He's Just Not Up for It Anymore (21 page)

Homosexuality is an unlikely—but possible—answer to the
question of why men stop (or never start) having sex.

Like asexuality and extremely low testosterone, homosexuality is an unlikely—but possible—answer to the question of why men stop (or never start) having sex with their wives. Weeks and Gambescia state that although they have worked as therapists with such couples, the situation is rare. “These individuals may not wish to admit to themselves they are gay or admit it to the world.” That is an important statement. A man may not realize that he is gay or may find the concept of admitting it to anyone, even himself, so negative that he remains closeted. Certain religious beliefs may make a gay lifestyle impossible to even contemplate.

BROKEBACK MARRIAGES

Men living in small towns, where homosexuality may not be as readily accepted, might be more likely to hide inside of “mixed-orientation”

marriages. The popular 2005 film
Brokeback Mountain
told the tragic story of two small-town gay men torn between love for their wives, children, and each other. It put a sudden and strong spotlight on what are now called “brokeback marriages.” Previously, Hollywood treated American gay male/straight female relationships frivolously. Take, for 178

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example,
In and Out,
a 1997 comedy in which Kevin Kline plays a beloved schoolteacher in a small Indiana town. In spite of his fondness for both elaborate window treatments and Barbra Streisand, not to mention the fact that he and his fiancée are in a sexless relationship, he does not realize he’s gay. He can’t even accept his orientation after being “outed” on national television, when a former student (now a famous actor), assumes that he’s already “out” and thanks him for being the role model he channeled for his Academy Award–winning portrayal of a homosexual. However, by the end of the film it looks like a gay reporter (played by Tom Selleck) and Kline are going to live happily ever after. His former fiancée has no hard feelings, of course, and also finds true love. It is the ultimate feel-good, let’s-all-be-open-minded-and-love-one-another fantasy. In 2004, Kline portrays Cole Porter in the fictionally fantasized biopic
Night and Day,
this time as a bisexual but happily married man, whose wife appears to be only mildly upset when he spends some nights away from home with beautiful young men. These types of films all have one thing in common: the guy is gay, the gal is straight, and no one gets hurt.
Brokeback
Mountain
was an astonishing change, a grown-up look at mixed-orientation marriage from every perspective. And everyone got hurt.

Heterosexual by Necessity, Not Desire

A 47-year-old gay respondent, married for twenty-three years to a woman of the same age, used the words in this heading to describe the pain of living in a mixed orientation marriage. He discovered that he was attracted to other men when still in high school, but chose a straight lifestyle instead.

I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s and this was still the cli-mate. I was a victim of a society that said being gay is wrong, and being married and having a family is the only socially accepted thing to do.

maybe he’s gay? asexual?

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He wrote that although he told his wife about having a homosexual affair two years after the wedding, they both pretended it never really happened until about twenty years later, when he fell in love with a man and was no longer able to make believe he was part of a “typical” American family. (At this point they had three children.) He describes his wife as reacting to the news with anger, hurt, shock, betrayal, and hatred, and is critical of her lack of understanding and support. She, quite likely, was devastated by the realization that what she wished away twenty years ago had always been just under the surface, and what she tried so hard to believe in as real was all a fantasy.

Trying to sift through the past and separate fact from fiction is one of the most difficult things for any victim of infidelity, and it is arguably even harder to do this when you learn your spouse is gay.

All those wonderful memories of family vacations, holidays, and celebrations—was he actually always thinking of someone else?

What about when we made love?

People can attempt to force themselves and their spouses to live life the way they want it to be, instead of the way it is. Work, children, and the daily routine allowed the woman referred to in the quote to keep reality hidden away for decades, and it would have stayed that way if her husband hadn’t finally decided that he could no longer live a lie.

I became unfocused and noncommunicative, and I cried four or five times a day for no reason. I hated myself for being gay, and I hated my wife for not seeing what suppressing the feelings was doing to me as a man, husband, and father.

He writes that he and his spouse are about to separate. He blames society, his wife, and himself for the last twenty-three years of his life and says that he is still torn apart by depression and guilt.

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The Inauthentic Life

Jim McGreevey is the former New Jersey governor we mentioned earlier who was caught in an elaborate self-made web of deceit and lies that ended in his 2004 resignation and proclamation “I am a gay American.” In his memoir, he describes the torment of pretending to be straight to get elected and the hubris of living parallel lives. His political career and second marriage were brought down by his gay lover, a former subordinate and campaign aide placed in a high-pay-ing government job he was unqualified for. He blackmailed him when the love affair ended, resulting in McGreevey divorcing his second wife and moving in with another man.

We thought about him a lot, this attractive, ambitious, powerful politician in his late 40s, twice married with a child by each wife. He admitted being very sexually active with multiple male partners before he finally settled into the tumultuous affair that led to his downfall. Did his current wife suspect homosexuality? Did his former?

The human sex drive can be powerful enough to topple empires, and has. Lust can soon resemble, or turn into, love. And love may conquer, love may destroy, but it can rarely be wished away—which is why we tend to romanticize anyone who does so for a noble cause (Rick Blaine in
Casablanca,
for example).

But when libido is weak, sex becomes an afterthought at most, no more than an occasionally pleasant, but unnecessary, diversion.

OR MAYBE HE NEVER LIKED SEX

TO BEGIN WITH

My husband has never enjoyed sex. A wonderful man in every sense of the word, but he cannot show the emotion of love and sex. He does not view porn—I wish he would. I am in very good maybe he’s gay? asexual?

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shape, but you cannot force someone to have basic needs like physical intimacy if they don’t. (Female, 40s) Sex is almost always required for an intimate, romantic, long-term committed relationship. It looms large as a chief component of exclusivity and fidelity, its frequency considered a barometer of the state of the union. Any other kind of close relationship can be, and usually is, devoid of sex, which may be why lifelong friendships are more common than golden wedding anniversaries. Once sex enters the game, a complex set of biological and psychological elements change all the rules.

