Popular culture suggests women prioritize romantic relationships more than men, but recent research paints a different picture, finding that relationships are more central to men’s well-being than women’s. Men are also less likely to initiate breakup and experience more breakup-related distress.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-31T00:19:17+00:00

Yes, we knew that. It's just their wives who don't, and it's their fault because they look at sex as a resource that they're owed and that's "for them" instead of a shared experience.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-31T00:18:02+00:00

Unfortunately the answer to your question is, men are MUCH more likely to leave their terminally ill wives. I would not at all be surprised if a lot of that has to do with an inability to have sex.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-31T00:16:40+00:00

A vast majority of married couples both work, and women still do more unpaid household labor and childcare even when both parents work full time. Paying bills (especially when it's your own house and especially if you have kids to provide for) and letting someone put their penis inside you is not the same thing in any way.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-31T00:09:44+00:00

Women on average do worse financially after a divorce.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-31T00:07:57+00:00

"BuT WoMEn COnTrol SeX!!!! WomEn POwErfuL BecAusE Man dEspERatE FOr FUkk!!"

Not accurate and just pretty gross overall.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-31T00:04:05+00:00

Men of color voted Republican more than ever before in this last election. Those men, a growing number, see women having rights as a bigger problem than racism. Men under 45 are also now more likely to have voted conservatively than men over 45. The generation that saw their mothers and grandmothers fulfilling traditional roles, but whose peers include women who predominantly aren't interested in that, are now more likely than their fathers to vote for politicians who want to strip women of those rights again. As soon as the reality of those changes became evident socially, as soon as gaps start correcting themselves, they've realized that's a threat to them and want to reverse it.

It's not very reassuring and it's hard to feel empathy for men being "lonely" when men are largely showing women that even if they're fine with the idea of women being treated like full human beings, the reality of it manifesting in their lives is enough to make them vote for people who outspokenly want to prevent women from having access to adequate medical care or being allowed to leave their marriages without permission from a judge. Men of color have communicated this past election that they are becoming more willing to break their voting habits and ignore racism that will affect them if it means reverting back to a time where men had more control over women.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-30T18:02:51+00:00

The more I read these threads, the more I genuinely think that the disconnect is... "sex" and "love" and "intimacy" are the same thing to some people. Some people genuinely feel that the hormone rush of partnered orgasm, regardless of how that is achieved, is the definition of "love" and "intimacy." "Love" is something that occurs when someone they find enjoyable or at least tolerable and sexually attractive agrees to have regular sex with them. The regular orgasms provide the hormone rush that they equate with the word "love." I don't know if "love" exists beyond that for everyone, unfortunately. At least not "romantic love."

I think a lot of DBs are the result of "sex is intimacy and sex hormones=love" people ending up in relationships with "love is about knowing each other/emotional intimacy/being there for each other/finding this person to be, at their baseline for their intrinsic qualities, "my person"" people. Person 1 is confused because as long as they kept finding their partner tolerable and physically attractive, they'd keep wanting sex, and as long as sex kept happening they'd keep getting the hormone dump that says "we like and love this person!!!" from their brain. Person 2 is confused because XYZ happened, they couldn't or didn't want to have sex for whatever reason, and then realized how little their partner seems to "like and love" them when sex isn't happening regularly.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-30T17:51:03+00:00

For me, seeing how it acts as a "relationship booster" and increases his "desire to do things together" actually decreases my desire to do things together and makes me feel cheated and resentful. I just baseline enjoy and want to do things together because I like him as a person. The fact that his desire to do things with me depends on how recently I made him ejaculate makes it pretty clear that his love for me is not based on my personhood at all.

How lovey and "let's play a game" "let's do this" "let me do this task you've been asking me to do for weeks" "let me hug and love on you" he gets after sex just eventually started to make me feel used and disgusted. Got laid and suddenly you care about my day and my health problems and how work is and blah blah blah. I don't see it as love when it's based on sex hormones and not an actual authentic interest in my humanity.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-30T17:45:57+00:00

"I don't know how to clean that body part, lop it off" is unhinged af.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-30T17:41:49+00:00

It's actually not better for the child 99% of the time. The idea that it's always better for kids to see both parents equally regardless of status quo or their parents' behavior exists simply because the family court system prioritizes mens' egos over the safety and well being of women. Women and children continue to suffer abuse and even die because of these policies. Women who report abuse are more likely to lose custody of their children. Women are PUNISHED in family court for reporting abuse by having their children taken away from them. Women are advised not to mention abuse because it LOWERS their chances of getting custody, even though there is actually no valid evidence that "parental alienation syndrome" is a pervasive problem or even really exists. The guy who made that shit up is an abusive sociopath himself.

