I think you missed a crucial part in this week's letter from WILLIE: "and it's over in 15 minutes." Also, he mostly complains about what HE doesn't get. My first BF was like WILLIE, and his critiques did nothing but make me LESS adventurous and LESS likely to suck his dick. WILLIE doesn't say, "I tried to make her feel safe to explore the desires she may be shy about," or, "I have tried to pay attention to her needs by using romance and/or extended foreplay," or, "I tell her all the time how beautiful her body is," or anything else that might indicate that he cares about her pleasure at all. It's all "no blowjobs," "won't touch my dick," "15 minutes." It sounds to me like this guy's problem is probably more his fault than hers.
Been There Didn't Do That Either
DAN HERE: WILLIE's letter was edited for space, BTDDTE, as there's only so much room in my column. Rest assured that he was a loving and supportive spouse—and rejected just the same. Still, it could all be WILLIE's fault—that's why I covered my ass by writing this in my response: "In some instances, there may be mitigating circumstances, i.e., there may be a very good reason why a particular husband or wife is no longer interested in sex. For all we know, WILLIE doesn't bathe or only speaks civilly to his wife when he wants sex. For all we know, FS supports the teaching of intelligent design or is Katherine Harris. But it's not always the fault of the cut-off spouse. There are people out there who simply aren't interested in sex, and judging from the mail, a whole lot of them are married people."
The letter from WILLIE hit home. I am outside your targeted demographics, but probably represent a much larger segment of the population than WILLIE. This year, my wife and I will celebrate our 35th anniversary. When our daughter left for college seven years ago and my wife began menopause, I thought the sex would be great—no more condoms and total privacy. Wrong!
My wife decided not to take any hormones due to cancer in her family. I totally support her decision, but that essentially ended our sex life. She has tried from time to time, but it is too painful even with creams & vaginal rings. Things just dried up along with her desire. I am sure there are millions of men with the same predicament. In my case, my wife has jokingly (maybe even seriously) given me the okay to find sex elsewhere, as long as I come home and don't pick up any diseases. I'm not sure if I can cheat, but I am getting desperate. At least WILLIE & FS have found an outlet.
When I was dating, I was too shy to have much luck picking up or even meeting women. I don't think my "game" has improved. Most bars and clubs do not cater to my age. Forget bingo parlors. Most women are looking for unattached men. I would not be able to lie about my status. For every understanding and willing woman, there are probably 10,000 men like myself standing in line.
Out To Pasture To Early
I got chills when I read those two letters from WILLIE and FS. I have been in WILLIE's shoes for years now, and actually was starting to look elsewhere. (And yeah, why don't guys like me find women like FS in the first place?) Then a miracle happened. At the end of last year, my wife told me that she thought I should start sleeping with other women. She knows that sex is not big on her list of needs, and she knows it is for me, and that I was doing a great job of meeting the needs that she does have. I was floored. I was amazed. I had been thinking about proposing such an arrangement that very week, but I never thought she would look on it favorably.
A minor miracle has happened in the short time since. I am now even more in love with my wife than ever. I haven't even exercised my new freedom, but it's as if a huge weight was lifted off both of us. And something else dawned on me. Whereas I was looking to head off and do my own thing, damn the consequences, now I am going to work my ass off to make sure that this new arrangement works out well for everyone. Whereas before I was at the point of not caring what happened to our relationship, now I feel like I would fight tooth and nail to preserve it. If you had asked me last year what could have accomplished all that, this would not have been on the list of things I would have come up with.
I know that this isn't going to just work as easily as falling off a log, but with hard work and good communication (gah, that sounds so cliché, doesn't it?) we can work it out.
Love My Wife More Than Ever
I was the male low-libido half of a high-libido/low-libido hetero couple, and after a couple years of fighting and mind games, I gave her an "ultimatum" to either live with the fact that I have no interest in fucking like bunnies, or to just leave me. "But, for the love of God, don't CHEAT on me," I told her. Of course, she picked option C: She cheated on me for a year before 'fessing up and breaking up with me.
