The person with the lower sex drive should be the one to initiate

[QuentinWinters]

just read this on another thread where a woman is talking about lack of sex with DH

what gets me with these threads is that if the man wants it more, the man is in the wrong and if the woman wants it more, the man is in the wrong

I've been thinking about this in the context of my own background - married to exH who wanted sex more than me, been in relationship with partner who wanted less.

I think the difference is that exH used to nag/pester/sulk about sex whereas I just accepted the situation where I was the higher sex partner and was happy to let partner initiate

So I wondered if part of the issue with difference in response re:men and women is to do with who initiates - with higher libido male partners being more likely to pester, which is unacceptable.

AIBU?

You should not unreasonably withhold sex from your partner. Saying no because you feel unwell either physically or mentally, are really tired just had a baby etc all fine. Because you fancy watching Netflix , no , marriages are about putting your spouse before yourself
This
I speak as someone who has been in a very happy marriage that was cut short by death. If you love each other then you prioritise your sexual relationship. This does not mean you make yourself available for sex even when you don't want it. It means that you want to be affectionate and intimate with your partner because of how you feel about them. Sex and eroticism is about communication, and communication includes talking openly with one another, sharing your news, laughing together, checking in with each other, sharing tasks and pleasures together as well as being physically close. Actual sex is a small part of that landscape of intimacy.

It seems to me on Mon there is a ridiculous culture of thinking it is acceptable for one person in a sexual relationship to check out sexually and still expect absolute fidelity.

Mon= Mumsnet

Getting dressed was a pain with one of my partners because he would just have to come and grope me when he saw me naked. At first it was cute but after a while it got tedious. I spent a lot of time touching him up too though so we were good.

My last ex, however, had pretty much zero sex drive as soon as our daughter was born. It was frustrating and a big confidence killer. I was confused because the man before treated me like I was special every day and this guy didn't? He was happy to let me do all the work and I pretended it was okay but it wasn't. This was a symptom of our crap relationship though, where nothing was going well, not just the sex.

You should not unreasonably withhold sex from your partner.

I know I tend to have old fashioned opinions on here but wow the 1940s have called and want their marital guidance advice back..

I agree bubbly.
Also I'm shocked that its apparently unreasonable to decide you would rather watch Netflix than have sex.

I know I tend to have old fashioned opinions on here but wow the 1940s have called and want their marital guidance advice back..
And what were the divorce figures in the 1940’s compared to now? I don’t know the figures but I know there was significantly less. Obviously you can’t accurately compare because many women stayed in abusive marriages. If you could account for that there would still be far fewer divorces.

@AldiAisleofCrap

I know I tend to have old fashioned opinions on here but wow the 1940s have called and want their marital guidance advice back.. And what were the divorce figures in the 1940’s compared to now? I don’t know the figures but I know there was significantly less. Obviously you can’t accurately compare because many women stayed in abusive marriages. If you could account for that there would still be far fewer divorces.

Nah, it was because the laws regarding divorce and child custody were far more heavily stacked against women in the first place. Divorces were available on the basis of adultery, drunkenness, incurable insanity, cruelty (as verified by witnesses, so unlikely to be visible) and desertion. Not rape (wasn't legally possible to be rape if they were married until very recently) and applications had to be made to the High Court in London, not the County Courts. Even so, the divorce rate increased and couples would often arrange for the spouse to go to a hotel to be 'caught' in adultery to give grounds to dissolve the marriage (so they could remarry, usually).

As soon as changes to the law came about in 1969 to more or less what is what we have now, the divorce rate increased again.

What I don’t understand is how so many people are in significantly mismatched relationships. Surely not everyone started out aligned and then everything else got in the way? I am inclined to think people (women Mostly) have ploughed away at relationships which weren’t sexually compatible from the start. Believing it to not be that important in the scheme of things.

Plus I think it’s more that people just don’t fancy their partner anymore but don’t want to admit it out loud and therefore can’t actually address it and work on the intimacy.

