Stefan Molyneux talks with a husband and wife about the ongoing difficulties in their marriage, especially around sex. The couple, who are practicing Catholics raising five children, rely on natural family planning, which limits their intimate time to certain non-fertile windows. That restriction has left them feeling disconnected, frustrated, and resentful toward each other.
The husband explains that their sex life has become mostly dutiful rather than passionate, happening only about four to six times a month. He says he usually has to initiate, and he misses the mutual enthusiasm he wants from his wife. The discussion turns to a recent argument when he commented on her choice of lingerie, which quickly showed how sensitive the whole topic is for them. She worries about feeling inadequate, while he hesitates to express what he wants because he doesn’t like making her feel burdened.
Molyneux helps them trace where these tensions come from. He notes that when a husband experiences little sexual intimacy, even while receiving plenty of love and care outside the bedroom, he can still end up feeling unloved. He points out the uneven ways they communicate and stresses that both partners need to speak openly about their needs without reacting in ways that punish the other for bringing up discomfort. The husband admits that the limited windows from natural family planning have put him in a scarcity mindset, which only adds pressure and creates more misunderstandings.
Molyneux also explores how the wife’s unease with her sexual role affects how engaged she feels. He explains why a satisfying sex life matters so much in a marriage, comparing it to the need for profit in a business. He observes that routine duty sex can weaken desire on both sides, and that paying attention to each other’s preferences, such as the husband’s interest in certain lingerie, could help close the gap between them.
The conversation covers intimacy, how they see themselves, and what they owe each other in the marriage. In the end, both thank him for the discussion. The wife recognizes the emotional weight she carries, and the husband works to come to terms with feeling undesired. The exchange leaves a clear sense that open communication, empathy, and a readiness to support each other’s vulnerabilities are key to keeping a marriage strong.
0:00:00 - Seeking Help for Marriage Issues
0:01:11 - Challenges in Sexual Communication
0:03:33 - Exploring Relationship Dynamics
0:08:53 - Specific Incidents of Conflict
0:13:07 - Understanding Emotional Responses
0:17:18 - Addressing Expectations and Frustrations
0:19:25 - Reflecting on Past Experiences
0:23:49 - Discussing Desire and Initiative
0:27:47 - Renovations as a Metaphor
0:31:23 - Love Languages and Expectations
0:35:33 - Understanding Vulnerability in Relationships
0:38:11 - Navigating Power Dynamics
0:42:02 - The Impact of Duty Sex
0:45:50 - The Role of Spontaneity in Intimacy
0:49:22 - Female Sexuality and Variability
0:52:45 - Balancing Expectations and Reality
0:58:17 - Differing Views on Family Planning
0:58:59 - Non-Vaginal Sex Perspectives
1:01:20 - Healing Sexual Relationships
1:06:27 - Communicating About Preferences
1:13:46 - The Impact of NFP on Desire
1:16:45 - The Frequency of Duty Sex
1:23:53 - The Value of Effort in Marriage
1:33:38 - Balancing Duties and Desires
1:40:26 - The Importance of Sexual Satisfaction
[0:00:00] Hello, hello. How's it going?
[0:00:01] Hey, how are you doing?
[0:00:03] Good, good, good, good, good. All right, so yeah, we're doing a public call today, so just remember, if you could, to stay off names and places.
[0:00:11] Absolutely. And I'm all ears. How can I best help? I mean, do you want to read your message? Do you want to jawbone it? What's your pleasure?
[0:00:17] Well, I'll just start off by kind of reiterating where we've talked before. So my name is, this is a pseudonym, but I'll be Jim. My wife's name is Jane. we reached out separately so I reached out in November of this year we were had a pretty rocky, time in our relationship we have five kids I work from home for the most part we have a I think we have a very good marriage but we've been running into things that we want to work on my wife called you separately as well not too long after I called you and then we had a group, conversation together so her and I and you talked together and you had left us with some homework so So just to kind of jog your memory, you had recommended that I read The Dishonned Self by Nathaniel Brandon. So we've kind of been working on that. Hopefully that kind of brings you back to who we might be.
[0:01:10] Yep, got it.
[0:01:11] Okay. So the reason we're reaching out today is because we're running into an area of our marriage where we continually have the same reoccurring problem. And that's in our sex life. And what I find is difficult is that we, or I feel as though we can't have any real communication when it comes to sex. So we're practicing Catholics, and that means that we are trying to avoid having more children at the moment for health reasons. And so the way that we do that is basically by doing something that's close to the rhythm method. So we, we are only allowed to have sex at times when my wife is not fertile and what.
[0:01:59] Happens is that because there's a window of allowable sex, it's only when my wife's natural desire is lagging. And so what we've been running into is that I feel as though I don't get to experience any kind of desire from my wife coming to me. And that's kind of consistent with NFP. But if I bring up the problem or if I want to talk about sex or talk about how I feel, my wife feels like that is a insult to her. And we are not really able to kind of breach this. The other problem with us is that neither of us have a good mentor when it comes to relationships. My parents' relationship is, it's okay, but they never mentored me in terms of having a healthy relationship. And my wife's parents are really not an example. She doesn't have a close relationship with her father, I wouldn't say at all. And she has completely separated from her mother. So, and we feel a little bit silly reaching out because we were talking about it beforehand. We almost feel like we're two children reaching out to an adult, but...
[0:03:20] We find it very difficult to find a mentor in something as personal as this, and that is kind of what we're reaching out about. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of understanding where we're coming from.
[0:03:34] Yeah, I got it. Do you want to give me more details or issues about it?
[0:03:39] Sure. Okay, so I'll talk to you about the specifics with this situation, and then we can break it down further if you have any questions. But this kind of emanates from after we had gone through a bit of a tumultuous time in our marriage back in November, we had to repair our union in a lot of ways. And so when it came to the sex part of our marriage, it's something that was very sensitive. And so there wasn't many expectations there for either of us. And so since November, I've just been happy that we've had a very, you know, we have probably a regular sex life, but I think our frequency is probably five to six times a month.
[0:04:27] Yeah, so about five to six times a month. And during this time, you know, I am probably bringing about 90%, 95% of the effort, you know, trying to create the situations where we can have sex, trying to put in the energy, trying to create the banter and everything else. And the problem is that there was a specific incident that happened a few days ago where my wife, I think something that I said about sex or something prompted her to try to put on lingerie. And when she put on the lingerie, I said a comment where basically she put on the lingerie, she got into the bed, and then I kind of just said, you know, I find this lingerie kind of boring just because it's the exact same as her underwear. It's just made out of velour. And it was probably a short... I'm not saying the comment was a smart comment to make. The comment basically caused my wife to shut down.
[0:05:28] And then she was angry at me and actually accused me of being selfish, which it was a selfish comment, sure. But she basically said, because I had suffered some sexual abuse when I was a child, she said, you got to deal with your shit and you're self-centered and this is problematic behavior. And I was of the opinion where I'm frustrated that I can't express myself in the realm of sex without being accused of being, you know.
[0:06:04] Reacting purely from a, I guess, a damaged emotional development or something. And I've been making a great effort to deal with my side of things. You know i think that expressing frustration okay maybe it wasn't the best way to do it but it feels as though i have no avenue to communicate and so specifically when it comes to sex i feel like i don't have the ability to communicate whereas if my wife has a desire outside of sex regardless of whatever it may be i'm trying to find a way to you know make the request happen And if she wants to, whatever, paint the living room, I'll pay for the paint. I'll try to find a way to make it work. If it comes to sex and I say, hey, I find this lingerie kind of boring, it's instantly viewed negatively. So that's the specific situation that kind of spurred on the fact that we still have a lot of work to do. And one of the reasons we're calling is just, I know I have my blind spots. I think Jane does as well.
[0:07:07] And it's tough for us to, you know, we can't see each other's blind spots and sometimes when there's this emotional volatility, it's just hard for us to really listen to our partner and.
[0:07:19] I guess take it seriously so that's as clear as i can make it i don't know do you want to add something there jane well i don't know like there was that comment of it this is boring lingerie but then after like you know 15 minutes of like trying to get warmed up and into sex, like there was this there's often oftentimes he can be like a little bit aggressive and that can sometimes cause me to either get hurt or something so in this case it was just he moved my leg because he you know is getting into things a little bit quicker than i am, quicker than i am and i said ouch that hurt and his response is angry and frustrated at me that he hurt me and that's actually what shut down sex the other day the comments did not help that i was wearing boring lingerie but then when i got hurt it's not met with like oh i'm sorry i hurt you i didn't mean to do that it's like uh well i'm trying here and you're not and that's i think the reason why i i see that there's more damage that needs to be repaired on his end.
[0:08:44] Okay so it's the moving of the leg that it pulled too hard or in the wrong direction or something like that.
[0:08:51] Yeah something like that.
[0:08:53] All right and sorry this is to your husband do you remember that situation.
[0:08:59] No, I do remember it. Like, I don't necessarily think like, there's definitely, there's definitely no doubt that I'm charged. So it's like, for me, I'm, you know, I have a.
[0:09:11] You know, I've got like a man, how do I say this? I am high libido. Well, sure. Yeah, I've got a high libido. But for me, it doesn't take me 15 minutes or whatever it is to get into it. But I'm putting in the work. And I could tell that when I had said this comment to her about lingerie that she had kind of gone quite cold. So as I'm putting in this effort, the effort, and maybe I should have just shut it down and stopped, but there's a little bit of a scarcity mentality because I know that our time window to have sex is pretty limited. And so I'm trying to kind of get her into the mood and it's not that I'm angry and I'm frustrated and I'm like wrestling her around but as I but I'm it feels like I'm working with a very passive partner and the difficulty with that is is that I feel like I'm on a stage performing, and as I try and try and as my wife is unresponsive it feels very demeaning so So, yeah, I mean, my response of her saying, oh, my leg hurts, it's hurtful for me to sometimes feel like because this matters to me more than it does to her, it's almost like she has the ability to not care.
[0:10:30] And for me, that hurts because I just feel like this isn't something that she has the same drive for. If I were to behave the same way that she behaves to me towards things that she cares about, I feel like she would be very hurt for it. If she wanted to go for a date and I just made her pick the date location, drive me there, make all the conversation, pay for it, create the banter, and then on the way back. It feels like it's very one-sided and I find it demeaning. And I can't survive in a marriage where there's no sex. So I'm happy for the sex we have. But I find it hard to feel like because I care about it more, it's always on me to provide the experience for the both of us. And, you know, after months of not saying the slightest thing, I can't say, you know, this lingerie isn't particularly, you know, if you're wearing lingerie for me, you know, we have all this different lingerie. I like this stuff. and by me trying to say like i like the frilly stuff like i like a different thing i know it's a small thing but if it's for me i feel like wouldn't my input matter wouldn't the fact that i care about this shouldn't that matter to her because i mean it feels demeaning so yeah that was i do remember the the situation i guess i've gone on a little over here but no that's.
[0:11:54] Fine that's fine okay and is there anything else you'd like to add.
[0:11:57] Not right now no that's how i feel about this particular situation.
[0:12:03] And to you, your wife?
