Long term marriage is like shagging your best friend

[Oneisnotamused]

……..or even worse, your brother or your sister 🤮. I think most long-term marriages end up with this problem - I know some people are still happily shagging after 30+ years but……..how do long-term marriages survive this particular ick?

I’m sorry OP I did miss some of your earlier posts.

For what my opinion is worth - when you feel this way you have a few options: stay in a sexless marriage and learn to let go of that side of things (I wouldn’t be ok with this personally), divorce and hope that you can find good sex with someone else (risky but a lot of people I know are far happier in second marriages/ relationships), or discuss the possibility of an open marriage with your dh.

If everything else but the sex is good a lot of people will say you should try and make it work - but that’s very difficult to do when you still have a libido and find yourself attracted to other men, which i‘m guessing you do.

If my dh stopped wanting to have sex with me or we stopped fancying one another I’d be absolutely bereft. I’m hoping by the time he’s too old il be unbothered by that side of things too.

I get what you mean OP. It’s easy once you have kids to get out of the habit and it can drift to it feeling like living with a flatmate. It doesn’t help that mine nags at me all the time which kills the lust factor a bit!! There is no shame in people talking about this, I don’t know why so many people seem to be taking it personally. Even if all is hunky dory in their own little “love shacks”, they must know of friends in similar situations?! Or at least have seen it on telly 🤣

Looking at most men in their 50s and 60s I am amazed there are so many women still fancying them so madly they want to rip their clothes off across a crowded room.

Almost 20 years hasn't done that here yet

So you're no longer having sex and no longer attracted to one another in that way? I guess the question is do you want to get back to a romantic relationship or not? I wouldn't be happy with life long celibacy in a relationship. Different if it was physically not possible and we needed to be creative for sexual fulfillment but just not fancying each other?

I'm curious how many of the hot sex LTR posters are very good looking with good looking partners. I know one poster said they are in peak physical shape and it helps. I suspect that is a pattern. Maybe it sounds superficial but it does matter. I don't think I ever saw DH in a crowd and got turned on by just looking at him. Not that i was never attracted to him or loved him, I did, but it was a deeper thing, the sexual stuff was secondary. These days my weight is a big factor and my lack of confidence kills my libido. Dh tells me he is attracted to me but I can't believe him, I feel gross a lot of the time. I can imagine many women and men don't like their bodies and this is a factor in their sex life.

I know what you mean OP and I agree.
The familiarity of a long term relationship is more like a friendship and deffo changes things sex wise. I could 💯 deffo give it a miss with my DH of many years and would happily never DTD again but he doesn’t disgust or ick me and I’d never ever tell him that as built our whole life together.

I think you have a point both me and my DH are fit, healthy and I know he thinks I'm gorgeous and I definitely think he is.

Have only been together 9 years so not as long term as some posters but we’ve maintained a good sex life and I was obese until recently! So not in peak physical condition but we have always fancied each other like mad.

I do think you’re right about the confidence though - it’s not necessarily the weight, it’s how you feel about it. I would bet good money your DH isn’t lying and fancies the pants off you. Men don’t see our flaws like we do!

I’ve been fat and thin, fit and unfit, made up to the nines and in slob gear - it hasn’t made a difference to us. Dh has never been grossly overweight but I’ve fancied him just as much when he was bigger as I do when he’s slim and fit.

After 21 years with my DH, I still fancy him. We have 3 DC, so clearly we'd been having sex for at least three times during our relationship 😅 Seriously, I think I have a pretty low frequency sex life at the moment, but given we have barely any time to scratch our arses in between children, work, domestic drudgery, and being knackered... we are trying our best 😆🤣

I've not got the ick yet. I've been through an awful lot over the years, and our marriage is very strong. We find each other irritating at times but not to the point that we don't want sex. Admittedly, perimenopause isn't helping me feel sexy but I guess it's something I will need to try and improve.

😆

It doesn't scare me it's just not my personal experience with my husband.

I do understand that many people have sexless marriages for a variety of reasons. After my children were born for a good 6 months I was in this camp. But we always discussed things and I hope we will going forward.

It's perfectly possible to be best friends with someone and fancy them though. I think you need to have some honest conversations with your husband tbh.

I can’t believe you enjoy sex with the man you specifically chose to marry and sleep with the rest of your life. Thats incest! 😂😂

OP, the people who say they enjoy sex with their husbands are laughing because they have chosen to keep the spark alive. It’s not about “sexual promiscuity” - I previously defined it here as a new level of intimacy born of a complex annd lifelong understanding and care for each other. This is a level of passion you can’t get from a fleeting fling.

