Been doing it my whole marriage! It’s a necessary sacrifice.
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
I havent had much of a sex drive since having kids (now teenagers), starting antidepressants which for me have been literally life saving, and becoming perimenopausal, and fortunately my husbands sex drive has also reduced a lot compared to when we were younger and he used to pressure me a lot. Our relationship has been very difficult, with a lot of really shitty behaviour on his part which I have put up with previously because he behaves the same way as my parents and family members and I didn’t know any different when I was younger… . I have been sorting myself and my finances out so that when the kids are older I can leave if I want to which he is completely oblivious to. I definitely use having sex strategically to improve his moods and have done for a number of years, which fortunately is usually actually a good experience for both of us, but I also started to just stop when it’s not good for me too and from doing that he definitely makes more effort to make sure we are both satisfied on the rare occasions that it does happen. Your writing has been so helpful to me to recognise what a healthy relationship should be and also that I am deserving of a peaceful, fulfilling life and respectful relationships. Thank you Zawn.
Back in the day (the 1990s) at what I knew was the end of my (at that time) 18 year marriage, but before he suspected I felt that way, I did a successful version of quiet quitting and using sex carefully, and paying attention to his sexual cues.
He had cheated twice before and after pointless (patriarchal) marriage counseling, I got an agreement: no more cheating or I leave the marriage. He swore he adored me and would never cheat again etc. He also never thought I would ever leave. So I quietly and without any fanfare finished an advanced degree that I needed for good earning power, just acted to him like it was a necessary boring chore, and very gradually set up my own finances without his knowledge, keeping the kids and house going while working and going to school, avoiding all triggers to upset him, and definitely having lots of sex with him to throw him off the trail. Here is where the fake orgasm can help you: he was so proud of himself it kept him looking in the mirror instead of at my quiet preparations to leave.
I also had noticed that when he was cheating there was a drop off in his demands for sex. During the final phase of the 22 year marriage I noticed this and realized it was my freedom card. Now this was way back in the day in a state that still had fault laws on the books—-to get any kind of decent settlement I would need to prove fault. So I went to a local shopping center and parked there, walked a few blocks to my lawyer to meet with an investigator who would help me. Then went back to the shopping center and bought a few things as cover for what I had actually been doing that day. Things for me that I knew would
Mildly irritate him, so we could have “make up sec” when I apologized and promised to return them. Give the man the illusion of control when you need to. Investigator helped me get enough proof and so one day when he was at work and kids were at school I had him served with papers. Once I knew he was served I called a locksmith and changed the locks, put suitcases with a lot of his clothes and toiletries etc in them—-anything I thought he might use as a reason to try to come back to the house—and put it all on the front porch.
There were lots of other tricks. Keeping the sex going kept him unaware so that was very important. It took almost 5 years from the moment I decided to get the h out, until the final divorce decree. Hard to stay steady so long but SO a WORTH IT. I got my life back! Nothing is more precious. Good luck to all women who are stuck. Be smart, be cagey, plan well, and get your lives back!
Well it did take a toll, effectively living a double emotional life for so long; but it was the only way I could get out and still be able to support my kids. Also don’t leave any tracks—-papers, lists, plans, money, lawyer’s name, all has to be super secret. I kept my stuff in a locked drawer at work.
I’m sure it did! And you also skilfully protected yourself and the kids. It’s like a war zone - mistakes are costly.
After trying to do things ‘softly and the right way’ following misguided advice from my lawyer, realising that ex will play dirty once I served him and his mask fell off, I see that longer quiet quitting would have given me more safety to plan, learn and prepare.
I’ve been telling a few ladies who are contemplating leaving toxic marriages to do just that. Basics of digital security too.
My main advice is to make sure that pregnancy is 100% off the table, however that works for you.
Saying "no" to sex made my life worse. But for me, sex was tied too tightly to pregnancy, and I refuse to have any more kids with this man. So I gave him a permanent "no".
He did get a vasectomy, 9 months later, but it's been a year and I still haven't seen the medical tests to prove that it worked, so the permanent "no" is in full effect.
I'm not very good at pretending to like someone I actually hate, anyway.