[0:12:05] Um i found that after november after we talked with you things became a lot more gentle and more um like like i was more of a human and like there was just a better connection he would do things where he would be like i hope i'm not hurting you it does is this too fast or you know certain things like checking in and just making sure that he's not being too rough or too forward or too whatever he was just very sensitive towards me after and now my fear is that we're kind of slipping back into because the sex that we had the other day where we stopped was very similar to what it used to be like for, the first, whatever, 11 or 12 years of our marriage where I just felt very, unconsidered.
[0:13:07] Okay all right and is it the roughness the what would you like to work in first the roughness or the luxury comment or any anything else.
[0:13:17] I think that i just feel this general aura of some sometimes like like the other day um frustration on his end that i'm like present that my head is there like like if i didn't have um the ability to say anything back that would be preferable sorry.
[0:13:42] I didn't quite follow that.
[0:13:43] So basically sometimes it just feels like there's he's just looking for the end the end goal it's a little bit it feels selfish from his end oh like He just kind of wants to.
[0:13:57] Get his rocks off kind of thing.
[0:13:59] Yeah.
[0:13:59] Okay.
[0:14:00] Yeah.
[0:14:02] And, I mean, he's a man, right? So the urge tends to be quite high. And is that offensive to you? I mean, I'm sure that's not all the time, but sometimes, right?
[0:14:15] Yeah. Like, there's ways that he can do it where it's not offensive. But I think that sometimes, like I said previously, it was more often and there are just some times where I just feel this pressure and this kind of feeling like my person isn't considered. You know what I mean? Like I don't have dignity or a say and there's a lot of pressure and there's just a lot of forcefulness.
[0:14:49] And so tell me about, so give me sort of, if you can, the sort of mechanical way that that unravels or unrolls for you. Like, what is it that actually happens? And I'm not disagreeing with you. I just want to make sure I understand the sequence for you.
[0:15:02] Yeah. So I guess in the past, and maybe this is, you know, playing into my mind today, because in the past, which was November and further past, there would be a lot of negative stuff revolving around it. So there used to be a lot of manipulation, coercion, or anger, sadness. I would pay for it if we didn't have sex. And to have sex just meant like, okay, feeding the beast. You know what I mean? Otherwise, things would just unravel in our marriage and in our home. So now it's not quite so bad we've we've had like stability since november but this last episode was a big big reminder of what it used to be like however he didn't pout or or get angry or frustrated as much as he used to but then if if i say something like ouch that hurts and he kind of barks back a little bit and is like well i'm doing all the work it does feel like i am not this is not an act of love this is just you trying to get what you want out of me.
[0:16:29] Right, right. Okay. Yeah, I mean, and look, with sexuality, I think it's fair to say that, you know, sometimes you have a really nice lingering meal, and sometimes you have a drive-thru, right? You get some fast food, so to speak, right?
[0:16:44] So and and i'm okay with that too like i don't like i have a much lower libido than him i'm okay with being like okay i'm not in the mood but this can happen but just realize it's fast food and it's not a steak dinner but if it's not a steak dinner every time i find that he's not okay with this it's the fast food afterwards is then um criticized sized.
[0:17:10] As you're not participating enough or not initiating enough?
[0:17:14] Yeah, yeah. Okay.
[0:17:17] Sorry, go ahead.
[0:17:18] Sorry, it can create a situation where I feel like I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't, if that makes sense.
[0:17:26] So if you do, but you're not enthusiastic enough, you're damned. And if you don't, then maybe the pouting or the negative or whatever it is.
[0:17:33] Yeah, just kind of like a, not as much these days. Like I said, the pouting and the anger has subsided a lot, but kind of just like a, well, you know, you, I haven't asked for it a lot and just kind of like this, we, it's been a while and, and, but just kind of like in a pressuring way, not in like a, in like, I'd love to do this with you way more of like a, I am, I'm, I'm trying to corner you so that you can't say no way.
[0:18:08] Right. Okay. And how long have you guys been married?
[0:18:11] 13 years.
[0:18:12] 13 years. And how long have you been together?
[0:18:15] 13 years and 10 months. Maybe something like that. We had a short dating engagement. Okay. So maybe 14 years total. Yeah. But we weren't having sex before we were married.
[0:18:26] Sorry, you weren't having sex?
[0:18:28] No, we weren't. We fooled around and we kind of, you know, manually stimulated each other, but we never actually had sex before we were married. With each other you mean intercourse intercourse yeah okay.
[0:18:40] Got it and what was the sexual frequency like early in the marriage.
[0:18:44] Well it was much higher but we had uh you know we didn't have five kids at the beginning of the marriage when so and it was much easier i mean i think that as the marriage went on sorry it's all right i'll jane names.
[0:19:01] That afterwards go ahead.
[0:19:01] Yeah, Jane had, you know, we had good memories and good things as the marriage went on. You know, Jane's not wrong to point out that there are negative experiences that have built rust on the machinery of our of our physical love.
[0:19:18] So, yeah, Jane tends to remember far more the negative things than the positive things. It's a trait that's kind of mimicked with her family where if I do something wrong four or five years ago, that will still come up despite some significant changes in a fight that would happen, you know, a bigger fight that would happen today. So I think the frequency was probably like two or three times a week when we were first married. And now, uh, it would be twice a week, maybe, but we can only have sex two weeks out of the month because of this NFP thing. Right.
[0:20:02] Sorry, go ahead.
[0:20:04] And I was just going to say, you know, the thing that makes it really hard is that at the beginning of our marriage, we were open to having children. We had no reason to avoid them. So whenever there was the natural desire, like I remember feeling desire from my wife. So there was times where when I would kiss my wife, she would kiss me back. When I would hold my wife, she would also put her hands around me. And that used to be something that would happen. Whereas for the last two or three years, I have not felt that way. You know, there has to be an initial investment from my end to her where I'm investing. And this is just in the sexual realm. Like my wife said, you know, I do things that make her feel unloved when we start having sex. But the love doesn't start at the sex part. The love starts when I take her for a date or when I clean up the house or when I do something thoughtful for her. So my whole love romance thing starts before the sex does. When the sex is happening, I understand that there's this gap between her natural desire for me and my nonstop desire for sex. It's just that it is sad for me to think that because of the health concerns that we have regarding having more children that I am castigated into this.
[0:21:30] Situation where I don't feel any desire for my wife. And I don't doubt that if she were to put desire into it or effort into it, it might be synthetic in a way. But when I do the laundry or when I buy a new dryer, if I'm renovating the house, I don't want to do those things. I don't care about the house's renovation. A lot of the things that I do for Jane are synthetic, You know, but I do the synthetic things that I don't want to do because it's an act of love. And I just don't see that same care for what I value when it comes to the realm of sex. And I don't want to say that I don't mind the fast food sex. That's okay. But, you know, I don't think that living on McDonald's for three and a half months straight is good. And if I point out, like, hey, it's the cheeseburger again.
[0:22:25] You know, I don't want that to be categorized as, you know, while you're selfish and you're emotionally unstable and you have all these problems and you're being, you know, it's just not fair because then it feels like I can't discuss something that has some significant meaning to me. I mean, I know that sex is more of a male drive, or I mean, not always, but often is the male that initiates it. But I feel like I'm crossing no man's land every time I initiate. It's just that in our world of sex, there's never the Christmas truce that exists. Every single time I go over the top, I'm getting machine gunned. And I got to run through the barbed wire and try to get to the other trench.
[0:23:11] And it's hard because it's, there's, I know that naturally there's not that desire there, but I feel like because there's no natural desire, it's almost like she's given herself the liberty to just say, well, it's not easy for me to try. So I'm not going to try.
[0:23:28] Sorry, try what?
[0:23:30] So if she, so one of my biggest complaints is I never feel desired. And if she doesn't have the natural desire to try to have sex with me. So what I find that's difficult is because she doesn't have the natural desire
[0:23:46] to try to entice me to have sex with her. She gives herself the liberty to just, well, it's not natural, so I don't have to do this. Whereas if I were to apply the same mentality to outside of sex, if I don't want to do a house renovation, then I don't have to try is how it would manifest. But I just feel like that's a cheap way to love someone.
[0:24:11] Got it. Okay. And how much time would you say you're spending on sort of house renovations or upgrades or things like that in any given week or month?
[0:24:20] Well, I mean, I think I spend more money on it than I spend time. But yesterday I was cleaning the basement and doing some renovation stuff. I probably spend like, I don't know, $500 or $600 a week or a month on buying. I'd say probably $600 a week on house renovation stuff. So new lights, nuts, you know. No, if I could spend that much, our house would be fully renovated. Okay, okay, fine. Maybe per month. Okay, well, I think that's a little low. Let's split it. $1,200 a month on renovation supplies and maybe 10 hours a month on my end on renovations. Whatever you think. No, but that's fine. Well, what would you say? Let's just give him a real number. Do you need a real number? No, he's going to quantify it.
[0:25:13] Well, no, I mean, it's interesting to see how you guys disagree, right? I think your wife laughed at you, almost like with contempt.
[0:25:19] She is still laughing at me.
[0:25:23] Right. Okay, well, let's tell me from your wife's perspective, what are you experiencing when he says how much he thinks he does around the house?
[0:25:31] Sorry, say that again?
[0:25:32] What did you experience when he made his estimate?
[0:25:35] Well, he did help out yesterday with renovations, but I had been asking, well, my father-in-law has been coming and helping me to do the renovations, because right now we have the five kids that we have in one bedroom. So i've been trying to make them a new bedroom in the basement and we needed one day of time sorry of jim's time we needed one day of jim's time and um we've been waiting for about two months to get a day so he he did put in some time yesterday to do some renovations which was very nice but when he compares sex to renovations i'm kind of like it's it's not really um in his benefit to do that because it's me and my father-in-law who have been doing all the renovations so it's funny that he would use that as an analogy and that's why i laughed.
[0:26:37] Okay um so jim what do you think of that.
[0:26:41] Well, I mean, maybe I overestimated my time, but I think overall my time into like, so when it comes to the actual renovations, there's no doubt that Jane does the majority of them. So she will mud the wall, she'll paint the house, she'll do whatever. But, you know, in lieu of doing those renovations, I create the space for her to do that. So I'll take all five kids and I'll take them to the play place or something like that. I'll give her the day, you know, I'll buy the mud, I'll buy the paint. I'll help out with some things. Like yesterday, I had to move two dryers upstairs and, you know, move a couch upstairs. And so there's, I try to help out when it's necessary. It's true that I hate mudding and taping. I honestly, like I could live in a cave. I couldn't care less about the house, but you know what I, I know that it's important. So I'll often try to help out in other ways. So I'll, you know, make meals for the kids or take them out of the house. So she's right. I probably don't spend too much time doing the actual renovations. I did help put up drywall in the basement, but I'll try to create the situation
[0:27:44] where she can, in fact, do the renovations herself. Somebody has to watch the kids. Which I would argue then that I create the space for him to do to have sex. But maybe I don't know.
[0:27:58] Sorry, sorry, let me get back to, sorry to interrupt. So, Jim, you were saying that you did the renovations, but in the revised estimate, it's your wife does the renovations, but you take care of the kids or other things.