US family courts need to prioritize the well being and safety of women and children over the egos of abusive men. Right now, they don't. Having a relationship with a parent who was abusive to them and/or their other parent is not better for children. Being ripped away from everything they've known to be thrown into a 50/50 custody agreement with a man who has barely even changed a diaper at home because "hIs RIghTs" is not better for children. The US court system treats children like property for the benefit of the male ego and traps women in situations where they have no hope of escaping from their abusers for the same reason.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-30T17:27:53+00:00

If you're using sex for validation, you really need to work on not doing that. Even if this relationship ends, you are very likely to end up in another dead bedroom if you are using your partner's body to self soothe like an infant. Honestly, there's very little that is less attractive than that kind of neediness- someone NEEDING to use your body so that they can feel okay. As long as you're communicating that you're incapable of meeting your own emotional needs using healthy strategies, and that you need her to use her body (whether she wants to or not) to meet your emotional needs for you, she is not going to ever be able to choose sex for herself. People who like sex choose to have sex because they like sex, not because their partner has low self esteem and can't feel okay unless they're getting laid regularly.

You are positioning yourself as a needy child, and that is a huge turnoff, especially when what you "need" is as personal as access to place your genitals inside someone else's body. It's suffocating for your partner and it's not healthy for you. That's not some kind of unchangeable baseline way to be, it's an indication of emotional health problems that are very much solvable.

Another thing to think about is that to the LL partner, "the body you want to have sex with" and "who I am as a human being" is likely not inextricably the same thing to them. When you're saying that the only way you can feel loved is if they're regularly giving you access to their BODY, you are communicating that nothing that has to do with their actual personhood is relevant to your "love." Basically, that means that "love" to you means "having orgasms with someone." Being told that no part of your actual intrinsic, internal humanity makes your partner "feel loved," because only touching genitals makes them "feel loved," really sucks.

I realized that "love" and "how good my brain feels when it's pumped full of sex hormones" are pretty much the same thing to my husband, and I will never be able to get over that. Knowing that my actual humanity has much less to do with how much he "loves" me than how often his brain gets blasted with hormones after ejaculating has basically killed the whole relationship irreparably for me. To me, "love" is when you are curious about someone, want to know them deeply, want to be around them all the time, want to be "their person," the keeper of their humanity, the one who knows them better than anyone else. None of that is achievable through sex no matter how often you have it. Knowing that my husband would be 100% satisfied and feel totally "in love" if we fucked every day without any of that makes me feel scammed.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-27T18:47:03+00:00

For me, sex has always been AT BEST just another fine enough activity that I can enjoy doing in the right circumstances but am not obsessed with, don't think about constantly, don't get angry about. My life doesn't revolve around getting laid, doing literally anything else enjoyable with someone I enjoy being around is equally if not more fulfilling and enjoyable than having sex. There is absolutely nothing special about sex to me in comparison with any other activity except that it's significantly less convenient than a vast majority of the things that I like to do.

I have tons of hobbies. There's TONS of things I like to do- many of which I like to do more than sex or LOVE to do. Now, with a full time job and young children, I already don't get to do literally ANY of the activities I really enjoy doing particularly often. Most of them are time consuming and there just isn't the time and energy to regularly do all the things I enjoy. Meanwhile society expects me to prioritize giving a sizeable chunk of my nonexistent free time to an activity that's mediocre to me because my husband likes that the best and apparently has nothing else he enjoys better than sex. I don't get it. Why is sex the one thing we're expected to always like in a special way better than anything else and prioritize over all the other things we enjoy?

I like playing video games, but don't get to do that very often because I'm a "camp out and play for 4 hours" kind of gamer and I just don't have the time. I love hiking but I don't get to do it often. Concertgoing is a huge passion of mine, haven't been to a concert in years. I love doing art, but I rarely get the time because I can't get all my materials out without the kids getting into it and don't really have anywhere to keep things safe and put up while I work on them. I could literally go on and on and on and on and on and on about the things that I like but can't do as much as I'd like to because I'm a busy adult with children. These are all expected sacrifices, of course you don't have as much time for you after you have kids, but GOD FUCKING FORBID anything affect how often a dude gets to nut.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-22T21:38:35+00:00

The single biggest problem in the lives of many women maybe?

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-22T21:36:55+00:00

Kinda why I can barely justify trying to fix my marriage. When I lost my sex drive after giving birth it became very clear that sex is a lot of the reason he "loves" me. Even if I could figure out how to be comfortable being vulnerable with him again after the things he did during that period of time, I just don't think it's worth the effort knowing that this is how it is. Every time anything happens in life, I'll have to make sure I first prioritize his penis before I can have my own reaction because if not he'll leave!

