Sex absolutely should be a mutual experience that BOTH people genuinely want to engage in and both enjoy.  So many men use the terms "vaginal intercourse" and "intimacy" interchangably, I guess because "intimacy" sounds less self-serving.  But by definition "intimacy" is a mutually shared interaction or connection with another person, sexually or otherwise.  "My wive doesn't give me sex anymore" makes sex sound like a favor, or at the very least a one-sided transaction. Like a backrub or letting your husband borrow your car.  If I don't desire sex or worse--if it hurts me--and I have sex with my husband anyway because he "needs" sex, it removes the element of intimacy and reduces the act to a one-sided favor.  At that point, we are no longer making love.  I am simply allowing him to use my body as a tool to derive physical pleasure for himself because society has conditioned me to believe that I must in order to be a good wife, and that if i dont my husband will simply abandon his marriage vows and find another body to use for physical pleasure.  

Like the author, at 40 I have small children, a 50 hour a week grueling job outside the home, and zero sex drive thanks to early perimenopause.  When i get home I am exhausted and after evening baseball and soccer games, I have no energy left.  Due to low estrogen, the desire for sex is just not there.  I agree that women don't understand the idea of sex as a need for men, but men don't understand what it is like to have zero sex drive.  Zero sex drive means zero arousal.  No engorgement. No lubrication.  No physical pleasure.  Speaking of physical pleasure, men don't understand that for many women in perimenopause and menopause, sex can HURT. For days.  It can cause vaginal tears, UTIs and bleeding.  Some women have huge babies that cause tears and prolapse that no amount of kegels can fix.   In fact for some women, damage from childbirth and vaginal laxity can leave them with almost no sexual sensation at all.  I personally have this problem.   Zero sex drive, vaginal laxity, prolapse and very little sensation down there despire 2 years of intensive pelvic floor physiotherapy.  My remaining options are to risk blood clots and cancer by taking estrogen which may help my libido but won't make sex more enjoyable and major surgery with high rates of complications and failure that might fix the prolapse for a few years but could possibly make sex even more painful or less pleasurable.

While I deeply appreciate that you shared this extremely well-written piece with us and recognize the truths and realities in it, I whole-heartedly disagree with your premise: decent men do NOT cheat on their wives. A man who betrays his wedding vows and lies to his wife's face about it every day thereafter is, by definition, NOT a decent man. Decency requires honesty, honor, self-sacrifice, adherence to morality, and caring about more than just yourself. Marriage vows are exactly that--VOWS. A promise. A commitment. No one gets every single thing they could ever want or need every single day in a marriage. That is no excuse or justification to break your marriage commitment. If you need something so badly That you will break your vows, risk STDs or pregnancy, lie to your partner's face everyday without remorse and risk ruining your wife's life and shredding her heart and trust, destroying your children's lives and their respect for you as their father, then you should divorce your wife instead.