[0:28:08] Yeah, that's more accurate I will help with the renovations Maybe 20% of the time, When the renovations do happen, I'll take the kids and give my wife the ability and the space to do it. Because I tend to think she enjoys the renovations more than she watches the kids from time to time. Because she's homeschooled, she's at home with the kids the majority of the day. So I honestly think that that's better for her. I think she enjoys painting and putting up new lights and whatnot more than she would watching the kids if I were to do it for her.
[0:28:46] Okay i mean that's a bit of a change from what you said at the beginning right, yeah sure okay got it all right so for you then creating the space for your wife to do the renovations is akin to her approaching you for sex is that right uh okay i just want to make sure i understand the analogy i.
[0:29:09] Well honestly i don't know i kind of lost track of how this i don't know exactly how the renovations and the sex interconnect at this point i'm.
[0:29:21] Yeah i think i think i recall and obviously correct me if i'm wrong i think it was that you spend time doing things you don't want to do for the sake of love language and therefore your wife should initiate sex even when she doesn't want it because that's your love language i think i'm not trying to minimize it, but I think that it was something like that.
[0:29:41] Yeah, yeah, that's right.
[0:29:45] Okay. And so in that analogy, then if you're taking the kids, then taking the kids would be something you don't want to do. And therefore she should initiate sex, even if she doesn't want to. Does that make sense? Or is that what you mean?
[0:30:00] Well, no, I mean that when you say it like that, I can kind of see the...
[0:30:06] Sorry, I'm not trying to say it like something. I'm trying to understand the argument. it.
[0:30:10] No, I, the thing is, is I, I enjoy spending time with the kids. So I don't think that that would be the proper way of putting it. I think I would, I think it'd be more like when we spend the money on, on renovations, that's, you know, like, I do do some work around the house that I don't like to do, like when it comes to renovations and things like that. It's not 10 hours, but it's not nothing. I would say it's at least a few hours a month. And yeah, I don't enjoy that. And yeah, I do enjoy the time with the kids, so I'm not going to say that it's like I'm suffering for my wife's benefit. So that's probably not the right analogy.
[0:30:48] Okay. I'm just, again, I'm not trying to nitpick. I'm just trying to understand. Okay. So then it would be that you spend a couple of hours a month doing renovations that you don't want to do, and therefore your wife should initiate sex more.
[0:31:07] Yes, that's probably a little bit more. I know it might sound silly, but...
[0:31:12] No, no, I'm not judging here. I'm just trying to understand. And I'm not saying I'm trying to understand because it's crazy or anything.
[0:31:19] I just want to make sure that I have an accurate representation of your mindset.
[0:31:24] Sure. Okay, so my mindset is, in fact, there are many things that my wife asks me to do that I wouldn't do for myself or that I don't have the will to do. So if it's something like, uh, trying to think of something specific here, but whatever, painting something or buying lights for the hallway or getting a new dryer or something that, or even like, for example, yesterday I was cleaning up the basement. My wife went to the city to get a massage. I'm watching all the kids at home or sorry, I guess three of the kids at home and I would have rather been working cause I worked.
[0:32:07] Have one business and I'm starting a second business. So for me, I work a lot of hours. I tend to like working and often I'm asked to do jobs in the home that if I was working outside of the home that they would never come up.
[0:32:22] And my mentality is there are often times where I do things that I'm not motivated to do on my own, but because my wife is passionate about it it matters that i do it in my mind for her benefit so yeah if she asked me to do a specific renovation job that i don't want to do i will do it because i know that the renovation job is important to her but and i think that in our sex life it would be nice if she viewed from time to time not every time but from time to time the things that i value so like i want to have a sexual partner that you know my wife made a comment earlier she says that you know i want just a body rather than her head being in the game i want my partner to be there and to view me as as someone worth interacting with and uh yeah so i do think that there is a crossover from me doing jobs that I'd rather not do for the benefit of my wife, and I wish she would have the same attitude from time to time when it comes to sex.
[0:33:37] Okay, but you don't want to do the renovations, but you want her to want to have sex with you.
[0:33:46] Well, I don't want to do the renovations is correct. And I want her to see the value in considering me when it comes to having sex.
[0:33:56] Okay. Sorry. I thought you were saying that you wanted your wife to desire you more.
[0:34:03] I do. I do.
[0:34:05] Okay. But then the analogy of you doing chores when you don't want to do the chores, it would be like her saying, I want you to want to do the chores.
[0:34:15] Yeah.
[0:34:16] Did you see what I mean?
[0:34:16] I hear. Yeah, no, I see what you mean. I do see what you mean.
[0:34:20] And so, and again, I'm not trying to nag or nitpick. I'm just, I think the analogy may be a bit tricky. Because then what you're saying is, I'm a chore you don't want to do, but you should just damn well do it because I hang the drywall when I don't want to. So I'm the drywall that you don't want to hang.
[0:34:39] Okay, yeah, you're right.
[0:34:39] Please be the taxes that you hate doing and spread your legs like I spread my sheet with spreadsheets in Excel or I don't know, whatever it is, right? I don't think you want to frame yourself as an unpleasant chore.
[0:34:55] No, you're not wrong.
[0:34:57] Okay. I just wanted to double check on that. Sorry, go ahead.
[0:35:00] No, no. Honestly, when we were talking about reaching out to you again, I very well knew that during our conversation, the chance for you to point out. My blind spots might be becoming glaringly obvious, and I think that I've reached at least a point on this end, so yeah.
[0:35:16] Yeah, this is why I'm glad I don't have the video on, because right now the hands of your wife will be around your throat, because I'm sure she said something like this, and she's like, oh, that guy with the fruity accent up in Canada, he tells you, and you listen, I tell you there's a thousand...
[0:35:31] Am I right? Am I somewhere in the vicinity?
[0:35:34] Oh, I'm sure.
[0:35:34] Okay. Alright. I think I get it. Alright. And what's the size differential?
[0:35:41] Eight inches. No, I'm just kidding.
[0:35:44] What's the size differential between you and a guy with an eight-inch penis? Oh, that means zero. Just kidding. Or 16, God help you. So what is the size differential in terms of height and weight between you guys?
[0:35:56] Oh, gosh. Height and weight.
[0:35:59] You don't have to give me exact weight, but just, you know, 50%, 25%?
[0:36:04] No, I think Jane is probably 125 pounds, and I'm probably 195.
[0:36:11] Right.
[0:36:11] And I think she's about 5'7", and I'm probably about 5'9 and a half.
[0:36:16] Okay, so I say this with all due respect, if not downright fear, you're a beefy guy, right?
[0:36:23] I'm pretty muscular, yeah.
[0:36:24] Yeah, okay. So you're huge relative to her, right? No, I mean, I don't mean huge like fat. I just mean that, you know, 70 pounds is a lot, right?
[0:36:37] Oh, yeah. No, for sure. There's definitely a weight difference.
[0:36:41] Right. So imagine if you were to get involved in a wrestling match with a guy who was, let's say, 280 pounds of mostly muscle. Would that be a little bit intimidating for you?
[0:36:56] Yeah, of course it would be. Absolutely.
[0:36:58] What if he was careless as well and leaned on your knee the wrong way from time to time? Would you be a little nervous?
[0:37:08] Yes, yes, I would be.
[0:37:10] It's hard for men to understand how small and vulnerable women feel, particularly when, Pinned beneath your sweaty, breathy weight. And, of course, Anna, tell me if I'm going astray in this at all. But, I mean, and look, I'm not saying there's any physical threats or anything like that. But it's just like if I was play fighting, like I'm 190 and just under six feet and fairly fit, I suppose. And if I was, like, you're 70 pounds more than your wife. And what that means is that you are 50%, more than 50% heavier than her. And if you're 190, that means somebody who's close to 300 pounds. And with 6 foot 8, 300 pounds, mostly muscle, 6 foot 8. I mean.
[0:38:06] No, sorry. I'm 5 foot 9, not 6 foot 8. That would be my dream.
[0:38:11] Okay. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that relative to your wife... You're, sorry, so you're a couple of inches, how many inches taller than your wife are you?
[0:38:23] Two.
[0:38:24] Oh, two, sorry. Okay, so you would be six two, say six one or something like that, right? Because it would be double. So what I'm saying is that if there was a guy who was close to 300 pounds and four inches taller than you, or three inches taller than you, and you were play fighting, you'd be a little nervous, right?
[0:38:48] Yes, absolutely.
[0:38:49] So that's your wife's position relative to you. And what that means, of course, as a man, you have to be super duper delicate when it comes to sexuality or play fighting or wrestling or whatever it is, right? I mean, I'm sure you play fight with your kids from time to time. You ever catch an elbow to the nads or a head butt to the belly or something like that?
[0:39:15] Oh, yeah. Plenty of times.
[0:39:17] Right. And they're tiny. relative to you, right? And I mean, you're still probably sometimes nervous around your kids when you're play fighting, right?
[0:39:28] Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[0:39:30] You get the kid with the little bike helmet who just decides to charge at you and it's like, oh, mama, praying for salvation, right? So it's just, and I'm sure you're aware of this, but I just wanted to sort of reinforce it that it is a scary thing in a foundational way. And I don't mean this in a negative way, but it's an alarming thing for a woman who's 50% lighter than you and shorter. And and it's not just the size and the weight men on average have like 40 plus percent extra upper body strength just in a resting state even without working out and if you work out or you move with your body you could easily have double and you should try this if you have weights at home you know you do your maximum bench press and then your wife does your maximum bench press or whatever it is. And you'll get a sense of just how different the... Strength is between you and it's hard for men because we tend to be the biggest people in the family and we tend to be the tallest and the strongest people in the family it's hard to think of again like a guy 260 280 mostly muscle you know a couple of inches taller and you know twice as strong if you would be if he was careless in play fighting you'd be pretty tense right Yeah.
[0:40:56] Absolutely.
[0:40:57] So that's just an important thing to remember that for men, we kind of sail through life like these giant tanks. And we sort of forget that women are uniquely vulnerable and relatively, of course, much less strong. And they are in a vulnerable position as well in sexuality because they're on the receiving end and you're on the delivering end, so to speak. So uh i just wanted to sort of reiterate that now to your wife you earlier said and i i pretty i just wanted to double check on this when you said coercion uh you mean sort of pouting or maybe mild bullying when it comes to sexual activity is that right yeah not any physical threat right i'm sure that's not the case okay so um if a woman doesn't feel that she can easily say no to sex, she doesn't feel that she can easily say yes to sex.
[0:42:00] Yeah, I would really agree with that statement, yeah.
[0:42:03] And it's a Zen kind of thing that men need to, we need to sort of get that through our heads. Because it's sort of like if your wife was nagging you to diet and exercise, let's say, right? And if you didn't diet and exercise, then she wouldn't talk to you for two days. Would you ever feel like you had a choice about dieting and exercise no right even though dieting and exercise would probably be it was good for everyone right and so when it comes to sexuality, if a woman feels that she's going to experience a punishment for not having sex it tends to really undermine the sex drive. And what it tends to do is it makes sex a kind of tool of masculine mood management.
