Involuntary Celibacy
November 7th, 2007 by Laura M. Brotherson
The following writings were sent to me by a man who has spent many years in a sexual desert in his marriage. He has agreed to let me share some of the heart piercing and profound reverie he has had regarding the intimately starved marriage in which he is living. This stuff is the sacred ground of the soul. What an awesome and humbling thing it is to glimpse into the soul of another.
He has graciously consented to let me share these personal writings in hopes that it may bring hope to others who find themselves in similar situations. His hope is that through his pain maybe he can be an instrument for good somehow.
I hope these writings will be received by you in the manner in which they were written. I know his words profoundly affected me. These writings and the many others like it are the reasons I see it as such a high priority to strengthen marriages sexually.
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In recent months I’ve begun to use the phrase “involuntary celibacy” to describe my current sexual status. I keep the phrase (and the truth behind it) mainly to myself (and my journal) with an occasional exception, when I find a listening ear.
It’s really quite tragic. But the term is rather fitting, since I have about as much of a sex life as a typical priest. I like to joke to myself that the difference between me and a priest is that the priest wears a collar. But it’s also that the priest entered his lifestyle willingly. On the contrary, part of the reason I married was because I knew I couldn’t bear to be celibate. What a sick twist of fate.
The part that’s a real clincher is that I took a vow about “til death do us part”. And since my wife will probably outlive me, I’m pretty much looking at living the balance of my life, which could easily be four more decades, in this condition of involuntary celibacy. At least single people have the hope that one day they might get married and have a lover. For me, every month void of intimacy just reinforces the pattern as less likely to ever change.
And one thing that’s taken me years of “sex deprivation” to realize is that it’s not just orgasm that I crave. You can have those on your own and still feel void. And it’s not just “sex” per se, either, that I need. It’s an emotional intimacy, a bond, a joy-filled exchange of love; being with another person who wants to be with me and wants to please me and desires me to please them.
I don’t really care for the song very much, but Cheap Trick definitely captured the essence of how I feel with these words: “I want you to want me; I need you to need me.” Most men never get this. They’re programmed to think that all they want and need is sex. But for all but the coldest-hearted men, there’s a need to be needed. And so the years after years of being reinforced that my interest in my wife is unwelcome, and that there’s apparently nothing desirable about me in her eyes, it has really beaten down on me emotionally. It’s enough to destroy a person.
I won’t go into all the 101 things that I have tried and that we together have tried over the past 17 years to “fix” the situation, except to say that they’ve ranged from “exercises” to psychotherapy to medication to laying on of hands.
The point that needs to be clear is that if God wants you to NOT be in a sexually intimate relationship for some reason, He can thwart your efforts to the contrary to make sure it doesn’t happen. God might have let me give in to having an affair with someone, but He didn’t. Sometimes I feel it’s a miracle that I haven’t. Sometimes, perhaps when He’s most concerned with the outcome (or perhaps when He’s dealing with a particularly stubborn subject), God will intervene in our lives, for our own good, despite all our efforts to the contrary.
Look what happened to Jonah when he tried to hop on a ship headed for the other side of the world when he knew God wanted him in Ninevah. God was on his tail. You can’t run from God. So when He has your attention, you might as well try to listen. Maybe He’s trying to tell us something. And maybe only when we hear it will He let us go. Maybe there is still something I need to learn before I can experience the sexual relationship I so desire.
God could have allowed me to find the solution to whatever is causing my wife and I to not have a love life, so that it would be fixed, since we’ve certainly done enough searching that one would think we’d find an answer by now. The fact that we haven’t has me wondering if there’s a higher purpose He’s trying to achieve by preventing the answer from being found. Maybe He wants to make sure that I’m not going to let sex “turn my heart away” from Him, like all those foreign wives did to Solomon. Maybe He wants me to be a more mature recipient of that blessing, so it doesn’t replace my passion for Him.
Maybe I have been running away somehow. I’ve been sort of whining and complaining to God about wanting a lover for so long, while I have perhaps been “running” from a deeper spiritual relationship with Him. Maybe that must come first.
Perhaps I have turned my desire for intimacy into an idol. I’m sure I want it more than I want God, which violates God’s greatest commandment to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Perhaps instead of seeking first for the kingdom of God and His righteousness, I’m seeking first for sex. Whatever it is, I need to try to sit still and listen.