I have had plenty of obligatory sex, but at some point I realized that if I don’t listen to my gut, my intuition, what I truly feel deep inside, I suffer greatly. Not only emotionally, but physically too. My last (toxic, misogynistic) relationship would have continued indefinitely if I had been willing to continue to have sex, for whatever reason, because that’s all he wanted from me. But my physical, emotional and spiritual health were deteriorating. As hard as it is, and there are so many valid reasons that leaving can be very difficult, ultimately women pay a big price for staying too long in these toxic relationships. I am so appreciative of Zawn and other women who are speaking out about the damage the patriarchal culture does to women.
I was still having occasional sex with my husband even after I was pretty sure the divorce was inevitable, because I don't actually hate him and sometimes I'd feel like "sure, an orgasm assisted by a familiar warm body would be nice, why not." But a few months ago he started having some trouble getting an erection sometimes--not sure if it's an antidepressant side effect, or just the fact that he's completely sedentary and does nothing to take care of his health--and he seemingly just gave up immediately and added sex to the lengthy and ever-growing list of things he just doesn't do anymore. After he declined my last couple offers I decided to wait and see if he offers, but he hasn't.
I recommend this quiet quitting VERY highly. I had been in a marriage for almost 13 years that was totally imbalanced around the care of our 2 children and our home, my husband deemed my need for emotional connection as "some vague idea she came up" with and he consistently diminished my labour and contributions for our family. I did endless courses on marriage communication, went to doctors about my diminished libido and tried EVERY damned thing because I believed, mistakenly, that me not getting my needs met was just me being selfish.
It finally dawned on me that I could simply move into our guest room, which I had long used as an office, for a perspective break and that is what I did. I had slept in there while I had a bad cold so as not to pass it on to my then-husband and the lightbulb went on over my head. Our 2 kids were pre-teen and I told them it was because of their dad's loud snoring, which had long been an issue.
Just before this, my then-husband and I, at my request, had both gone through a "conscious uncoupling" coaching process with separate coaches, as I was still in the optimistic, "We can be different and divorce and do this as friends!" stage of my journey (sigh). I do not recommend this kind of effort, as it did absolutely NOTHING to inform his actions in this stage of our relationship and was very frustrating for me that his most significant insight from the experience was that he had been "too young" when he decided to have children with me. He had been in his mid-30's.
However, that process DID help me. The very obvious (in retrospect) insight I came to was that I didn't want to and DIDN'T HAVE TO have sex with someone who was not willing to be emotionally connected to me or value my contributions. I created that as a boundary. I would be happy to have sex if there were efforts made toward emotional connection and valuing of me as a person and if there was not an effort to address these issues, no sex. We never had sex again after that, which was pretty amazing to me. My husband at the time was SO insistent that my needs for emotional connection and being valued were nonsense that he cut off the opportunity to have sex with me. Now THAT is commitment to an idea!
That time in the guest room was SO important and valuable. I began to realize (and sadly, it took until my 50s to see this) that my needs were as important as my husband's and our children's and that my marriage was over. I prepared financially, I got legal advice and I started seeking a full-time job, which I secured just as we had the discussion around him moving out.
The most valuable part of that quiet quitting time is that I stuck to my boundary around the sex issue. It was the lack of that "obligatory sex" that finally motivated my husband to move forward with the separation that I had requested from 2018 onward. Actually, at first he just demanded an "open relationship" - in a text, with no context and not even signed by him in any way, which was initially infuriating and now is hilarious to me looking back. I then was able to communicate with him that I respected the work that he had done to "decide to move forward", that I would never in a million years be open to an open relationship and that he could now move out and leap into this new stage of his life.
Because I framed it that way, that it was HIS idea (which was all with the help of an amazing woman coach I worked with at the time), he saw moving out as HIS amazing growth insight (which I guess it could be considered...) and HIS idea. He moved out within weeks. This was after him telling me when I first asked for a divorce (4 long years before) that he would never leave the house, I would have to go, that I would get the bare minimum financially and that I was a horrible person for not "accepting what I got" AND that I would be selfishly ruining our kids' lives.
