To not have sex unless I actually want to

[OverOverOverAgain]

Me and my husband been having issues for last couple of years. We have young kids amd full time jobs and we have grown apart. We don't have much in common

Tonight we had a "chat" after a month or so of barely saying two words to each other

I've slept in spare room for months. My choice. I find it hard to sleep next to a man I barely talk to for days.

He said our lack of sex life was a driver in our issues. I said its a symptom of the issues, not the cause. He disagreed and said we should schedule sex and commit to regular sex and the closeness and love will follow

I said "but I don't want to have sex when its so frosty between us" and he said "so?". And I said "i have to want it"

He replied "well I'd rather you want to have sex but even if you dont - I'd rather you just did it anyway - because I need ti have sex, and our relationship needs it. You refusing is causing huge distance" and so on.

Im just sat here by myself at 11pm on a Sunday unable to sleep mulling it over in my head

But it feels like a really shitty thing to have said. But maybe there is a grain of truth to it. I need some advice!

I had tears falling once when having sex with my EH, he was a good friend, we were good parents I suppose but during Covid and the grandparents could no longer babysit sex became harder to have. Then the more he became distant, the more porn I found on his devices. The constant pestering, turning his back to me in bed, the sly comments just pushed me away. He then starting touching me in my sleep, I would wake up to him crawling on me. I just couldn’t get past all this, it’s like I got the ick and I couldn’t get past it. A year into covid (of this behaviour) I found messages to a prositute so was my way out.

im now in a very healthy relationship with a gorgeous funny man who I regular pester to take me bed

Three kids with SEN.

I have no plan for the future but I am trying to maintain a stable home for the girls for as long as possible.

Is he aware that men are able to give themselves a handjob?

Ah...but he needs you to service him in order to engender a feeling of closeness between you? Good grief.

Morally, this is the same as rape.

The bottom line is this .. if you don’t want to have sex with him then don’t. However you no longer have a marriage. You are housemates … not even that. As long as you are ready for a split household then that is what needs to happen.

Okay, I'm going to make an important distinction here. YOU agreeing to have sex even if you're not especially wild for it is one thing. HIM demanding that you do so is quite another thing. From what you've said, it sounds like he is doing the first thing above, requesting that you consider agreeing to do this, NOT demanding that you do it.

Also, it sounds like the two of you are caught up in a pretty common dynamic. Many women don't feel like having sex unless they feel close with their partner first, whereas many men feel close to their partner BY having sex with them. Neither way is right or wrong but I think it's good to realize that you differ in that way.

And, when you have little kids, jobs and so on, the early, lighter and more exciting days of marriage are over and it's also common to just feel burdened, tired and bored with life and to feel like getting through the day is about all you're up for.

All of the above, including you sleeping in separate bedrooms, is also a very common predictor of divorce.

So I'd think very carefully about which way you want your marriage to go, when deciding how to proceed.

What I do with my husband is usually give him sex when he wants it. I know I don't have to and of course I make an exception if I want to but I do prioritize his sexual desires. It also has a way of causing him to then be more in tune with me.

I also sleep in the bed with him every night. Those are two special, unique things that exist in a marriage, you could say honored positions that only you have with him and he with you. But if you refuse to take them and clearly don't want to take them, you are sending a big message to your partner and also leaving a big gap between you in your marriage.

I would start sleeping in the bed with him and, IF you can do it without strong negative feelings, I would have sex with him when asked. AND I would also figure out a way for regular date nights. You might also try marriage counseling. So many couples don't get it until the distance is allowed to go on for too long and the marriage breaks, usually by someone else stepping into the gap the two of you left and whichever partner is targeted feeling so alone that they go with it, when they wouldn't have in a healthier marriage. Then all that you didn't do this, well you didn't to that bickering seems quite trivial.

That's my advice as an older wife but of course it's up to you. Best wishes.

"Having issues the last couple of years" "have grown apart" "don't have much in common" from the OP.

This should help with your comprehension of the thread going forward to avoid derailing the thread further.

Sexual coercion is never ok.

Also, I forgot to add that in my decades-long marriage, we've had several years that were high and several that were low, along with plenty that were in the middle. What I've seen, in my opinion, is that when many marriages hit the first low point, like you seem to be in now, don't recognize it for what it is and then they're surprised when it all falls apart. But if they knew more from the start, they'd realize that if the high years were there before, they'll most likely return if they just stick it out. Just stick it out AND try to turn it around. Marriage counseling is also a great idea. I hope this helps. :)

Haven't RFTF. But, maybe have a read on the differences between spontaneous desire and responsive desire. Men tend to have the former while women have the latter, and it causes a huge gulf between men and women. The book "Come As You Are" by Emily Nagasaki is also an eye-opener. Also highly recommend "Mating in Captivity" by Esther Perel.

The relationship issues are a block, though. I see entirely what you mean about not being able to feel desire for a man you don't feel close to and have resentment towards. I would feel exactly the same, and definitely felt a lot like that in my former marriage.

You both need to give each other something of each other's needs. For men, love does often follow sex, whereas we women often need to feel love before we want sex. Another of God's little jokes.

He's not being realistic to expect you to jump in the sack while things are like this. No one wants to sleep with someone they don't feel close to. On the other hand, he's not wrong about there being a place sometimes for girding your loins and Just Doing It with the thought that it will help melt the ice and bring you closer. There's a reason that sex is called "making love," and it's responsive desire.