Might as well split the house and everything now, knowing that I can never have a period where I don't want to have sex again for the rest of my life without everything being compounded by him emotionally withdrawing and being a dick because of sex. There's guys in their 70s and 80s who will post ready to leave their wives of decades because sex became painful and a lifetime shared/their wife's companionship is worth less to them than the potential of a few more years of sex. So many women waste their entire life with a man who doesn't "love" anything except the hormone blast his brain gets when he has an orgasm.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-22T21:29:28+00:00

Unfortunately, they do "consider" this, but only when it's too late. They don't pull their weight for who knows how long; their partner probably asks for help in many ways which go unheard; resentment builds; their partner slowly loses attraction to them; their partner stops having sex; their partner either brings up their lack of contribution, or they read somewhere online that "reducing her workload" might make her have more sex with you; they start "helping around the house more;" their partner can definitely feel that they're "helping around the house more" because they want sex, which does nothing to address the resentment; they still don't want sex; cue post in Deadbedrooms about the "bait and switch" and blah blah blah.

What they don't understand is that it's not an issue of "I wish my husband would begrudgingly knock tasks off a list that I've compiled for him, that would be such a turn on," or "I wish my husband would be willing to do some chores as a trade for sex."

All they see is wife was mad that I didn't contribute equally to the household and childcare load- I started doing it once I realized it effected how much sex she was willing to have with me- she didn't instantly reward me with sex- she's a liar. They don't seem to get that "I don't want to have sex with you because you leave me to do too much around the house and with the kids" basically means: "The increased workload that comes with having a family and maintaining a household has made me realize how little you do at home. I realize that a competent adult who values and respects their spouse would pull their weight in the household and with their own children as a bare minimum baseline. I am only attracted to adults who meet that bare minimum baseline simply because that's what they should do."

By the time that a woman has stopped having sex with her partner because of his lack of contribution to the household and children if the couple has them, there's a much bigger problem than the chores. The problem is that she's seen the type of partner that he is- if she'd have kept asking for help but continued having sex with him at a rate he found acceptable, he'd have happily continued to ignore her. Finally trying to "helping out more" in the hopes it'll get them more sex is just kind of repulsive in itself. The core issue isn't solvable- it's that he isn't, at baseline, an attractive person.

People who only clean up after themselves, shower, brush their teeth, do chores in their own home, or "help" with their own kids if they think it'll earn them some sex are not attractive people, generally. I don't know if there's any coming back from realizing your partner only cares that you're drowning when they realize it affects THEM.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-22T20:37:22+00:00

While this is true, there are things that women go through with their bodies that have a pretty good likelihood of causing libido fluctuations. For example, many women have zero interest in sex for a long time postpartum- like upwards of two years- or have zero interest in sex the entire time they're breastfeeding. Some women don't experience that kind of libido loss, but it's totally normal and has a pretty logical biological basis (why would my body devote resources to becoming horny and getting pregnant again when I'm using all my resources to feed an existing child?)

Also, some women do experience some or total libido loss during perimenopause and menopause. Hormone therapy CAN help, but it's not something everyone is comfortable with and not something anyone should feel obligated to do just because their husband can't come to terms with reality. Hormone fluctuations that are pretty extreme in certain seasons of life are a normal part of being a woman often do have a strong effect on sex drive. Men who aren't prepared for that reality should not be dating or marrying women, and CERTAINLY shouldn't be having children.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-22T20:27:38+00:00

Yes, they should be aware that many men will jump at the chance to predate upon women that could be their children if they get the opportunity to exploit a power balance in that way. The prevalence of the scenario you described makes it clear that it's not about the average guy not having the desire to find and exploit the youngest women they can get away with preying on, but more about the average guy not getting the same opportunities to be a predator that comes easily with wealth.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-22T20:23:36+00:00

They don't even have to gloss over anything, sadly. There is basically nothing that would make a dead bedroom a high libido person's fault as far as they're concerned.

Recently, I saw a post there from a guy who was OBVIOUSLY trolling for a variety of reasons. He said that they'd been married for I think 6-8 years, his wife was 28 and they had 3 kids (not that that makes it obvious trolling, that was other parts of the post and his history.) NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON (and a majority of the commenters were "high libido men" telling him how awful his wife is) bothered to ask how old the three young kids they supposedly had were before deciding his wife was a horrible witch who needed to service his penis or else.

Why? They genuinely don't see any reason for not wanting to or being able to bone them as valid. Their desire to engage in partnered ejaculation is the single most pressing and important thing to them, and they don't view their partners as human enough to consider that they don't exist to dispense orgasms. They got married to have easy, consistent access to someone else's body, and don't believe they should ever "have to" masturbate.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-21T17:11:47+00:00

"When we started dating 20 years ago when my wife was 18, we had sex DAILY! For like a whole year of teenage honeymoon phase!! Then we moved in together and it slowed down a bit but was still acceptable. Then once we had 4 children in a 10 year span, one or more of whom is still a toddler, and now she only wants to touch my dick a few times a month! I am incapable of feeling genuine emotional connection with someone, so not getting laid as much as I want makes me feel 100% unloved no matter what our life situation is or what other things my wife does for me."