I am sharing a lot here because I SO wish that I had found you and your writing, Zawn, and had read these stories of other women doing this YEARS before when I started to want to leave my marriage. I stayed stuck for years because I was a) TERRIFIED of hurting my children and was b ) very afraid of being totally screwed financially, as I had set aside my very successful career to be the primary parent for our kids (who were early teens when we finally started living apart).
Please know YOUR KIDS WILL BE FINE. I believed everything I read about divorce and childhood trauma and the rest and did not ever think of how negative it was for my kids to see their mother as the person that did everything for the family and was consistently disrespected. I now tell my teens that I am the first woman in my family line who decided that her happiness and her wants and dreams mattered and I am really proud of that.
And in terms of finances, by getting my job when I did and being clear that I wanted independence and with the guidance of an excellent woman lawyer, I got a very good agreement in place and my ex-husband was much more conciliatory because again, he felt it was HIS choice and his decision.
Finally, to end this long story, if you CAN do the quiet quitting and get to a place in which you can frame the separation as HIS idea and is something you can support for HIS growth, then it is a LOT easier. It may feel somewhat insincere but it helps decrease conflict and that is gold. As much as I didn't believe it, when I took that time to pause and stop clamouring for us to "work on our relationship" or to "make a decision on how to move forward" and just lived my life on my terms and did my own planning, (and had no sex with him - that was a biggie), that is when he got to a place of being willing to move forward and out in a decently cooperative way.
I know my situation is not like yours and I was very fortunate overall but what IS universal is that each of us deserves to be in a loving relationship in which we are cherished and appreciated and we deserve to LEAVE a marriage where this is not so. I promise, it is SO much better on this side.
Thank you for sharing! It’s very important what you’re saying and I would love to learn more about the coaching you went through and how to steer the separation in a decent direction. Unfortunately the ‘blame and punish’ seems to be default for men whose egos get bruised by wife making the decision to leave.
Love this! People always flip the fuck out at the slightest suggestion of sex being transactional. I've read so many comment sections full of people on either side bemoaning how very totally terrible it is to "treat sex as transactional."
But here's the thing, and it is a hill I will die on - It is already a transaction in a LOT of relationships, and men want to deny that because they don't want to stop getting it for "free", while women want to deny it because then they'd have to face how terribly they have been GETTING RIPPED OFF for years.
But if no longer denying, men think the deal is this: I give her what she's always dreamed of, a husband and kid(s), and in return I get all the sex I want! If she expects me to do chores etc. and be civil, then she is trying to get me to give her extra stuff, but I've already fulfilled my end of this transaction! She's the one who isn't fulfilling her end if she denies me the sex I've already paid for!
And that man's wife is thinking: wtf? Does the work I do have no value? These chores, this parenting, this civility from me counts for nothing? That would already be a really shitty deal - He "pays" his part of the transaction with marrying me and impregnating me, and I "pay" my part with all the chores and parenting duties? That alone is a rip-off, but on top of it he expects me to pay with SEX forever???!! Oh hell no.
And if her husband heard her thinking that, he'd think: The chores and parenting aren't payment from *you* to me - those were what I gave you in exchange for the sex! That domestic stuff is what women dream of! I made your dreams come true by giving you all these chores to do and kids to raise! You can't pay me with the very things that I was paying you with! My payment is SEX!
Even in my quite quitting phase of my relationship with my ex, I still had sex with him sometimes, because I fetl horny and I wanted it (and wanted to be faithful as well). Ultimately the intervals were bigger and bigger until I stopped that as well. The sex was bad, he didnt care about my pleasure and he didnt care about me, I felt empty. After our break up, I decided to try to have some one night stands. It was quite a terrible realisation that in every single of these interactions with random strangers I felt more respected and more cared for than at the end of the relationship with my ex of 9 years who supposedly loved me.
This is brilliant. Thank you, Zawn!
Been doing it my whole marriage! It’s a necessary sacrifice.
