I know you like your sex and all but it seems, especially for women, your sex drive is something you just can’t count on to be the same throughout your life.
Hormones are what control your sex drive and with women these days there’s tons of things affecting them. Going on birth control, going off birth control, changing birth control, taking other medications, pregnancy, post pregnancy, aging, etc. etc.
You can say “Not once in the almost 10 years I’ve been sexually active has there ever been a time I haven’t wanted sex” or “disliking sex is fucked up” but you never know when one day you’ll wake up and have absolutley no sex drive at all.
Not saying it’s going to happen, but it does happen, and quite frequently.
There’s plenty of women who love their husbands, have great relationships, like kissing holding hands cuddling etc, but have -zero- drive for sex. It’s not mental it’s chemical. The hormones just aren’t doing it and there’s not much they can do about it.
When I get old, is my sex drive going to leave me? If so, I hope it leaves whoever I’m with at the same time. Wanting sex when your partner does not makes for a very strained relationship. Everyone becomes unhappy, and everyone feels bad for different reasons, it becomes an ugly sore spot, and things turn nasty… is what I hear.
I think I’ve been abundantly clear that all I’m doing is speaking from my position thus far in life.
The fact is, though, if that happened and I woke up one day never wanting a dick in me again, I would let my husband know he was allowed to bang other people if he wanted to. Again, I’d hope he’d do the same for me, if the roles were switched. Certainly, if your relationship is fulfilled for both you and your spouse through cuddling and hand holding, more power to you guys, but that would not cut it for me. Hence the OP.
There are some situations under which I’d tolerate a sexless marriage, but the OP generally knocks those out.
If there’s an issue and my spouse refuses to work on it, that would be the end of the marriage.
I’m not sure this is completely true. From a lot of what I’ve read, many women’s sex drives can be stimulated by… having sex. The more sex they have, the more sex they will want to have, to some degree. Many women are completely capable of going completely celibate, too. It’s very much a “use it or lose it” situation for a lot of women. Instead of “I’m not in the mood” it can be “I’m not in the mood yet.”
It’s something that can be worked on and improved, at least for some women.
If I’m convinced he loves me even though he doesn’t want sex, and I know he’s not getting sex elsewhere, I’m fine with staying and not cheating.
But I have a low sex drive and I know it.
Wow yeah totally. I’ve never read about this but I sure have experienced it.
Not to mention, as I touched on earlier, I’ve always read that most women are in their sexual primes in their 30s and going into their 40s. I don’t have anything handy as far as a cite, but this is the type of thing that’s often trotted out to support the whole cougar idea-- hey, an older lady is ripe for the banging, whereas men hit their sexual peak in their early 20s. I can’t possibly be the only person that has heard this?
So, maybe you’re right- it’s a use it or lose it situation, but if you use it, you’re going to be using it much, much more than before.
Nope. Don’t stay. I don’t cheat, either, but I don’t stay. I would be perfectly fine with being legally separated and (free to date other people) if one of us needed the others’ health insurance and whatnot.
But it’s very, very important to me. (TMI alert!) I can see that it’s very important to my parents. They separated for a month a few years back, and retained lawyers. They have always had a contentious relationship, but this seemingly came out of nowhere. (They have since reconciled and are the happiest I can remember). My mom relayed the conversation she had with her lawyer (also an old friend):
Lawyer: I am so sorry, Lucille. I can’t believe this is happening to you guys. So…what happened? Sex, money, or kids?
Lucille: :eek: People get divorced cause they don’t have enough sex?
Lawyer: It’s only the # 1 reason…
Lucille: We have sex all the time! He’s just such an ass about money!
BARF. Anyways, my parents make each other very happy even though they have the most bizarre relationship I’ve ever witnessed. It seems to me that when you’re having good amounts of sex, the rest is just gravy. Whatever that takes - scheduling it, hiring a babysitter, telling your kid to stay in their room and not leave until 11am except to use the bathroom, whatever. It’s one of my first priorities and it’s his too.
Actually, I’m a married man, and for us the roles HAVE switched. I wake up *every *day not wanting a dick in me.
Now here’s the thing: you gotta ask your friends how often they did it before they were married, or before they were on the pill. Before I went on the pill, thinking about sex actively got in the way of me thinking about school, life, etc. Going on the pill was a breeze! Suddenly now I only want to get down when he’s actually around. But for some women,hormones kill their libido.
