Who causes infidelity? Is it the husband, the wife, the children or maybe the family dog? How could a dog cause infidelity, you ask? The husband or wife could spend so much time with the dog that the mate would be crowded out. There is another possibility: Love Chemicals.

When man meets woman and they feel especially drawn to one another, the mating hormones called “love chemicals” flood the bloodstreams of both. For six months these hormones cause each to feel loved, appreciated, acknowledged, listened to and heard, intimacy is built, words are seldom needed to communicate, childhood traumas are seldom remembered and the sex is hot to hotter. For most couples, all they want to do is have sex all the time. Often they call in sick or miss work altogether for the pleasure of sex in all its many forms. All these feeling are actually illusions as they discover after six months when the chemicals subside and the feelings evaporate.

Sexual intimacy is far more than just rolling in the hay, so to speak, and having multiple orgasms. The joy of sex is the freedom to be naked together, vulnerable, enjoying the feel and taste of skin and tissues and talking about the most intimate subjects during recovery from the exhaustion of intercourse. When the love or mating chemicals begin losing their effects after six months, the desire and practice of getting naked, feeling vulnerable and tasting skin an tissues subside also. Too often women discover that they can put off the man’s insistence of sex by excuses of having a period or even being too tired. She therefore stops initiating sex, leaving him to do the chore. He attempts it several times, is too uncomfortable with the rejection and stops initiating as well. Sex stops. More important, the joy of touching and tasting and confessing deeper feelings after intercourse stops and therein lies the big problem. Sex is necessary for a good, healthy, loving and intimate union or marriage. It is as important as air or food.

Marriage is a partnership and as partners both must work to maintain and provide “conjugal rights” to the other on a regular basis of some kind. What happens when the two bodies are no longer driven by powerful body hormones to have sexual intimacy? I’ve already mentioned that the woman finds comfort is using excuses for being unwilling to push through her own resistence to working for conjugal rights. Along with new found excuses come her feminine drive toward sex. She is attracted more psychologically than sexually to intercourse. She wants sweet words, romantic gestures such as cards or flowers. When she demands those before allowing her husband to have sex with her, the crisis begins. The man expresses love best through sexual intercourse and also feels most loved that way. Maybe a kiss or two, but mounting for sex is his main goal. Frustrate that by demands of sweet words is big trouble. Or perhaps, she is willing but he decides to punish her for something like treating him with self-perceived disrespect and therefore denies her conjugal rights. Neither has the right to deny the other conjugal rights. Both have the responsibility to do whatever is necessary to provide conjugal rights on a regular basis. When one or both deny those rights, it is time to bring in a professional licensed counselor such as a therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist to get that marriage back on track. Ninety-five percent of couples refuse professional assistance and so the problems of no conjugal rights destroy countless marriages.

The question remains: who causes infidelity? Is it the woman who insists on sweet words as a prelude to sex who denies sex and therefore he finds it elsewhere? Even masturbastion is infidelity in such a case or starting a sexless relationship online. Is it the man who causes infidelity? He denies his wife’s conjugal rights by masturbation, chatting or texting another woman or ignoring her altogether. Marriage is regular conjugal rights granted to both husband and wife by one another. Whoever does not work persistently to provide those conjugal rights is the one who causes infidelity. Sex is a physical need like air or water, not a personal option.

May I add a conversation I had one night with a wife of a man, both are now dead. She said, “I was mad as hell with him one night when he demanded his conjugal rights. So he was pumping away on my body and I hated his guts, but I was indeed granting him his conjugal rights. We were demonstrating marriage to one another. “