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
Sun Tsu, Art of War (notes from enemy playbook)
I havent had much of a sex drive since having kids (now teenagers), starting antidepressants which for me have been literally life saving, and becoming perimenopausal, and fortunately my husbands sex drive has also reduced a lot compared to when we were younger and he used to pressure me a lot. Our relationship has been very difficult, with a lot of really shitty behaviour on his part which I have put up with previously because he behaves the same way as my parents and family members and I didn’t know any different when I was younger… . I have been sorting myself and my finances out so that when the kids are older I can leave if I want to which he is completely oblivious to. I definitely use having sex strategically to improve his moods and have done for a number of years, which fortunately is usually actually a good experience for both of us, but I also started to just stop when it’s not good for me too and from doing that he definitely makes more effort to make sure we are both satisfied on the rare occasions that it does happen. Your writing has been so helpful to me to recognise what a healthy relationship should be and also that I am deserving of a peaceful, fulfilling life and respectful relationships. Thank you Zawn.
I wish I had this information so many years ago
I think that SO often as well, Jenny!!
Back in the day (the 1990s) at what I knew was the end of my (at that time) 18 year marriage, but before he suspected I felt that way, I did a successful version of quiet quitting and using sex carefully, and paying attention to his sexual cues.
He had cheated twice before and after pointless (patriarchal) marriage counseling, I got an agreement: no more cheating or I leave the marriage. He swore he adored me and would never cheat again etc. He also never thought I would ever leave. So I quietly and without any fanfare finished an advanced degree that I needed for good earning power, just acted to him like it was a necessary boring chore, and very gradually set up my own finances without his knowledge, keeping the kids and house going while working and going to school, avoiding all triggers to upset him, and definitely having lots of sex with him to throw him off the trail. Here is where the fake orgasm can help you: he was so proud of himself it kept him looking in the mirror instead of at my quiet preparations to leave.
I also had noticed that when he was cheating there was a drop off in his demands for sex. During the final phase of the 22 year marriage I noticed this and realized it was my freedom card. Now this was way back in the day in a state that still had fault laws on the books—-to get any kind of decent settlement I would need to prove fault. So I went to a local shopping center and parked there, walked a few blocks to my lawyer to meet with an investigator who would help me. Then went back to the shopping center and bought a few things as cover for what I had actually been doing that day. Things for me that I knew would
Mildly irritate him, so we could have “make up sec” when I apologized and promised to return them. Give the man the illusion of control when you need to. Investigator helped me get enough proof and so one day when he was at work and kids were at school I had him served with papers. Once I knew he was served I called a locksmith and changed the locks, put suitcases with a lot of his clothes and toiletries etc in them—-anything I thought he might use as a reason to try to come back to the house—and put it all on the front porch.
There were lots of other tricks. Keeping the sex going kept him unaware so that was very important. It took almost 5 years from the moment I decided to get the h out, until the final divorce decree. Hard to stay steady so long but SO a WORTH IT. I got my life back! Nothing is more precious. Good luck to all women who are stuck. Be smart, be cagey, plan well, and get your lives back!
Wow, so clever. I wish I’d met you and heard this story few years back.
Well it did take a toll, effectively living a double emotional life for so long; but it was the only way I could get out and still be able to support my kids. Also don’t leave any tracks—-papers, lists, plans, money, lawyer’s name, all has to be super secret. I kept my stuff in a locked drawer at work.
I’m sure it did! And you also skilfully protected yourself and the kids. It’s like a war zone - mistakes are costly.
After trying to do things ‘softly and the right way’ following misguided advice from my lawyer, realising that ex will play dirty once I served him and his mask fell off, I see that longer quiet quitting would have given me more safety to plan, learn and prepare.
I’ve been telling a few ladies who are contemplating leaving toxic marriages to do just that. Basics of digital security too.
Yes—digital security v v important now in a way it wasn’t back in my day. Good luck!
My main advice is to make sure that pregnancy is 100% off the table, however that works for you.
Saying "no" to sex made my life worse. But for me, sex was tied too tightly to pregnancy, and I refuse to have any more kids with this man. So I gave him a permanent "no".
He did get a vasectomy, 9 months later, but it's been a year and I still haven't seen the medical tests to prove that it worked, so the permanent "no" is in full effect.