It’s very reductive of you to say those who don’t see their husbands as brothers aren’t willing or able to discuss this on a deeper level. Of course there are women whose relationships die off or become like room mates. That isn’t because of the length of the relationship itself, it’s by falling into taking each other for granted. Many people are still deeply in love with their partners. Perhaps that should be aspired to. I certainly have found it far more fulfilling and passionate than sex with men I don’t know very well and therefore can’t fully trust or let my guard down with.

I think this is one of the saddest threads I’ve ever read as this is a reductionist on the whole state of marriage. After being through two major illnesses in the last 15 years and surgery this year my wonderful husband has been there for me through the times when I couldn’t even give him a smile, never mind a shag. I am so incredibly grateful to have this wonderful man in my life.

marriage is and never was all about sex. It’s about a deep connection between two people and if they’re very lucky they have a family to experience that with I’ve never once thought about this man as being my brother or reducing him to just my best friend he is so much more than that.

i’m sorry@Oneisnotamusedthis is how you define your marriage and you’ve really missed out

You can flip that though. Whilst I don't think men automatically age better than women, and it depends on a number of factors, like genetics, if you smoke, how often you drink booze, how good looking you were to start with etc; it's laughable to say 'it's amazing women fancy men in their 50s and 60s!' I mean, why should men fancy women in their 50s and 60s? Some look OK/fine, some not so good... Same with men. Some look OK/fine, some not so good!

DH and I still look OK in our 50s.. (Don't drink, don't smoke, quite good genes.) We have both been slim/a bit chubby/a bit more chubby, then back to slim again and so on, and we have still always been attracted to each other. How sad for you @Oneisnotamused that you have never experienced long-term love and attraction.

Getting scarily close to 30 years since we started having sex with each other.

Absolutely wouldn’t want to do it with anyone new. My DH knows what I like better than I do at this point! He’s spend over 2 decades perfecting various techniques and discovering new ones.

Why would a relationship that’s always been sexual start to feel like one that totally isn’t?

I'm not defending anything, I just have no idea what is "icky" about sex with your best friend. That's what marriage is meant to be. A lifelong partnership with your best friend who you also find sexually attractive.

Your post may as well say, "Long term marriage is like shagging your husband!" Um, ok?

How does that help, out of interest?

I mean, you can speak for yourself but you ain't telling me how i feel.

I’ve been with my partner 28 years and still fancy him loads. I don’t really understand the post. He’s my best friend and I really like shagging him. We’ve had two kids and things went on the back burner when they were little but now they’ve grown up, the sex is as good as it ever was.
The whole sibling comment is just odd.

How old are your children?

In a long marriage there are peaks, troughs and occasional deserts. How you feel now is different from how you felt ten years ago and how you will feel in ten years time.

The 40s for many of us coincides with peak dc/work responsibilities and sometimes the start of supporting older relatives. It can be exhausting and leave little time to spend simply with each other. Being in a trough or a desert doesn’t mean sex is gone for good.

I remember the priest who married us talking about “one flesh” not being just about sex but about bonding. Something which grows over years of shared experience and is about more than physical sex and carries us through the dry and difficult times. The young me thought this was nonsense, it was obviously just about the sex. The older me knows rather better.

It is an OP problem if she pitches up on here and suggests that her experience is the norm when it isn't for millions of people. She phrased it to make it seem like it was the norm and that in her view it was likely that the majority of people had this unhappy experience and perhaps that makes her feel better but unfortunately for her this simply isn't the case. It is sad that people find themselves in sexless, loveless or otherwise unhappy marriages but imagining or hoping that most people are the same is a rather unpleasant way to try and make yourself feel better, like when some people on here suggest that the seemingly happy couple are miserable behind closed doors, I'm sure it does happen but some couples do remain very happy on all counts long term.

Wait, you're married and having sex? Oh.. 🙁

This doesn't happen in all long term marriages, I think is the point.

All long term relationships go through higher and lower passion phases. The ones that last are the ones where both parties are committed to seeing it through the periods that aren't what they want and making sure they bring it back to what they do want.

It's not about "giving up" on sex. It's about navigating through the phase you're in together and working out what you want from your relationship and how to get there. If you can, you'll last. If you can't, that's why some break down.