by Patsy Rae Dawson
Last month I shared "3 Types of Sexless Marriages in the Bible". I introduced Type 1: The "Doubting" Spouse who just doesn't know lovemaking originated within the mind of God to bless and pleasure both husbands and wives. This type of sexless marriage is easy to deal with.
Then I addressed Type 2: The "Fire-Flirting" Spouse" who not only doesn't 
know God's plan for sexual love, but also flirts with all kinds of unloving conduct. The loving mate usually has to teach this spouse how to fight fair before they can deal with the real problems.
Now we're examining Type 3: The "Polluted" Spouse who has progressed through Type 2 to become a hardcore career sexual-depriver. Jude warns "have mercy with fear" in dealing with a polluted spouse (Jude 22-23). Type 3 is so skilled at manipulation and weasel-word lies that we need to fear being sucker punched into playing their games that destroy intimacy.
Type 3 Sexless Marriages Aren't Much Different From Other Sexual Deviations
Type 3 sexless marriages and dead bedrooms, mental adultery, sexual addiction, one-time and serial adultery, and gay-straight marriages all look and act about the same. I've observed that these sexual deviations and all their baggage share a root of clustered love sins. The main difference between these various sexual sins is the object of the sinner's lust that springs from their heart.
You can read an overview of these cluster sins in my article "Open Your Eyes to Dying-Fly Marriages--When Trying Harder Doesn't Work." In the midst of this list of cluster sins from 2 Timothy 3:1-5 is "unloving." Dr. Douglas Weiss in his book Intimacy Anorexia demonstrates that these characteristics exist in clusters in sexless marriages, many of which are also plagued with mental adultery, sexual addiction, serial adultery, and homosexual-straight marriages.
The chief characteristic of all these sexual deviations is a deliberate addictive withholding of intellectual, emotional, and sexual love from the mate.
"Unloving," the core of these characteristics, means without natural affection for family. This refers to everyone who is unwilling to feel and show natural affection for their spouse and children. It includes mental adulterers, masturbating adulterers, and serial adulterers. Huggin’-‘em-up gropers and back-rubbing dry flirts fall under this description. Sexual addicts and homosexuals married to straights lack natural affection. Additionally, both men and women who are unable or unwilling to respond with emotional and sexual love for their mate for whatever reason can accurately be described as “unloving—without natural affection for family.”
God created sexual love as an important part of natural affection between a husband and wife. The sexual act releases God-designed hormones to make both the man and the woman more loving and nurturing toward each other and their children. Everyone thrives in a home where the mother and father are passionate lovers.
For now, I'm only addressing the #1 sin that is present 98% of the time in Types 2 and 3 love sins:
The BLAME GAME--The #1 Intimacy-Cheating Game Unloving People Play
People involved in clustered love sins play many deceptive games with us that we often dismiss with "That's just the way they are" or "My spouse is perfect except for sex." Of all the games, their #1 favorite and most effective one is the BLAME GAME.
They start playing by questioning us about our feelings. We falsely assume they're making an emotional connection by sharing their feelings. Not so! They reveal as little as possible about themselves to get us to open up so they can discover our vulnerable spots. Then they manipulate our sensitivities to blame us where it wounds us the most to silence our objections.
We are more likely to fall for the BLAME GAME if we were reared in a home of origin that fostered shame and criticism. We don’t know what healthy emotional and sexual love looks, feels, talks, smells, tastes, and acts like. That's why we falsely think, "My spouse is perfect except for sex." Because of our upbringing, the Blame Game paralyzes us emotionally and intellectually so that we don't realize that we should be holding our mate accountable for his or her unloving conduct outside the bedroom.
Dr. Weiss says the #1 characteristic of people who deliberately withhold emotional and sexual intimacy is being too busy to give emotional and sexual attention to their mate and #2 is blame. I disagree. Working with husbands and wives for over 40 years and my failed marriage show that the BLAME GAME starts first. It usually appears in the first few months of the marriage alongside the dead-bedroom surprise . It's not about us. It's a problem the spouse brought to the marriage.