I think God does want me to have a good sex life. (Man…that was really hard to say! I’ve never said this before and have spent more time journaling as if I’m Job and that God’s trying to kill me. I need to focus on the truth…) But if I’ve begun to want sex more than God, He might take the drastic step of holding back the sex to prevent me from idolatry, while trying to lure me to truly love Him first.
Now, do I think this life of celibacy is God’s original plan for us? No. I think the sexual dysfunctionality of my marriage will, when all comes to light someday, be attributable to a combination of my sin, her sin, the impact on us of a world of sinners living around us, and the Devil himself. It’s not unlike the forces causing sickness, war, and all the other griefs of this world. And I have to believe that in heaven there will either be perfect sex or something much better yet.
So what now? Well, my latest theory is that, at the core, my wife’s problem is really spiritual. Her sexual “shutdown” is part of an emotional shutdown, which itself comes from a spiritual shutdown, and the indications support my theory. (I have, after all, had a lot of time to think about the matter, time when I would have rather been rolling under the covers.) And so it has to be fixed in the appropriate order, starting with the spiritual. Seek *first* God’s kingdom, and let God take care of meeting our personal needs.
I just think it’s important for God’s children to realize that sex isn’t a right, even for married people. It’s a gift from God. And I think that having the right attitude of humility before God should be our first step in reaching that wholeness.
I certainly don’t have things figured out; if I did, I probably wouldn’t feel like the 40 Year Old Virgin. Like Job, I want to be able and willing to receive counsel from anyone God puts in my path. God created us to grow in the context of community. Lord willing I will continue to be open to learning as I continue to seek for answers. For now I’m going to focus on my wife’s needs and try to show her God’s love. I have to believe it can break through even the hardest of hearts.
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Laura M. Brotherson is the author of a groundbreaking book on sexual intimacy and marital oneness entitled, And They Were Not Ashamed—Strengthening Marriage through Sexual Fulfillment. Laura shares her passion for building strong marriages and families as an author, intimacy educator and relationship consultant. Visit her website www.StrengtheningMarriage.com to learn more. Sign up today for her FREE “Straight Talk about Strengthening Marriage” newsletter. StrengtheningMarriage.com is your trusted resource for education, products and services to strengthen marriages intimately!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Intimacy, Sex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Laura, thank you for posting this. Although my wife and I are not completely celibate, it almost seems to me that we are. Sometimes we suffer from the “grass is greener” syndrome- from the outside, it seems like others’ lives are free of trouble, pain, and problems. As “sad” as it sounds, it does help to realize that we are not alone with these problems. Just a few other comments in the form of a reply to the man whose writings you posted….
I am no expert, but you seem to be searching for a deeper reason for what you are going through. In my opinion, often we just experience these types of things in life. We make choices and consequences follow. Sometimes things happen to us that have nothing to do with choices we have made but rather choices that others make. And sometimes things just happen independent of the choices of anyone involved. That’s not to say that God does not care about us- on the contrary, he loves us more than we can comprehend. But I don’t think He’s behind any of your problems and is not trying to teach you anything through this, although you very well may learn a great deal in the process.
I admire your desire to focus on your wife’s needs and to show her God’s love. As you said, sex is a gift from God, and so is the ability to love others unconditionally, despite the pain, disappointment, or hurt that you might feel.
I feel so much compassion for you.
To some degree I can understand the pains of loneliness that come from the lack of desire for intimacy from a spouse. I can say that trying EVERY avenue for help is the correct thing to do. Then accept it.
Trials came for me, that ended up to make those pains turn around for me. I KNOW that WITHOUT A DOUBT, Heavenly Father who was your father first, knows completely the depth of your pain. One day He WILL make that depth of pain, into extreme joy and fulfillment. YOU are his son, and although you may suffer by the choice of another, he is also a God of Love and Mercy.
I strongly believe that Heavenly Father has greatly blessed me for being faithful to covenants and commandments. Also for enduring those trials that came from the choices of another. If I could be blessed in such a way, you can to.
You are a son of God, HIS son.
Stay strong in your faith and covenants of God and he will strengthen you. When it is the right time for you to let go of the pains, reguardless of the esteemed choices of another, the power of the atonement can make you heal from this even in the midst of it.
