The bed, bed world of marital breakdowns

An increasing number of young professional women are dragging their husbands to courts seeking divorce on grounds of impotence or unfulfilled sexual desires

Sex or the lack of it is breaking homes. Spearheading this trend are a bunch of young, confident professional women who are filing divorce petitions or claims alleging impotency or non-consummation of marriage.

“Increasingly, since the past two years or so, there has been a flurry of divorce petitions by women claiming impotence of their partner or non-consummation of marriage. Consummation is a bonding force of a marriage, especially in the initial years. Women do not see much sense in a marriage without sex,” said leading family court lawyer, Neelofar Akhtar.

Though no statistics were available, the lawyers working in the family court said the number of such cases was going up exponentially every year, comparable with cases of cruelty and mental harassment by husbands. The cases by and large involve Dink (double-income-no-kid) couples, with the woman — a working professional in most of the cases —  expecting more from life and marriage and accepting the status quo.

A lot of these cases end up in divorce with mutual consent as the man does not want this (facts about his sexual state of affairs) to come out in the open. The divorce laws in all religions have impotence or non-consummation of marriage as a ground for divorce. “It is not that impotency did not exist about 10 years ago. It is just that more and more women are now coming forward,” said family court lawyer Usha Tanna.

 In 2006, a 25-year old engineer, Geeta (not her real name), filed for annulment of marriage, alleging that her husband Rakesh (name changed) was impotent, a condition that he inherited apparently due to the pills he consumed for treating epilepsy. Married in 2004, she told the court that “my dream of a happy married life and my aspirations were completely frustrated”. The couple agreed for divorce by mutual consent last year.

Impotency, however, is very difficult to prove in court. “One cannot compel a person to undergo tests to check impotency as per law. The woman can file an application seeking medical examination of her husband to prove her case, but the man has to volunteer for it,” said Kranti Sathe, a lawyer who practises exclusively in family court.

 A family court heard a case where the man challenged the ground of impotency by claiming that the woman was “frigid”. After tests conducted by a gynaecologist, a psychiatrist and a sexologist, it was proved that the woman was “not averse to sex”.
The man never revealed before the open court what his tests results were; the couple soon filed a decree for divorce with mutual consent which materialised earlier this year.

There were more cases where the marriage was not consummated, but not always because the man was impotent. For example, after her husband filed for divorce in 2005 claiming wife’s “obstinate refusal of connubial rights”, Rena (name changed) fought back stating that her husband had shown “no desire, no interest, or inclination” to consummate their marriage or “did not even touch or kiss her”. She stated that she “lived like a woman in prison” and remained a “virgin” in spite of marriage. After two years, the couple filed a decree for divorce with mutual consent.

Lawyers said the problem is bigger than it seems. “A woman is always made victim. If she shows interest in the subject, things are said about her. When she files for annulment, it becomes a public debate about her private life,” said Sathe.