The "too busy" and other games Weiss writes about are like buying hotels and property in Monopoly. Our spouse uses them along with the BLAME GAME to cheat when we try to use the Get Out of Jail card by standing up for ourselves and insisting on fair fighting.
Types 2 and 3 sexual sinners are skilled game players. We often miss their slight-of-mouth weasel words and under-the-table intimacy-cheating methods. When we threaten to quit playing, they let us win to keep us playing their deceptive game.
They pretend to be loving only long enough to keep us in the game. We falsely think, "Our marriage is finally going to grow into a loving relationship," so we relax and withdraw our objections. The BLAME GAME quickly begins again with the cheating more cleverly concealed. It may take years for us to realize we've been sucker punched harder than ever.
Everyone Gets Cheated by The BLAME GAME
A long-time friend divorced her husband decades ago because of his multiple adulteries. He went with her to ask a preacher for help. The husband played the BLAME GAME and the preacher fell for it. As a result, he gave the wife the standard advice, “Go home and try harder to arouse and satisfy your husband.” All the "trying harder" advice did was put even more blame on her, which gave her husband license to continue his clustered love sins without distraction.
But it wasn't about her.
She was one of my original students who worked hard on her marriage. She learned how to respond quickly with a vaginal orgasm. She openly admired her husband. She fixed great meals on time and kept the children from annoying him when he was home. While the majority of my students were rewarded with warm, loving marriages for less effort, her husband never returned the love she gave freely to him.
It was about the husband successfully playing the BLAME GAME to cover up his secret activities.
The preacher was taken advantage of by the smooth talking intimacy anorexic. He helped the husband win the BLAME GAME by focusing on the wife becoming a more alluring lover. There is no humanly possible way for a person to lovingly entice a mate who is consumed by clustered love sins.
With a few direct questions, the preacher would have learned that the only times the husband initiated sex was when his wife asked, "Are you a homosexual?" From the very beginning of the marriage, the man had never acted like an emotionally and sexually loving husband.
Decades later, this woman's children still bear the scars from growing up in a home where their father refused to learn how to love their mother intellectually, emotionally, and sexually.
Incidentally, avoiding sex with the mate is the most obvious classic characteristic of marriages where homosexuals and lesbians have tricked a heterosexual into marrying them as a trophy spouse. But sexless marriages are also common in marriages of masturbating mental adulterers, sexual addicts, and serial adulterers. As I said earlier, the main difference in these loveless marriages is the object of the sinner's lust--not the games they play
2 Timothy 3:1-5 Condemns the BLAME GAME
The cluster sins that Paul warns Timothy about intertwine and overlap. It’s not hard to recognize the BLAME GAME techniques in “malicious gossips.”
They specialize in blaming others so they appear to be the victims. This also appeases their consciences. This is the main reason they can continue their sin in the midst of the congregation—the preacher and elders listen to and believe their malicious gossip about their spouse. One husband told his wife, “I blamed you because I was afraid if I looked at myself, I would discover a monster.”
One wife learned about her husband's deceitful BLAME GAME because a woman in the congregation told her what he said behind her back. Secretly running down the spouse to others provides a believable I'm-the-victim story for when the mate finally has had enough and asks for help or tries to leave. Who is going to believe the mate when everyone has heard for years about his or her supposed defects.
The BLAME GAME is just one of the many ways people without natural affection cheat their mate and children out of a loving home. There will be more valuable insights into sexless marriages, mental adultery, sexual addiction, adultery, and homosexual/straight marriages as this series continues.
Permission to Reproduce Part 2: Type 3: The Hardcore Career Sexless Marriage
Part 2: Type 3: The Hardcore Career Sexless Marriage by Patsy Rae Dawson. Copyright © 2016 Patsy Rae Dawson LLC. All rights reserved.
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