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Going back to this idea of women losing their desire, especially when it's tied to duty,

I do get quite a bit of men, especially on my blog, who talk about being in a sexless marriage,

where they're having sex many times less than 10 times a year, many times for years,

have gone without any sexual encounter in the frustration that goes along with that.

And I see this issue as complicated in the sense that because we aren't a benevolent patriarchy,

which is good in a sense, better than a full-blown patriarchy, these men are not, you know,

forcing themselves, of course, they're not being coercive, they're not being manipulative,

they're very much respecting their wife's desire not to have sex,

and yet they're completely feeling basically abandoned, you know,

in their sexual intimacy, and it affects, of course, the rest of their marriage as well.

So, with this idea of how do you help women kind of navigate this idea of compromise,

which can easily go down the slope of duty to also realizing, you know,

that we meet both of the needs in this partnership?

Yeah, I don't think there's a lot of easy answers for this.

I wish there were, because it's such a heartbreaking problem.

I think that, in the realm of a sexless marriage, I would first say that accommodation

of that sexless stance is often undertaken thinking that eventually,

she will see what a nice guy I am, and how much I've tolerated her anxieties about sex,

and she will eventually turn to me, be more comfortable, feel more accepted,

and you know, that we will eventually have this thing that she says she also wants,

...