What Is This Advice Column Suggesting?

http://www.sunherald.com/living/story/1395742.html

Dear Annie: “Danny” and I have been married 37 years. We raised two daughters, now married with children. As far as my friends are concerned, Danny is a great husband, and they continually tell me how lucky I am because he treats me like a queen.

Danny is fit and trim and average-looking. He does all the cooking, cleans the bathrooms and does a number of other household chores. Our yard is the envy of the neighborhood, and it is all due to Danny. In fact, there is nothing Danny will not do for me if I ask.

So what is the problem? Danny expects sex once a week. Sex is something I have never enjoyed. Since Day 1, I would submit to him because I believed it was my duty, but after 37 years I consider sex an unnecessary task. I love Danny with all my heart and cannot imagine my life without him. He reads your column daily, and if he saw my letter in print he might understand that even though I do not want to be intimate, it doesn’t mean I don’t love or care for him. — Not Interested Now, Never Was

Dear Not Interested: Please don’t do this. Danny has been a full partner in your marriage. You should be one, too, and sex is part of that. When you love someone, you accommodate them in ways that make them happy — whether you get anything out of it or not. Sex once a week is not excessive.

Have your doctor check your hormone levels, which we suspect have always been out of balance, and consider therapy. It’s possible you could enjoy intimacy if you worked on it. Contact the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors & Therapists (aasect.org) at P.O. Box 1960, Ashland, VA 23005-1960.


Is this advocating marital rape, or is this sensible, wise advice?

The "{s}ex once a week is not excessive" comment seems to me to be an appeal to understanding more than a command to submit to the husband.

about this problem a long time ago. Men don't get married to have children. They want and need intimacy. Her hormones are obviously out of whack.

Advocating marital rape? About a million miles away from that. All the talk of submission and duty originates from the letter-writer, not the columnist.

If the wife breaks that contract the man does NOT have the right to rape. He does, however, have the right to cancel the contract if his reasonable expectations are not met, just as the wife has the right to cancel the contract if her reasonable expectations are not met.

If the woman is not interested in sex, then clearly this particular marriage contract is a business arrangement and not based on shared love, which should include physical intimacy.

(Disclaimer: I say this after two marriages to two women who both used sex as a lure and "lost interest" immediately after marriage. I stuck around for a total of 30 years (first 25, then 5) going to couples counseling and patiently waiting for that to change, but it never did. Now 16 years single and 16 years celibate, and never been happier.)