This is the third installment in a series for this column, answering readers’ thorniest questions about sex and love as part of a special magazine issue on relationships.
My husband of four decades runs his own business. When I retired three years ago, I discovered significant billing issues behind our sporadic ‘‘cash-flow problems,’’ and set to work organizing his accounting and creating invoices. While he submitted many invoices, he refused to bill his largest customer — one whom I overheard joking that my husband must be rich because he never receives bills from him.
When my husband wouldn’t submit these invoices, I warned him I would deliver them myself. I did, but he called the company the next day and told them not to pay. That was two years ago, and the customer still owes over $80,000 for work done in 2020.
I’ve tried explaining how betrayed I feel discovering he was running his business with our household funds, and I’ve suggested both accounting help and personal counseling. Last year, at wit’s end, I cut off sexual relations with him until he delivered the 2020 invoices, thinking that would motivate him. We’re still at an impasse a year later. My husband says I’m being cruel (and I would like our sexual relations to resume, too), but I find it hard to believe he hasn’t taken action. Am I being unreasonable? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
A married couple is economically interconnected — when one falls into debt, the other is affected. So your husband’s business is your business. He has failed in his responsibilities to you. Now, maybe there’s something about his relationship with his indebted client you don’t know about. Is the guy a crime boss? Or is the guy (who notably hasn’t tried to pay up) such a hard-luck case that your husband feels bad for him? I can imagine all sorts of client-specific explanations for why your husband hasn’t sent him an invoice. If there’s more going on than you’ve been told, there’s a failure of candor here. Your husband would be keeping something from you. But the fact that he’s generally failed to keep current with his invoicing points to a psychological issue.
Unlike the sex strike led by Lysistrata and the women of the warring Greek states in Aristophanes’ comedy, yours clearly hasn’t brought peace. This suggests a problem not just in your husband’s ability to manage his business but in your relationship, too. Those peacemaking women of antiquity negotiated with the men during their strike; the way you describe the situation, you essentially issued an ultimatum and the conversation stopped. Making sex a quid for some quo can be, as in “Lysistrata,” a dramatic strategy, but it probably isn’t the best one. In marriage, as in much of life, it’s usually better, as St. Paul told the new Christians of Ephesus, not to let the sun go down on thy wrath.
The urgent question now is how to get your husband the psychological help he needs. Because he’s plainly reluctant to acknowledge his problems, you could take a different tack. Why not ask him to come with you to couples therapy? There you can try to get him to see how this all feels to you, and he can try to explain his own understanding of the situation. All that requires is his recognizing that his marriage is in trouble, which is surely not in doubt. Any therapist will at least give you a space for speaking about love and money and trust. Also, an invoice.
My Wife Has a Condition That Will Lead to Dementia. When Should We Stop Having Sex?
My wife was diagnosed with a rare brain disease that causes dementia and death. Though the situation is complex, my question is simple: Ethically, when should I stop having sex with her? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Your question is simple, but your situation isn’t. Morally, sex requires the consent of both parties, and at some point your wife may not be able to consent meaningfully. It isn’t inconceivable, for instance, that she could continue to initiate and take physical pleasure in sex while, for example, believing that she is having sex with someone other than you. Before her condition worsens, you might see whether you can talk with her about the issue; you might also confer with her neurologist about it. There won’t be a date certain when she can no longer appreciate what she is doing in a way that allows for genuine consent. But the time will come, and you’re the person best placed to make the call. In moments like these, ethics takes the shape of the untrumpeted decisions we make, guided by love, about what it means to honor both the person we knew and the person before us now.
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