I'm not very good at pretending to like someone I actually hate, anyway.
I have had plenty of obligatory sex, but at some point I realized that if I don’t listen to my gut, my intuition, what I truly feel deep inside, I suffer greatly. Not only emotionally, but physically too. My last (toxic, misogynistic) relationship would have continued indefinitely if I had been willing to continue to have sex, for whatever reason, because that’s all he wanted from me. But my physical, emotional and spiritual health were deteriorating. As hard as it is, and there are so many valid reasons that leaving can be very difficult, ultimately women pay a big price for staying too long in these toxic relationships. I am so appreciative of Zawn and other women who are speaking out about the damage the patriarchal culture does to women.
I was still having occasional sex with my husband even after I was pretty sure the divorce was inevitable, because I don't actually hate him and sometimes I'd feel like "sure, an orgasm assisted by a familiar warm body would be nice, why not." But a few months ago he started having some trouble getting an erection sometimes--not sure if it's an antidepressant side effect, or just the fact that he's completely sedentary and does nothing to take care of his health--and he seemingly just gave up immediately and added sex to the lengthy and ever-growing list of things he just doesn't do anymore. After he declined my last couple offers I decided to wait and see if he offers, but he hasn't.
I recommend this quiet quitting VERY highly. I had been in a marriage for almost 13 years that was totally imbalanced around the care of our 2 children and our home, my husband deemed my need for emotional connection as "some vague idea she came up" with and he consistently diminished my labour and contributions for our family. I did endless courses on marriage communication, went to doctors about my diminished libido and tried EVERY damned thing because I believed, mistakenly, that me not getting my needs met was just me being selfish.
It finally dawned on me that I could simply move into our guest room, which I had long used as an office, for a perspective break and that is what I did. I had slept in there while I had a bad cold so as not to pass it on to my then-husband and the lightbulb went on over my head. Our 2 kids were pre-teen and I told them it was because of their dad's loud snoring, which had long been an issue.
Just before this, my then-husband and I, at my request, had both gone through a "conscious uncoupling" coaching process with separate coaches, as I was still in the optimistic, "We can be different and divorce and do this as friends!" stage of my journey (sigh). I do not recommend this kind of effort, as it did absolutely NOTHING to inform his actions in this stage of our relationship and was very frustrating for me that his most significant insight from the experience was that he had been "too young" when he decided to have children with me. He had been in his mid-30's.
However, that process DID help me. The very obvious (in retrospect) insight I came to was that I didn't want to and DIDN'T HAVE TO have sex with someone who was not willing to be emotionally connected to me or value my contributions. I created that as a boundary. I would be happy to have sex if there were efforts made toward emotional connection and valuing of me as a person and if there was not an effort to address these issues, no sex. We never had sex again after that, which was pretty amazing to me. My husband at the time was SO insistent that my needs for emotional connection and being valued were nonsense that he cut off the opportunity to have sex with me. Now THAT is commitment to an idea!
That time in the guest room was SO important and valuable. I began to realize (and sadly, it took until my 50s to see this) that my needs were as important as my husband's and our children's and that my marriage was over. I prepared financially, I got legal advice and I started seeking a full-time job, which I secured just as we had the discussion around him moving out.
The most valuable part of that quiet quitting time is that I stuck to my boundary around the sex issue. It was the lack of that "obligatory sex" that finally motivated my husband to move forward with the separation that I had requested from 2018 onward. Actually, at first he just demanded an "open relationship" - in a text, with no context and not even signed by him in any way, which was initially infuriating and now is hilarious to me looking back. I then was able to communicate with him that I respected the work that he had done to "decide to move forward", that I would never in a million years be open to an open relationship and that he could now move out and leap into this new stage of his life.
Because I framed it that way, that it was HIS idea (which was all with the help of an amazing woman coach I worked with at the time), he saw moving out as HIS amazing growth insight (which I guess it could be considered...) and HIS idea. He moved out within weeks. This was after him telling me when I first asked for a divorce (4 long years before) that he would never leave the house, I would have to go, that I would get the bare minimum financially and that I was a horrible person for not "accepting what I got" AND that I would be selfishly ruining our kids' lives.