So, what to do? He needs to accept that your relationship needs some work and he needs to court you and romance you, and listen to whatever main complaints you have about him. And you should bear in mind that you probably shouldn't wait until things are just right, but at some point during the repair process, you just have to floor the pedal and make a run at it.

You need to start by dating each other again, and institute non-sexual touch. Kiss goodnight on the landing outside your rooms after a dinner date. He can touch and cuddle you in the cinema but not at home. You get the idea.

Really wishing you the best of luck.

What is not sustainable in the long term is a sexless marriage… well obviously it happens but with only ONE inevitable outcome… the spouse that wants sex will look elsewhere. Followed by affair, lies, deception and divorce.
If you no longer want him . End it before that happens…

You don’t need to have sex with anyone if you do at best too . This being said , I can see his perspective too as I think no marriages survives that way and for me sex means proximity and intimacy , and I see it often the less sex you have the more of a wedge and the less you want it .
If you sleep separately and you don’t talk , why don’t you divorce ?

And btw even as I was quietly weeping as he had crawled on me whilst asleep he carried on. He knew I hated what he was doing and carried on. So fucked up.

I think men just have no conception at all that we get NOTHING like the same amount of physical pleasure from PIV sex that they do. I mean, just imagine if our clitorises were located inside our vaginas. Think how amazing PIV would feel! Or imagine if our clitorisis were on the end of a stick (bear with me!) and we were able to put it in something that stimulated it on all sides, and the stick was sensitive too. I mean, that would feel amazing. PIV must feel absolutely incredible to men. I think that's why some men don't/can't think of PIV as being this bad thing that it often seems to us, in terms of it feeling like such an imposition if you're not in the mood, and that you can feel so used. Men Just. Don't. Get it. And I think they don't want to get it. Because if they considered for a moment what PIV is like for women, that we don't feel the same things during it as them (the fact that we wear tampons and can't feel them should be a clue), that in fact we often don't feel much at all, and that yes, having something pushed inside you does very much feel like an imposition, often. If they considered these things for a moment, they would be devastated. They have to tell themselves the lie that PIV is as much fun for us as it is for them. Because if they don't, what does that say about sex? They need and want to believe it's a mutual feeling, when it really isn't.

Of course women can get pleasure from PIV. But it has to be the right man, at the right time, and he has to be skilled. It's not automatic deep pleasure like it is for men. I do think that all this is why otherwise good men can come out with things like "you have to do it." He really thinks he's encouraging OP to do something that's innately really pleasurable, instead of something which feels impossible for her and like a real imposition.

So there's a massive difference between letting yourself be persuaded by a partner you love and fancy even when you're not initially in the mood, and what he's suggesting, which won't bring you closer more like the opposite surely. To state the obvious, sex happens when people are attracted to each other, otherwise we'd be shagging anyone and everyone all the time. So if he's not bothering to do anything that's attractive to you like making time for the both of you as a couple to reconnect, he can't expect you to be up for any sex.

Any argument about sex being the thing to reconnect you is bs. Ask him perhaps if he'd out of nowhere like an unlubricated cucumber up his hole.

He needs to do his part, building intimacy with you again outside of the bedroom so you want to have sex with him.

utterly repulsive man . Make sure there is a lock on the spare room door.

It's not so much what's wrong with you, more what's wrong in your marriage.
You certainly don't have to have sex if you don't want it...and your husband doesn't have to live in a sexless marriage if he doesn't want to.

I don't think it's BS. It's a well-researched sex difference between men and women that, in a relationship, men feel closer to their loved one via sex, whereas women need to feel closeness first, in order to have sex. As I said upthread, another one of God's little jokes. Men and women get to closeness via different routes, and they also get to sex via different routes. Men's route to sex is that they're endowed with an entire set-up that prompts spontaneous desire, and the act of love-making opens up their emotions. Women need the closeness to be open to sex. It's a set-up that's guaranteed to create disaster, basically. I do wonder if we evolved that way specifically to create tension, break the pair bonds, and each half of the couple then goes off to breed with new partners, therefore increasing genetic diversity in the next generations.

I take your point about the cucumber up the bum, though. Men really, really need to think more about what the experience of PIV sex is like for a woman.

Honestly nothing else should need to be said. It's pretty chilling that he said that.

Exactly. OP is now thoroughly turned off, and who could blame her. She says that she has asked for romance, dates, connection etc. and it has never happened. How the hell does he expect her to want sex with him is there is no romance, no tenderness, and no connection? OP might have let their sex life slide, but he has been really neglectful of his marriage, too, in a different way. And this is the result.

@Griselinia Ugh, your "out of nowhere" comment just reminded me of when my marriage was in its death throes but we were still valiantly trying. He couldn't be bothered with foreplay, so he got this glob of lube and just put it on my vulva, with no warning - it was quite dark. It was cold, and unexpected, and it really felt like someone just dropped a lump of ice cream onto my undercarriage. I have never experienced anything so deeply and utterly unsexy. I wish I could remember if we then had sex. If we did, clearly it was very memorable!!

I suppose you have to decide whether you want to stay in this marriage or not. How old are your children?

I am a man and to me the idea of having sex with a woman who doesn't want it is absolutely abhorrent. I can't for a moment understand men who would take pleasure in it, although sadly I know that such men exist.

Having sex you don't want just to get children is a really bad idea. If you're not attracted to the guy or hate sex in the first place don't get married to him...if none of those apply then just accept it's not working for whatever reason and divorce.

He wants you as a masturbation tool, yet thinks it's ok to treat you like shit the rest of the time.

Please tell me you're getting your ducks in a row.