Sexless Marriage? Boundaries Are the Missing Piece

Hey, it's Bruce. A lot of you have downloaded the securehusband.com

self-abandonment marriage checkup. And if you're concerned that maybe you are self-abandoning

in your relationship, I encourage you to go check it out. Securehusband.com slash checkup.

Just download the free PDF again at securehusband.com slash checkup.

All month long, we're talking about boundaries. And boundaries are going to be the missing

piece in dealing with a sexless marriage. The good old dead bedroom. Bruce Abbott

certified professional coach founder of Securehusband.com. So last episode, we started the podcast

series, Laying the Groundwork. Talked about why boundaries matter, especially when you're an

anxious preoccupied husband or a fearful avoidance that leans anxious and you're married to a dismissive

avoidant wife. Now we're going to look at probably the most painful part of that dynamic.

And that is the bedroom. Sex, the sexless marriage. There's a good chance that this is an area

that probably brought you to me in the first place. This is where I meet most of my guys. They

are starving. They are starving for connection. They're starving for touch. They're starving for

desire and intimacy feeling wanted. And most of the men that I work with have literally

tried just about everything. They've tried date nights and being romantic and having the talk and

going to therapy and reading books and losing weight and hitting the gym and making more money

and doing more chores and all of this. Nothing has changed. Nothing. Oh yeah, you may get some

ups and downs. You might get a couple of of good days here and there. Just enough to give you

those little table scraps, bread crumbs. But then it goes back to the normal. When I start working

with guys, the question that comes up is what do I do? And when we talk about boundaries and

setting boundaries in a marriage, this is an area that's really confusing because what boundary

do I set around sex? This is what I want to look at today because when we're setting boundaries

around sex, this really is all about self-respect and it's not about control. It's not about trying

to control your wife. If you look at a sexless marriage, a sexless marriage is typically defined

as sex fewer than 10 times per year. But in many cases, it's not about the number. It's about

the quality. It's about it being one sided. It's about absolutely no initiation from your partner.

There's no desire. There's no enthusiasm. There's no flirting, no passion, no touch. It's one

sided. You feel like roommates or at worst you feel like a burden. This is what happens inside

of the anxious husband. Your nervous system now starts to freak out and your nervous system

starts feeding this narrative that ranges all the way from am I unattractive? Am I undesirable

to does she love me? Is this my fault? Is she to blame? Is she cheating? That's one word that comes

up. The mostly the one that pops up is, should I try harder than you pursue? Ask for reassurance. You

try to create the perfect situation. You bring it up. You talk about it. You're over-functioning.

You do all the things that we've talked about in this podcast. If you listen to our podcast

series on the dismissive avoidant, you understand that what she feels is expectation and obligation

and pressure and all of that kills desire. The more you pursue sex for connection, the less safe

she feels and so the more she withdraws. That's the trap. That's the loop that we get stuck into.

And without boundaries that never stops. We understand that. Now, setting a boundary. What is a

boundary that has to do with sex? A boundary in dealing with a sexless marriage is not if you don't

have sex with me, wife, I'm leaving. Let's get that super clear because that is what I hear over

and over and over. That's not a boundary. That's an ultimatum. The boundary is not forcing your

wife to have sex with you or else you're gone. And it's not you that you owe me sex because that's

entitlement. And then we have to be careful too because a lot of times we'll want to set a boundary

of well, if you reject me again, I'm going to I'm going to shut down emotionally for you

because we tend to have this this idea in our mind because what we hear in society is the wife

controls the sex, the husband controls the emotional connection. Fine, you're going to shut down

sex for me. I'm going to shut down the emotional connection for you. Now you're just playing games.

Now that that's retaliation. None of those are boundaries. A boundary is not punishing her into wanting

you. Desire is not forced. You cannot negotiate desire. So then what? What is true is you are allowed

to have needs because sometimes we get in these relationships and we're made to believe that is

somehow wrong that we should feel shame for that. No, the truth is you are allowed to have needs.

You're allowed to one intimacy. You're allowed to want sexual connection in your marriage.

Not even just using the word allowed makes me cringe, but those are once those are needs

and you're not a bad person or weak for wanting that. The question is not whether you're allowed

to want sex. But what I suggest is the question is more how do you stop abandoning yourself when

it's not happening? And our boundaries are going to be tied to the self abandonment part. Guys will

self abandon in sexless marriages. All of those things that we think we should be doing

to get our wives interested in us. And that's where we either pursue more or try to stuff our

desire, kill our own libido or we swing into this resentment and shut down and back and forth.

But again, none of those are boundaries. Those are all reactions from your nervous system.

So you pursue because you fear losing connection and you might try to kill your own libido because

you fear making her mad. You fear triggering her emotions. And then you feel powerless. I get it.

