Urban living conditions are mounting unprecedented pressure on couples leading to the epidemic of “sex-starved marriages” as a result of which more and more couples are seeking divorce, the Delhi high court has observed while upholding a man’s plea for divorce on the ground that his wife inflicted mental cruelty on him by refusing to have sexual intercourse.
“Sex-starved marriages are becoming an undeniable epidemic as urban living conditions today mount unprecedented pressure on couples. The sanctity of sexual relationship and its role in reinvigorating the bond of marriage is getting diluted and as a consequence more and more couples are seeking divorce due to sexual incompatibility and absence of sexual satisfaction,” Justice Kailash Gambhir noted.
He dismissed the wife’s plea against the trial court order passed in 2001 which had annulled their marriage on the husband’s contention that she had refused to have sexual intercourse on the first night after marriage and they had intercourse only 10-15 times during the five months for which they stayed together, which had inflicted mental cruelty on him. “Wilful denial of sexual intercourse without reasonable cause would amount to cruelty… The courts have through various judicial pronouncements taken a view that sex is the foundation of marriage and marriage without sex is anathema,” he said.
“Although it is difficult to exactly lay down as to how many times any healthy couple should have sexual intercourse in a particular period of time as it is not a mechanical but a mutual act, however, there cannot be any two ways about the fact that marriage without sex will be an insipid relation… Marriage is an institution through which a man and a woman enter into a sacred bond and to state that sexual relationship is the mainstay or the motive to be achieved through marriage would be making a mockery of this pious institution,” he noted.