Taken from http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Live-In-A-Sexless-Marriage/3448102  written by Zincore
The Love Roulette: Why We Are In A Sexless Marriage The “effeuiller la marguerite” is an ancient game, traditionally played by the young falling in love for the first time and the hopelessly romantic of any age. For those unfamiliar with it, the daisy oracle consist in pulling the petals from a daisy, or other available flower, one by one while chanting, "he or she loves me", "he or she loves me not". The phrase spoken on picking off the last petal is supposed to be a perfect match to how the person you are thinking about feels about you. Those in love, who sacrifice flowers in the hope of uncovering emotional states in others, show a charming innocence, one that many of us can identify and sympathise with.

However there is a more serious undertone to this game, one that highlights two important issues that are directly relevant to many people in this forum. The first relates to the lexical categories available to describe feelings of love. The second is a misguided belief that we can accurately infer other people’s feelings, thoughts and intentions.
 
“I love Peanut Butter” vs. “Romeo and Juliet – Let Me Drink Poison for You Love”
 
There are effectively only two ways to describe love in the English language: you either “love” or you “do not love”: the only two decisions that can be returned by the “daisy oracle” reflect this notion and this seems perfectly acceptable to us from a very early age. As we become more experienced, we intuitively feel that love exists on a spectrum and that the number of categories of “love” we have in our mind is not accurately summarised by the two lexical categories available to describe them.

In our minds we have “shades” of love but in discourse we are forced to dichotomise a trait that is likely to be continuous, or at the very least ordinal. This forces us to assign people and objects into one or the other class using a system that does not consider magnitude, persistence or intensity of feeling. We may all agree that love as in, “I love peanut butter” is just not the same as in, “Romeo and Juliet: I will drink poison for you love”.
 
Moreoeover, dichotomising a continuous trait means we are crudely cutting through the densest part of the distribution and assigning one half to love and the other half to not-love. However this complicates things when someone misses the classification by very little. Indeed at the cognitive level, the many different categories of love may have fuzzy boundaries and we may alternate in our decision to assign someone to one class or the other, perhaps even on a daily basis. I have often read variants of the following phrase: “I know my partner loves me in their own way”. This simply means that in their mind you miss the threshold of love or just about make it on certain days. However even if you do make it, you are probably closer to the cut-off threshold than the extreme of the distribution.
 
Absence of Love as Cause of a Sexless Marriage:
 
I am absolutely convinced that in otherwise physically and psychologically healthy individuals the absence of sex in a marriage is primarily driven by an absence of love. Briefly, if someone sees you miserably sad, desperate and in pain yet remains indifferent to your suffering and plans to do absolutely nothing to relieve it, they are not in love you with.
 
I’ve previously stated that those who have the antonym love-hate tattooed on their fingers are walking around with a lexical semantic error. The antonym of love is not hate; it is indifference. If your partner remains indifferent and insensitive to your pain and needs, it means that you fall in the lower half of their love-distribution. They do not love you, they do not care about you and, depending on how low you score, they may even be repulsed by you. Your partner may be an extraordinary human being, charitable, smart and clever (which makes their indifference towards you even more callous and crueller), a good provider or parent, handsome, charming and attractive. They do not have to be abusive towards you or shout at you or hate you in the traditional sense. They may like talking with you and enjoy doing things for you, cook for you, buy you presents; indeed they may love what they can attract in their lives by being with you but they do not love you.
 
As discussed above “not love” does not mean zero love; this is common misconception. There is still a shade of “love” there, a bonding force just sufficient to make you doubt yourself and incessantly think about the meaning of it all. This leads to a sense of doubt and confusion that often persists for years after your have left your relationship. This doubt will make you search for another cause for your sexless marriage, probably one that does not involve you. Perhaps you will look at your partner physiological or psychological state, book appointments with doctors and therapists in the hope they will resolve any issues they may have and rekindle a love that perhaps once existed. Some even believe that it is all fault of the environment; perhaps those cold in-laws have instilled their misguided values in your partner.
 
To be desired is to be loved, if you are not desired you are not loved. To be in a loving relationship you have to fall well within the category of love, preferably somewhere towards the end of the love distribution. Indeed you have to fall so far into the love portion of the distribution that any defects and idiosyncrasies you may have will not be sufficient to make you slide into the other category; a loving partner will love you “no matter what” or “despite of”. Without this love, those endorphin-fuelled love sessions where you try to satisfy your desire for the other person will never happen; sex will be at best predictable and mundane and gradually disappear completely.
 
Let's Get it Clear:
 
People in love will prioritise each other’s needs because knowing your partner is happy will make them happy in return. In a sexless relationship the needs of one partner are fully met, while the needs of the other are fully ignored. The overly used “Love is not the problem in my relationship; I know they love me in their own way” argument is nonsense. The “in their own way” is a method of assigning you to a categorical love-bin that falls several orders or magnitude away from the love you should have in your relationship. You may fall near “I love peanut butter” with the only difference that peanut butter gets licked once in a while and… you don’t.
 
There is the other issue of libido alignment, which has been talk about extensively in other posts. This can lead to problems but if there is love it can partially be addressed. To some extent a strong love makes it possible to overcome biologically driven factors. If you recognise the other person is suffering you will be able to do things to overcome your natural propensities. Isn’t this what love is all about? Isn’t love a cosmic imbalance that make people do otherwise unconceivable, often absurd and extraordinary acts such as tearing petals off flowers and using the stem as an antenna to tune in at the hearts of others?
 
Lastly we often believe that we can accurately predict and understand other people’s feelings and emotions and are often biased in the weight we give to verbal as opposed to non-verbal cues. You can never be sure how someone feels about you or what they are thinking. Thoughts are private. True, there are many who believe thoughts can be broadcasted but we call them schizophrenic and listen to their ideas with caution. If sex matters to you and your needs are not met, if you are not being desired, if your partner remains indifferent to your suffering and needs, then they do not love you. The precise mechanism that explains “why” they do not love you are unknown and irrelevant. If you are both healthy and your needs are not at least partially met within your relationship and there is no will to even try and work towards meeting them, then your partner does not love you in a way anyone in a marriages should be loved. Period. This daisy oracle returns the following verdict: “they love you not!”  Get a divorce.