I think it would make the giver kinda unpopular, but there really needs to be a frank conversation with every engaged couple. Something that says: Hey, at some point in time, odds are, you will experience the following:
the desire to sleep in another bed so you can get some sleep…that’s not as big deal as you think
the lack of desire that might end your marriage…here’s how you avoid it.
The loss of identity - here’s how you maintain it.
The loss of an argument - here’s what that means.
You will be strongly tempted to break your vows to get that ‘high’ again…here’s where that leads.
and so on.
Heck, perhaps it’ll be a series of envelopes that are delivered over time…something like ‘Congratulations, you’re in-line to experience the 7 year itch!’
While I agree that having to care for two small children can stress anyone and put a major damper on any libido, I don’t think it’s the cause in this case.
Rereading the OP…
…I see that her disinterest in sex with her husband began (according to his math) 9 years ago. That is three years before any pregnancy, and when the couple were in their early-to-mid twenties. So, although I certainly think it’s a contributing factor at this time in their marriage, I think the problem may lie much deeper than being ‘touched out’ and stressed by her current Master’s Degree work.
Hmm. I put up with a decade of an ex-SO’s low libido. She refused to seek medical help, go to couples counselling, etc. I broke up with her repeatedly because of it and she begged me to take her back - and her libido switched itself back on again for about two weeks before it died again.
When we finally broke up for good she turned into a total cougar.
Turns out she only had a low libido for me. My self esteem is still trying to pull itself back together.
ETA: sorry, OP, that seems really pessimistic. I allowed my bitterness to get in the way of offering any advice. My advice is: in retrospect, I wish that I had pushed harder for counselling, and that I had called her bluff when she refused. We might have resolved things, or allowed her to realise she should go her separate way a lot earlier and not have caused so many years where I was deeply frustrated and felt terrible about myself.
jjimm, don’t blame yourself for that. Some women need that ‘newness’, that early-relationship excitement, to validate their own lack of self confidence. 10 years…You knew her, you knew all her tricks and mystery, and for her that might have felt like losing some of her feminine power. Truly, chances are, it was really not you - it was her failing.
And to OP, I had a thought after chatting with some friends about this thread. If you rule out medical issues, you try talking, maybe counseling, you try re-connecting romantically, and you’re still getting nowhere, there is the possibility that she’s never enjoyed or wanted a lot of sex. Early in your relationship she may have seemed more sexual because she was in courting mode.
I’m obviously naive, because this surprised me - but both my friends acknowledged that early on it’s easy to be more into sex - not just because of the actual excitement of a new relationship, but that desire to please someone you want to stick around.
I think sex is a critical part of a healthy relationship, and I hope your issue is one you can work through with her.
I completely agree with you. We’re planning on doing pre-marital counseling even though both of us have been married before just to maybe hear somethings that we haven’t thought of, or maybe some hard truths that we’re avoiding.
Reminds me of an old joke about married couples only having hallway sex:
During the first 1.5–2 years of a marriage, the couple will have sex all over the house, at all times of day, several times a day, every day, in every imaginable position.
From Year 2 through about Year 5, the couple will have sex in the bed, missionary position, once or twice a week. Maybe.
After Year 5, couples just pass each other in the hallway and scream “FUCK YOU!” at each other.
Thank ‘ee. But I’m more of a SNAG in real life, where I do much more than half the cooking, deal with the dishwasher at least half the time, get the kids’ tea ready, and am the only one who can figure out anything technical like how to unblock the vacuum cleaner, operate the lawn mower, put food back into the fridge, install anything at all on the computer, or clean up dog shit or cat barf or dispose of the cat’s hunting trophies. Admittedly I no longer bring in 75% of the household income like I did for the first fourteen years of our marriage. But it’s full of compensations: Mrs M is slim, toned and gorgeous, we have fantastic sex four or five times a week… and I am Marie of Roumania. Ya gotta laugh how ya can.
I think it is instructive, though. I think women are told in various ways that “women just don’t like sex as much as men,” so when they are not really feeling it, they assume that is just the normal and natural way of relationships. They figure sex must not be that important to them, and focus on the other good parts of the relationship. If women had a better understanding of their sexuality, less of this stuff would happen.
