No Intimacy is Not Normal! 5 Ways it is Affecting Your Marriage
There are a few things in life that you look forward to…
Getting good grades in school where you make friends for life gets you out of bed every morning. Graduating college makes you breathe again. Getting married is like a breeze of fresh air. Having a child makes you the happiest person alive. Watching your kids grow and having a family life is another tick mark on the list.
Yet along with everything, there comes the sheer happiness of having a special bond with your life partner. Those tender everyday moments, the essence of touch and constant laughs.
But what if Intimacy is a no go? What if there is no sex in your marriage? What if there’s no touch to reciprocate the love?
Lack of Intimacy has been one of the major causes that strike problems in every marriage. The worrisome part is that it causes problems without being evident as the reason behind them. Children, stress or an exhausting schedule can be some of the basic reasons why your partner is not interested in sex. To be clear, experts define a sexless marriage as a relationship wherein the couple has sex no more than 10 times in any given year, or less than once per month.
More often than not, when a phase starts, it keeps on building up as a vicious circle. Couples lose out on their charm, their spark and end up drained. Also back in the day, research found that happy sex life is the second most important factor in a successful marriage.
To emphasize further, here are a few harmful impacts of a no Intimacy marriage:
You Lose out on the connection
The emotional connect is like the primary cord that connects to your physical bond. The whispers in the ear, the long hugs, and the cuddles. Intimacy and emotional connections act as complements to each other. One cannot sustain for long without the other. Once your marriage life lacks intimacy, you start losing out on your emotional connection. The bed conversations don’t happen, the morning breakfast chats with a kiss on the cheek vanish into thin air and dinner tables become quiet. Once there is hardly any talking, the trust starts to deplete.
A relationship without trust isn’t a relationship and it takes a long time to build that trust back. No Intimacy becomes the root cause of your problems at home, lack of communication and the warmth that makes a marriage happy is lost. Without communication, it becomes difficult to come to decisions, make choices or even figure out the family plans for the future. Things start to go haywire and out of control. With 15 to 20 percent of couples having sex no more than 10 times a year, it is very important that you don’t fall in that group.
High stress
Intimacy is also a stress buster. It comes with its feeling of satisfaction, peace, and relaxation. A warm hug or a kiss on the cheek by your partner makes your day better. Once that goes away, there is nothing to help you out with your stress and anxiety. Again, with no communication, you fail to even get the message across about your troubles.
Work stress, home stress, financial stress or stress about your own marriage keeps building up and exhausts you. With stress, tons of illnesses come along. Headaches, heart troubles, breathing issues and even reduction in libido takes place. There is absolutely no escape once it gets out of bounds. Sex also burns 200 calories in 30 minutes which helps in keeping the body and mental fitness in check, which when avoided becomes a major cause of concern.
Excessive fighting
So, when the communication is gone, trust gets thrown out of the window, what comes next? The fighting. The shouting. The excessive noise and discussions bearing no fruit. The frustration comes out in the form of harsh words and both of you don’t know when to stop. The lack of intimacy, sex or emotions can make anyone feel the anger or anxiety it carries along. Sleepless nights and never-ending fights also start impacting your day.
You need to struggle with work, be rude in your workplace or don’t function efficiently wherever you go. On the other hand, the mental impact that happens on a child’s brain when they see their parents fighting all the time cannot be repaired. The atmosphere your child grows up in is what makes them the human they are. They tend to lose out on any faith in the whole concept of marriage and love. Trouble always comes around in different forms and if you don’t learn to fight it, it will damage you and your family.
Public Shaming
Once you start to have issues in your marriage, the fights, the emotional stress and the lack of an outlet, the signs become obvious to everybody. When you don’t hold your partner’s hands in a party or share a plate with them like before, people start asking questions, especially your friends and family. Once you try to answer or dodge the bullet, they start talking behind your back. Some get worried and try to help in your personal matter, adding on to the pressure. The people you work with, the people you meet at parties or events, it just becomes awkward. If you have a kid who is a teenager, they tend to become the target too. People approach your kid making suggestions or giving solutions which makes things worse. The society we live in knows us the best and once it becomes obvious, things are bound to get difficult.
External outlets
Once things aren’t great at home and there is a zero sex life scenario, both partners tend to look for help, support or comfort outside. Everyone needs someone to confide in, to feel good and to trust. Once your partner starts becoming distant with time, external outlets can become an option. An office colleague, a friend of a neighbor, they all become forms of escape and distractions.
Instead of working on the intimacy problem, a couple starts to run away from it. External outlets can be in various forms. It could be a secret affair, a new friendship or even habits like alcohol. All said and done, none of these work in favor of a successful marriage and become a tipping point. With 22 percent of men and 14 percent of women admitting to having sexual relations outside their marriage, an affair won’t be a surprising consequence of a no-intimacy relationship.
Where there is love, there is a way. Don’t start considering lack of intimacy normal and be casual about it. Never stop lighting the spark, keep communicating and don’t ruin your healthy marriage. If needed, consult a doctor like Doctor A.K Jain who is the top sexologist in India or visit a therapist, but get your sex drive in place. You can also go for adventures, try role play or finalize a second honeymoon. Remember effort is the key.