I am sharing a lot here because I SO wish that I had found you and your writing, Zawn, and had read these stories of other women doing this YEARS before when I started to want to leave my marriage. I stayed stuck for years because I was a) TERRIFIED of hurting my children and was b ) very afraid of being totally screwed financially, as I had set aside my very successful career to be the primary parent for our kids (who were early teens when we finally started living apart).
Please know YOUR KIDS WILL BE FINE. I believed everything I read about divorce and childhood trauma and the rest and did not ever think of how negative it was for my kids to see their mother as the person that did everything for the family and was consistently disrespected. I now tell my teens that I am the first woman in my family line who decided that her happiness and her wants and dreams mattered and I am really proud of that.
And in terms of finances, by getting my job when I did and being clear that I wanted independence and with the guidance of an excellent woman lawyer, I got a very good agreement in place and my ex-husband was much more conciliatory because again, he felt it was HIS choice and his decision.
Finally, to end this long story, if you CAN do the quiet quitting and get to a place in which you can frame the separation as HIS idea and is something you can support for HIS growth, then it is a LOT easier. It may feel somewhat insincere but it helps decrease conflict and that is gold. As much as I didn't believe it, when I took that time to pause and stop clamouring for us to "work on our relationship" or to "make a decision on how to move forward" and just lived my life on my terms and did my own planning, (and had no sex with him - that was a biggie), that is when he got to a place of being willing to move forward and out in a decently cooperative way.
I know my situation is not like yours and I was very fortunate overall but what IS universal is that each of us deserves to be in a loving relationship in which we are cherished and appreciated and we deserve to LEAVE a marriage where this is not so. I promise, it is SO much better on this side.
Thank you for sharing! It’s very important what you’re saying and I would love to learn more about the coaching you went through and how to steer the separation in a decent direction. Unfortunately the ‘blame and punish’ seems to be default for men whose egos get bruised by wife making the decision to leave.
This is such a good share…thank you. Wish it had gone this well for me.
I so appreciate you sharing your story! 💜
LM, this is so smart and so wise. Great share and thank you.
Love this! People always flip the fuck out at the slightest suggestion of sex being transactional. I've read so many comment sections full of people on either side bemoaning how very totally terrible it is to "treat sex as transactional."
But here's the thing, and it is a hill I will die on - It is already a transaction in a LOT of relationships, and men want to deny that because they don't want to stop getting it for "free", while women want to deny it because then they'd have to face how terribly they have been GETTING RIPPED OFF for years.
But if no longer denying, men think the deal is this: I give her what she's always dreamed of, a husband and kid(s), and in return I get all the sex I want! If she expects me to do chores etc. and be civil, then she is trying to get me to give her extra stuff, but I've already fulfilled my end of this transaction! She's the one who isn't fulfilling her end if she denies me the sex I've already paid for!
And that man's wife is thinking: wtf? Does the work I do have no value? These chores, this parenting, this civility from me counts for nothing? That would already be a really shitty deal - He "pays" his part of the transaction with marrying me and impregnating me, and I "pay" my part with all the chores and parenting duties? That alone is a rip-off, but on top of it he expects me to pay with SEX forever???!! Oh hell no.
And if her husband heard her thinking that, he'd think: The chores and parenting aren't payment from *you* to me - those were what I gave you in exchange for the sex! That domestic stuff is what women dream of! I made your dreams come true by giving you all these chores to do and kids to raise! You can't pay me with the very things that I was paying you with! My payment is SEX!
That reminded me of a famous male French psychologist from the 1950s who said that women find housework "deeply sexual". 😂😂😂
Even in my quite quitting phase of my relationship with my ex, I still had sex with him sometimes, because I fetl horny and I wanted it (and wanted to be faithful as well). Ultimately the intervals were bigger and bigger until I stopped that as well. The sex was bad, he didnt care about my pleasure and he didnt care about me, I felt empty. After our break up, I decided to try to have some one night stands. It was quite a terrible realisation that in every single of these interactions with random strangers I felt more respected and more cared for than at the end of the relationship with my ex of 9 years who supposedly loved me.