MemeMachineGo!

Pocahontas is a fan of Salon’s advice column, Since You Asked. She told me about the disturbing situation in this question:

Recently, I began taking an antidepressant (Celexa). Like apparently many on this drug and others like it, my sex drive sank to near zero shortly after I started taking it. There’s plenty of advice online for dealing with the impact that this can have on a marriage (it’s certainly having an impact on mine), but nothing about my specific problem: I like not having a sex drive.

You see, since my wife and I married, we’ve had plenty of conflict about the lack of sex in our relationship. I’ve always had a very strong libido, and my wife (especially during pregnancy) never seemed to care much about sex (this wasn’t at all true when we were dating). We didn’t have sex on our wedding night, or during most of our honeymoon, and quite frankly during most of our marriage so far. When we do have sex, the only time she seems to be enthusiastic is when she is getting something from me (be it children when we were trying to have them, or when I’ve caved in an argument). If we have an argument, and I stand my ground or even simply try to compromise, the sex can end for days or even weeks, and she knows I’ll get lonely eventually and make whatever concessions I need to so that she’ll start being affectionate and sexual with me again.

Now that I’m on Celexa, though, I can’t believe how free I feel. Her threats of withholding that she lobs when we’re in the midst of an argument don’t faze me now that I have no desire. I’m also starting to realize how shallow our relationship is; while I was lost in depression, sex was one of the only things that could lift me out of the depths; she knew this and would hold back if I didn’t give her her way. That exchange seems to have formed the basis for more of our relationship than I would care to think. Now that the depression is gone and I don’t have a drive to have sex, I’m finally able to hold my ground during an argument without fearing the emotional isolation that results.

My wife has been bugging me to ask my doctor for a different drug, one that has less of an effect on my libido (this despite the fact that we were rarely having sex before Celexa, by her choice).

I don’t really have any comment, other than that’s a damn sad story.