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Sexless Marriage will Affect Your Mental Health
By Adeoye Oyewole (adeoyewole2000@yahoo.com)
For most married couples, the bedroom is a place of privacy and sexual intimacy. But many who have been married for a while know that this is often not the case.
Sometimes and for a long period, the bedroom can become a lonely place. To be clear, a sexless marriage is a marital union in which little or no sexual activity occurs between both spouses. A Newsweek magazine survey found that 15 to 20 per cent of couples are in a sexless union.
Studies have even showed that about 10 per cent of couples below the age of 50 have not had sex in a year. The definition is often broadened to include those where sexual intimacy occurs less than 10 times per year.
In addition, less than 20 per cent of them report having sex a few times per year, or even monthly, under the age 40. This definition takes into consideration the fact that partners may have varying sexual drives, but not as bad as having sex only 10 times in a year.
It is difficult to obtain statistics about couples in Nigeria, but sexless marriages may be common among our modern, educated couples. Our religious and socio-cultural values that accommodate polygamy and forbid divorce may mask research findings and inadvertently encourage marriages, even if it is sexless.
If you are in this category, there is no shame. What you need is help before it begins to affect your mental health.
The major causes of sexless marriages are psychological, but a few are understandably due to some biological and clinical situations that could be handled medically, such as vulvae pain syndromes, fragile vagina tissues from low levels of oestrogen, prostate difficulties in men, post-heart attack or stroke states, chronic arthritis, chronic low back pain, side effects of medications and diabetic complications.
There are also clinical psychological states such as depressive illness, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypoactive sexual drive, gender identity problems or body image difficulties. However, more than 90 per cent of the causes of sexless marriages are due to issues in the psychodynamics of the marital relationship.
A partner may have feelings hurt repeatedly, get turned down too many times, get disrespected and erect a wall that does not allow issues to be resolved promptly. These unresolved conflicts can generate a state of permanent hostility that blocks sexual expression.
The partner, who behaves in a passive-aggressive manner, may block sexual intercourse as punishment or protection from hurt inflicted by the mate. The perceived rejection may lead to loss of interest in sexual communication, which may be complicated by loneliness, anger and lowering of self-esteem in the spouse who feels that basic sexual human needs are deliberately frustrated by the rejecting partner.
Other causes of this resentment may be due to perceived imbalance of duties and responsibilities, including moral, religious and financial issues. This may get complicated when extra-marital affairs set in, which may lead to reduced sexual interest in the estranged spouse and, if the affair is discovered, the innocent spouse may cease to want to be intimate with the offending spouse.
This may manifest as restricted, formal and coarse communication as partners treat each other with contempt. Couples in this situation are definitely in mental distress or already mentally ill, hence they require professional help.
Those deeper feelings of resentment must be uncovered and dealt with as they practise active listening and try to communicate creatively in the process of discovery. You may think you have a right to be resentful of the way you have been treated, and while it might seem natural, resentment creeps into everything you do.
Every time you talk to your spouse, every action you take can be so tainted with this resentment that it becomes a psychological burden. The path to recovery is that you make a conscious effort to do everything for the benefit of both of you, and not just yourself. You must be honest and, without hatred or fear or anger, confront the problem of sexual intimacy together.
The bedroom should be a peaceful and relaxing place by keeping it free of clutter. To bring the spark back, you can go on dates, do fun things together, especially things that ignite mutual passion and excitement.
There is a need for the services of a professional marriage counselor, who will help couples to navigate and elicit hidden resentments and resolve. Such a counsellor will also help to identity faculty communication styles that may have shut down sexual intimacy and suggest new patterns and also appropriately refer those with mental health issues.
A successful marriage requires commitment, effort, compromise and forgiveness. Sexless marriage can impair wholesome development of children in the home because of discordance in communication. In addition, less than 20 per cent of them report having sex a few times per year, or even monthly, under the age 40.
The facility of education and financial empowerment of our modern wives may serve as templates for more conflicts leading to ego-stalemates that may injure sexual intimacy. Our relatively lower rates of divorce, even among our educated couples, compared with the western world, may find compensation in sexless marriages as a manifestation of emotional divorce.
The Senate has granted approval to the ₦1.77 trillion ($2.2b) loan request of President Bola Tinubu after a voice vote in favor of the request.
The Senate presided by Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, approved the loan after the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts chaired by Senator Wammako Magatarkada (APC, Sokoto North) presented the report of the committee.
The request which was submitted by the President on Tuesday is part of a fresh external borrowing plan to partially finance the N9.7 trillion budget deficit for the 2024 fiscal year.
Tinubu had on Tuesday written to the National Assembly, seeking approval of a fresh N1.767 trillion, the equivalent of $2.209 billion as a new external borrowing plan in the 2024 Appropriation Act.
