Failing? Failing? That’s a pretty goddamn harsh way to characterize not being into someone, like it’s a sign of being defective or some kind of character flaw. (And if we were talking about a guy who lost interest in his partner but found renewed interest with somebody new, would you describe it as a failing, or just the way some men are wired?)
I know it was probably just a poor choice of words in the rush to make someone else feel better, but it’s something that tends to pop up a lot in threads like this. There’s this undercurrent that loss of libido is somehow her fault, like it’s something she deliberately chose. And that’s bullshit on a lot of levels–it’s untrue, it’s unfair, and it unnecessarily puts an extra burden of shame and guilt on a topic already amply loaded with those things. It’s hard enough to discuss something that you know gives your partner all the shitty feelings filmore describes, something that you know makes people think you’re a shitty partner, something that makes you feel like a failure as a woman. Adding on the burden of the idea that you’re somehow to blame for all this…well, that makes it damn near impossible.
And that sucks for everybody. For her for obvious reasons, for him because it makes the issue far less likely to be addressed.
I meant her failing libido. Her loss of interest. It probably wasn’t something Filmore specifically did or didn’t do. Things like this can happen organically, or they can happen because needs aren’t being met. He didn’t say that she cheated or anything, nor did he say that she’d been complaining specifically about him as a partner. I wasn’t attempting to assign blame.
Not sure why you threw the ‘if it were a man’ card. I’m a woman. If it were a man I’d feel the same way.
I read “her failing” as a comment on how this issue is a problem for her partner, but she is unwilling to examine or attempt to fix the problem. It’s not the loss of libido that is a failing, IMO, but her failure is in refusing to address it.
Ah, I see. It wasn’t really clear from the way it was written. And as I said, I suspected it was a just an unintentional thing that brought to mind a more general attitude one tends to find in these threads. And the “if it were a man” thing is an honest question brought about by reading other threads about women being frustrated by male low sex drive. When a woman starts a thread about how her husband or boyfriend won’t fuck her, there’s always a rousing chorus of “have you let yourself go?” and “well, men are genetically programmed to need variety and get bored easily.” There’s not nearly so much of this “Well, he needs to get off his sorry ass and fix himself” that you see in threads like this one. There is, of course, some of it but not nearly so much, and you never know whether someone holds a double standard like that till you ask.
That might have been how I read it, too, except that the specific sort of libido loss she mentioned was something that I honestly don’t see a way to address. If the problem is that all the new-boyfriend smell has worn off, what on earth do you do about that that doesn’t involve getting a new boyfriend? Hell, how do you even figure out that that’s the problem until after the fact?
There are a lot of causes for libido loss that I wonder that about, either because the cause is something that fixes another, more serious problem or requires effort the complaining partner isn’t willing to put in. How do you address stuff like anti-depressant side effects or feeling neglected when your partner isn’t willing to turn off his gadgets and focus on you one night a week?
What I remember from such threads are comments like “It’s not possible for stress to affect his libido. He’s having an affair.”
Men are expected to be ON at all times. Women are expected to be OFF most of the time. If they stray from these expected things, there is something a bit weird going on, suspicious. We* want people to stay neatly in their places, abiding by all of the gender rules and roles we assign. And then when people report that these things have happened, we tsk tsk and say we knew it all along that Jill would lose interest in sex and/or Jack wouldn’t be able to keep it in his pants.
*We as a society. Plenty of individuals don’t believe these things, though it underlies a lot of our basic assumptions about how relationships work.
The UB Patented sure-fire way to wedded sexual bliss:
Low Libido Person..................................High Libido Person
...........................ZONE OF HAPPY.............................
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXYYYYYYYYYYYYYY----------PPPPPPPPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
S and X are times of real, good, Sex together
Y are times of ‘Sex for the other person’…a Pity Fuck, not to put too fine a point on it.
P is Porn. This helps the person with a higher libido, make it through the night. The individual with a lower libido is not permitted to complain about it, and any guilt they have is theirs alone.
is that period of time where everyone is happy because everyone is getting enough
What often happens is the following:
Low Libido Person..................................High Libido Person
...........................ZONE OF HAPPY.............................
NNNNNNNNNNXYY--------------OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Where the one with the low libido says NO a lot (the ‘N’) and occasionally gives it up out of pity…but then the person with a high libido looks OUTSIDE (‘O’) the marriage to get enough.
Note there is no male or female in this list…and the charts were created on Firefox, on the Mac. Apologies if it looks like crap.
This is my problem, but mentally. After working all day (only person in my department, which includes IT helpdesk stuff), coming home and taking care of the baby full-time (to give my wife a break from her) 5-9, I do NOT want any more demands on my attention, mental or physical–all I want to do is sit and play World of Warcraft (and sometimes THAT is too much for me, so I just read).
Meanwhile my wife never gets adult company all day, and by the time I get the baby to bed, she’s over the too much intimacy thing since she’d had a few hours off.
So my wife right now is experiencing a lot of libido and frustration, and I’m frustrated that I never get enough alone time that sex is something I want.
I know the Sunday evening depression well. But have you thought of scheduling a date earlier in the weekend? I know it might sound crass, but there are lots of advantages. You can schedule your other activities around it. Both people can be thinking about it before. If you have favorite times of the day, you can schedule it for then. And you lose all that “is this a good time” tension.
If you are interested in a long term relationship, the new boyfriend/new girlfriend smell always wears off. Call it a fault, call it lack of maturity or lack of commitment, but there are plenty of things to replace it with. Guys are at least as guilty as women of this.
