I’m curious to see how people would approach this scenario. For whatever reason, your SO randomly cuts off the sex from your relationship, and you’re suddenly faced with the reality of approaching that situation. How do you deal with it?
Can you soldier on in the face of a sexless relationship? Do you wait to see if things improve, or do you try to find out why your SO has suddenly decided to reject your sexual advances? Do you issue some kind of ultimatum that the sex will need to resume in order to secure the relationship? Is it even worth saving at that point?
There are probably a few people here who have dealt with similar situations. Have you ever gone through something like this? How did you deal with it?
There had better be a good reason. If so, we’ll soldier on. ‘Randomly’? That’s just… I’d sit it out for a while, but I’d be wondering what other ‘random’ changes would be popping up.
Obviously I’d ask why the sex had stopped, and the answer would have a lot to do with how I responded.
Recently my SO’s mother died, and with it our sex life for a few weeks. I knew he was grieving, so I didn’t ask why it had stopped in this case, but we did talk bout how he was feeling and I tried to be supportive of him. I also made a point to be physically affectionate, and after some time had passed, I initiated sex and tried to ease us back into our usual sexytimes. Another time, I was having a medical issue that made sex uncomfortable for me, and my SO was very patient as I was being treated/recovering. But again, we talked about it, and I tried to accommodate him in other ways so he wouldn’t feel “cut off”.
If sex stopped suddenly and my SO couldn’t explain why that was (and there wasn’t an obvious reason), I would insist that he be checked by a doctor to rule out a medical reason first, and then we would try therapy. If I felt he was really trying to resolve the issue, I would be patient for quite a while I think; maybe up to two years? If he wasn’t trying, or if it couldn’t be resolved, we would break up.
The reason would be important. Recent serious life trauma (death in the family, something similar) or some medical problem I’d have a lot of patience for that.
If it is some interpersonal/relationship problem that they can’t be open with me about, I’d try to work it out with them for some time and perhaps pursue counseling if I felt that would open avenues of discussion. But if they weren’t really willing to be open about why there was no more sex then I can’t see me going very long. Not that I need constant sex but after a month or two with no opening of communication I don’t feel a real relationship would exist at that point.
This situation actually happened to a friend of mine. His wife of ten years whom he had two kids with suddenly started turning down all of his advances. She denied there was any medical problem or any problem with their relationship, she just said she wasn’t “in the mood.” As the weeks turned into months he got pretty insistent with trying to find out why she wasn’t in the mood, but she wasn’t willing to explain it. It caused a fight anytime it was discussed. She was not willing to do any kind of counseling.
Myself and mutual friends of ours wondered (openly to him) if perhaps there was someone else, as in my own life similar situations I’ve seen often mean one partner is still having sex just outside the relationship. In this scenario he was all but certain that wasn’t the case (based on good reasons that aren’t worth elaborating on at this point.)
Finally it got to the point where his marriage was going to fall apart if he kept pressing his wife on the issue. So he basically made the decision to have a sexless marriage and he stopped trying to initiate, he wasn’t willing to end the relationship over it, and his wife had no interest in leaving him or ending the marriage, she just turned off the sex–permanently. It’s been going for 8+ years now.
At first his friends told him he shouldn’t put up with it, later that he should look for action on the side. Finally it stopped being brought up because then it became a reason for an argument between his friends and him as he was unwilling to defend his decision to remain in a sexless marriage for the rest of his life.
If the reason was obvious I’d deal with it while he worked through whatever was going on.
Otherwise I’d insist on a doctor and then counseling.
I’m not sure what I’d do after that. Seems rather unfair for someone to be expected to be monogamous yet the one person that they’re allowed to have sex with refuses to have sex. I don’t know if I could live like that.
I’d definitely stick it out until PandaKid was grown. After that, shrug
My sister’s husband stopped having sex with her oh, twenty-three years ago after their second child was born. She’d had to have an emergency C-section that took some time to recover from, since she almost bled to death, and was told that because of the fibroids she had, having another child would be a bit dicey. So when sex (which she says had not been that frequent anyhow) didn’t resume, she put it down to his hesitancy to risk a pregnancy, her exhaustion, his exhaustion, then medical issues, and then her weight gain, his weight gain, then just low libido…the years just piled up and she never really forced the issue. then a couple years ago she discovered he had a MySpace page where he mentioned he was questioning his sexuality and regretting ever getting married and having kids…which was a wonderful thing for his daughter to stumble across! They are still married…he has moved in with a friend but is now talking about moving back in, and they are negotiating staying married. Finally talking honestly to each other, but not completely. My sister just doesn’t care anymore…she says she gave up caring about sex after years of going without, and now her health and physical ailments make it not a high priority. She’s content to go without for the rest of her life, and she’s only 59.
In my case, my ex stopped approaching me for sex whenever he was having an affair. The few times he mentioned it, he blamed it on my weight, my clothes, the necklace I wore…he’d pick fights just to have an excuse. And after a while, I really wasn’t enjoying having an extremely drunk man wake me up in the middle of the night for crappy sex, so his cut-off times were frustrating but also a bit of a relief. He tried to make me believe that I was “frigid”…anything to make himself feel better about his cheating. If he hadn’t up and left me, we would have probably divorced eventually anyhow. What I never did though, was bluntly ask him. I guess I didn’t want to know the answer right then…or didn’t want to be lied to again or made to feel like it was all my fault.
Pretty much exactly this. There’d better be a damn good reason and “I randomly decided to.” is definitely not going to cut it. We’d be having a good serious talk if there isn’t a satisfactory answer.
My ex cut off sex after I gained a few pounds. He told me it was my fault, because I could have lost the weight if I really wanted to. I ended up keeping the weight on because I was so angry at him. Months rolled on, and I ended up staying for 6 more years. I finally asked him for an open relationship, and when he refused (saying that he didn’t want to have sex with me but didn’t want me to have sex with anyone else) I left him. Best decision I ever made.
I don’t understand why sex is so important to people. It’s fun, but I don’t exactly think of it as the glue that holds the relationship together.
That said, if we were having regular sex and he suddenly stopped with no explanation, I would be very concerned by the sudden change in behavior. If he wasn’t willing to talk about it, I would feel pretty betrayed.