The fresh loan is expected to stretch the amount spent on debt servicing by the Federal Government. The Central Bank of Nigeria recently said that it cost the Federal Government $3.58 billion to service foreign debt in the first nine months of 2024.
The CBN report on international payment statistics showed that the amount represents a 39.77 per cent increase from the $2.56bn spent during the same period in 2023.
According to the report, while the highest monthly debt servicing payment in 2024 occurred in May, amounting to $854.37m, the highest monthly expenditure in 2023 was $641.70m, recorded in July.
The trend in foreign debt servicing by the CBN highlights the rising cost of debt obligations by Nigeria.
Further breakdown of international debt figures showed that in January 2024, debt servicing costs surged by 398.89 per cent, rising to $560.52m from $112.35m in January 2023. February, however, saw a slight decline of 1.84 per cent, with payments reducing from $288.54m in 2023 to $283.22m in 2024.
March recorded a 31.04 per cent drop in payments, falling to $276.17m from $400.47m in the same period last year. April saw a significant rise of 131.77 per cent, with $215.20m paid in 2024 compared to $92.85m in 2023.
The highest debt servicing payment occurred in May 2024, when $854.37m was spent, reflecting a 286.52 per cent increase compared to $221.05m in May 2023. June, on the other hand, saw a 6.51 per cent decline, with $50.82m paid in 2024, down from $54.36m in 2023.
July 2024 recorded a 15.48 per cent reduction, with payments dropping to $542.50m from $641.70m in July 2023. In August, there was another decline of 9.69 per cent, as $279.95m was paid compared to $309.96m in 2023. However, September 2024 saw a 17.49 per cent increase, with payments rising to $515.81m from $439.06m in the same month last year.
Given rising exchange rates, the data raises concerns about the growing pressure of Nigeria’s foreign debt obligations.
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Self acclaimed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Simon Ekpa, has been arrested by law enforcement in Finland.
The BBC reports that Ekpa was subsequently sent to prison by the district court of Päijät-Häme for “spreading terrorist propaganda on social media”.
Ekpa was said to have committed the crime in 2021 in Lahti municipality.
The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) also arrested four other men over alleged terrorist offences.
A citizen of Finland and Nigeria, Ekpa has described himself as leader of the separatist IPOB group since Nnamdi Kanu’s incarceration.
Finnish police say Ekpa’s activities and social media rhetoric may have fanned the flames of violence in the south-east of Nigeria.
“He carries out these activities from his social media channels, for example,” said Otto Hiltunen, detective chief inspector of the NBI.
In February 2023, Ekpa was arrested by police at his residence in Lahti but was released after hours of questioning.
Using his social media channels, Ekpa had directed Igbos not to participate in Nigeria’s 2023 general election.
In September 2021, the Biafra agitator and secessionist denounced Nigeria and vowed to return the medal he won for the country at the 2003 African Junior Athletics Championships.
The Court of Appeal has sacked Musiliu Akinsanya aka MC Oluomo as the National President of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).
In a ruling that upheld the earlier judgment of the National Industrial Court, the appellate court sacked MC Oluomo and reaffirmed Tajudeen Baruwa as the legitimate leader of the union.
Baruwa had assumed office after a properly conducted election held at the union’s headquarters in Abuja.
The three-member panel of the Appeal Court dismissed the appeal filed by MC Oluomo’s faction, declaring it devoid of merit.
In addition, the court imposed a fine of N100,000 on the appellants, further solidifying Baruwa’s leadership position.
Reports quoting court documents said to have been released on Friday detailed the ruling, which effectively countered any attempts to displace Baruwa from his role as the NURTW president.
The judgment read: “This is an appeal against the judgment/decision of the National Industrial Court Sitting in Abuja, in Suit No. NICN/ABJ/263/2023, delivered on the 11th March, 2024, by Justice O. O. Oyewumi.
“Upon reading the Record of Appeal compiled and transmitted before this court, together with the respective briefs of argument, and after hearing the counsels for the appellants and respondents, it is hereby ordered that:
“This Appeal is devoid of merit, and the same is hereby dismissed.”
The ruling reinforces the legitimacy of Baruwa’s presidency, concluding the legal dispute over the union’s leadership.
Meanwhile, MC Oluomo’s son Idowu Akinsanya (King West) had bragged about his feat of emerging the NURTW president, saying: “We are now in charge of Nigeria, not only Lagos,” a comment that attracted public opprobrium.
MC Oluomo, a diehard supporter of President Bola Tinubu and a prominent figure in Lagos politics, was the sole candidate in the election, which took place at the union’s zonal secretariat in Osogbo. His perceived victory was deemed to carry significant implications for the future of the NURTW and the political landscape of Nigeria.