There were no kids, no joint bank accounts, but I would have respected her more if she had just plain dumped me instead of "living a lie."
Maybe FS' and WILLIE's spouses are just as tired of being hounded for sex as WILLIE and FS are of being denied sex. Their relationships and friendships with their spouses might be strong enough to survive divorce if FS and WILLIE are just honest and upfront.
Name Withheld
DAN HERE: Sorry, NW, but you'll get no sympathy from me. If you weren't interested in fucking like bunnies, why didn't you break up with her?
And here's something I don't get about you low-libido types: If sex doesn't interest you, if you place so little importance on it, why does the thought of your girlfriend doing this unimportant thing with someone else bother you so much? Why not, like CTP's spouse, give her permission to get her needs met elsewhere?
I am a straight woman and I want to respond to the letter from "WILLIE," the man whose wife doesn't want to have much sex and won't touch his dick, and FS, the woman whose husband didn't want to have sex with her.
I would bet the farm WILLIE's wife didn't want to marry him in the first place. Many women marry men as investments so they have the nice house and car, and the first thing they do is have a kid so the guy is stuck. It's no different than picking out a stock. Notice the first thing guys like him start off with is, "We have a nice home, kids, and I have a good job." The other clue is, this has gone on for years. I promise you, she wants adventure, but not from him. I had a friend who had the nice house, car, kids, the whole deal. She would tell him she only wanted sex early in the morning, because that's the best time. The real reason was, she wanted to be half-asleep during the act. WILLIE needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
Regarding FS: It doesn't matter how good she looks. Look at Princess Diana, Halle Berry, and Nicole Kidman. A straight, red-blooded man is going to want to have sex. Anything else is an excuse. One of two things is going on: He is either into some other female (and he is already having sex with her), or he is gay and closeted and married her to keep his family off his back. A straight man will still want to have sex sometimes. FS can keep prancing around in her thong, but it will not do a bit of good.
That's How It Really Is
A few years ago, I was in a position similar to WILLIE's wife.
My boyfriend isn't a particularly outgoing person, and after being together several years, he gradually stopped touching me, except when he wanted sex. No hugs, no snuggling on the couch. My sex drive plummeted to nothing. I'd still have sex with him, so at least he'd quit asking for a few days. It was always the same—he'd suck my nipples for about a minute, then go down on me for about five, and then he'd put his dick in and go at it for another five minutes. I'd lie there, wishing our ceiling had a television. For a while, I suggested different positions or different activities, and brought home books and toys, but the next time, it always reverted back to the routine. After a while, I gave up. He wanted some place to stick it, and I was handy. What really struck me about WILLIE's letter is his wife saying she feels like an object, because that's exactly how I felt—like a blow-up doll, only warmer. What finally changed things was one day when he had the nerve to complain that sex wasn't fun anymore. I didn't talk to him for a week, and when I did, we started fighting all the time, and finally went to a counselor. She suggesting more cuddling and touching that wasn't a preliminary to sex, and within a week, my sex drive was back. I had thought it was dead. Now that I'm into it, he's having more fun too, and the variety came back. He's now more than happy to give me the cuddling and touching that I need, and I'm now more than happy to have lots of sex with him.
To WILLIE: Try touching your wife when you're not trying to get her into bed. Try bringing up counseling without attaching it to how rotten she is sexually. It's amazing how much better the results are likely to be when it's not presented so critically.
Snuggling Works Wonders
DAN HERE: I find it interesting that so much mail poured in with advice for WILLIE, all of it predicated on the assumption that he was doing something terribly, terribly wrong. I got so much mail from people who wanted to tell WILLIE that the fault was his, that he obviously needed to be more loving.
Oddly enough, no one wrote in to blame FS for her problem. Her husband won't put out, and—guess what?—most people who wrote in seemed to think that was her husband's fault, not hers. FS' husband must be gay or already cheating on her. Hmm. I find it odd that no long letters arrived laying out what FS was doing wrong.
Is it always the man's fault, I wonder? If something is going wrong in a couple's sex life, the man must be to blame?
Illustration by Misako Takashima (
