behaves accordingly. We can only know for a fact what our own feelings are.
Depressing, but true. It's ridiculously easy to fool somebody who loves and trusts you and selfish users know that full well.

@rainfallpurevividcat I was with my ex for nearly a decade before we married. Two years later I met someone at work, fell in total lust and had an affair which ended my marriage..I left to be with the twathead I'd fallen for. It blew everyone away... ex and I had been a "perfect couple" and we actually were very happy, genuinely. I just was completely knocked sideways by a purely physical attraction and it ruined what should have been a lifelong partnership. People always assert that happy people don't cheat for sex. They do. I did. And as the op said, it broke up the stable platform of both our lives.

This thread is so depressing

I agree

It's a shame this is so completely unaffordable for most single people these days

@ElizabethG81 Marriage is a social construct that doesn't fit at all with our biological urges.

In regard to marriage - of course marriage is a social construct. Humans have always organized themselves in family units. Marriage is not a modern or new invention. Some of the ways we do it in this day and age are new, but the act of getting together, celebrating getting together, having babies, and raising a family is as old as humanity. Not only, but that behaviour is not location specific. Some form or iteration of it was, and is, in every culture in the world.

In regard to biological urges - I think in the modern world we have over stated, to an enormous degree, our need for sex, and specifically, men's need for sex. We are fed it non stop, like the UPFs. Pre contraceptive pill, everyone had to work around the possibility of pregnancy. Men had to be as careful as women. Pregnancy came with many consequences for both sexes (the main burden on women), and it quite often resulted in death.

In today's world women do not need men. We control our fertility, earn our own money, can buy sperm, hire childcare and so on.

Almost all consequences of sex and almost all responsibility has been removed from men.

I don't even know if that means anything but I think it is worth thinking about.

Great thread idea op.

Sure but your husband might still decide to leave you for someone he feels he fancies more. I’m sure most of the marriages that end due to infidelity involved people thinking they had shared values, were compatible etc.
I think the key lesson is never to be financially dependent on another person. Don’t give up your job because it’s “easier” or “saves on childcare”. Cultivate an earning capacity so that if your partner did leave, you’d be fine financially. You can’t really do much about them cheating - some scumbags will always do it. Just read a thread about a woman whose DH is searching for escorts while she is pregnant. Disgusting.

Thing is life is very expensive so my husband benefits from the financial security we have built together. I think that ties him to wanting to making it work too.

I have a great relationship with DH & I’m still very attracted to him, we’ve been together decades but people change & you can never say never so I agree with pp you have to have some independence in case.

But lots of people are capable of sexual fidelity.

@Smartiepants79 @OneKindDreamer I don’t think you read the OP carefully. It’s really odd that you both seem to think that the fault is silly women who aren’t smart enough to understand how relationships work. The OP is saying that you can be smart, on the ball, realistic, independent and have built a solid relationship built on shared values and respect and STILL your relationship can fail through no fault of your own, because your husband’s head is turned by someone who looks a certain way.

Exactly lettuce. Op was just like they are. That’s the point! All it takes is Dh to connect with the new hire at work and that’s you out of the window.

I don’t think Dh would do that to me but he might. I have a back up plan if he does. We have a great life together lots of friends always doing the culture stuff we both enjoy of course our teens he really likes my family regular sex. So it would be a lot for him to walk away from but he could do so.

100% agree with you @NoisyDenimShaker

it is absolutely insane that we tie financial planning, pensions, work patterns, career moves, pregnancies = health risks, the biggest life decisions we actually make to a person who might implode the whole set up by deciding they are bow entitled to sex with someone else.

the whole thing becomes more insane when we acknowledge that our social structures install entitlement in men, not necessarily by their families but by wider social structures, especially the corporate world.

All I can say it is not a coincidence that statistically single woman are happiest and married are happiest.
with this statistic in mind, isn't it funny that getting married takes 1 day and includes a princess dress but getting a divorce takes more than a year, is as costly and complicated as possible and includes needing the financial power of paying gor a lawyer, which is always harder for the one who cut back on their career.

So yes, building my life in top of a fragile penis was a bad move, for me this is true.

lost a word there in my post: married men are happiest