No-sex marriage ends in rare annulment decision for Waterloo man

TORONTO — A bride’s refusal to have sex with her new husband apparently due to crippling anxiety is reason enough to grant his request for a rare marriage annulment, an Ontario court has ruled.

In his judgment, Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Gray noted the high legal bar to undo a marriage, which goes beyond a spouse simply saying no to sex.

“This is a rather rare proceeding today with the ready availability of divorce,” Gray said in this week’s ruling. “(But) it is clear from the authorities that non-consummation must be as a result of an incapacity or inability to consummate rather than a refusal to do so.”

Court records show the couple met in January 2017 at the University of Waterloo, where the man was a PhD student in systems-design engineering and the woman was a post-graduate student in computer engineering. They began dating and talked about marrying.

During those discussions, the woman told her fiancé that she didn’t want a sexual relationship before marriage and he agreed. He proposed in May last year, she accepted, and they married in July 2018 at city hall in Waterloo.

In an affidavit filed with the court, the husband describes his mounting frustration about his sex life with his new wife.

“(She) refused to have any physical intimacy with me and I could not understand the reasons behind it right after our marriage,” he wrote. “Later, I noticed that our marriage could not be consummated due to (her) serious incapacitating anxiety for having sexual intercourse.”

According to the husband, his partner kept putting him off, saying she needed time to overcome her fears. Despite his “passion and desire,” he said he didn’t insist or try to force her.

Given her pre-marriage request to refrain from sexual activity, the husband said he was unaware of how his wife felt until after they had tied the knot. It’s likely she didn’t even know about her fears until after the wedding, he said. He also said she refused to seek any kind of counselling or medical help. The lack of sex played out against a backdrop of parental unhappiness over the marriage, Gray heard. Her parents, who live in Iran, took the view the marriage was not valid because they did not have an Iranian marriage. The couple separated at the end of August 2018, about seven weeks after the wedding, and the husband sought an annulment.