An article in the Mail Online India talks about people being granted a divorce because of lack of sex, deemed by the Judiciary in India as cruelty. Often individuals in our support groups talk about how in the last fews years of their marriage their partner did not want to have sex with them. Is this a good ground for divorce? Do people cite this in their divorce petition? They certainly do and it is cruel if one person wants to have sex and the other is entirely witholding of it. Withholding sex is a clear message of denial and hostility and after a while of trying to remedy the situation to no avail, seems like a very good ground for divorce. Having said that how much sex people have is a matter of negotiation between them. Often people have different libidos and a compromise has to be reached. Divorce isn’t a natural consequence of that. The Mail online talks of no sex at all and if that isn’t satisfactory to one person in the marriage, to expect to live a sexless life when it is distressing to do so, might well sit within the catch all ‘irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.’