“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah40:31)
Remain faithful and endure fully to the end.
I stumbled across this post while searching for information on “involuntary celibacy”, which is what I suffer in my own marriage. We have been celibate within the marriage for over 5 years now, and largely asexual for years before that. I felt frustrated, angry, resentful, humiliated, unloved, depressed, insulted, abandoned, and desperate. Like the author of the post, I tried everything.
But unlike the author of the post, I gave up. Please understand — I never, ever, ever, in my life wanted to become an adulterer. But I could not face living the rest of my life like that.
The first time I cheated I thought I was going to be consumed by guilt. But guess what? I didn’t feel guilty at all! I felt like I was finally getting some control back in my life, and finally getting back something of myself after all those years of abuse.
In the three years since then I’ve enjoyed several “friends with benefits” type relationships with other married people. I am always safe and discreet with my partners. I don’t feel great about myself, but I feel much better than I did before. My marriage has actually improved — our relationship no longer suffers all that stress over sex.
I wish I didn’t have to do this. But now that I do, I’m happy with the compromise.
Hello Random Surfer,
(Additional comments added 12/10/07)
I wasn’t sure whether to approve your comment for posting or not, but decided that although I in no way condone the actions you have taken, I do realize that this is a path that unfortunately many people ARE taking.
My heart goes out to you and to the many others who struggle with the depth of pain they feel regarding the lack of a fulfilling sexual relationship in their marriages.
I don’t know your religious convictions, nor am I the judge of anyone’s actions, since I nor anyone else are sufficiently privy to the heart, soul and circumstances of any other. Your actions are between you and your God. But I do wish that you had found another alternative to infidelity.
Maybe your wife doesn’t yet know about the affairs, and maybe you don’t have children that will someday learn of their father’s behavior, but being a God-fearing Christian, I do think that the Lord is saddened both by the state of your marriage prior to the affair and to the choices you feel it led you to make.
I can see how it might seem that the affairs have “solved all your problems.” Your situation is such a sad one for all who are, and will be, affected by it now and in the future. Your actions reflect the seriousness of the sexual relationship. Your situation is one of the sad realities that propels my efforts to strengthen marriages sexually.
I hope you will consider stopping the affairs and believe instead that with God’s help you can heal your own heart, your marriage and your family. Knowing even what little I do about the sexual wiring of men (and some women), I applaud those who are able to resist the temptation to go elsewhere to get their “needs” met.
One other thing your situation reemphasizes for me is the encouragement I give couples to be sure that the spouse is fully aware of the seriousness of their situation before either spouse does something that has such profound implications. I would consider an extra-marital affair a “marital suicide attempt” where one spouse has decided that their “plea for help” (or for a change in the marriage) must be taken to the life-threatening level of “acting out.”
Just as in the case of a child having thoughts of suicide, I would hope and pray they would try with all their might to get me to listen to the seriousness of their situation before pulling the trigger. I thought it no coincidence that a recent church magazine that I stumbled upon made this statement that has relevance here: “Inform family and friends that you’re lonely [unhappy, etc.]. We often assume they know and don’t care. In reality, they may be surprised about your needs [or the seriousness of your needs]” (Ensign, Dec. 2007, p. 16). I would encourage any spouse within the sound of my voice to be sure they have been very clear in communicating the seriousness of their sexual situation before taking life-threatening action.
I’m sure sex has been a topic of contention for some time between you and your wife, but sometimes a heart-felt letter or a joint visit with an ecclesiastical leader or a professional to discuss the issue is a necessity to be sure both spouse’s fully understand the depth of the situation in their marriage. Even just letting your spouse know of your fears concerning your own vulnerability to temptation can be enough to bring about some necessary changes. No spouse wants to hear such confessions, but it’s better than after the damage is done for them to say, “I didn’t know you felt this way.”
Of those couples that I know or have worked with, an affair is not usually just about sex anyway. There are usually many other issues involved.
As long as we continue to have a culture where “good girls don’t” even in marriage, and where we can’t even discuss sex intelligently between husband and wife, parents and children, or have a respectful conversation about it within society, then we will continue to produce spouses who don’t understand the importance of a healthy sexual relationship, nor understand what it takes to create a mutually fulfilling sexual relationship in marriage.
