What camp are you in?

Door number 2. We have been roommates for most of our marriage. It's a miracle we even had kids. I wonder how long it will last like this. Been over a dozen years so far. We discussed divorce a few years ago but the economics were against it.

I'm in the stage of turning my marriage around. I think this is an option if you have a good base to build on. My marriage was not always sexless. It only happened over the last 4 years out of 23 years. If it was always sexless then I would have been out sooner before having kids.

We were very close friends and grew apart. We also suffered some tragedies that I could have helped my wife more through instead of being closed off emotionally. We both played our role in the marriage waning.

Of course it takes two people to work on a marriage for it to turnaround. My wife is finally coming on board after 5 months. At least I know it's not a reset. I'm setting the bar high for myself and her. So I'm hoping that she'll join me. If not, then I'll be in the leaving camp.

I didn't have a name for it until I read your post Dan, but I do believe thats what I have done too ... I have "friend-zoned" my wife.  Because I couldn't handle the rejection, I lowered my expectations, and I don't want to do anything to get them back up again.    

For her part, my wife is in the same place as yours is as well.  She claims she loves me dearly and says she looks forward to growing old with me, but in her vision of marital love, there is no sexual component. (this attitude baffles me--because for me, the sexual component of a marriage is what makes it a marriage, and not just a legally binding friendship) 

As I read some of the other posters here, I am glad that I am not alone in the "its complicated" camp where leaving our sexless marriages would create more problems than it solves, but that realization does nothing to dull the pain.  

I fired the "if we don't fix this, we're headed for divorce someday" warning shot twice.  

My first shot was ten years ago.  I was expecting her to rally; she didn't.  She crumbled.  The "D-word" shook her to the core.  But it lead to less sex, because she didn't feel "safe" with me.  (Her words: "I can't really be into sex with you if I don't feel safe."  And she meant "I'm not safe from you leaving me".)  

At that time I also expressed my deep hurt about how I felt she didn't care about sex, but I used poorly chosen words, and for the next few years she was convinced I was being "mean to her" in that whole exchange.

About two years ago I pointed out "I'm willing to work on this.  And -- look -- I don't have a specific time frame, but neither is it an indefinitely open period."  (This was in front of the marriage therapist.)  She was AGHAST, as if I was threatening her with immediate bodily harm.  The therapist look quizzically at her reaction, shrugged, looked her straight in the eye, and said "sounds reasonable to me".

So... those were her two wake up calls.  Frankly, at this point I've given up trying.  And if she were to have some sort of miraculous discovery of her libido, I don't think I'd be interested.  The scars of too much rejection and concomitant distrust on my part, at this point.  I'm focused on raising my kids and getting them launched... and her next wake up call will be when the "divorce someday" is upon her.

I think I'm like many here that fall into more than one camp. It started with a medical issue and at the very least it seems to flirt with the friend zone idea. I think we could almost break those into several different groups and subgroups.
In addition to the concepts you break things into we would have concepts of where in the sexless marriage spectrum couples fall.

Does someone just meet the criteria of "10 sexual encounters or fewer per year" all the way to how many years it has been of nothing.

Toss in a discussion of already given up, actively trying to reconcile (which leads to discussions of how much each partner is committed to trying), or just realizing there's an issue and determining the path from there.

While in many cases this wide of a dispersion would seem to muddle discussions; it seems to me that the larger number of viewpoints actually helps me see things from new perspectives.

Mine was in the medical and health camp (some physical health, some mental health.)

And, I'm in baza's group 3 - I'm out. But I'm not sure my love life is any better than it was with him. At least it's not worse. And there are things about my life here, which are an improvement on my life there (I did zipcode therapy.) So, I would say that I'm in a sub camp of group 3 - Out, but not 100% I'm better off.