Nodding Off Hill

I've been married for 10 years. I'm 43, well-educated, financially well-off, and fit. My husband and I are wonderful friends, and I love him dearly. However, for reasons he won't tell me, he decided eight years ago that he was no longer interested in sex. He says it's "too much work." He refuses to discuss it further. Also, for work reasons, we live apart. So, I have taken lovers. My husband doesn't like this, but I pay all his expenses so he can live his dream life, so he doesn't complain much. Four years ago, I moved to be with a man I got involved with, but the relationship felt more like a bridge than a destination, so I went back to my husband. Now, I love a man who wants to marry me, but I fear that ALL relationships degrade into roommate situations. I do fantasize that there's one perfect soulmate for me, and with him, I'll be able to commit. For now, I guess staying married helps me keep up appearances that I'm stable and normal while I hold on to the fairy tale that marriage is a forever relationship.

--Compartmentalizing

I must have missed that fairy tale -- the one where the couple get married and go off to live happily ever after in the house with the white picket fence and the 2.5 boyfriends. Two years into your marriage, your husband took early retirement from sex, deeming it "too much work." Well, sure, it takes some elbow grease, but it isn't exactly picking lettuce in the hot sun for $3 an hour. Although he refuses to even discuss this any further, you keep him on staff -- as your Vice President of The Illusion of Safety and Security. Keeping him on your payroll allows you to play both sides of the street -- married and taken and single and available. Single and available allows you your flingy fun. Still being married allows you to stay in himbo limbo -- avoiding anything more emotionally risky or stressful than retreating to your couch to wait for your mythical soulmate to fall into your life like a meteorite. The truth is, there are probably various men who are compatible with you in important ways, but there is no such thing as a soulmate -- no one perfect partner whose mere presence in your life will dry up all your problems like a big tube of Clearasil. No matter how compatible two people are, things will never be as hot long term as they were at the start, but they're the unhottest for those who think a great relationship will just happen to them. Those are the people who wait until the urge strikes to hug or kiss their partner. Bad idea. Just do it -- several times daily. And make a pact that you'll keep having sex regularly -- even when one of you doesn't totally feel like it. Sex researcher Rosemary Basson found that arousal is "triggerable"; just start making out, and you'll get turned on and get into it. Ultimately, you have to fill a marriage with loving and sexual acts, and love and sex should continue -- assuming you're with somebody whose idea of sex in marriage isn't sending his spouse out to bars to score it off somebody else.