 |
| When husbands want less sex, marriages can suffer. Photo: Getty |
Heidi Stevens
There's a passage at the beginning of Michele Weiner Davis' 2008 book, The Sex-Starved Wife: What to Do When He's Lost Desire (Simon and Schuster), that underscores what experts say is a larger problem than our culture lets on.
"You ask yourself, 'What's wrong with me? Aren't I attractive?'" Weiner Davis writes. "How did you manage to hook up with the one man in the world who would prefer doing just about anything other than making love to you? Why isn't he like all the other guys?"
The one man in the world. All the other guys.
It's difficult to quantify how many women are in marriages with husbands who've lost the appetite for sex, in part because it's hard for women - who are surrounded by friends, sitcoms and magazines telling them all men want sex all the time - to speak up about the "one man in the world" who doesn't.
"It's a very real problem," says psychiatrist Andrew Gilbert, medical director at the Hallowell Center, a New York-based facility that treats cognitive and emotional problems. "It's not weird or unique. It's also very treatable."
While researching her book, Manopause: Your Guide to Surviving His Changing Life (Hay House), co-author Lisa Friedman spoke with women who struggled to reconcile their husbands' waning desire with the impressions they had always accepted about men's sex drives.
"It's hard for anyone to admit; let's start there," Friedman says. "Women are just as uncomfortable admitting they're not having sex as men are. They think, 'What's wrong with my man?' Because, after all, the ability to perform is at the core of his masculinity." Read More
There's a passage at the beginning of Michele Weiner Davis' 2008 book, The Sex-Starved Wife: What to Do When He's Lost Desire (Simon and Schuster), that underscores what experts say is a larger problem than our culture lets on.
"You ask yourself, 'What's wrong with me? Aren't I attractive?'" Weiner Davis writes. "How did you manage to hook up with the one man in the world who would prefer doing just about anything other than making love to you? Why isn't he like all the other guys?"
The one man in the world. All the other guys.
It's difficult to quantify how many women are in marriages with husbands who've lost the appetite for sex, in part because it's hard for women - who are surrounded by friends, sitcoms and magazines telling them all men want sex all the time - to speak up about the "one man in the world" who doesn't.
"It's a very real problem," says psychiatrist Andrew Gilbert, medical director at the Hallowell Center, a New York-based facility that treats cognitive and emotional problems. "It's not weird or unique. It's also very treatable."
While researching her book, Manopause: Your Guide to Surviving His Changing Life (Hay House), co-author Lisa Friedman spoke with women who struggled to reconcile their husbands' waning desire with the impressions they had always accepted about men's sex drives.
"It's hard for anyone to admit; let's start there," Friedman says. "Women are just as uncomfortable admitting they're not having sex as men are. They think, 'What's wrong with my man?' Because, after all, the ability to perform is at the core of his masculinity." Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment