It is the little things that will fell your marriage

It is the little, irritating things that your partner does, not the big hurdles, that will fell your marriage. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • There was something unique about this couple which is rather common amongst couples in sexless marriages: they had spent so much time and energy choosing the right partner and planning a grand wedding that they had neglected to find out if they were compatible with that partner.

  • They had all the information on what to look for in a spouse, and applied the knowledge diligently.

Some questions are difficult to answer. That is what raced through my mind as Jane sat in front of me in the consultation room explaining her medical situation.

“I have done everything that a woman can do to please this man but he never seems to be satisfied,” she explained. “He wouldn’t just touch me. We last were intimate six months ago. What exactly does a man want, doctor? Tell me, how do you please a man?”

It all started when Jane’s husband came home one day and found Jane chatting with her women friends.

He had been warning her to stop her friendship with those women but Jane found no reason to. He claimed that the women were bad mannered and made life difficult for their husbands.

On the material day, they had a heated argument about Jane’s continued friendship with the “bad women”.

“Since then he has not touched me,” explained Jane. “He sleeps facing away from me.” Jane tried pleasing the man in many ways: she cooked good food, called him sweet names, washed and ironed his clothes, all to no avail. “It is frustrating. I have lost so much weight. It is better he opens up and discusses his problem,” she explained. The couple had never had a sex problem in their four years of marriage until the current incident. We agreed to have the man come to the clinic.

“Well, I just have no feelings for her,” explained John, Jane’s husband, when he came to the clinic. “It just went and I can’t help it.”

SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT THIS COUPLE

There was something unique about this couple which is rather common amongst couples in sexless marriages: they had spent so much time and energy choosing the right partner and planning a grand wedding that they had neglected to find out if they were compatible with that partner.

They had all the information on what to look for in a spouse, and applied the knowledge diligently.

They however had no clue how to show love and maintain a relationship. What they were facing was the culmination of dying love. When love is dead, sex becomes impossible because there is emotional withdrawal.

John had gone to the extent of secretly buying and using Viagra. Most men facing sex challenges end up swallowing this drug secretly. Most of the sex problems do not, however, require the use of Viagra.

“I just thought it would reawaken the love I used to have for Jane,” said John, avoiding looking me in the eye.

One researcher has proposed that if it were possible, couples should be attached to a love mentor until they learn to take care of each other. What causes the death of love is not the big issues that people popularly talk about. The real issues are the small, daily, petty disagreements.

I liked the way one couple put it: “I told her to shower before coming to bed but she just brushed it off!”

And the woman replied: “He just can’t learn to arrange his shoes on the shoe rack! It annoyed me.” Thereafter they started acting in ways to hurt each other and ended up reporting to their mothers, who in turn started interfering with the relationship.

Yes, it is those small things, like insisting on having the whole family at the dinner table when her favourite soap is on television, or changing the channel to watch football when she wants to watch a wedding show. One thing just leads to another and resentment brews.

Once resentment sets in, you are done! You will be unusually harsh to each other, you will lack sexual feelings, and you will subconsciously work to hurt each other. Loss of sexual feelings for each other is a common symptom when things have progressed too far.

Some men even lose their erection in the process. Irrespective of how many tablets of Viagra one swallows, the sex problem does not go away.

Jane and John were referred for relationship counseling. It took over three months to reawaken their emotions for each other.

The process involved forgiving each other for what they described as petty day to day life mistakes.

“But the greatest lesson for us has been that we should not take the small concerns expressed by our spouses for granted,” explained Jane. “We must be sensitive to the small, sometimes trivial and unexpressed dissenting voices of our partners which can actually be multiple each day.”