[0:43:08] And it sort of becomes like, I'm sure you've had this experience with kids in grocery stores that, you know, they always put these amazing candies right at kid eye level, you know, on the way out and the kids grab stuff and they want stuff and it turns into kind of chaos and tension. And you're like, ah, I don't want these kids to have this candy, but if I say no, there'll be all these problems. And so you can't just decide whether you want the kids to have candy or not because there's all of this tension and heaven forbid you give one kid a piece of candy and not the others, then Ragnarok and the end times have descended upon the household and it's all revelations and doom and despair. And so you can't just sort of make a decision when your kids are really angling or desperate to have something, and they're, oh, mom, come on, please, come on, I'll be good, you promise, you know, whatever they're doing, right? Then you can't just sort of make a decision to be generous or not, because there's so much pressure in the situation, if that makes sense.
[0:44:05] Yeah, makes sense.
[0:44:07] Yeah. So with regards to sex, you want your wife to want you. But wanting and bullying or pouting, which is two sides of the same coin, and I know I sound like I'm picking on you, the husband. I mean, wives can do this as well with other things often, so I'm not trying to sort of single anyone out here. But if you're not perfectly free to say no, then you can't say yes i mean you can do it you know like if there's these sort of situations i remember seeing a capital at a restaurant once you know this is sort of back when there was all of this belief that meat red meat was terrible heart disease and you're gonna die and all of this sort of stuff and you had to eat fish and and so on right and.
[0:45:01] The husband was like, oh, I haven't had a steak in forever. And he's like, I really want to get a steak. And she's like, oh, but think of the children, you know, and we don't want to, we don't want to, they don't, you don't want the children to grow up without you. And I love you. And I would just, I wouldn't be able to eat my food if I watched you eating that hot killer. You know, it was something like, and the guy was like, oh my God, it's kind of heavy duty and so on. And of course, all of that research seems to have turned out to be mostly nonsense as it generally is. But he was not free to order or not order a steak because she, I mean, she really brought out the heavy guns, right? The children, think of the children burying their father with a keg box on his chest or whatever it was, right?
[0:45:50] And people do this with like desserts and so on, right? The sort of little treats in life. And i just remember thinking like this guy is not making his own decisions yeah and it's really in a marriage of course it's complicated and you know people who aren't married don't often uh understand this as well it's a sort of glorious do whatever you want to single them or whatever right which has its minuses in the long run because we tend to be kind of isolated if we only do what we want but trying to figure out what works for both people at the same time is The economists call it the coincidence of once, right? And so the problem is that you can get duty sex. You can. You can get duty sex. The problem is getting duty sex knocks out enthusiastic sex. In the same way that if you bully someone to diet and exercise, they won't have any enthusiasm them for it, they'll just do it because otherwise you'll nag and moan and complain about things, right?
[0:46:57] Right.
[0:46:57] So, duty sex is like a drug. Like, you know, if you snort a bunch of cocaine, I'm sure you feel pretty happy for a day or two, and then not so much, right? Or, you know, if you have three pieces of cheesecake, you probably feel pretty good eating the cheesecake. Oh, man, now my mouth's watering. uh and but but not later like i was talking to a friend of mine the other day he's a workout guy and he's like he was telling me about this particular meal that he likes and it's like ah it's a fantastic meal it's like but it's over 2 000 calories and the next morning i just feel like crap and i said but is it worth it he's like totally totally worth it that's because he's he's young he can do it but so so duty sex is like a drug you you get your sex and like you can be happy with cocaine, but the problem is it knocks out the base of female desire.
[0:47:51] Because sex is now a management tool to keep the husband relatively happy. It's not something that she can spontaneously want or not. And then, of course, if there's duty sex, then other forms of physical affection tend to go by the wayside. So if your wife is concerned about duty sex, she's not going to be spontaneously affectionate, jump on your lap and start kissing you and running her fingers through your hair, or with my wife over my ear here because she's concerned that if she acts in a sexual manner, then the wheels are set in motion to the point where.
[0:48:31] If she doesn't offer up duty sex later, then there's going to be a lot of pouting and, well, why did you lead me on? You know, that kind of stuff. Like a lot of the spontaneity kind of goes by the wayside.
[0:48:40] Yeah, no, I understand that.
[0:48:43] And again, I'm sort of speaking for your wife here, so I wanted to check in with you and see if I've got anything astray.
[0:48:48] No, I do understand what you're saying.
[0:48:51] Check in with your wife.
[0:48:53] Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's all on track.
[0:48:57] That's all on track. Okay, sorry, I didn't interrupt. I just wanted to make sure I got her perspective, because Lord knows me wafting on about female sexuality is if your wife is rolling her eyes like a Vegas slot machine, that's not going to get us very far.
[0:49:11] Yeah, and I do feel that way, that when I have withdrawn spontaneous affection from very early on in the marriage.
[0:49:20] Because it might lead to do de-sex, right?
[0:49:22] Yeah, yeah.
[0:49:23] Right, right. Now, I would also say, and again, this is to you, Anna, please feel free to totally interrupt me if I go astray on this, of course, but female sexuality is more variable than male sexuality. And what I mean by that is, if a man feels like having sex, in other words, if a man is, breathing, then it's fairly certain that the man is going to feel like having sex in two or three hours, right?
[0:49:55] Yeah.
[0:49:56] And it doesn't matter if a baby pees in his eyeball. It doesn't matter if he stubs his toe and it's hanging by a thread and it's black. And it doesn't matter if he's got a too thick. It's like gravity. The feeling is constant. A man says, I feel like having sex in a couple of hours. He's going to feel like having sex. That's just male hormones. You know, we've got 17 times the testosterone, but it doesn't mean 17 times the sexual desire. It's just, it tends to be a bit more constant. Now, Anna, if you feel like having sex at five o'clock in the afternoon, but you've got five kids, so you probably aren't going to get anything going on to like 10 o'clock, what percentage are you certain that you're going to want sex at 10 o'clock if you want sex at 5 o'clock?
[0:50:45] Yeah, it might not happen. Yeah, it might not be that way.
[0:50:49] So tell me some of the things that might knock your sex drive off its perch.
[0:50:56] Yeah, if my life is chaotic in the evening, if I'm trying to get the kids to bed and things aren't working out, or things are going much later than planned, and I'm getting tired, or if I, you know, there's all the stereotypical things. If I develop a headache or a stomach ache or something like that, then I won't want to.
[0:51:20] Right. See, in general, and I speak in general, bringing none of my own life into the conversation, but in general, let's say that a child is very unwell, and this sort of comes over the course of the evening, right? And if the man wants to have sex, the general thought and the general communication from the man is, listen, kid's not going to die in the next 10 minutes. We've got 10 minutes. And, you know, 99.9% of the time, thankfully, the man will be right. Now, for a woman whose child, whose fruit of the loin is unwell, how does that affect the sex drive?
[0:52:06] Yeah, that really does affect it because I think, oh, this kid might come in. What if the kid starts puking during this? Or what if, you know, you hear them whimper or cry or it's going to keep the other kids awake? Or, you know what I mean? You just want to be on call for that child.
[0:52:22] And the man offering earplugs to you to be helpful, does that work?
[0:52:27] No, it does not.
[0:52:29] Honey, we'll just prop two pillows on either side. You won't hear a thing. It'll be fine.
[0:52:34] Yeah. Yeah.
[0:52:36] So, I mean, my point, of course, is that for men, the sex drive tends to be
[0:52:42] less variable in the way that gravity tends to be less variable. But a woman's sex drive is a little bit more like the wind. It's very fierce. I suppose sometimes it takes half your house. But also, it's variable in that if something happens between 5 o'clock and 10 o'clock, or sometimes between 9.45 and 10 o'clock, the sex drive doth vanish.
[0:53:04] Yeah.
[0:53:05] And again, part of it is the headache thing, or part of it is you get some bad news, or part of it is my mother's unwell. It could be... Sorry, go ahead.
[0:53:15] Yeah, no, I completely agree. Right.
[0:53:18] So what that means, of course, is that a man has to be flexible with disappointment. And the reason we're flexible with disappointment is that the disappointment, like let's say that you say, hey, let's have a happy fun time tonight at five o'clock and then something happens, then you have to be able to let go of that as a man because you want to keep that spontaneity going. And you want the woman to want you and if the woman feels like she has to give you male management duty sex then her sexual spontaneity goes out the window and the variability we can think of obvious evolutionary reasons why women's sexuality tends to be more variable and often associated with bad news and be feeling unwell or illness somewhere or whatever it is right because you know kids will also say stuff like, as you know, they're rather, excellent congenital liars sometimes, you know, I've got a stomachache, you know, just because they want another story or something like that, right? And women who ignored their children being unwell for the sake of.
[0:54:30] Uh sexuality um well the children would have a slightly less of a chance of surviving and it sort of gets there's a reason why uh it's nothing wrong with male sexuality nothing wrong with female sexuality it's gotten us to the top of the food chain but it is really important to recognize that what a woman intends at 5 p.m is not necessarily where she is at 10 p.m and you kind of let that go right and the the other thing though if you do that then if she doesn't feel like it at 5 p.m., what else might happen? So if she does feel like it at 5 p.m., she might not feel like it at 10 p.m., but if she doesn't, and if you're fine at accommodating with that, then what might happen is the other thing, where she doesn't feel like it at 5 p.m., but something happens in the mysterious tidal regions of the netherworld, and the planets align or whatever it is, and then suddenly she feels like sex at 10 p.m. When she didn't feel like it at 5 p.m., if that makes sense. So you trade one for the other. You say, hey, if you don't feel like it, it's totally fine. We'll cuddle, we'll watch something, we'll chat, and all of that. And then the woman goes to sleep feeling loved and cared for and so on. And then with that, sometimes, and it'll be about 50-50, you'll end up with the same amount of sex, if not more, if a woman doesn't have to do duty sex. You'll end up with more sex. Because duty sex then becomes a tug of war.
[0:55:58] And you'll end up with better sex because then you know that every time she's doing it, she's enthusiastic and wants to, right?
[0:56:07] Well, I don't see, I mean, I know what you're saying and I know that you're right, but there's a factor here that we're not really considering because we're doing this natural family planning that means that we're only making love when it's not in sync with her hormones. And this is something that I don't want to do, but it's important for my wife because she's a practicing Catholic.
[0:56:29] And I'm sorry, I just want to remind me, and you're not a Catholic, is that right? Or you're not practicing?
[0:56:36] You know what, I have a real difficult time with the church. So I think it's populated by great people. I think that it's got benefits, but I just, after COVID, I have significant problems with the Catholic church. So I can't help it.
[0:56:52] Sorry, what was specific to COVID? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just not sure what you mean.
[0:56:56] Well, they accept a lot of government money during COVID. We didn't get vaccinated, so they wouldn't allow us to go to certain churches. I think that they profess that the Eucharist is the most important thing for you to partake in, but then they were very willing to close the doors to us. And if they were consistent with their beliefs, they would have been believing that they were condemning us to damnation by withholding the Eucharist. So I tend to look at the Catholic Church as very hypocritical. And I have my own hypocrisies, but they're the ones who are basically making the statement that they're a moral authority. And during COVID, they displayed their hand and they were working hand in hand with the government and accepting money from the government that I think is wrong.
[0:57:40] And they were espousing all the same propaganda about getting vaccinated. So I look at the Catholic church as the leadership being very corrupt. I'm not saying every priest and every bishop is, and I tend to think that a lot of the parishioners are good people, but I have significant problems with the Catholic church. So my wife doesn't feel the same way as me in some of these ways. She feels the same way about the propaganda with COVID, and we both chose not to get vaccinated. But when it comes to the Catholic Church's authority, it's almost a surrogate
[0:58:16] father to her, I would say. So when they say the only acceptable way of avoiding children is nfp that's the way she moves forward whereas for me i think well we have plenty of other ways we can go about avoiding children and not to say that i would agree with every single one of those things but i think that there are viable alternatives to the nfp way do you mean like uh.
[0:58:40] Do you mean like contraception and or.
[0:58:44] Non-vaginal sex yeah i would, Well, I would say coitus interruptus, non-vaginal sex.
[0:58:51] I mean, I can understand how with the dangers of microplastics and all everything else. I mean, I would be completely against synthetic hormones and condoms I wouldn't be against. But I think if Jane were to be against them, I would absolutely agree. I just think that coitus interruptus is still open to life in the sense that NFP is. You know, if we have, you know, pull out sex and she ends up getting pregnant, that would be a blessing, I think, that we would accept. So, yeah.
[0:59:26] Sorry, I just had to interrupt, but a blessing that we would accept. I mean, who's the one getting pregnant again?
[0:59:34] No, I know. But even with this current way that we're managing children, so natural family planning or the rhythm method or whatever, you know, the reason that we do it in theory is because there's always a small chance that you can still have children. So according to the Catholic Church, it's still open to life. And so, you know, seeing that this is the case, Jane and I have both accepted that if we have another child, it's a blessing. Even though it's not something we're trying to do, we're trying to avoid having children. But, you know, we have genuinely been blessed with wonderful children. Another addition, as difficult as it would be, you know, it's something that, I mean, how else would you view that?
[1:00:21] Okay, and sorry, Anna, if you wanted to mention something about that, or more than mention.
[1:00:27] Yeah. Oh, I had so many thoughts, but I kind of, they kind of flew the coop here. Um, I just think that, um, I, I am the one that wants to do natural family planning. And I guess my main thought is, I actually don't think that female desire, like, yes, when you are ovulating, you tend to be, your body responds to sexuality a lot easier, right? It's a lot more natural. I tend to think, and the material that I read is telling me that desire is there regardless of whether or not you are ovulating. I don't think we experience that because of the state of our sexual relationship.
[1:01:21] But I feel like if we would heal our sexual relationship, and if we tried to do it right and well, then I really feel like my desire might come back and it could be there regardless of it of the time of month does that make sense sure.
[1:01:41] Okay so tell me what you mean by right and well is it sort of the stuff we've been talking about um I know it's not all inclusive or is it something else.
[1:01:48] Um yeah I think that I think that it was quite revolutionary for us to talk to you in November and have some of these discussions where we discussed about our sexuality and why it was at the state that it was in. And I think that this is just further helping us discover why it's always the number one fight. You know what I mean?
[1:02:18] Sorry, can you say that again? Why it was what?
[1:02:20] Why it's always the number one fight. This is the number one thing that we would argue about. It's a reoccurring contention. Yeah, we just, we just, we're not just not doing it right. We're not either accepting Nothing sexier than fighting about sex.
[1:02:33] Sorry, go on.
[1:02:36] I know. So I just feel like if we got to a point where we could, you know, even agree to disagree or to just accept each other for where we're at, then maybe we would feel like we're not walking on eggshells in the bedroom and people would be happy regardless of if we're doing the natural family planning or not.
[1:03:00] Right. Could I? Go ahead.
[1:03:01] Because to me, the natural family planning is not the problem. To him, the natural family planning is the problem.
[1:03:09] Well, sorry, it's part of the problem. It's not the whole problem, but it's part of it, I think, if I understand. Sure.
[1:03:15] It could contribute to, yes, the lack of desire. But I think that a desire could be there regardless of the natural family planning. Could I mention something here? Absolutely not.
[1:03:29] No, you're done. That's it. No more input. It's all done. It's all over. No, go ahead. Of course.
[1:03:35] Okay, so I want to say one of the things that I find frustrating is that this fight started from me expressing some frustration. And it's been over a series of months where I find the desire has been one-sided. Now, maybe it's right that my attitude towards sex has poisoned the well and makes it so that she can't have any natural desire for me because of my past cry bullying or whatever it was that kind of destroyed the health of our sex life. But the one of the reasons or one of the things that i find a problematic here is that i was expressing how you know if you're putting on lingerie for my benefit why don't you put on something that i actually like you know it's it's like i haven't been communicating or being moody or anything i mean i'm sure i i haven't been perfect but i haven't i've tried to be very um.
[1:04:41] Very, like I've tried to really hone in my behaviors regarding sex. So I've been working on not being selfish and not being emotional and not being pushy for months. And when I start to discuss how, you know, I'd like to see this improve, the mere fact that I brought about communication in a realm that is you know i suppose uncomfortable for jane here when i bring up that i want to communicate about this and there's things that i think we can do better it's it was met with you know you're emotionally immature and this is a result of you know what happened in your youth and and you're being selfish and you know you need to go deal with your shit and i'm thinking You know, that's not fair that when I want to just have communication about, granted, a touchy and difficult subject that I can't.
[1:05:44] Sorry, sorry to interrupt. Is the touchy and difficult subject that there's certain lingerie you find more attractive than others?
[1:05:51] No, I think that the touchy and difficult subject is that I have some dissatisfaction with the current state of our sex life. Like, you know, the lingerie is, you know, not the most important thing. The lingerie is just kind of like, hey, I would like it just a little bit different. Or if you say you're doing this for me, then can we do it? You know, can you? It's just I haven't communicated anything regarding sex for months. And it's not necessarily just the lingerie it's the fact that i feel like i
[1:06:22] can't communicate about sex i don't pick the kind of uh well okay but i think.
[1:06:28] You're using communication i mean i can communicate to you that it's you know 5 10 p.m that's just communication it's neutral right but it's complaints it's not so it's not just communication and complaints doesn't mean that it's bad or wrong, but you're using a very neutral term for something that's quite charged, which is complaints about the sex life.
[1:06:52] Yeah, no, you're right. There's probably better ways to communicate about it, but I do find it very difficult to communicate about sex. I get it.
[1:07:02] So let me ask you, do you want duty sex?
[1:07:07] No, but I don't want no sex.
[1:07:10] No, no. Hang on. One question at a time. Okay, sorry. So, do you want duty sex? The answer is no. So, to your wife, I ask, is it your perception that your husband wants duty sex?
[1:07:21] Yes.
[1:07:22] Okay. So, that's a disconnect, right? And that's good. It's good that we have a disconnect because then we have something to solve. Okay. So…, What happens to you, this is, sorry, to your husband, this is to you, what happens to you when you don't get sex? What daisy chain or what dominoes has that set off in your mind?
[1:07:45] Well, I, so I feel that there's a series of things, I guess, like physically I start losing sleep. That's probably the biggest problem I have.
[1:07:55] Okay, why do you lose sleep?
[1:07:58] Well, I mean, I'm sitting next to, it's like, you know, I'm starving and there's a ribeye steak that's perfectly cooked right next to me when she's in heat and her hormones are, you know, going through the roof. And I, I came not allowed to even touch her at the moments where she's the most charged. I don't know if pheromones is a real thing, but I'm laying there and my body is responding. And there's very little I can do in those moments because, you know, we are in the situation where we don't capitalize on that.
[1:08:27] And I'm sorry to be crude, and obviously I don't know much about this Catholic form of planning, but like handjobs and blowjobs or anything like that, that's out the window because it doesn't bring a chance of a baby. Is that right?
[1:08:41] Exactly. There's just, there's no physical affection at all. Like, you know, there's no kissing, hugging, hand-holding, or anything in our marriage. It's just duty sex when the wind— Okay.
[1:08:55] Hang on, hang on. Sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding this. So is it how many weeks? Is it a week of the month that you can't have physical affection?
[1:09:06] So I think, like, Jane has charts that she has to follow, but they're dependent on her cycle. So sometimes it's two weeks where we can't have sex because of the hormones. And then she also has her period. So sometimes there's months where we are unable to have sex for, you know, over two weeks at a time, which I find incredibly difficult. And, and, you know, being the fact that. You know, I'm trying to be a good husband and I want to minimize my exposure to masturbation and pornography, there's no avenue for release and it makes it very difficult.
[1:09:42] Well, it's actually, it's quite bad for men to not have orgasms. Again, I'm not trying to make a case here for medical duty sex, but a deficiency of orgasms is linked to prostate cancer. And again, that's not any reason to have sex. I'm just sort of pointing out that it's more than just the male sex drive or anything like that. There are health issues involved as well. And because it's prostate cancer, I think it's sort of one of the big fears that most men are going to get it if they live long enough. So we want to postpone that as much as possible. So that's something to recall. Sorry, go ahead.
[1:10:19] Would somebody be prone to prostate cancer from having five to six times orgasms per month?
[1:10:26] Oh yeah, no, it's supposed to be 20. And again, you can do your own research. I'm not a doctor, so, you know, don't take anything I'm saying with any seriousness. But if I remember, it was 21.6 or some crazy number. So that is, and again, it's not like if you have 18, you get prostate cancer. It's just that there are elevated risks from not having orgasms.
[1:10:54] Just from the person doing the charting I'm just going to clarify that it's usually not Two weeks of abstinence It would be closer to between, Seven days would be on the lower end And ten to eleven days would be the higher end And then what's the period time? Per month So it would be up to ten days And your period as well It's another week. Oh, so my period would be about five days of abstinence and then the 10 days on the high end of abstinence. So that's about 15 days total. And my cycle is around 40 days.
[1:11:39] So is it half the month? I lost a little bit of track of the math there.
[1:11:44] Sorry. Yeah, just no less than that. So in a 40-day cycle, it would be a total of around 15 days that are off limits. I would say at probably 40% of the month, we can't, like if we're looking at it in a block of time, 40% of the time we can't have sex. And I think that this particular method of birth control is one that if I could, if we can have a conversation as to the pros and cons, I would love to just say, let's find a different way. This doesn't work for me. I mean, we're making it work, but this is not my preference. And I feel like I haven't been able to have any voice in the matter because I get vetoed because Jane says, well, I have the key to morality here. I know what's best because i'm a practicing catholic therefore you have to obey but when we were first you know dating we were still mutual masturbation and and having fun uh in ways that were not having sex and i mean i would be happy to just have some release because well i think you understand what i'm trying to say i'm.
[1:12:56] Sorry let me just uh because i was wanted to make sure i got the facts here i just looked this up on grok uh multiple large studies including a long-term Harvard-linked cohort of 32,000 men followed for over 18 years, which is a huge cohort, of course. Higher ejaculation frequency correlates with lower risk of prostate cancer. Men ejaculating 21 or more times a month had roughly 20 to 31 percent lower risk compared to those at four to seven times a month. The protective association appeared across age groups and was more pronounced for low-risk prostate. Cancerous frequent ejaculation may flush out potential carcinogens, reduce inflammation or lower concentrations of harmful substances in prostatic fluid. So that's, again, Grok is not a doctor either, but that's the research that I remember. So sorry, go ahead.
