This rabbi's take on how a lustless marriage is akin to a prison | Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

And I maintain passionately that the passion need not be lost. That this idea that there's a transition in marriage from lust to love, that when you're single, you can't keep your hands off of each other, but it slowly migrates into this partnership, it's a defective approach to marriage.

It's one that I cannot embrace, and it's one that I have to argue against. Any marriage that doesn't have intense, strong desire, any marriage that doesn't have lust, is becoming something of a prison. It's where you're kind of there for reasons other than wanting each other.

It may be because it's comfortable; it may be because you appreciate and cherish each other; it may be because of the kids; it may be because you have nowhere else to go; and maybe because you even feel that you belong there. That's okay, but it's still a form of external incarceration. You're not there out of a deep desire to be there.

Lust is where you want that person, and that's why you're there. That has to be the primary reason that we go into marriage and that we stay in marriage.