Marriage is hard after kids

[tootiredforeverything]

So I had my daughter nearly a year ago, and yes it's been hard, but she is honestly the greatest thing in my life and I have never felt a love like it. The problem is that since she arrived, I just don't feel the same way about my husband. We've been together for 12 years, married for 5 and are in our thirties. Our relationship was built on trust and friendship rather than lots of sex and passion, however we a lot of fun over the years, and yes we argued (sometimes a lot), but we were happy. He was my best friend, we made each other laugh, and I truly loved him.

When we first brought our daughter home, we worked together really well and we couldn't be happier. But over the months, I just ended up doing everything for her. If I'm honest I wanted to do this and I haven't resented any of it... even when I was surviving on 2 hours broken sleep a night. I'm her mum and I want to take care of her, and didn't want to miss anything.

I think things took a turn for the worse in our relationship when the sleepless nights got really bad, and he moved into the spare room. I honestly felt relieved about this as I could manage the crying and night feeds without worrying about waking him up.

Fast forward to my husband moving back into our room though, and I immediately resented it. I used to want to cuddle, hold hands etc, but now I don't want him to touch me! We have had sex a few times, but honestly I was just doing it for him and couldn't wait for it to be over.

Anyway we have now reached a stage where he is frustrated that we don't have a relationship beyond being mum and dad. I'm back at work and juggling everything at home with a full time job, and it's like I just don't have anything left for him. I know that he could do more to help etc, but equally it's me who has withdrawn from our relationship. Is this something that other people have been through? Did you manage to get things back on track? I don't think it's a matter of making more time for us as a couple, as even when we've tried, my sex drive isn't there. I don't want to leave or break up our family, but I know my husband can't live in a sexless marriage either...

DH and I had our struggles.

He found the weight of responsibility being the breadwinner really hard whereas I loved being at home (not all the time, obviously. I'm no saint!). Having the traditional roles was discussed before having children and there was no resentment to either myself or the children just a pressure he felt.
DH also found that my 11 years nannying experience meant that I had 'all the answers' and he felt redundant. We worked hard on that. I said that mostly it had given me a wider choice of strategies/techniques to try BUT I had not had experience of having children 24/7, of our own children or for the completely different level of emotion bringing up your own children compared to someone else's.

Thankfully, communication was still good and we could discuss it - although we agreed that late night/first thing in the morning was NOT a good time! In fact, we evolved into booking a time to have such discussions. It meant we were both prepared for it, in the right 'headspace' and could choose our words carefully to avoid provocative language.

tootiredforeverything - you're focusing far too much on your dh not getting sex. There is one hell of a lot more wrong with your relationship at the moment than that. It's not just a physical need he has - he needs a loving partner who can bear to touch him and wants to spend time with him.

Unless your relationship was only ever based on feeling sexy?!

I think that it can take ages to get back to a semblance of the "before" life, once you have a child.

A long period of going off sex is not unusual and in the scheme of things not a huge deal - if you've given birth, and then worn out through up at night, possibly BF, possibly MHPs (speaking from my own experience here) then it can take a fair old while before you start feeling frisky.

Thing is that sex is not the be all and end all as long as there is friendship, communicaiton, love, affection, or shouldn't be. I think it's if that other stuff is missing as well is when sex becomes the focus, the be all and end all, the magic bullet to save everything.

It sounds like you're either:-

Worn out, which is never good for anything, people making demands left and right and yes at the end of the day you want some time to yourself. The only way to resolve this is to become less worn out. Which would mean making sure that you are workign together to get all the necessary stuff done, and maximising relaxation time for both of you. If you need time to yourself then you need to agree with him a way to take it "properly" - get out the house for a good walk, or whatever you like to do, rather than being in a situation where you need some down time but you can't take it fully so you just sort of tune out even though you're physically there

Or you've just had enough of him which is a different problem entirely.