Bad sex did us in

My friend Bethany kept falling in lust with men at her office, which would’ve been fine except that she was in a seventeen-year marriage with two teenaged daughters. 


She was never physically unfaithful to her husband "Doug", but the cost in integrity was devastating for her. for her marriage was sacred or so she thought.

Finally the inevitable happened. She fell in love with one of her co-workers. Again, there was no physical infidelity, but hearts were involved. She decided she’d rather end her marriage than have an affair.

This is one of the things I love about Bethany, no equivocation, but in this instance I thought she was being rash. Couldn’t she tell Doug what was happening? That the survival of their marriage was at the end and he needed to step up to the plate? I was shocked to discover she’d been honest with Doug and he’d remained passive. she had told him everything and he seems to not care.

We’ve known each other since 1986 and bonded over our shared experience of being children of overbearing but loving parents. I wondered how she could she consider leaving a marriage to, as she fully admitted, a funny, kind, committed man? As someone never married but hearing about how you need to stick with a marriage through thick and thin, I really wondered.

Why I asked?

“Doug and I don’t have sex, and when we do he's not good at it” she said.

“What does that mean? You and Doug don’t have sex? You mean, like, you have it once a month or so? how bad can it be”

“I mean, like we haven’t had sex in a year at least.”

“Holy shit! I had no idea!”

“It’s not really something people advertise. And the last time we did it we had to get drunk, and he couldn't even get it up. Once he did get it up he came in less than a minute, could not keep it in, and in general didn't seem to know how to use his penis anymore”

“But why?” I asked, “Why don’t you have sex, why is it so bad after all these years?”

“Because I’ve become his mother. We have an Oedipal relationship. Just minus the sex.”

Bethany explained that over the years she’d taken up more and more real estate in the marriage or Doug simply did less and less so she had to do more.  She managed their family schedule, she had the bigger job, she planned all their vacations, she made all major decisions about their finances and their children.

“Is this because you’re controlling and bossy?” I asked. She is controlling and bossy and I can say that because so am I, but she really is.

“Maybe,” she said.  “But, I don’t always want to be the boss, sometimes I really want him to take over.”

There certainly was one place where Doug was the boss and that was in the bedroom. He could control Bethany by withholding. My assessment, not hers.

When you’re a married person, other people’s divorces – from marriages that seemed solid and strong – can be threatening.

Over time I came to understand that in divorcing Doug, Bethany did something incredibly brave. She took all the hits for breaking up her family, from her parents, her siblings, her children and her friends, myself included, in order to seek a fuller, more integrated life.

In the midst of the divorce, when Bethany had lost twenty pounds and couldn’t sleep and doubted herself, she clung to one simple truth, “I can’t live the rest of my life without passion. I longed for some good sex.”

A passionless life. Not just sexless, but passionless. We all need to have a passion. Whether it’s passion for our partner or spouse, our work, our children, our hobbies. The lack of sex in Bethany’s marriage had eroded the passion of her spirit. She was living a rote, predictable, stagnant life.

That was two years ago. I look at Bethany’s life today. It’s not perfect. The man she fell in love with is no longer in her life and she’s not in a hurry to meet someone new. In fact she said although the man she fell in love with at work was way better in the sack than her husband he was not mind blowing. She is not in a hurry to date anyone else as she wants to better understand herself and not bring her daughters into a situation that won’t last. She has had two flings since work guy, admitting one man she still sees occantionaly just for the sex, which is great.


She and Doug are incredibly amiable and excellent parents to their now almost grown daughters.

Funnily enough, Bethany’s life is now sometimes just as sexless as before. She went through a spell of just getting laid for the sake of telling herself she could. Having several men a week. Then she did the experimentation phase. Sex with younger men, older men and even a few threesomes. But alas she said the passion or the connection was not there. 

Is bad sex a good reason to divorce?