And PP who said you have an obligation to the person you entered a sexual relationship with - they are right. There is no need to climb on the literal use of “obligation” - of course you are not obliged to have sex on demand etc...but it really is quite a selfish thing to keep someone in a SEXUAL relationship - which is what a marriage is after all - where their sexual needs and wants aren’t addressed. We’re not talking 24/7 kink here, no one is obliged to provide blowjobs on tap but it’s not unreasonable that someone might want sex once a week ffs.

If you don’t want the sexual side yourself then don’t be in a sexual relationship with someone who does. And if you find you’ve lost it, be brave and really try to address why.

"If you don’t want the sexual side yourself then don’t be in a sexual relationship with someone who does. And if you find you’ve lost it, be brave and really try to address why."

^ THIS I AGREE WITH ^

Personally I'd hate to be in a situation where one partner always initiates. The person who wants it should initiate (with the understanding they can be refused).

What I don’t understand is how so many people are in significantly mismatched relationships. Surely not everyone started out aligned and then everything else got in the way?

Surely at the start of a relationship both parties are enamoured with each other and more likely to be initiating in both directions. It is not uncommon once a partner has been "landed" for one or both partners to go off the boil, as it were. I very much doubt two people with totally different libidos would make it through the first few months, the problem is that one or both of the partners change over time.

@2020iscancelled thank you! You've explained it so much better than I did.

@joystir59

If you are in a loving relationship you should want to respond to your partner

Well yes, but they have to accept that the response might be "no" and that's ok.

Also I'm shocked that its apparently unreasonable to decide you would rather watch Netflix than have sex

If mine would rather watch Netflix than have sex we'd have been divorced about 30 years ago.

I think there is a lot of cake eating on MN and this idea that only the Lower Libido partner (usually the woman) should initiate sex is very much part of that.

It is up to each partnership to decide how they are going to make sure that both people's needs are met. That will be different in each relationship. Blanket rules don't work.

Having had lots of issues with my own libido (due to GAD) I know that it is very difficult, but you can't just expect your partner to sit there and take the rejections and lack of interest indefinitely, it simply isn't fair or reasonable. Just as it isn't fair or reasonable to constant hound and harrass your partner for sex.

@AldiAisleofCrap

You should not unreasonably withhold sex from your partner. Saying no because you feel unwell either physically or mentally, are really tired just had a baby etc all fine. Because you fancy watching Netflix , no , marriages are about putting your spouse before yourself.

marriages are about putting your spouse before yourself Ok so Bob says "Hey Mary, fancy sex tonight?" and Mary say "Nah, I'm gonna watch the new episode of Desperate Housewives".

Now according to you Mary should say yes and put her spouse before herself by having sex with him. But HE should put himself before her and let her watch TV. So how does that work? Now Mary is saying "yes Bob yes, you have to take me right now!" and Bob is saying "No Mary, we must watch Netflix!" and they're both unhappy.

Or we could just go with no one should be expected to have sex when they don't want to.
If one never wants to, or one wants it lots, or one tries to coerce the other into sex, both partners can make a choice about staying in the relationship.
And if one says if things don't change I'll leave, the other one has a right to decide whether to get help or live with the consequences
If the on

I think both should be comfortable initiating with the one with a higher drive sensitive to frequency and not now vibes. The higher drive person is surely willing to put in the effort to get the other in the mood if they weren’t necessarily thinking Yay sex, but could be persuaded!

Persuasion is just a form of manipulation though and that is never sexy

Hmm.
I'd initiate by a kiss or a touch, if my partner didn't enthusiastically respond I'd back off.
ExH would initiate a lot more strongly (groping, fancy a stag, dirty texts etc) and wouldn't take non-verbal cues (e.g. me pulling away) as a signal to stop. I'd have to say I wasn't interested then he would either sulk or carry on, telling me I would eventually get in the mood. Or be angry in some cases.
It was a big contributor as to why we didn't have more sex. I felt like whether I wanted to or was turned on was nothing to do with what he wanted. He had needs, as his wife i should be meeting them. Regardless of my own.
As I said uptrend, this was by no means a sexless marriage

Female. I had the higher sex drive. Almost sex less relationship.

