Glossary & Abbreviations

Glossary:

Sexless marriage: defined by experts as "a marriage where sexual intimacy occurs fewer than ten times per year" (source). Abbreviated "SM".

Refuser: A spouse withholding sex, but expecting sexual fidelity in the marriage. A refuser unilaterally imposes celibacy (or near-celibacy) on a hapless sex-desiring spouse. Could be for any number of reasons: out of general lack of sexual desire (asexual), lack of interest in the spouse in particular (aspousalsexual), out of spite (just plain mean). Also applied to a spouse who can't perform sexually due to medical issues but who doesn't seem to care, or take any actions to address the underlying medical problem, or work with the spouse to find other ways to still carry on some sort of sexual activity in the marriage.

Refused: a spouse who wants marital sex and feels their spouse is a refuser.

Outsourcing: breaking your marital vows of marital monogamy by getting sex outside your SM... a.k.a.: cheating. Controversial here less for the traditional reasons and more for the potential repercussions like an explosive divorce. Some say the refuser broke the marriage vows first by unilaterally imposing a vow of celibacy on the sex-desiring spouse, rendering the act more morally neutral than it would be if the marriage was sexful.

Gaslighting: a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target's belief. (Wikipedia entry; article)


Abbreviations:

Here are some abbreviations you may find common in posts here:

AP -- affair partner; the person you are having an affair with.

DARVO -- "Deny, Attack/Avoid, Reverse Victim & Offender" (link1, link2)

EP -- A website called Experience Project. A website that was part social media, part blogging, part self-help group. One of the forums was "ILIASM -- I Live In A Sexless Marriage". That website closed in April 2016, and many of those who participated in EP ILIASM moved here when this forum was set up.

FOG -- "Fear, Obligation, Guilt" (link1, link2)

H -- husband

HL -- higher libido (said of one member of a sexually-involved couple)

ILIASM -- I Live In A Sexless Marriage

LL -- lower libido (said of one member of a sexually-involved couple)

SM -- sexless marriage

STBX -- soon-to-be-ex (current spouse about to be divorced)

W - wife

Please suggest additional definitions and abbreviations as a comment to this post. (They may be deleted as they are incorporated in to this post.)


Jargon:

Here is some jargon you may find common in posts here; a little less formal than "glossary terms":

The Talk™: Finally telling your spouse that marital sexlessness has lead you to want a divorce. It's final, it's over, it's all I can take, we're done.

Bacon-scented candles: a disparaging term for advice to "bring back the romance" with one's refuser recommended by those who have never been in an SM. SM veterans have already tried this and found it works as well as every other tactic.. that is to say: it fails miserably. Origin: mashup of the trope of bacon's popularity as a trendy food item (and flavoring, scent, etc), and trope of candles as an "obvious way to bring back the romance".

Husbro: (portmanteau of "husband" and "brother") a man who doesn't have sex with his wife; acts more like a brother than a husband.

Wifster: (portmanteau of "wife" and "sister") a woman who doesn't have sex with her husband; act more like a sister than a wife.