We were about to have a serious argument. I mean a damned throw
down! If I heard this man say one more freakin’ time, “she made me do it,” I
was going to scream! And then I was
going to rip his head off and scream at it some more as I rolled it across the
floor like a bowling ball!
My friend was in the beginning stages of a divorce, so he
was deep into that venting phase where he would easily share all the messy
details of an 18-year marriage gone terribly wrong. And then he did it again.
He said it: “I’m just saying -- she made me do it.”
That cut it!!!
(Children under 18
years of age should stop reading right…about…HERE!)
I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to get very real
with my friend. “What did your wife have to do with you placing your penis into
another woman’s vagina?” I asked, on the verge of launching an apocalyptic
verbal assault on behalf of scorned women everywhere whose husbands had ever
cheated on them.
“You made an independent decision to have sex outside your
marriage!” I fired at him. “Now how is that your wife’s fault?”
As I waited for an answer, I kept thinking, “This had better
be good.” And it was.
He said, “I just couldn’t be married to a woman I was still
attracted to, that I wanted to make love to and had to sleep next to every
night and be celibate for life. Could you?”
Oh snap! I was ready to obliterate my friend. Honey, I was
about to launch a verbal tirade that would have made Richard Pryor, Sommore,
Andrew Dice Clay and Adele Givens hit the “censor” button! I was ready to lay
into this man and make him pay for every girl in the world whose man had ever
gone astray. But I was stumped. He got me. I was cornered.
What the hell do you say in response to that?
Could I be married to
the man I loved, with whom I’d once enjoyed a good sex life, still desired and
had to lay next to every night, but never have sex again because HIS libido or
desire for me had waned? Damn.
Right about then, all I could hear in my head was André
3000 asking, “Forever? Forever-ever?? Forever-ever???”
The man wasn’t trying to make a
case for cheating. He wasn’t saying, “If my wife won’t give it to me then
someone else will.” He knew what he did was dead wrong. He never said it wasn’t.
According to him, they stopped having regular sex less than five years into the
marriage. At the time they were young, in their early 20s. So you know his sex
drive was in high gear. She had already had one of their three kids. It’s not
like they weren’t sexually active. But as he tells it, the sex slowly started
to wane after their first child. She wasn’t really interested in it anymore and
when asked why she didn’t want to have sex she would say “I don’t need it as
much as you” or “I don’t know.” There wasn’t any medical reason for it, either.
They explored that possibility, too. He said he’d begged her off and on for
more than four years, getting it only occasionally.
But more than that, you should’ve
seen him tell the story of when it actually happened. He sort of looked like
Steve Brady telling his wife Miranda Hobbs he’d cheated on her in the first Sex
and the City movie. My friend looked genuinely disgusted with himself as he
relived the event. He described the way he felt the very moment it was over. He
said he felt mortified immediately after the urge was satisfied -- he hadn’t
even got up yet. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, but his young 20-something
self gave in to hormones and urges. Back then, when it was over, he had to come
to grips with just how human and fallible he was. Today, more than a decade
later, he accepts that about himself.
I can already hear some Relationship Revelations readers
saying, “Yeah, but there’s two sides to every story.” And you’d be right.
Okay, so let’s play devil’s advocate and consider the wife’s
point of view for a moment. What if she argued he wanted sex too much and was
just plain worn out? Well, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. He would’ve had
some sort of libido during their dating years. It’s not like they met one week
and married the next week. She would have known that about him already. Or what
if he’s lying about his wife’s dying libido and she was really breaking him off
more than Heidi Fleiss was scheduling johns back in the day? What if he just
cheated on her and he’s trying to put the onus on her back? Honestly, we’ll
never know who’s telling the truth.
But what if everything he said was true? What if she really
did lose her desire to have sex? What if he really was begging and pleading
with his wife and she continued to shun him, secure in the fact that this was
her husband and he wasn’t going to stray because their wedding vows said he
would forsake all others? Sure, they took vows. They made a promise before God and
man, family and friends. They signed papers recognized by the state. Him for
her and her for him. All for one and one for all…right?
But the question still stands can YOU (the person reading
this blog post) be married to someone you’re still sexually attracted to and be
celibate for life? Is that scenario something you sign up for when you marry
someone? Is that a part of “for better or for worse?” Because baby, if you
enjoy sex…that’s the worst!
Then these other questions started creeping into my mind.
Like, do spouses have a responsibility, a duty even, to be available to each
other sexually? Some say yes, referring to the biblical passage of 1 Corinthians 7:3-5.
The New International Version reads like this: “The husband should fulfill his marital duty
to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have
authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the
husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do
not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that
you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan
will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
Look, I’m no preacher. I’m not trying to convince anyone that
what my friend did as a young married man was right or justified. He was wrong. And I’m
certainly not trying to provide a “the perfect excuse” for any other husband
looking to justify having sex outside of his marriage. They'd be wrong, too.
All I’m saying is this: I’m not sure I could be married to
the man I love and sexually desire…and be celibate for life. These days, I’m
not so quick to judge.
Content copyright 2011. Relationship Revelations, LLC. All rights reserved.
Content copyright 2011. Relationship Revelations, LLC. All rights reserved.