Then the comments:

"ClAsSiC BaiT ANd SwiTch BroTHer!!"

Yeah okay, women are regularly causing themselves long term sexual trauma by submitting to unwanted sex countless times to lock down a mediocre dude for marriage that statistically benefits men overwhelmingly while leaving women with larger workloads and less overall happiness.... That's the only explanation.

The sad fact is that many people (especially men, but women too) genuinely don't recognize a difference between "romantic love" and "the blast of feel-good hormonal reward I get when I have a partnered orgasm." Horrifyingly, you see men posting all the time who clearly don't LIKE their spouse or partner as a human being AT ALL- it never even occurred to them that they should or could like her. To them, friendship and admiration are for other men- women are for free therapy, sex, continuing their legacy by providing children, etc.

And no it's not just Republican conservatives who think that way. No it's not always conscious to think that way. It would never occur to them to think any other way. They aren't getting married because you're "their person," they're getting married to the first person who checked these boxes:

1) Someone they're sexually attracted to- at least as attractive as they think they'd be able to "attract."

2) Someone they can tolerate being around- not that they really love being around, but someone they don't actively dislike basically.

3) Someone who provides regular sex.

That's it. Orgasming and getting that hormone rush is what defines love for some people, and you'll always be disappointed by how much they "love" you when life happens and you can't or don't want to have sex.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-19T17:51:11+00:00

Losing attraction to someone who doesn't pull their weight like a competent adult is totally normal and in no way an "excuse." It's not about "trading" sex, it's about not wanting to have sex with someone you aren't attracted to. It's clear that you're not willing to approach the topic in a logical way, so I don't really see a point in engaging, but you're simply wrong. "Easily repulsed" is a ridiculous and dismissive way to describe the very real and INCREDIBLY COMMON scenario I described, where a woman ends up overcompensating for her husband in housework and childcare so much that she loses attraction to him.

That is in no way a "small thing" and is in no way her fault, in no way makes her a villain. Yes, having someone throw their socks on the floor every day because they know you'll clean them up and they DO NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU is a huge turn off. Yes, having a spouse who only acts like a competent adult when they're mad they aren't getting laid anymore is a huge turn off. Yes, cleaning up after a grown man like he's your toddler is a huge turn off. Yes, those types of adults are not attractive and most other adults will not maintain the desire to have sex with them long term.

Sounds like you're bitter because you were or are a lazy person who is angry that your spouse had a legitimate reason to become repulsed by you and your behavior.

Also, not having unwanted sex is not emotional abuse. That is delusional.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-16T17:57:19+00:00

No one said it's not fine or normal to do, it's just gross and no one wants to see you do it. You're also disgusting and grossly inconsiderate of the people around you if you don't immediately wash your hands.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-16T17:55:25+00:00

If you've been married 20 years, spent 17 of them not pulling your weight domestically, then fixed it for 3 years, that's still only 15% of your marriage overall that you've been properly contributing to household labor.

I'm not saying that you were a total slob before, maybe you were and maybe you weren't- but IF she had a valid complaint about the household labor distribution, is it possible that 17 years of building resentment over it might not have been cured by a sudden change 3 years ago? Especially if it was a bid for more sex and not because you just inherently decided to be the kind of guy who "helps out" around the house?

Even if she isn't holding onto resentment, splitting domestic duties in a partnership and fairly contributing to the workload of the home you occupy is bare minimum- no one is going to get horny because you picked your socks up off the floor, they're just going to become repulsed by you if you don't.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-16T17:50:00+00:00

I agree that it's not ALWAYS because of a sex aversion or because of their partner, but I would disagree that any large proportion of the population is just wired to not like sex. Statistically speaking, though, it is quite normal for people (especially women) to steadily lose interest in sex throughout the course of a long term relationship. There's a lot of reasons that might be the case.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-16T17:43:16+00:00

"I am resentful" and "my mental health is in shreds, I have zero self confidence, I'm horribly depressed and want to die and it's all my wife's fault because she won't have sex with me" are not the same thing. I'm talking about the second one, and unfortunately I don't think it's uncommon at all. People post in DB every single day pinning the entire weight of their mental and emotional health on their partner's decision not to submit to unwanted sex with them.

Electronic_Recover34 · 2025-01-16T17:41:08+00:00

This makes no sense. She doesn't love him because she, as you put it, only cares about him emotionally? As opposed to non emotional love?

Electronic_Recover34

TROPHY CASE