I agree. When a girl I was seeing went through a couple weeks of low libido (she suddenly had a lot of stress going on in her life at the time) she was very self-conscious about it and worried that I’d be disappointed at the lack of sex and lose interest. I made sure to reassure her that it happens to everyone, even guys have trouble getting it up when we’re stressed, and it’s nothing to worry about because I know 100% for sure that it’ll come back, no worries.
I didn’t ACTUALLY know this, but I said it with a crap-ton of confidence and that helped her kind of latch onto my steadfast belief that it’d come back and, lo and behold, a week or so later when that stress died down she was back to being horny as a bunny.
If I had encouraged the “well women always get bored with sex, that’s just how it is, women don’t like sex as much as men” myth, then like you say, she might have just gone along with it and not expected it to ever come back.
Sex drive can be very affected by someone’s mentality/outlook, especially for women who need to be turned on on a lot of levels to really get going.
No one is saying anything wrong in this thread but I can’t help but feel that not enough people realize that this has been going on for 9 frigging years. I’m not a run-to-therapy type guy but at this point I think they are so deep in it they probably need a third person perspective.
Then one can assume it will go one of three ways: continue for another XX years, or become an inflection point where the topic is brought up in a healthy non-confrontational way (because there are two sides to every story), or the topic is brought up and things blow up badly.
It takes two people to solve this problem, and how it is brought up will dictate how it goes.
Quite frankly, there was a time in my life where I thought “Everything else is great…I’m married to my best friend, I have two great kids, I’m happy in my house, and career, and hobbies…I’m just not getting enough sex. Would it be worth throwing all this away because I wasn’t getting any?”
Now the answer to that is iffy, and we re-adjusted things, but it’s important to note that sex is both MORE important and LESS important than we think.
Really, how much time, over your whole life, do you ACTUALLY spend time making the beast with two backs? How much time do you spend obsessing over it?
The problem is that sex is not just something you want. It’s a strong urge that doesn’t just go away. It gets frustrating having to actively supress or find some way to deal with the urges on a daily basis. It would be like trying to satisfy your hunger by only eating plain oatmeal for the rest of your life. Yes, you can do it, but it would be frustrating to give up something that brings you such joy.
Also for men, sex is a very big part of their identity. I feel like an emasculated, loser, fool because I don’t have a sex life. It eats away at me every day. And my wife is better than most in this situation. If I approach her she will accomodate me. But even though she gets into it and enjoys it, I can tell she’d rather be doing something else. It’s very depressing to know that I cannot make my wife want to have sex with me no matter what I do. I feel like so much less of a man.
Other than that, our relationship is pretty good. It’s just that the sex leaves such a big hole that all other problems are magnified. I feel like I’m giving up my sex life for what?
I’m sorry, filmore. That does sound really difficult. I don’t think I’d just be able to shrug that off, either. It would feel like a fundamental rejection, I think.
UB I totally feel what you are saying. Married just about 20 years and sex has never been more than twice a month. But the rest of the life together is pretty good, we’ve accomplished a lot because we’ve been together, much more than I could have accomplished on my own. There is no way in hell I’m giving that up so I can have a little bit more nookie.
With us (and I’m guilty of it too) it just feels like everything in the world needs to be done first before that can even be considered. I tend to have my Sunday evening depression because I look back at all the chore type things and all the fun/loving things we did over the past two days and yet we couldn’t come up w/ a half hour for that. It sucks and it doesn’t help that Sunday nite is the time I generally choose about talking about not getting needs met. I’m sure I’m not pleasant to deal w/ at that moment.
I’m not saying we’re in a rut and I’m not saying I get “blue balls” if I don’t get any, it’s just that sex and playing around is fun, it’s just never a priority. It’s something I’m very used to by now, but I honestly wish I wasn’t so used to it.
To use a variation of an old cliche’, its her not you. Not that improves the situation much, but IMO you can lighten up on the self guilt part of the problem.
“Oh Marge, there’s just so much pressure - my job, the kids, political strife at home and abroad! But I promise you: the second all those things go away, we’ll have sex.” ~Homer Simpson
