Sex is a potent, organic lubricant which lubricates the depressed wheels of marriage. In some cases, it is the elixir which sustains marriages that are near asphyxiation. The winsome paramountcy of sex in marriage is a ubiquitous fact that some married people know. Sadly, married people who should levitate in the inebriation of sex don’t get a puff! Although, it barges in sometimes, but its frequency hurries down the diminishing valley as time strolls into the future.
My friend Ade doesn’t secrete the agonies of his sexless marriage in a comely façade. He tells everyone who cares to take a listening to his honest jeremiads that sex happens more in “ordinary” relationships than in marriage. Ade is mulling having an extra-marital affair. His wife isn’t salting his veggies. She has had enough sex with him to last her a life time. And the kids? Yes they are top priority for her now. Sex is just a humdrum exercise.
Ade regaled me with a passionate and effusively erotic story of how he engaged in endless sexual somersaults with Bukky, his wife, before they were married. They did it at every odd corner and at odds times. And they left their scent anywhere they conceived could hide their entangled bodies. Not that they really cared about being seen, but somehow they tried to keep their erupting volcanic passion within responsible frontiers. They had it best when they were unmarried.
The first two years of his marriage was sprinkled with tepid sex. The third year when the twins came it morphed into a depressed exertion, and in the fourth year it became a plaintive fit. It ceased! Ade wondered how his marriage could have run out of sex steam in such a short time. He had tried everything to make his wife respond to his libidinal “dander” but she seemed to have slipped off the sex cliff. She had reached the climactic cumulus, and thus couldn’t descend.
Now, Ade wants to give Bukky the last nudge to reason before he nestles in the arms of a mistress. He thinks counseling will do it, since her defence is that she has lost interest in sex. She simply needs a libidinal epiphany!
When Ade brayed his marital challenge to me, I told him I would write about it. He giddily told me to go ahead because many marriages like his are drained of sexual passion, and lost in quotidian chores.
Truly, many marriages are sexless. According to some marriage surveys, an unbelievable number of adults are crouching in sexless marriages. And from many other testimonies, the lack of sex is the fount of major marital problems. It is surprising that marriage which customarily breaks inhibitions and gives couples the carte blanche to explore the crevices of their bodies is sexually less quarried.
In Godwin’s own case, his wife, Chisom has emasculated him. And for this, he has vowed not to use his tool to any good. Whenever he makes a move, with a deft aspect to “tango” with her, she responds with a stern and prudish dismissal, “I’m not in the mood”. This has continued for a long time, and Godwin has resorted to discharging his sexual fumes by masturbating. He loves his wife. He can’t have a mistress.
Many women too are in sexless marriages just as Ade and Godwin. Sometimes, it is not the woman’s fault. Some husbands who feed on pornography prefer dissipating their raw energies on other women who are objects of their depraved imagination to making love to their wives. They leave their wives sex starved, and eviscerated of passion. Again, some husbands who are lustful, after sometime find their wives unattractive. They too take their tools to where they believe they will be better served.
I know the intricacies of marriages are different, but the truth is more marriages are becoming sexless with new technology, job strains, kids’ intrusion, illnesses, old age, frumpiness, fossil romance, financial constraints and all in the list sex killers.
Tendentious as it may be, married people don’t really have sex, I know because I’m involved.
Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and a poet. He writes from Abuja. Email:fredricknwabufo@yahoo.com. 08167992075.