It was humiliating, degrading and painfully sad to always initiate. But I believe we never would have had sex otherwise. I felt like a sex pest.

Healthy relationship now. If the relationship is healthy both people will be happy to initiate or not. No one has to feel either coersed or rejected. It's the lack of compatible libedo, resentments, mental health of both that's the issue.

Strangely after ex and I split he agreed that it had been cruel of him not to have opened up the relationship on my side (not that I wanted that) as he was never capable of fufilling my needs.

@BubblyBarbara

What I don’t understand is how so many people are in significantly mismatched relationships. Surely not everyone started out aligned and then everything else got in the way?

Surely at the start of a relationship both parties are enamoured with each other and more likely to be initiating in both directions. It is not uncommon once a partner has been "landed" for one or both partners to go off the boil, as it were. I very much doubt two people with totally different libidos would make it through the first few months, the problem is that one or both of the partners change over time.

10 years actually. Always with different libedo. There was a lot more to our relationship than sex.

Even if I "knew" my partner had a higher sex drive and basically always wanted me, I would hate to be the only person initiating sex.

I don't believe that having a "high" or a "low" sex drive is just a neutral fact about a person, like liking curry or not, and the state of the partnership around it has no bearing. If you enter a marriage with someone who likes curry and you don't, you just work around it and it's all fine, assuming that the curry person doesn't force it on the other and the non-curry person doesn't force the other to abstain. Sex is different. If you are in a relationship, you are more or less inclined at any given moment to want sex with that person, and everything that is going on between you has a huge bearing on that.

If you love and cherish the other person, and make them feel truly loved and cherished and appreciated, in many relationships physical sex will naturally be a huge part of that and both partners are satisfied. In some relationships, maybe for one person sex can be less a part of that for various reasons, some of the time, but the person who would prefer more sex will still feel loved and cherished and lacking actual sex will matter less. I have never been in a relationship with a man who truly wanted to make me happy and been either pestered for sex, or left feeling frustrated; and in those cases I honestly believe the man was happy too.

I actually agree now, though I would have struggled with this earlier in my life, that if that isn't happening - love and sex resulting in general fulfillment - that it is fine to leave or agree an open relationship. I was hanging onto a terrible relationship for the sake of the children and I thought that it didn't particularly matter if I was enjoying it, the thing was to put up with it. I think that was wrong now.
In the end, we separated, but in another time or a parallel universe I might have said "look, we have children and you are their father, and a house; but you clearly have no interest, desire or respect for me. So can I please, discreetly, go and find someone who is interested, respectful and desirous of me?"

Nobody should ever have sex they dont want or be pressured into it. Nobody is entitled to sex with a person.

However, i also feel that there should be honesty and willingness to look into issues of mismatched libidos. So if someone is highly sexed they should work on themselves to come to a compromise so they are not upsetting a partner but equally someone with a very low sex drive (not due to illness or medications that can lower sex drive) should look into it and explore why that is and how they can compromise.

I dont think the low sex driver should be the one to initiate all the time they are a partnership and need to talk to their partner and allow the partner to initiate they can always say no.

And also did the "any sign = raring to go". It was a huge turn off.

I think attitudes like that are sad and the death knell of any relationship. The low sex drive party should never be coerced or bullied into sex but equally they cannot expect the other partner to be happy and stay in the relationship.

Im the one with the higher sex drive and i dont mean i want it every day. I mean unlike dp i want it more than once every couple of months. I never used to ask and now i will occassionally ask if he wants to come to bed every few weeks and he acts put out like i am harassing him even though i asked once and drop it as soon as its clear its a no. Its difficult being rejected and made to feel devient because you want intimacy now and again and im sure dp feels like the comment above. Anytime he initiates im raring to go because i know i wont get it again for ages. So its pretty shitty to then say thats offputting. So what we should play coy and pretend we dont actually want to shag when our partner decides they want to?