Sunday, March 25, 2012

Mar 25, 2012: 'Divorce epidemic due to sex-starved marriages'

, TNN | Mar 25, 2012, 02.29AM IST
NEW DELHISex-starved marriages leading to divorce are becoming an "epidemic", the Delhi high court has observed, while granting divorce to a husband, maintaining that denial of sex by his wife amounted to mental cruelty.

The man argued that in the five months he and his wife stayed as a couple after marriage, they had sex only 10-15 times. Dismissing the wife's plea against divorce, Justice Kailash Gambhir noted in his order earlier this week: "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, there cannot be any two ways about the fact that marriage without sex will be an insipid relation."

According to case records, the couple married in February 1991 but the wife left five months later.

The Delhi high court has granted divorce to a husband, maintaining that denial of sex by his wife amounted to mental cruelty.

The court was hearing her appeal against the decision of a lower court to grant divorce to the husband. Denying her husband's charges, she sought the marriage to be restituted.

The man, however, claimed that she had refused to have sex with him on the wedding night and was thereafter unresponsive; she "was like deadwood when he had sexual intercourse with her". Dismissing the wife's plea, Justice Gambhir stressed the importance of a healthy sexual relationship between a normal couple, though there may be exceptions.

"The sanctity of sexual relationship and its role in re-invigorating 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," Gambhir said. "That 'the twain shall become one flesh, so that they are no more twain but one'...(is the) real purpose of marriage ."

The court also took into account the wife's refusal to participate in traditional ceremonies and quarrels with her in-laws. The husband had also accused her of trying to steal jewellery from her mother-in-law. The fact that she slapped a dowry harassment in the Crime Against Women Cell only case to later unconditionally withdraw it, also raised HC's suspicions that her denials were baseless.

While acknowledging that "what happens in the four walls of the matrimonial home and what goes inside the bed room of a couple is either known to them or at the most members of the family", Justice Gambhir found the testimony of the husband more credit worthy because his father seconded it while the wife failed to provide any evidence in her favour.
Link: 'Divorce epidemic due to sex-starved marriages'

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