[1:13:46] No, I mean, that's, you know, my biggest problem is that I don't have any ownership with the decision of engaging in NFP. We can't talk about alternatives because my wife has a moral veto on when it comes to this decision. And yeah, I just find it, you asked what the repercussions are of lack of sex life for me. I tend to lose sleep. I tend to get more tempted by masturbation and pornography, which I don't like to engage in those because they tend to make me depressed. And then the other thing is that there is an element of depression. I long for when we were able to have sex together, i'm so sorry when jane had her normal drive and we weren't doing this kind of of uh.
[1:14:40] Avoid avoidance of children before we're doing nfp we had far more sex or sex life problems really increased when we started doing this particular form of contraception and i tend to feel and this is probably a failure on my end but i tend to feel loved like i tend to feel like The tangible feeling of my wife loves me when we are having sex and when she's engaged in sex. And because I don't get that feeling, and maybe this is a byproduct of whatever, looking at pornography as a young man and the experiences that I experienced when I was a child, but I just feel unloved when we don't engage in sex. And when we engage in nothing but duty sex, which is kind of all it's been for quite some time, it just makes me feel very, yeah, unloved.
[1:15:32] I think I understand that. And I just want to make sure I understand the frequency then, because if it's two to three weeks a month that you can't have sex, and then there's other variabilities about, you know, headaches or kids unwell or going to bed too late or whatever, whatever is bad news or stress or whatever it is. So if I understood this rightly, was your sexual frequency four to five times a month in this sort of 14 to 16 days a month that you can have sex? So when you are having sex, is it like every two or three nights or when you were in those windows when you can have sex during the week, during the month?
[1:16:07] Sorry i would i would say it's at least every so every fourth night i think jane will consider it that if i'm no sorry in.
[1:16:19] The windows where you can have sex.
[1:16:22] No yeah that's what i mean in the windows where we can it'll be like once every four days okay so how.
[1:16:27] Many times a month is that on average, And not just considering it, but actually having it.
[1:16:34] Well, you know what? I can look at the chart and tell you exactly what it is.
[1:16:38] Just roughly.
[1:16:39] I'd say four to five times a month. At the beginning, you said five to six. Yeah.
[1:16:45] Well, I mean, I'm just trying to figure it out as a whole. I would say four to six times. Yeah, because if we're taking a little more than two weeks of the month out for period and fertility windows, then that's kind of doubled in a sense on a per day basis or per week basis, if that makes sense.
[1:17:07] Yeah, no, I understand. I don't think we're taking more than two weeks. I would say less, but that's okay.
[1:17:13] No, no, this is your part of the conversation. We don't want to audit you about what your cycle is. You're definitely key to the combat.
[1:17:23] So if we say 15 days, that's fair, I think. Just around two weeks. So a little less than half. You know, 40% of the days are off, something like that. But I think to quantify it, we're probably having sex four to six times a month.
[1:17:40] Okay, so let's say 30 times. I'm sorry to do this base math, but it helps me. So 40, so 12 of the 30 days. So you've got 18 days that you can have sex. And if you have once every four days, yeah, that's right. So it's four to five, four to five times a month. So of the 18 days a month that you can have sex, you have sex once every four days, if I understand this correctly. Yeah. And so, I'm sorry, go ahead.
[1:18:15] Sorry, sometimes it's every other day. Sometimes it's every three days.
[1:18:18] No, I understand.
[1:18:19] I would say we don't have sex four times a month, personally. I used to make sure that it was seven times a month before we had our conversation with you. And now it is lower than seven times, but I wouldn't say four. True. That's okay. Five or six, that's fine. I think it's close to accurate. It's in that range. It's in that range. Okay.
[1:18:43] And of those times that you have sex, what? Let's say it's six. Let's be sort of in the middle. So of the six times a month that you have sex, how many of those would you guesstimate on average to be duty sex? And how much of them are like pouring each other with mad cocaine-fueled lust?
[1:19:01] Oh, gosh. Well, the med cocaine-fueled lust does not happen.
[1:19:05] I mean, I'm exaggerating a bit, but you know what I mean.
[1:19:08] No, I know what you mean. But the passion or the real drive from my wife's side does not happen. I would say that once out of every six, she'll be very receptive and both of us will be engaging after a short period of foreplay. But you know the majority of the time it is duty sex in my opinion I mean Jane might see this differently no I think that's accurate.
[1:19:37] Okay so you have one mutually lusty sexual encounter a month.
[1:19:43] Yeah, Maybe, but yeah.
[1:19:46] I mean, what do you guys think of that?
[1:19:48] Well, I'm not happy with it. I want to talk about it. That's why I bring, that's why I was, you know, the fuel for frustration has been building. As I try to manage myself and try to change, I expected that at some point, the fact that we had talked about some of these things in our earlier conversation would start to tangibly change my wife's...
[1:20:12] Okay, sorry. I don't want to get it back into the complaint stuff. I understand all of that. So I'm just asking sort of what do you think of that? Sometimes it helps to break down the numbers. And if you're having a handful of duty sex and one mutually passionate or enjoyable sexual encounter a month, which is like 12 a year and over 10 years, 120 times, that's, I mean, that's not ideal, right?
[1:20:35] No.
[1:20:37] And this is to your wife, is that, is this news to you or is this something you already know?
[1:20:44] Uh, yeah, I think that that sounds about right to me. It's not news.
[1:20:50] Okay. And to your wife, what do you think would be needed to change that number? I mean, sorry, let me, let me ask you before that. Do you think that the number of couple of duty sex and one good sex, do you think those numbers should change?
[1:21:09] Um, that would be, yeah, that would be preferable to change that.
[1:21:13] And why would that number be better to change?
[1:21:16] Because I would like to enjoy it more often, yeah.
[1:21:19] Okay. And what needs to change?
[1:21:24] Um, I think that I just, I don't deal well with the pressure. And I think that, you know, when we engage and there's the opening words or your lingerie is boring, it just, that kind of sets the stage. But that was the first time in months that I said anything.
[1:21:45] Okay, hang on, hang on. So that's interesting, right? I think it's, I mean, it's all interesting and I appreciate your openness. So he says that lingerie is boring to me why is that such a downer i mean why not just oh yeah and you know come out with nothing at all how's this lingerie for you big boy or whatever it is right come out with uh i don't know two uh two band-aids over your nipples and say well this this should work better for you or whatever i mean just silly stuff right i mean why is that if he's saying i find this lingerie kind of boring why is that like hurtful and negative and a buzz kill and like he's just expressing a preference, right?
[1:22:22] Yeah. I think it's a buzz kill because I feel like I can do no right. And I feel like.
[1:22:29] No, no. Hang on. Hang on. Sorry to interrupt. He's not saying you can do so right. He's saying you can do right. All you need to do is choose a different launch rate. If he said, no lingerie pleases me, right, and you being naked doesn't please me, and the lights on doesn't please me, and the lights off doesn't, then you would be able to, but if he's just saying any other lingerie but this, you're not in a no-win situation, you could just change the lingerie, right?
[1:22:59] Yeah, maybe, but there might be something wrong.
[1:23:03] Sorry to be annoying. It's not maybe. if he's saying this lingerie I don't like any other lingerie I do then he's not putting you in a no-win situation. Again, unless this is about diabolical mental torture plot.
[1:23:17] No, I think that he might find something wrong with the lingerie that I choose no matter what unless it's like new and he hasn't seen it before. That's not true.
[1:23:28] But you didn't try to find out.
[1:23:30] No, I didn't because he had asked for lingerie, and I put on the lingerie, and this is one of the damned if I do, damned if I don't situations.
[1:23:42] Sorry, you know he likes lingerie, right?
[1:23:45] Yeah, so then I assumed he would like the lingerie.
[1:23:48] No, no, but hang on. If you know he likes lingerie, why not put on lingerie to begin with?
[1:23:54] That's what I did.
[1:23:55] Oh, I thought you said he asked you to put on lingerie.
[1:23:59] Well, he had mentioned like a week prior that it had been a while since I wore lingerie. Sometimes I don't get the, we don't get to that stage. Do you know what I mean?
[1:24:13] I have no idea what you mean. Sorry. He says he likes lingerie, and how long had it been, roughly, since you'd worn lingerie?
[1:24:21] Like, maybe two months.
[1:24:23] So, why would you not wear lingerie if your husband likes you wearing lingerie?
[1:24:29] I don't like wearing lingerie.
[1:24:31] Is it uncomfortable? Does it shave? I don't know. I rarely wear lingerie, at least when people are over for dinner. So, hopefully you'll forgive me for not having much expertise in this. But what's wrong, what's bad about wearing lingerie?
[1:24:45] It is uncomfortable, and it's not really my cup of tea. It's not what I like. Sometimes I just like to be down low.
[1:24:53] When you say it's uncomfortable, what is that, like a wedgie? I mean, doesn't the lingerie come off? I mean, it's not a long-term thing. You're not asking to go on vacation on it or on a plane.
[1:25:03] Yeah, I would just say it's uncomfortable.
[1:25:06] Okay, like really uncomfortable? I mean, they don't make them, like, with spikes or anything, right? So I'm, I'm trying to, again, not having worn lingerie, if you can step me through it.
[1:25:17] Um, like if you are going into sex, like you're going into a restaurant on a date and somebody is always ordering your meal for you, maybe that would get old.
[1:25:33] So it's psychological, not physical?
[1:25:35] No, I would say it's physical too. I don't prefer to wear lingerie. It does sometimes feel like I'm the only person that's doing this thing. Hold on. That I don't like to do. Let me just say something here really quick. In an effort to make my wife more comfortable wearing lingerie, I have bought my own skimpy thong underwear thing just so that we can make it fun.
[1:25:59] Sorry, I'm just going to need you to turn on the camera. No, I'm just kidding. go ahead i need a.
[1:26:04] Thumbnail anyway go on but like when we when when this lingerie thing came up i i even set up because you know i'm sure this does not excite my wife but at the same time she said i don't want to be the only person wearing lingerie so i bought lingerie and yeah i mean i'm sure i look probably grotesque in it but just in an effort to kind of lighten the mood and make it more fun you know i i'll be like oh i'll put it on too like that's fine you know we can have fun with this so she says she's feels like the only one but she's legitimately not that's all i want to add.
[1:26:40] Well let me this is to your wife i mean when you guys maybe you don't do this often with five kids but when you dress up to go out for dinner or you go someplace formal you have a wedding i mean don't you put makeup and heels and stuff on.
[1:26:54] Yeah right.
[1:26:57] So that's a whole lot more effort than wearing lingerie for five minutes, right? So why do strangers get heels and makeup and whatever, tight clothing or uncomfortable clothing, or you spend an hour on your hair or whatever you do, why would strangers get all of that and your husband doesn't get five minutes in lingerie?
[1:27:15] I guess that makes me feel pretty, the hair and makeup and nails and heels, and the lingerie does not.
[1:27:22] The lingerie doesn't make you look pretty. So your husband's desire for you and him finding you even sexier doesn't make you feel attractive, but strangers seeing you with nails on does.
[1:27:36] Yes.