And that's where the resentment comes. The real issue there is that you're outsourcing your

sense of worth to whether she desires you or not. And I've talked about this in previous podcasts.

If she wants you, you feel secure. It's it's codependency. I'm okay if you're okay. If you're not okay,

I'm not okay. If she wants you, then yeah, you feel secure. But if she doesn't want you, then you

feel rejected and you feel unworthy. None of that has to do with sex. That's the attachment

wound to be an activated through sex. You begin this boundary process by separating your worth

from her libido, because otherwise you're not going to be able to set a healthy boundary. When you

can detach and understand that your worth has nothing to do with her initiation or her enthusiasm

in sex, then you can start looking at setting a boundary around sex for the right reasons. These

boundaries are not going to look like what you think they should look like. The number one boundary

that I talk about all the time in this podcast is you stop over pursuing. Okay, well, if I stop doing

that, I'm never going to have sex. Okay, just hang with me. If you stop asking for it all the time

and you stop initiating it every time, you stop trying to manipulate her desire. You stop trying

to put the pressure on her because you respect yourself enough not to beg for it. That is a boundary.

Believe it or not, it doesn't look like one, but that is a boundary. That right there is going to

shift the dynamic. I've talked about this before. When you stop chasing, two things are going to

happen. Your nervous system is going to calm down. Her nervous system is going to feel less pressure.

Okay, well, I've listened to your podcast, Bruce. I've stopped over pursuing and sex did not

magically come. No, not yet, but it does remove the anxious avoident spiral that you're in.

So another example of a boundary around sex will be communicating clearly and calmly. One time,

you're not going to do this over and over and over because that's the over pursuing. You're

going to say something along the lines of babe sexual connection matters to me. I don't want to

pressure you, but I also don't want to pretend that this doesn't matter. I'm not going to keep

pushing you, but I do need to understand whether rebuilding intimacy is something we are both

willing to work on. How did that hit you? Did you feel the cringe as I said that? I need to

understand whether rebuilding intimacy is something, babe, that we're both willing to work on.

And then you notice the tone in the reaction. You're not begging and you're not blaming. You're

just setting clarity. You're setting this is what is important to me. And I need to know if this

is something we're both willing to work on. You state that truth. One time, you don't have to

rehash it over and over and over. You state that truth and then you observe. There's something that

always sticks with me that I heard one time where if you're communicating your needs and she's

not meeting your needs, there's probably a good chance that she never will meet your needs.

So we observe that is an example of boundaries. You set that boundary up. And then from there,

you're just you're going to see where this goes. You're going to see any intention of your wife

wanting to help you meet those needs. So you just observe another boundary around sex and the

sexless marriage. This one's going to hurt. You stop accepting pity sex. The thing that's the hardest

for the men, especially ones that I work with is the only sex they get off and is pity sex.

So if I'm not accepting pity sex, then I am completely celibate now. I totally hear what you're

saying. But pity sex, again, this goes back to self-respect. So if she says yes, just to shut you

up and she's not present in it, if she's resentful in during it, that's not intimacy. And that

accepting of pity sex trains your nervous system to tolerate the breadcrumbs, setting a boundary

might be, you know, babe, I want us both to feel connected. If it feels forced to you, let's not do

this. That takes a tremendous amount of courage. That takes a tremendous amount of strength.

You're telling her, you know what? If this doesn't feel good to you, let's not do this. And at the back

of your mind, you're telling yourself past history shows she never comes towards me. So therefore,

by me saying this, I just gave up sex for the whole rest of my life. No, you did not give up sex

for the whole rest of your life. But you did communicate through self-respect that you are not

going to have sex with somebody who's just doing it to shut you up. That self-respect that preserves

dignity because all of this is based around radical acceptance. And I've talked about this before

in podcast radical acceptance. What's reality? What is reality? If I never initiate sex anymore.

And there's zero initiation. That tells you something important about this relationship.

This is something you have to pay attention to. We try to numb out from this. We try to ignore it.

We try to work harder to change it. But that is the reality. That's part of setting the boundaries.

And this may mean redirecting energy in your life. You build your own life. And I get it. When the

sex disappears, you hyper focus on the marriage. But if you redirect your energy, you redirect your

energy into things that are healthy within the marriage. So building friendships, improving your

health, deepening your purpose and developing hobbies or strengthening your leadership. You build

that rounded life. I've talked about that in some earlier podcast. To where your relationship,

your wife, her sexuality is not the be all end all of your life. So you redirect some of this

energy that you're pushing towards her into other things. Why are you doing this? You're just stopping

making sex the center of your identity. Again, this is about self-respect. Boundaries are about

self-respect. So what you're going to do is I'm going to, and you don't have to make an

a big announcement over. You just do it. You start to improve your health. Go build male friendships.