Sometime last year I actually pushed the conversation with female friends towards “how often” intentionally, because I was curious. One kept raving about how they have sex all the time, can’t keep their hands off each other. To me, that means 3+ times/day. To her, that meant every other day. Which, incidentally, is how much I’m having sex right now, and it’s because the other half is finishing his law school apps, running a nonprofit, going to school full time and working part time. And I count the days until his semester is over!
So they possibly didn’t have a big sex drive to begin with, and their expectations were never in line with their SO’s (she: we’re having crazy amounts of sex! him: I can’t wait to get married and have MORE!)
I would address it. I’d want to talk about it openly, honestly, and calmly. I’d want us to pursue some sort of reasonable fix, whether emotional, psychological, etc. I’d do my best to be the helpful and supportive guy. But eventually, the sex would have to return. I wouldn’t leave, because in this hypothetical everything else is good, and we’ve got kids. So way down the road of trials and failures, I’d take the same open/honest approach and ask if I can fulfill that need elsewhere. Basically an open marriage. If the answer was no, I guess I’d have to start weighing pros and cons. I’d like to think that out-and-out cheating wouldn’t be in my cards.
Oddly, of the group I’m thinking of offhand, none take birth control and none of them ever did, either. They all think it’s odd that I more or less have been on it constantly since I was a teenager. I am well aware this sampling ain’t normal at all in this regard (it trips me out, too).
They regularly compare tales of not having sex for weeks on end. One came back from her honeymoon and then didn’t have sex for six weeks. She acted like this was perfectly normal and almost seemed to be bragging about it. Only two of us piped up that there might be a problem there. . .
Huh. Frankly, the mere thought of having sex while not on birth control (ETA: and not trying to make a baby) makes me almost totally uninterested. But that is extremely strange that none of them have ever been on BC. Have their spouses/partners ever asked them to? Perhaps the spontaneity factor is missing?
Wow. The honeymoon one. Again, so foreign to me. Guy should have filed 6 weeks in for divorce, on the grounds it was never consummated.
A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend of 2 years because he basically sunk into a “depression” (I use this loosely because he was uninterested in sex, definitely not cheating, and basically had a quarter-life crisis for no reason at all). He refused to seek any help, too. One of the major factors they broke up was his lack of sex drive.
I don’t think that any of us would argue with that as a first course of action. The thing is, some people just don’t want to talk about it or deal with it. I once dated someone like that. We had a few bad arguments about it. We tried to get counselling about it. We tried 4 or 5 therapists, but she said that every one of them “took [my] side.” Sex every six months in a relationship that only lasted two years got to be a real drag.
I left her for a nympho.
It depends what you signed up for. I have lots of friends of both sexes that I love but I would expect a marriage to involve the intimacy of sex. To me, if there is no sex then I’m just living with another good friend. I can phone that in without all the day to day drama required of a marriage.
Yeah, I agree that the birth control thing is completely backward to me. Don’t get me wrong, if I’m not getting any for a few months for whatever reason (between relationships, whatever), I will sometimes stop the pill just because I feel guilty pumping my body full of needless medicines :p-- but those first few times I have sex again before starting the pill, I’m damn near distracted the whole time at the thought of getting pregnant. Kills the moment, it does.
The friends in question are from the midwest and I’m from California (not sure if that makes a difference, but worth noting). They are folks that are generally religious, but the going to church but not confession sort. If that makes any sense. They aren’t morally against birth control, but just. . . never did. It blows my mind, because I can’t imagine being all promiscuous like some of them were in college and not taking that extra step for protection. Several of them don’t even use condoms in their marriage, but their quiver isn’t full of kids or anything. Heck, one’s been married like 5 or 6 years and just had their first kid a year ago. None of them admit to ever having an abortion and one was horrified when I offered her a morning after pill.
For the honeymoon one, I’m fairly certain that’s grounds for a damned annulment. :D. They still very rarely are intimate and she claims he just isn’t interested. For a few other reasons (but certainly this in part), the rest of us think he’s messing around on her. . . but still.
And in the example you gave-- don’t get me wrong, I’d feel terrible about leaving, but I’d do exactly what your friend did. It comes to a point where if the other person doesn’t acknowledge the problem and refuses to work on it, your sympathy can only go so far.
Ain’t that how it goes?
One of my guy friends once jokingly said, “Ladies, remember: every time you turn your man down for romantic, easy, missionary sex---- there are 5 women who would do anal with him.” You just can’t win against those anal girls 
The funny thing is, the sexless girl could definitely be described as anal.
Not in the positive way, it appears.