[1:27:37] That's not overly rational, is it? Unless I'm missing something.
[1:27:43] I don't know. I feel more elegant in a dress than I do in lingerie.
[1:27:49] No, but I'm just talking about, you said it was uncomfortable, right? I mean, the purpose of a lingerie is not to feel evident, but to have fun with desire, right?
[1:27:57] Mm-hmm.
[1:27:59] So, yeah, I mean, if your husband likes it, I'm not sure what the barrier is to doing it. I mean, he's not asking you to, you know, climb a coconut tree in a monkey suit or something, right? I mean, he's just asking for a bit of lingerie for a couple of minutes. What is the negative? And it can't just be discomfort because you're way more uncomfortable. I'm sure you spend a lot more time and effort dressing up to go to church every week. So it's not a discomfort thing. And women walk around in heels all day, right? Right. So it can't just be a few minutes of discomfort or, I mean, I imagine it's something else.
[1:28:32] Yeah, I guess I just don't, that's not my cup of tea.
[1:28:38] But it's not, it's not for you. Sorry, I don't know what that means. I mean, if you were going someplace on your own, you wouldn't wear heels and makeup and do your hair and all of that, right?
[1:28:51] On my own, like where nobody would be there to see me. Oh yeah. Okay, sure.
[1:28:56] You wouldn't, right? So you do all of that work for other people, right? The hair, the makeup, the clothes, the stockings, the heels, like all of that is for other people, right?
[1:29:09] Um, yeah, I guess some of it would be for myself. Yeah.
[1:29:12] Well, no, but it's yourself relative to other people. Because again, if you had to go and pick up something at the midnight storage facility where there was nobody there, you wouldn't put heels and makeup and hair and right, you wouldn't do all of that stuff, right?
[1:29:25] Yeah, sure.
[1:29:26] Right. So just from the male perspective, if you spend an hour or two, as I'm sure you do, and it's not a criticism, it's just a fact of female nature. But if you spend an hour or two getting ready for strangers, but then it's too much and too negative, and because of them, because of what they want, because of what they perceive and what they see, but then it's just too much effort to put yourself in a lingerie for five minutes. He's going to feel massively devalued and that other people are way more important than he is. That strangers at the church or strangers at the mall or strangers wherever you're going are way more important than he is. Because you're willing to endure a lot of discomfort for the sake of looking good to strangers, but not a few minutes of mild discomfort to be sexy for your husband. I'm just telling you the male perspective. And of course, your husband can correct me if I'm wrong, but he's going to feel as big as an aunt. He's going to feel tiny and that you care a lot more about discomfort for the sake of strangers than you do mild discomfort for the sake of your husband who loves you and, provides and protects and co-parents and it's from a male perspective I assume it would be from every, perspective it would be strange.
[1:30:40] I guess I just don't like the negative reinforcement around sex.
[1:30:46] I'm sorry I don't know what that means I don't know what she means by that so I don't know what you mean by that.
[1:30:53] So if he is like if he doesn't like the lingerie instead of saying why don't you put on that outfit that I can recollect you know instead of saying that saying you look boring you know, is a little bit more of hers.
[1:31:13] No, no, no, it's unfair. He didn't say you look boring. He says I'm bored of that lingerie.
[1:31:18] Yeah, maybe. No, I definitely wasn't saying you look boring. I was saying this lingerie is the same thing as underwear. It's just made out of velour. Like, if you're wearing it for me, I like the frilly stuff. The thing that's frustrating me is that she said, I'm doing this for you, but then as soon as I say, oh, well, I have this preference. If you're doing it for me, this is my preference. And then she was angry. And yeah, you're accurate. It does make me feel small that she'll take 45 minutes to get ready for church. But then when we go to bed, it's just, there's nothing special there. And I'm not going to say that there's nothing special. Like we have a, you know, like there's a lot of good things that happen, but it just feels like the amount of effort is very low. Like it's almost like disdain for me. I feel like she regrets marrying me sometimes.
[1:32:05] Oh, that's tough. I mean, from a Christian perspective, is your husband who you made the vows with before God more important than strangers at a church?
[1:32:15] Yeah, for sure.
[1:32:16] I mean, you have become one flesh, your home is where your heart is, and God has joined you together in a holy union to produce children, and we should put as much effort into pleasing our partner at least as we do put into pleasing strangers, right? At least. I mean, obviously, I think it should be more, but it should be at least, right?
[1:32:40] Yeah.
[1:32:41] I mean, I do three to four hours of pretty hard exercise a week. I mean, in part for health. It's not like I rip my shirt off on every show or anything like that. But I want my wife to find me attractive. And, you know, we are monogamous, obviously. So it's very important to put a lot of effort into being attractive for her. Right.
[1:33:01] Mm hmm.
[1:33:03] And the misplacement of priorities is I mean, it's a very common tragedy in human relations. I try not to wax too poetic here, but I'll probably fail, but I'll try. In that everybody knows if you grew up with dysfunctional parents, they're much nicer to strangers than they are to their own children often, right? Or they're nicer to waiters or bus conductors or people at the border crossing or whatever. They're super nice and polite to all those people, but they can sometimes be mean to their own family. Or a husband and wife can bickle with each other,
[1:33:35] and then if people come over, they're all smiles and pleasantries. And we often, it's a kind of incomprehensible thing for me as a whole, but we often will reserve our best behavior for people we're never going to see again. And we reserve our laziest or least attentive behavior for the people we actually live with and love and have wound our lives together and are going to go through the whole journey of life together, are going to tend to us in our old age.
[1:34:02] And I think if I were to get mildly Catholic for a moment, heaven help me, I think it is a fundamental breaking of the vows to reserve better behavior for people outside the marriage than for people inside the marriage, than for your husband or for your wife. It is a sin, really, to put more effort into looking good for strangers at church than it is, to pleasing your husband in the holy matrimonial bed, right? Because sex is holy, sex produces life, sex is what defines the marriage, because it's the one thing you can't do with anyone else. You can go on a bus ride with someone else, you can go fishing with someone else, you just can't have sex with someone else, and neither should you. And so sex is the very heart of the marriage, it's what differentiates you from being friends, or roommates, or acquaintances, or anything like that. And monogamy separates you from being in a situationship and the marriage vow separates you from being boyfriend and girlfriend. So the sanctity of sex is right at the heart of the marriage. That is the most important aspect of the marriage from a moral or legal standpoint, because that's what the marriage is. Marriage is the regulation of sexuality. And it's a beautiful and holy and wonderful institution I'm happy to have been part of for almost a quarter century and hopefully another 40 years to go.
[1:35:26] But to make the effort to have your partner happy sexually is very, very important and is a great virtue. And I'm not speaking to either one of you in particular, but to both of you and, of course, to the world as a whole. Your partner needs to be happy sexually. That means no pouting when you don't get sex. That means listen to your partner and what he wants and try to provide it. Again, assuming it's legal and reasonable, you know, doesn't involve a llama or some godforsaken thing. And so the goal of trying to figure out how to please your partner sexually, is at the very heart of the marriage. And as you say, the lack of happiness for both of you in regards to sexual matters is undermining, the happiness of the marriage, and everything which undermines the happiness of a marriage is a sin against the vows you made before God and the universe. And anything and everything which undermines the happiness in a marriage undermines the security and stability and happiness of your children.
[1:36:35] So, and I appreciate your wisdom in calling in and discussing these things so frankly, but it's absolutely essential that you have a happy sex life in your marriage. Absolutely essential. And so if sexual rejection has your husband feeling like she has contempt for me or sometimes I think she regrets marrying me and so on, and if you're fighting over lingerie and if there's duty sex involved and there's pouting and discontent and conflict and so on, that is a grave sin. Whether you're a Catholic or not, whether you're a Christian or not, whether you're religious or not, it is a grave sin. Because when you make the vows of marriage, the most foundational vow is, we're going to be happy sexually. Because again, marriage is about the regulation and focus of what is often random and semi-ape-like human sexuality into love, pair bonding, monogamy, and a stable foundation for the raising of children.
[1:37:35] And everything which undermines that connection, that passion, that love, that openness, that fun, that frequency, everything which undermines that is a sin because it is putting considerations other than the happiness of the marriage and what's best for the children and the vows that you've made before God. You're putting other priorities higher. And having open communication about sexual preferences is essential. Working to reasonably accommodate other people's sexual preferences your partner's sexual preferences is really essential.
[1:38:09] And if he wants you to wear some different lingerie, wear some different lingerie. Surprise him. Make him happy. Again, I'm not talking about duty sex. If your wife doesn't want to have sex, she's got to be free to not have sex. Because again, if she can't say no, she also can't say yes. And you end up in this kind of grim battle tug of war over possession of the vajayjay. And that's not any kind of good place for anyone to be. And unfortunately, I think you guys have turned into a bit of a pitched battle, which is you don't want to give each other what each other wants for reasons of maybe past hurt or past carelessness or past accidents or a feeling of rejection. But you can't just accumulate rejection in a marriage that's going to break the marriage. Whether you stay together or not, it just sort of foundationally breaks the marriage. The marriage is an inverted pyramid of happiness, contentment, connection, and monogamy based upon a satisfying sex life. And I'm not saying that sex is everything in life. Of course, I get all of that. But the marriage in particular, it's like a business is predicated on profits and loss. And if you have a business that loses money, the business is going to fail.
[1:39:17] And it's not that everything about the business is to do with profit and loss, but that's what fundamentally defines a business success or failure. And a marriage is success or failure relies upon satisfying sexuality because marriage controls sexuality. Marriage through monogamy controls sexuality. And if you're going to control something, you have to do a good job of satisfying those needs because you're saying to each other, and rightly so, you can't go anywhere else. You even touch another woman, you either touch another man, it's all over. So you are saying, you can only come to me for any kind of sexual satisfaction, only to me, nobody else. I will rip this marriage apart. If you cheat on me, I will...
[1:40:02] There'll be lawyers, there'll be assets split in half, houses lost, like the children traumatized for life. Like if you touch anyone else, this marriage will be destroyed and the children will be irrevocably harmed. Okay. That's the vow, right? That is the vow. You cannot get your sexual satisfaction anywhere else. Well, that's a pretty big responsibility, right?
[1:40:27] That's a pretty if I say to my wife you can only ever eat the meals that I cook and if you ever touch anyone else's food I will divorce you, isn't it kind of incumbent upon me if I tell her she cannot eat anything other than what I cook, that I cook her some good meals and don't just throw her a couple of pieces of toast and a slice of Velveeta from time to time, so yeah sexual satisfaction is right at the heart of what makes marriages work, and i i think i think that's why you're fighting so much about it if that makes sense so sorry that's the end end of the speech i hope that made some kind of sense to you.
[1:41:04] I guess it's like what comes first the chicken or the egg right.
[1:41:08] No i don't know what that means sorry well.
[1:41:11] Because you're saying like the duty sex is what's causing this kind of not wanting or hesitancy from me.
[1:41:20] I
[1:41:21] Um, so it's like.
[1:41:24] Who's, well, now, yes, now, now it's a chicken and the egg, right? Now it's a chicken and the egg. So let me, let me ask this of, of the husband. Has your income generally increased over the course of your marriage?