“Marry your best friend” is advice that manages to be both good and bad at the same time. You can, after all, love your best friend, look forward to his company, laugh at his jokes, and go on terrific vacations.

You can be, like the old song goes, a mutual admiration society. But if, hypothetically, you suddenly
fall
in love, he is supposed to evolve sometime during the courtship into your sensitive, passionate lover. If he falls into the lower end of the libido scale, he may manage to do just that, for a little while. But when the novelty-fueled passion that comes at the beginning of a new sexual relationship diminishes (if that passion ever really begins) and your “lover” goes away, leaving behind your best friend and you, what happens to the marriage? What can be done if you end up with a friend instead of a husband? As one respondent who has chosen to settle for a lifetime of sublimation told us: After ten years of marriage, I’ve resigned myself to the fact it will always be this way. I realize I have two choices: leave or learn to live with it. An affair is out of the question—I love him too much and I believe in the sacredness of marriage. I have decided to live a completely celibate life—no sex, no porn, no masturbation, and no fantasies. I treat my wanting sex as if it were an addiction, which is difficult because I was/am a very sexual person. Somehow I’ve managed. I have put the energy into other things. I’ve lost weight, I’m no longer depressed, 182

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and hubby and I have a very loving, albeit platonic relationship. He is a good father, a good provider, and a good friend.

(Female, 32)

In our society, a man, especially, may be reluctant to reveal
that he doesn’t have a constant desire to have sex.

Others make the opposite choice, like this woman, also 32, who thinks that marriage to her childhood friend may soon end.

Our sex life died within the first six months of marriage. We’ve known each other our whole lives. I was actually his “first”

back when we were kids. He says I am the love of his life, which I find hard to understand because he doesn’t provide any “love.” He is a good provider of everything else—but I always thought a marriage would have both elements. It’s unfortunate; he really is an awesome person, and we are compatible and close friends. But it can’t last much longer. It makes me really unhappy.

There is a broad range of possible levels of sexual desire and the majority of men and women fall within it. Some people, however, fit into the category of those who have either a very high or low level of desire or none at all. Whether or not one’s libido is below average can be difficult to assess in a culture that embraces the concept of sexuality in all things, including diet soda and mouthwash. When media and advertising represent a state of constant arousal as the norm, it may be embarrassing, even considered “abnormal,” to not want a lot of sex.

Thus, an individual with a low libido may cover it up, similar to a gay or lesbian of decades past. In our society, a man, especially, may be reluctant to reveal that he doesn’t have a constant desire to have sex.

maybe he’s gay? asexual?

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Conventional wisdom is that men have a stronger sex drive than women, and statistical data and clinical research seem to verify this.

In a 1991 study, almost all the men (91%) but only half the women (52%) experienced sexual desire several times a week. A 1995 study concluded that men had more frequent and more varied sexual fantasies. A 2001 extensive review of the psychological literature surround-ing the issue of gender differences in sexual motivation concluded that it was “indisputable,” based on the “quantity, quality, diversity and convergence of the evidence,” that men desire sex more than women; it went on to state: “We did not find a single study, on any of nearly a dozen different measures, that found women had a stronger sex drive than men.” And in a 2006 online survey of long-term relationships implemented by
Elle
magazine and MSNBC, 66 percent of the almost thirty-nine thousand male respondents said they wanted more sex than their partner.

Many of the men that we have been discussing in this book may have average or even strong sex drives, but don’t want to be intimate with their partners. The men we are discussing
here,
however, have below-average or low sex drives, and their wives have nothing to do with it. And then, there are men with a complete lack of sexual desire. Asexuality is rare, but it does exist.

ARE THERE
REALLY
MEN WITH LOW LIBIDOS?

He has no sex drive. Is he asexual and doesn’t know it? (Female, 59)

HSDD, which stands for hypoactive (underactive) sexual desire disorder, is the term used when desire for sex, partnered or solitary, is infrequent. The American Psychiatric Association defines it like this: “A persistently reduced sexual drive or libido, not attributable to depression, where there is reduced desire, sexual activity, and sexual fantasy.”

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The APA also stipulates that in addition to depression, low libido cannot be diagnosed as HSDD if it is the result of a general medical condition (i.e., obesity or diabetes) or substance use (including prescriptive medication, alcohol, or street drugs). This suggests that if any or all of these conditions were resolved, libido would most likely be restored, but if it isn’t, only then would HSDD be an acceptable diagnosis. Age and overall physical health are taken into account.

However, HSDD has also become an all-encompassing term used to describe individuals with significantly lower than average sexual desire, for any reason. Studies have shown it to be more prevalent in females (33%) than males (20%).

Trying to quantify the amount of sex an individual should want might seem foolhardy, as each of us is unique. It is, however, done all the time, by magazines, universities, and even the government. Remarkably, the statistics regarding frequency of intercourse for married couples seem to consistently fall, on average, between one and three times per week, declining with age.
Sex and the City
and other single-centric television shows notwithstanding, married people have more sex than singles, probably due to easy availability.

“Normal,” when discussing sexual appetite, is a complex,
delicate, and misleading term.

Since men appear to want sex more than women do, it would seem likely that a man suffering from HSDD is rare. It is not. Therapist Michele Weiner Davis states: “Based on my clinical observations and conversations with colleagues, low sexual desire in men is considerably more rampant than many people think.” Therapists David Schnarch and Joseph LoPiccolo would agree; both say that of couples who see them for loss of desire, at least half the time it is the man who has stopped wanting intimacy in the marriage.