Sexual intimacy in marriage?

It’s been reported that a woman in Dubai sued her husband for divorce because he wasn’t satisfying her sexually.

She told the judge that she desired sex at least twice or three times a day, and that her husband was only prepared to perform three to four times a week, which was just not enough for her.

Garry Hertzberg, practising attorney at Dewey Hertzberg Levy Inc and presenter of the Laws of Life with Garry Hertzberg on Cliffcentral.com writes:

In another case, also in Dubai, a woman sued her husband for US$12 million after he did not have sex with her for four months after the wedding, she then discovered that he suffered from erectile dysfunction. She went on to sue him for her loss of income and for damages for mental anguish.

Maybe it’s just the weather in Dubai, but then again, evidence is coming to light that women everywhere want sex just as much and as frequently as men do.

The laws in Dubai are very different to those in South Africa, but on this matter, there are some similarities. In particular, our law allows for the annulment of a marriage where the man is impotent from the outset. Annulment of a marriage means that for all intents and purposes, the marriage never existed. This would be the situation in the second Dubai divorce.

A lack of intimacy can definitely be viewed as evidence of a breakdown of a marriage. Intimacy is an important part of marriage, even the highest court in our land, the Constitutional Court has stated the following, ‘Entering into and sustaining a marriage is a matter of intense private significance to the parties to that marriage for they make a promise to one another to establish and maintain an intimate relationship for the rest of their lives’.

Yet intimacy should not be an obligation, but a pleasure for both. Unreasonable sexual demands can make sex a chore, and then all intimacy falls away, anyway.