There's something about being with other men that Iron Sharpen's Iron talked about that in

an earlier podcast. When you stop making this the center of your identity, that pressure on her

is relieved a little bit and oftentimes that desire will return. But even if it doesn't,

you're still now building something bigger than just her. That's a boundary. Like I said,

some of these boundaries are not going to look like what you think boundaries might look like.

In this particular case, building a full life around your marriage is a boundary because what

you're doing is you are keeping yourself from collapsing on the one pillar holding your life up,

and that is your wife and her sexuality. That is a boundary. So going back to that radical

acceptance, that is a boundary. If a sexless marriage is not temporary, if it becomes permanent,

radical acceptance is just understanding with an honest evaluation, this is my reality. This is

my marriage. And then from there, you ask yourself, am I willing? If nothing changes,

to stay in this relationship for the rest of my life, this is something I can live with long

term all the way till the end, if nothing ever changes. That honesty with yourself is a boundary

because it's really a boundary you're holding to yourself. Remember I talked about that last time,

holding boundaries to yourself is often just as important as communicating a boundary with your

wife because a boundary eventually leads to a decision if change doesn't happen. And I think

that's where most anxious men have the greatest fear because staying indefinitely without any kind

of clarity, it's just going to breed resentment and resentment is going to destroy your relationship

anyway. Do you see where the radical acceptance is a boundary? One of the guys I was just talking to

this morning before I started recording this podcast, he was in a marriage with pretty much no sex

for a few years. It was like two or three years. And he did the whole thing. He was constantly

pursuing and he was negotiating and improving himself and he tried the date nights and all these

things. And it wasn't working for him. And we talked about this. We talked about just stopping the

pursuit. Stop bringing it up all the time. And I was proud of him because we talked about this

just telling him, Hey, communicating with your wife one time, you don't over and over just saying,

Hey, look, mutual desire, mutual intimacy reciprocity matters to me. And then from there,

he just started redirecting the energy into himself. This was a few weeks back. We were talking

this morning. And he was saying that a couple of nights ago, his wife actually initiated sex

for the first time in months. And he did nothing to demand it. And I told him, it's because you

communicated your need. And then you stopped begging. You stopped demanding it. That's becoming

grounded. And so when he stopped chasing emotionally, because his wife is very dismissive

avoidant, that felt safe to her compared to his usual anxious pursuit. In his particular

situation, he's starting to see how this works with boundaries. Doesn't always restore sex. But

you stop self abandoning. You act out of self respect and that integrity and dignity. Internal

boundaries are just as important as the external boundaries. I'm not going to measure my worth

by her sexual desire, her libido. I'm not going to punish. I'm going to regulate myself,

do the nervous system work. That rejection, I get it, man, it hits your childhood wound. If you

don't regulate, you're going to find yourself numbing or begging or reacting. None of those

are going to build attraction. You're just going to create resentment for you and for her.

That's where the calm leadership comes in. And that's where boundary setting is important.

And if you do all this and nothing changes, well, then you've gathered the information. The

boundaries reveal what the truth is, radical acceptance in your relationship. And you stop chasing.

And if she shows no interest. And if you communicate clearly and she refuses to work on it,

if there's no effort, if she refuses, well, then you got clarity right there. You don't have to

be confused anymore. But it's living in that stuck dynamic. That's what is destroying you. And

the boundaries end that stuck dynamic one way or another. Think about desire. Think about it.

Desire grows in respect and polarity, safety, emotional safety, emotional steadiness. And it dies

in pressure and neediness and resentment, those unspoken anger. Your boundary work removes the

pressure and resentment. And so it stabilizes the situation. And then she has a choice to engage

or not. You're not going to negotiate desire. Your boundary is not going to create her wanting you

per se. But your boundary will create your sense of self-respect. So the boundary around sex

is not have sex with me or I'm gone. I'm not going to abandon myself for sex. I'm not going to

beg. I'm not going to tolerate disrespect. And that's going to be our next podcast in the series.

Boundaries around respect. I did a podcast earlier. I'll have to go back and look at what number

that is. We're talked about respect in a marriage. And so boundaries are how you handle that.

That's going to be our next episode in the series. I hope you get a lot out of this series on

boundaries. Boundaries are so important in a marriage because you have to regulate your nervous

system to be able to hold them and set them. But from there, that's where you start to build

that inner strength. And that's where you start to build that sense of self-worth. And I can tell

you from my own experiences and experiences with a lot of the guys that I work with. When you can

do that, when you can set those boundaries, whether it's around sex, whether it's around respect,

you become attractive again to her. You become attractive to yourself. You start really loving

yourself. Whether the marriage heels are not, you're no longer being desperate. You're not trying

to control or coerce. You're just existing in self-leadership grounded strength. So I hope you

join us for the next episode on respect. Hey, if you're not subscribing to this podcast already,

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