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"Again, if a man were to lose almost all interest in sex and refuse to engage in sexual activity with his wife for years -- would women be so quick to say there is no problem? Would they argue that it's just evolution? Would they try to shame the wives if they asked for a divorce because they hadn't had sex in years?"
Actually, this does happen, a lot, especially after kids are born. Pregnancy turns men off. Childbirth turns men off. Motherhood turns men off, especially since it usually does come with extra weight that can take several years to shed and physical changes that cannot be reversed without surgery (e.g. sagging breasts). Sometimes sex loses it's savor once the ring's on her finger and she's a sure thing; he wanted the chase, not the quarry.
And yes, husbands get fat and out of shape. They're notorious for it; married men are twice as likely as single men to be obese. They also dress like slobs, ditching the suits once they get married because they no longer have to try as hard. I got to see this in full, living color today, a father of 2-year-old twins whose jeans hung too low off of too little rear and whose drab T-shirt was stretched over a belly that made him look like he was expecting himself. Plus a bad haircut, and I mean really bad. Does his wife have grounds for divorce, maybe trade him in for a younger, sleeker model? That and both sexes age. If men don't get fat and wrinkly, they get scrawny and wrinkly. Neither is particularly attractive.
The always-on male sex drive? Sometimes men find being outearned or being married to someone with a higher-status job emasculating. Male libido can tank over any kind of stress, including marital problems. Sometimes men get stressed out over something completely unrelated to their wives, and it still has an unsettling effect on their libido. They develop diabetes or heart conditions that render them impotent, or have to take medication that does the same. Age can significantly reduce their interest, and can start having that effect as early as 35 - 40. In short, a lot of things can happen to men that make them less attractive, and that either decrease the frequency of sex or remove it from the equation entirely, and wives are expected to adapt. We know that it comes with the territory.
The reality is that a baby is a dramatic and even traumatic life change, especially for a woman who has to cope with a whole new body, either quit or downscale her career, dump most of her pre-baby entertainments, and probably do most of the grunt work of raising the child. There is no way to change that. Changing expectations to fit reality is a lot more constructive than trying to change reality to fit expectations. Given that the vast majority of women experience physical and emotional changes following childbirth, and that there doesn't seem to be any way of eliminating them that costs less than several hundred thousand dollars a year, it stands to reason that a sensible man would have this in mind when planning marriage and a family. If he doesn't think he can handle it, then he needs to consider other options.
Anyway, the more dramatic effects of childbirth usually ease off. Most women eventually lose some of the weight, the kids get older and more independent, and both men and women adapt to their new roles. The post-partum crisis mode is temporary. Like any other storm, it will eventually pass and both parents will be stronger for having weathered it, if they have the chops to see it through. Courage, as C.S. Lewis put it, is "the form of every virtue at the testing point." Fidelity is a virtue, and a virtue that cannot hold up to pressure is nothing but a pretty word.
My grandparents did not stay married for 50+ years because my grandmother looked like a supermodel after five babies. They stayed married because they had certain values in common that trumped her attractiveness. And no, it wasn't his money because he never had much. He was a schoolteacher and a farmer. Something else brought them and kept them together, but in light of this particular conversation, it's hard to imagine what it could be. In light of that marriage, which ended with his death, I find it profoundly disturbing that a wife's primary value could be her sexual attractiveness. It's just as bad as a husband's primary value being his money. Have we, as a culture, really sunk so low that the only imaginable happy marriage is that of eternal youth to endless wealth?
For the record, I'm mother myself with a BMI within healthy range, so I'm not whining about how I can't help being fat. I'm not fat. I'm just astonished that anyone would think that a woman should pop out a baby and be back in the bars in her miniskirts in a few weeks. I thought this article was a bit of reduntant fluff until I started reading the responses to it. Perhaps the fact that childbirth can have a profound effect on a woman's experience of sex really is major news.