The problem is not really lack of sex, but the blow to the ego of the partner not being interested. Known medical side effects don’t involve a blow to the ego. My wife being in bed for two months with a bad back didn’t involve a blow to the ego. On the other hand, lack of interest or the partner caring about something else more does. I think “not now, I’m too tired” - every day at 8 pm and “not now, I’m playing” - every day also - are fairly equivalent excuses.
I’ve always been a really passionate sexual woman. I had a feeling that I was heading in that direction when at 14 I was sometimes masturbating more than once per day. I am almost 50 now. I don’t want things to slow down and want to keep sexually active as long as possible. I don’t get people who lose their drive, or that never had one to begin with. But, we are all different, I do understand that. I had a wonderful lover last year, but do to unforeseen circumstances our lover affair is over for good. I’ll find someone else though, because I don’t want to live without physical touch for too much longer. It’s depressing as hell. I’m not just talking about sex alone…but about kissing and embracing and being close and intimate with someone who you care for deeply. I left my husband last year because of the lack of that in our marriage, and many other reasons too. His libido was also gone. He hugged me with the double pat on the back…made me cringe every time. Folks who stay together (long after kids are gone especially) when they are nothing more than roommates are hard for me to understand. Financial security or not…they are living a damn lie…life is too short not to give and receive love. I can’t live my life like that, and I won’t. I wish you luck Osiris the 1st. I really do. I hope something wakes up the passion in your wife and that your marriage makes it.
I’m not sure I agree with that, at least not the second part. It used to be the standard expectation, yes, but these days people who espouse such assumptions tend to be dismissed as neanderthalic, woefully misinformed, and just plain dumb. Now women are expected to like and want sex, to be ON most of the time. If we’re not, there’s something physical or emotional wrong with us that needs to be addressed. Thus the rise of threads like this; if female low libido was the default expectation, the situation in the OP would just be what you normally expect in a marriage, rather than a problem.
Yes, I know. I’ve been in a relationship for 16 years, and one or the other of us has had sex drive issues at various points most of that time. Believe me, I’m well aware of the other things that replace the new boyfriend smell. That’s not what the post I was referring to was talking about. That post was blaming the lack of libido solely on lack of partner novelty…and if that’s the sole issue, it’s a damn hard one to address in any sort of way the guy is going to find satisfactory. That’s what I was saying.
True enough, but that’s not what I was asking. Medications like anti-depressants and hormonal birth control are infamous libido-killers. When that’s the problem, what’s the solution? Stopping/changing the meds in the hope of finding one that works okay but doesn’t have the same side effects, and in the meantime deal with the effects of not having your depression under control? When the issue with her low libido is lack of attention/affection and she asks for a date night once a week and he can’t be arsed…where do you go from there?
Like all things, open communication helps, but it would ALSO help if folk realize that the odds of being completely sexually compatible over the course of a lifetime together is unlikely and to build skills to handle the times when you’re both on different pages.
[QUOTE=Rushgeekgirl]
Same here. I’m just bored with the whole thing. I’m not unhealthy, although I am a bit lazy. It’s a lot of trouble for little reward. I only do it to make my SO happy, and I try really hard to make sure we get it in at least once a week or he starts grumbling
[/quote]
Such a contrast. I read these threads to try and understand female sexuality, there seems to be such a huge swing in desire and attitude among women. I as a male could never enjoy sex with a woman who was just doing it to make me happy, I can’t think of anything more depressing.
Oh, my sentiments exactly. Some people can put up with it for the duration though. I could not. I also think that giving your heart to someone in profound ways is not always a good thing. A lesson learned just recently. My shell will be much tougher from now on and my heart not nearly as warm. It goes against everything that I’m about…but as my father always told me in his cold way…“such is life.” I guess he was right. I should start a thread, but it would be too depressing and so I’ll spare you all and wait…
Yes. There is very little attention paid or respect shown in person on the street views and the media for life issues etc that can interfere with a couple’s sex life. Somehow we are supposed to put aside truly crippling issues like loss of job or grief or other things (like having a child), and enjoy hot hot sex always. We have at least managed to get rid of (so far as I know) that bogus expectation of orgasming at the same time. That was bandied about when I was a teen, to no one’s benefit, IMO.
I think what it shows is that “mismatched” libidos are much more common than not. My issue with this is that it seems to be the more demanding partner (or in less loaded terms, the partner with the stronger libido) is the default standard. I think this is wrong.
I don’t have any answers, really. But when a situation such as the OP’s is so common as to be considered “normal” (and I disagree that it is considered so–we’ve seen in this thread the view that it is not, that it is wrong, that it needs to be “fixed”), I have to wonder if the standard is what is at fault. Let me use another example to make my point. Women have for years been told (and described) by doctors that their heart attack symptoms present atypically. That is, females tend to NOT have pain down the left arm, crushing chest pain etc. That’s all well and good and it’s true. But here’s the thing: if half the population doesn’t present symptoms in the standard way, that’s too large a group to be considered a subset of the other group. What is the case is that while both genders suffer from heart attacks, the symptoms are not the same for both groups. One is not “atypical” of the other.
IMO, it’s the same for sex. It’s not that women lack a libido or are less highly sexed than men. IMO, we are differently “sexed”, in that we experience desire, and sexual needs differently. I’m hugely generalizing of course, but I am so tired of this extremely common “condition” being viewed as abnormal or wrong or bad for the individual. Those are all value judgments and their expression does not tend to make a female partner more willing to engage in sex.