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When I was younger and less jaded I had the attitude that if you married someone it could last through almost anything. None of this growing apart or what have you. If you married your best friend and you fell "out of love", but still loved your partner as your best friend you could eventually regain that love and passion. After all, we all go through dry spells. But, what if the spouse is no longer your best friend and it's just not there at all?

I know someone who has been going through this and it's changed my view on things. Because her husband is a good guy and everyone tells her this, but as they have gotten older they have different viewpoints on everything. She thought she had a low libido and blamed herself for it. Should she continue this way for next forty or fifty years, becoming increasingly more miserable and probably making him miserable in the end? Or should they both have a chance to find someone more compatible? It's unfair to both of them in the long run.

Why can they not get counseling and work on it? What happened to "for better or for worse"? What do they think couples do when one or both get too old or too sick to engage in sex any longer? There has to be more to it than that. I'm not saying that she should just forget sex at her age, but what about trying to work it through before just bailing, if they still love each other? Maybe it's just me, but I believe that there's a lot to be said for the idea of "it's being together at the end that counts", if two people love each other and have invested years of emotion and shared history in their lives together.

See post 105. Read the referenced book and articles. I find that marriages that become "dull" are for a couple of simple reasons:

1) He doesn't love her enough, and show it.

2) She doesn't respect him enough, and show it.

3) Women have been sold a bad bill of goods by the feminist movement. Not the part about equal pay for equal work, but about expectations and balance in marriage.

Here's the tough part. To break the logjam, the best and easiest way is for the woman to give in first. Meaning, make a conscious decision to become his girl again, to become his sex partner again. Treat him like a man. Pamper him. Meaning, yield. Definitely not what four years of liberal college education, and the media, tell women. But the feelings are visceral and the first steps are also behavioral, not analytical.

But it works. Why do you think that most men tell their mistresses "my wife doesn't understand me?" He is crying out that his wife won't let him be a man, doesn't regard him highly as a man, doesn't respect his work, doesn't respect his deficiencies while honoring his strengths.

Among those who endorse the action that it's the woman's first move are Dr Laura and Nancy Missler. Probably many others.

My wife went to a Christian ladies conference on marriages with a bunch of girlfriends, and they all came away shaken up. Because they got the above messages, and found it very disturbing to what they had been led to expect.

I'm expecting to get flamed ... so don't hold back!