[1:41:36] Significantly. Yeah. It's gone up quite a bit.
[1:41:41] Doubled 50%, 300%.
[1:41:42] Well, I would say that when we started, we were in the oil field, so we're making good money but then what happened is I left the oil field I decided to put my family first I started my own business and then we made oil field money but now I'm at home co-parenting all day and I'm starting another business that will cash flow far better than than this one did so I expect that we'll be doing very very well financially in a year two years but we're doing very well financially but I'm home all the time.
[1:42:14] Fantastic.
[1:42:15] You know, I'm here for my kids, for my wife full time, whereas before 14 hours a day, I was gone on an oil rig.
[1:42:22] Yeah, no, and I've done that similar kind of work, so I understand how draining that can be. Okay, so let's look at your sexual frequency from when you were first married to now. And let's just talk enthusiastic sex, because the duty sex barely counts. Duty sex is like, you know, your wife says, you've got to come to my mother-in-law's house and you don't really want to go, but you go. It's okay, but it's not like a fun outing. So in terms of enthusiastic sex, you're once a month, if I remember rightly. How was your enthusiastic sex at the beginning of your marriage per month?
[1:43:03] I would say it was eight times a month when we were first married enthusiastic sex you know we were both very engaged and.
[1:43:13] Would your wife agree with that, Oh, I can't hear her if she's talking.
[1:43:17] Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that.
[1:43:19] Now, is that eight times a month of enthusiastic sex and then some less enthusiastic sex or eight times a month of sex as a whole?
[1:43:28] No, there would be less enthusiastic sex in there.
[1:43:31] Okay. So what's your sexual frequency? I mean, I assume there wasn't any duty sex at the beginning of the marriage. Is that right?
[1:43:39] I would say that there was.
[1:43:40] There was. Okay. That's important to know. Okay. So what was the sort of proportion of duty sex back in the day at the beginning of your marriage like first month or two.
[1:43:50] I i would honestly well i mean maybe i'm remembering this wrong but at the beginning of the marriage i don't think that there was any uh well i mean well you can't really speak for your wife.
[1:44:01] Because men don't really have duty.
[1:44:03] Sure sure yeah fair enough fair enough okay sorry go ahead yeah i would say three times a month it would be duty sex okay.
[1:44:13] Got it all right so you had eight times, now it's once, right? So, let me ask you this. This is to your husband. You don't have to give me exact numbers, but what was your salary at the beginning of your marriage?
[1:44:28] Between $100,000 and $150,000.
[1:44:31] Okay. So, let's make it $125,000, right?
[1:44:36] Mm-hmm.
[1:44:37] $1,000,000. Okay. So, So that's kind of important. So let me just get the numbers up cranking here. Do five. So now, you know what? I'm going to go with the very beginning of the marriage. So you've been married for, did I have this right, 13 or 14 years?
[1:44:57] 13 years.
[1:44:58] 13 years. Okay. So this is to your wife as a whole. So imagine that when you first marry your lovely husband, he's making $100,000 a year. And now, after 13 years of marriage and five children, he's making $12,500 a year.
[1:45:21] Okay.
[1:45:21] Or about $1,000 a month. How would you feel?
[1:45:26] Hungry.
[1:45:27] Yeah, I bet, right? I bet. No, but that's a very real thing. Do you know why I'm giving you that number?
[1:45:34] To compare it with our sex life?
[1:45:37] Right, because you've gone from eight enthusiastic sex to one enthusiastic sex a month, which is the equivalent of going from $100,000 a year or $8,000 or $9,000 a month to $1,000 a month and $12,500 a year. So if as the marriage goes on, the income goes down, how would you feel?
[1:46:04] Discouraged.
[1:46:04] It would be tough, right? Because you'd look back and you'd say, man, at the beginning of the marriage, bro was making a fortune. Now we are going to the food bag and we're living in a trailer if we're lucky, right? So that's a diminishment over the course of the marriage, right?
[1:46:23] For sure.
[1:46:24] And so for men, and maybe this is true for women as well, but for men, we tend to set our clocks, so to speak. Maybe there's an extra L there. We tend to set our clocks by the beginning of the marriage. And of course, we know there's five kids, there's going to be illnesses, there's recovery from childbirth and stresses and so on. But that's our baseline. In our mind, that's our baseline. That's the norm. And so for your husband to go from eight to one is kind of a catastrophic diminishment. Now, let me ask you this. If you'd known ahead of time that your husband was going to go from making $100,000 a year to $12,000 a year, would you have been enthusiastic about marrying him? Now, this is to your husband. If you had known that you'd go from eight enthusiastic sex activities a month to one, would you have been as enthusiastic about marrying your wife?
[1:47:31] I want to make one qualifier before I answer this, because she's a great mother and a great partner in a lot of other ways. But early on this way, no, I wouldn't be. I would feel like it's, yeah, I would feel trapped.
[1:47:44] So, women, as you know, make 85 to 90% of household purchasing decisions, right?
[1:47:53] Mm-hmm.
[1:47:54] Now, your income has, relative to the amount of time that you have to work, your income has gone up considerably from 13 years ago, right?
[1:48:05] Yeah, huge. Okay.
[1:48:06] So what that means is, given that women like to spend money, and this is not any kind of negative, it's just a fact. You go to the mall, there's nothing there for guys except stuff that their wives want to buy for them, right? So from your wife's perspective, you are getting more of something that you really value, which is income. And it's not just for you or buying things for the house. It's for the kids. It's for lots of retirement. It's for a lot of things, healthcare and so on, right? So his value has gone up enormously in something that matters to you both. But as your husband was saying earlier, he could live in a cave as most men could. It matters a little bit more to you than to your husband. And his value has gone up enormously in, since you first got married, but something that he values, which is enthusiastic sex, has gone down catastrophically from when you first married. Now, this doesn't mean, again, I'm not saying duty sex or anything like that. I'm just trying to get you both to understand the mechanics of each other's perspective in this area, if that makes sense.
[1:49:15] Sure.
[1:49:16] So if you can imagine what it would be like to live on $1,000 a month, you can understand what it's like for him to live on one good sex romper month yeah you seem hesitant to accept this as a potential analogy yeah i mean i mean don't give me your fruity philosophy tricks canadian boy anyway i.
[1:49:39] I find that i probably have a very similar amount of income to to spend that i did 13 years ago like it's it's a similar budget does that make sense.
[1:49:53] Would you have five kids.
[1:49:55] And i'm home all the time yeah yeah.
[1:49:57] And that's why i said relative to the amount of hours he has to work.
[1:50:00] Oh okay i see so you're saying just the amount that he's around more.
[1:50:06] Well yeah i mean if you were basically you'd be a single mom if bro was working 14 hours a day on an oil rig right yeah.
[1:50:13] Definitely a benefit.
[1:50:14] Okay. So it just means that relative to his hourly wage, if he's working seven hours and making as much as he did when he was taking 14 hours, then his hourly wage has kind of doubled. So something that is important to you and to him, right, but it's something that's important to you has gone up significantly in value and something that's important to him has gone down considerably in value. And that's just a tough situation to deal with. And then again, partly it's theological because of the family planning and the kids and all of that. So, I mean, nobody expects to have the same amount of sex in year 13 with five kids as on your honeymoon. I mean, that would be sort of an unreasonable standard. But it may help you to sort of understand where he's coming from to get that analogy.
[1:51:04] I guess I just don't know how to get out of the duty sex cycle.
[1:51:08] Right, right. Right. Well, but it could also be the case that you both are kind of punitive with regards to sex, because when he expressed a preference for a different lingerie, you got a little punitive, too, it seems like, because you could have just said, oh, yeah, well, come show me which one you want, and I'd be happy to put it on. But instead, it was like, how dare you? Yeah, you've ruined the mood. And like, you know, that's kind of punitive, too, right?
[1:51:31] Yeah, I guess I'm a little bit touchy.
[1:51:34] Well, that's reframing it a little bit there, right? Because he's also touchy with regards to rejection, but we had a whole conversation about duty sex and how wrong that was. And so he wouldn't just say, well, I guess I'm just touchy with regards to rejection. So it's not just touchy. I mean, it's a little punitive to punish him for expressing a preference, wouldn't you say?
[1:51:54] Yes.
[1:51:55] So, yeah, you can't use sex as a weapon. You can't ego identify too much with sex either. And if your wife is tired or doesn't want to have sex, you can't say, oh my gosh, I'm unattractive. She doesn't want to be with me or anything. Like you can't ego identify too, because then it becomes way too personal. And that always leads to being controlling or punitive, if that makes sense.
[1:52:14] Yeah, I agree with that. I have been working on that since our conversation in November. There's going to work then, but you're right.
[1:52:24] And some of turning things around is just gritting your teeth. Like, I sort of hate to say it, right? But generally, unless, you know, the marriage is in a complete catastrophe, which it doesn't sound like it is, but generally, it is often the case that it's sort of like there are times when I really, really don't want to work out. I just don't want to. I'm tired. I get a headache or whatever it is, right? But then what happens when I start working out?
[1:52:53] It gets easier.
[1:52:54] Yeah, it's mostly fine. And sometimes I'm happy that I did that, right? So with regards to sex, one of the ways that you can't just wait passively, like I can't just wait passively until I feel like working out because then I won't work out that much because I don't particularly enjoy working out. It's just something that's, I like the feeling afterwards and I think it's something that's important to do. So with regards to sex, most times if you approach it with some reasonable level of enthusiasm, you know, when you get into it, it's good. And so I think it's, you know, open your hearts, recognize the vows you've made, recognize that you both owe each other great sex. That's the marital contract. Again, barring illness and all headaches and things like that, right? But you both owe each other great sex, at least as much as possible, as much can be reasonably accomplished, that you've got a lot of responsibilities and so on.
[1:53:49] And trying to find a way to just like, let's just do it. Let's just do it. And you, there is a certain amount of willpower involved. And again, I'm not saying have sex when you dislike the other person or you're feeling terrible or whatever it is. No, of course not, right? But, you know, in the balance, right? In the 50-50 times, just tip over and see where that takes you. Again, if you're fighting, you know, you don't have sex, right? Or whatever it is, right? But if it's like a 50-50 time, just tip over to the yes and see how it goes. You'd be amazed at how much that can just solve things over time.
[1:54:29] All right.
[1:54:30] All right. I've never heard or rarely heard a less convinced person at the end of a speech, but that's all right. That's all right. Is there anything that you guys wanted to mention as we wind things down?
[1:54:44] You know, I think that you've given us some really important things to think about. But I know last time that we had a conversation, it was very difficult for me to accept some of the blind spots that you had pointed out. So I think that it's, you know, it's hard for us to absorb the lesson. But no, this is a very great talk. And we do appreciate you being a bit of a mentor for us. So thank you for your time. And as far as I go, I don't have anything further than that. What about you?
[1:55:17] Thank you very much. You're very welcome. I appreciate your openness, and I hope you guys will keep me posted about how it's going.
[1:55:23] Absolutely.
[1:55:24] Hey, thank you so much. Bro, I'll give you a secure place to send that thong pic. Just kidding. All right. Thanks, guys. Have a great night. Bye.
[1:55:32] All right. Thank you. Bye.
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