Resources on Infidelity/Affairs
For some helpful resources on infidelity in marriage visit our Resources Page (click on Filter Topic by “Infidelity”) or check out these resources listed below:
Smart Marriages resources on Infidelity
Smart Marriages books (search for those that address affairs/infidelity)
DearPeggy.com
Beyond Affairs Network (BAN)
Laura,
I couldn’t agree more with your comments to Random Surfer; I wanted to say something similar to him. I also think of the passage in the New Testament where a woman was caught in the very act, the Jewish leaders were so ready to convict her but wanted to tempt Christ and see if they could pin Jesus on this issue. What wisdom, infinite wisdom, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Christ knowing this woman’s heart neither condemned her but said unto her “Go and sin no more.”
I pray that Random Surfer will have the strength and the courage to ask forgiveness from his wife in all sincerity and seek forgiveness. In most cases, spouses find out the hard way and making repair is 10 times or a 100 times harder to fix compared to a sincere confession and complete repentance.
Random Surfer, I only wish you, your wife and all others who are involved the best of luck and God’s direction and mercy in this situation.
I knew I had made a mistake on my wedding night. My husband spent the first week of our marriage on the phone with a friend talking about his hobby.
He never told me he had been molested as a child and couldn’t stand sex.
Finally after 35 years of grief, he told me he never loved me sexually. I am destroyed. I thought that if we had nothing else, we still had love.
I spent 15 years in therapy trying to “fix” myself so he would love me.
All I think about is suicide but I am sure I would be thrown out of heaven because I didn’t “endure to the end.”
Dear Abandoned,
Please, seek a new counselor or other trustworthy help. You can get past this. Suicide is never a good option.
Hey Laura,
I was reading about your comments about an “Unspoken Sexual Contract in Marriage”:
“”I expect you to be faithful to me, but don’t expect me to meet your sexual needs.” ”
http://www.strengtheningmarriage.com/06news7.html
I’ve been thinking about this topic for some time. It’s a very unfair contract; I know it’s not one I ever signed. She would be horrified if I were unfaithful. But to ignore me sexually for years doesn’t seem to phase her in the least. Worse, she doesn’t seem to have a clue that her practice of depriving me is at all related to my temptation towards infidelity.
“The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” 1 Corinthians 7:3-5
I seem to recall vows about “to have and to hold”. And it seems to me that the one who’s being unfaithful is my wife. I spent some time thinking about this in light of Scripture a while back. In short, I don’t think it’s inconsistent with Scripture that this type of “passive unfaithfulness” is a legitimate grounds for divorce. A theologian friend told me that the Puritans held married couples accountable for having active sex lives because they knew the danger of the alternative. And if legitimatizing divorce in this situation is difficult to grant, consider this: she’s already divorced me emotionally. So which is really the more significant and tragic: the spiritual and emotional disassociation or the legal divorce paper?
Still, while I’m not prepared to say divorce might not be the right choice for someone else, I have other considerations. Besides 3 children and years of friendship at risk, I have a higher concern: there’s a reason she won’t or can’t be intimate with me, and I’m quite certain that it’s very much linked to the same alienation she feels towards God. And I’m concerned about her spiritual and emotional health. If I left, how would I be helping her? What would that tell her about God’s steadfast love for her? Isn’t this what the book of Hosea is all about? No man has ever wanted to share love with a woman more than I do right now. If I’m feeling this hurt by not be connected to my wife’s heart, how much more must it hurt God that she has essentially written Him off as worthless? Is this what God is trying to teach me?
[Jonah] said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
“I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”
10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4)
God wants His people to feel what His heart feels. Is this why He has me living is this hell of emotional isolation? Is that how it feels to have your own creation do the only thing worse than mock you: ignore you completely?
I am also an involuntary celibate. My wife announced 10 years ago that she was no longer interested in marital intimacy. That means we do not even hug or kiss passionately.
I have experianced being lonely while married.
I have questioned ‘Does God really intend for us to be so hurt by his stance regarding adultery, when our partner unilaterally chooses to end all intimate contact?’ I also agree with Under the Sun when he states that ’she’s already divorced me emotionally’. I continue to try to be loving and considerate while living in an emotional desert. The only solice is that I have found that since there are others in the same circumstances.