Some married couples enjoy celibacy

By SHIRL KASPER

The Kansas City Star

Bill says he's a happily married man. Thirty-six hears now. But something is missing from his marriage: sex.

Not that he minds.

"We haven't had sex in years and years," said Bill of Kansas City, Mo. "She doesn't seem to mind, either. The subject never came up."

When they first married, Bill and his wife made love a couple of times a week, although he said it was never very enjoyable. Their lovemaking decreased to an occasional weekend, "almost as a husband's duty," he said, and then to never. That has been the situation the last 20 years.

"After about a month or two into the marriage, I could have gone without any martial sex," said Bill, who asked that his real name not be used. "I just kept [having sex] because I felt I had to."

No one knows how common Bill's situation is, but psychology professor Ruthellen Josselson says asexual marriages may be more common than is generally thought. Josselson, who is on leave from Towson State University in Baltimore, examined the patterns of relationships, including those of celibate couples, in her book "The Space Between Us" (Jossey-Bass Publishers).

Josselson found that asexual marriages often were by mutual consent.

"There are some people for whom sex is just not a very important part of life," she said in a telephone interview. "There are other things in the relationship that both people value, and sex just floats away."

Interestingly, she said the notion that marriages inherently are sexual is a product of the mid- to late 20th century.

"What we see on TV is what we think everyone is doing," she said, when in reality it is the media that are portraying a sexualized society. Asexual couples—when it is mutually agreed—are "as contented as most people," she said.

Bill's story, Josselson said, represented a typical pattern, and it wasn't unusual that the couple had not talked about it.

Most couples in a happy asexual marriage are quite secretive about it, she said.

More troublesome perhaps are others, who in interviews with The Kansas City Star expressed deep dissatisfaction with their sexless marriages. One man, who had not had sex with his wife in 2½ years, was considering divorce. One woman had resigned herself to living without physical intimacy the rest of her life. Two other women held out hope that someday, somehow, their husbands would open up to them emotionally.

Their stories are more complicated, Josselson said, because "one or both partners have intense conflicts."

Here are some of their stories. All the names have been changed.

Even before she married, Susan glimpsed the problem. Her future husband never made a sexual advance.

"I had taken him not making any moves as him respecting me," she said. "One time I had too much to drink and I kind of went after him.

He reacted like: 'Oh, no. Oh, my god.' And then we just kind of ignored it."

She married him, she said, "for all the right reasons," thinking things would change. That was five years ago.

"He's never initiated anything," she said. "I feel a lot like we're pretending at playing house."

For a time she tried to be the initiator.

"But when it's just you all the time, it's too weird, too odd. So I've pulled back and we've just become celibate." She considers her husband a virgin, even though they managed to have a baby.

"He had an erection in his sleep," she said. "I was able to get myself pregnant."

They do talk about the problem.

"It'll be OK for three or four months, and then I'll blow up. I couldn't handle it anymore."

She tells him: "I need tenderness. I need love. I need something. But there's nothing."

He listens, but nothing changes.

They've talked to sex therapists, family therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. Her husband had a pituitary tumor removed, and while that certainly could affect his sex drive, Susan thinks that plays only a small part.

"There are too many other things," she said.

"Because of something that's happened in the past, I think he has blocked out the emotional side of himself. He's closed a door to keep himself from getting hurt."

Why does she stay in the relationship?

"It's a good marriage," she said. "My husband respects me highly. He supports me in what I want to do. He's a good father, very loyal. I don't know a more ethical person.

"He's a lot of things I'm looking for in a husband."

So she stays.

"When you get married, two people strip down naked in the emotional sense and they accept you for who you are. You trust them. They won't make fun of your bumps and bruises.

"But when one strips down naked and the other doesn't, that emotional intimacy just ends.

"I think the worst thing in the world is not to know if it will ever work. If someone would tell me, 'No, it's never going to work,' then you'd get to the point where I could make some decision, where to go for myself. But there has always been hope out there."

Josselson has heard stories like Susan's before.

"There are a great many marriages that are never consummated," she said. "The typical story there: They're dating and the one partner assumes the other is being old-fashioned. So the other one says, 'OK, that's how it will be until we get married.'

"When they get married, they try it and it's awkward and clumsy and then they avoid it or they put it off… and it doesn't happen and it doesn't happen.

"The other one gets afraid to ask about it, afraid to ask because it will blow up the relationship."