Goodness me, there’s a lot of judgemental shit being posted on this thread. I’m amazed – and impressed – that the OP’s stuck around, which is a measure, I presume, of her desperation for perspective and advice. I also have the impression that very few of those posting have any personal experience of the issues the OP raises, which is making it hard for anyone much to give her what she needs.
OP, I am in a similar relationship – or at least I could certainly have described it in similar terms. My DH and I have been together nearly 20 years. We have children and a business together. We love each other, but there are definitely areas of frustration, of which our non-existent sex life is one. With retrospect, his sex drive was always much lower than mine, but my interest in sex is just normal really, I think – I certainly wasn’t expecting him to swing from the chandeliers several times a night and wasn’t into anything particularly adventurous. In fact, if he wasn’t so totally uninterested in it, I think I probably wouldn’t be half so preoccupied with it myself. Anyway, bad has gone to worse over the years. Having to entice and seduce (and feel like shit when unsuccessful) gradually gave way to a long period where he would come to bed hours later than me in order to avoid intimacy, and at this point we probably have sex about as infrequently as you. The other thing is that on the rare occasions we do have sex, it’s rubbish. Yeah, yeah, I know it takes two to tango and all that, but I love sex, I really do, and I slept with quite a few people in my youth and had a great time and no complaints. With my DH it’s inept and fumbling, exactly the same every time, always always in the dark and under the covers, very focused on PIV, and, uh, brief. Anyway, this thread isn’t about me, but the point is that I get it, OP. I also relate to what you say about a lack of intimacy – no kisses, hugs, handholding, proprietory touch. Sometimes it kills me.
The question is whether it’s OK or not, or at least whether you can feel OK about or not, and also what’s to be done.
Like you, OP, I’ve spent a lot of time on MN trying to figure the answer to these questions out. There’s a lot to be said for the hive brain, the collective wisdom of thousands of anecdotal experiences. The support women here give others going through divorce or infidelity or DV is amazing. When it comes to sexless marriages, though, the hive brain just isn’t so good. The clichés being wheeled out here are astonishing. He’s having an affair, he’s depressed, he’s just not that into you, he’s addicted to porn, he’s gay actually. You’ve had them all.
One or more of them may be true, and you definitely do need to talk to him about it, preferably in a spirit of enquiry rather than one of libidinous desperation. It may even be necessary to fall back on that good old MN standard, the GP appointment, although very little, IME, will show up, because dietary or hormone related influences are all likely to fall well within the range of normal even if they’re playing an unhelpful role, and stress and depression act to reduce libido well before the point where medication is a useful treatment. Past a point, even talking about it won’t help, IME. Let’s face it, men aren’t immune to all the social stereotypes that give rise to the clichés being trotted out here, either. Who wants to hear that their sexual performance isn’t meeting up to expectation? Contrary to the assumptions largely being bandied about on the thread, an inability to get answers to some of these questions doesn’t necessarily mean ‘communication has broken down’ or ‘the marriage is dead’. My DH and I communicate excellently. We talk almost incessantly, broadly agree on all kinds of topics, make each other laugh, and like each other. We just can’t talk about this. God knows, we’ve tried, or I have. Mostly, he apologises and promises to ‘do better’. But of course it amounts to nothing. And nor should it. I don’t want him to be sorry or to ‘try’. I want him to enjoy sex as much as I do. And he just doesn’t. And eventually, covering the same sorry ground in a conversation like this is a toxic thing in an otherwise loving relationship. So talk, by all means, but don’t expect to get much in the way of useful answers.
So is it OK, OP? Or can you feel OK about it? I don’t know, but what I do know is that’s it’s very, very common. And according to some definitions of the word, therefore, it’s really quite normal. Lots of the people on here will tell you it’s not, and that may well be their experience. But there may well be things about their marriages you wouldn’t find normal if you heard about them. And everyone’s characterisation of normal is different. Some here saying you’re entitled to a normal sex life may be meaning several times a week, some may mean several times a month, some may mean Christmas and birthdays, some may mean no PIV thanks but I want to be cuddled. In a forum like this, ‘normal’ becomes a unitary concept that has no agreed meaning and yet still manages to leave you feeling like you’re on the outside of it and therefore ‘abnormal’. It is OK to be in a marriage with very little sex, provided you've found a way to feel OK about that.
How to accomplish that is the other question, and again, I don’t know the answer to that, but I know what’s worked for me. Firstly, hard though it sometimes is, I recognise that sex is only one aspect of marriage. I read about some of the marital problems in threads on here and I wonder how the hell some of these women put up with their husbands: men who won’t pull their weight in the house, who undermine their wife’s parenting, who are mummy’s boys who let the MIL rule the roost, who control their wives financially, who have serial affairs, who come home drunk and puke everywhere and leave it for someone else to clear up, who work away all the time or expect their wives to give up careers to follow them round the country, who gamble the family money away, who can’t hold down a job, who are sexist or racist or hateful in a million and one ways. By comparison my lovely, hardworking, funny, intelligent, evolved, hands-on parenting DH is a fucking saint, and if his one failing is that he isn’t massively interesting in the bedroom department, then is that so bad? I think of all the times his lack of interest in sex suited me: like when DC1 was born and I had a massive tear and stitches that took literally years to heal, like when I had PND, like when I was working all the hours in a high-stress job and really needed to go to bed to sleep. I think of all the less-than-perfect qualities I have: I’m lazy and a bit judgemental, I have a nightmare family and I’m useless with money. I think of all the things I love about the life we have together: lovely DCs, a nice home, shared interests, shared values and plans; interesting conversation, interesting work that we both do.
And yes, I think about sex a lot. I think about other men, and, like you, I once got myself into an EA because I knew that I had needs that weren’t being met but hadn’t figured out yet how to cope with that. An EA is not the same as a physical affair. It just isn’t. And anyone on this thread who claims it is is being obtuse and unhelpful. But the problem with EAs is that they involve other, real people and that’s when things get messy and feelings get hurt. So leave other people out of it. I learned my lesson and at this point I’ve made my peace with the idea of having a sexless but otherwise happy marriage, a very active fantasy life, and an excellent vibrator.
It is possible, OP, and it’s much more common than you’d think. Whether it’s the right decision for you, only you can know. If you decide you want a whole different kind of relationship, then leave him and get out there and find it. But do it because it’s what you want, not because MN said you should.
Sorry for the essay, but I hope it’s useful. I NC’d for this, so probably won’t come on the thread again, but you can PM me if you’d like to. 