True Story
Whilst watching some documentary on the* Mating Habits of the North American Porcupine** and learning that the female porcupine only goes into heat once a year for 15 minutes, my husband, shouts up to me upstairs, " What do you have in common with a North American Porcupine?" (and not realizing I had been watching the documentary while putzing about.)
" A lotta little pricks."
*Some kind of porcupine.
Yes, but you probably weren’t sleep-deprived on top of working your butt off. Sleep deprivation does many a strange and aggravating thing to people.
<sidles int the thread>
Remote control vibrater?
<saunters quickly out again>
You’ve never been unable to respond? It can hurt after a while in addition to being very frustrating if you’re just not able to respond, at least for a woman.
Well…no. 
Then perhaps you should simply concede that you can’t relate to this particular problem and therefore have no informed opinion, rather than making those of us who have feel bad about it.
(I like you a lot, Inigo, but I think you’ve stepped into a steaming pile of you-know-what this time.)
ergo
Like most folks, sex is not always, or even usually, the foremost thing in my mind. In fact I have been known to go for days without even thinking much about it. Occasionally, it would occur to one or the other of us to be a good idea. When it’s been her idea I’ve never resisted on the basis of fatigue, and in fact always welcomed the advance. I decline now every time for entirely different reasons, and I do not approach her no matter how randy I am–because I don’t want to with her.
That’s where I’m coming from: The only reason I understand for avoiding sex is because one simply isn’t into the person at hand.
Didn’t mean to make anyone feel bad, I just don’t get it as a reason to leave your lover out in the cold.
That would be just the ticket!
Inigo, I am afraid that there are many other reasons to not want sex apart from not being into the person.
Sheer exhaustion brought on by never having had more than 45 minutes of sleep at one time for six weeks will do it, pain from incisions will do it, being internally rearranged will do it (I had cesareans and the first time stupid me thought that as my nether regions had been untouched we could make whoopee with abandon. Boy was I wrong - it hurt so much and was such a shock we didn’t dare try again for another six weeks!)
And from a male perspective, my husband has periodical bouts of mild depression and during those times there is nothing I could do to get him interested in sex. But he still loves me, talks to me, looks after the kids with me and is still “there”, so I don’t complain - I have it easier than people who live with partners who have deeper depressions. It’s just like living with Eeyore for three months or so, and surely you can’t imagine getting it on with HIM?!
(And in a roundabout way I think the depression/no sex thing of my husbands is related to post baby life because its usually when he has a crisis of confidence about his abilities as a provider.)