How can change this when nothing is working?

[DirtyStopOut]

Name-changer, for obvious reasons as you'll soon see.

Been married for 6 years, one DS (3). DH is lovely, wonderful, caring, and the most straightforward honest man I know. He would die for me or DS before he'd let anything bad happen to us.

However, since DS was born his sex drive has dwindled to absoultely zero. He's never been massively bothered about sex and hasn't ever had a high libido, but it's much, much, much worse now. In the last 4 years we've had sex 6 times.

I'm the opposite - I'm not desperate for sex, but I like it and I like it a lot, and I am absolutely dying here. We talk about it frequently, he swears he'll make more of an effort and surprise me, but he never does. The last 3 times's I've initiated sex, he has turned me down once and hasn't climaxed the other time.

I'm getting pretty used to "sorting myself out" IYKWIM, but it makes me feel desperate and sly and like I'm doing something shameful because DH doesn't know. But even so, it's not enough and I simply don't know what to do.

Sometimes when I broad the subject of sex he challenges me as to why it's so important to me, and this makes me feel even more depraved (hence the NN). What he doesn't seem to get (even though I tell him) is that sex for me is an expresion of love and when he doesn't want to show me love in that way, it upsets and saddens me.

I've just started a new job, and am now surround by younger, virile, attractive men who seem to find me attractive and are always flirting with me, and this is just bringing everything to a head. I love my DH to piece, but genuinely feel that if one of these guys made a move on me I'd be hard pressed to resist and I am just craving that kind of attention.

I don't want to be in that position, but I'm running out of ideas here on how to make DH hear me

Sorry for it being so long. I hope it doesn't put you off!!

Anyone??

Poor you. I think you need to twist his arm and get him to professional couple counselling about sex issues. It's a horrible situation that's no one's 'fault' when a couple have dramatically different sex drives, but it's the responsibility of both to be prepared to talk about it openly and explore all avenues for improving the situation.

Would your DH visit his GP to see if there is a physical reason for the lack of libido?

Poor you! My DH has a low sex drive but we were having sex once or twice a month. We went to Relate and talked about things, and although we don't have sex much more than we did, we're generally getting on a lot better and I'm happier.

I'm sorry your DH seems to have some mixed feelings around sex - there's nothing wrong with wanting sex more than once in a blue moon! I hope you are able to sort things out, I know it's really lonely feeling undesired with the man you love.

When we speak about it, he says it's because he's nervous about it having been so long since we slept together, and then every time we DO have sex, he says "I don't know why I was so nervous, it was brilliant, we'll definitely do it more often now we've broken the cycle.". And then it doesn't happen for months again.

The other issue is variety is complete, totally and utterly against ANYTHING remotely adventurous that would possibly spice things up. And when I mean adventurous, I'm not talking sex swing and strap ons, I'm saying he won't even have sex outside the bed. Not even on the couch. Always me on top doing all the work.

I don't know whether he'd see someone about it, we've not really discussed that. I think he'd be utterly mortified (coming from that same conservative place as the unwillingness to explore any other sexual practices).

Is he affectionate in non-sexual ways? Do you hold hands, cuddle, kiss on the cheek, etc.

fairynuff he isn't massively physically affectionate, sometimes little touching my face, kiss when he leaves/comes home in the morning, cuddles only if I instigate it. Generally Im' more affectionate than he is.

We did a marriage prep course and discovered that my love language is actions and his is deeds. So whilst I try to speak to his love language by cooking him a nice dinner or tidying up after myself (I am disgracefully untidy), he speaks to me with HIS love language rather than mine (dishes instead of kisses IYSWIM)

Sorry, meant my love language is affection, not actions.

I think counselling may be the best option for him. Not to try and 'fix' him but to help him explore how to keep intimacy alive in the relationship.

Couples counselling would probably be best but if you think he would be embarrassed talking about it, he could go on his own to start.

Also, something like couples massage is nice to do as an evening class. Lots of physical contact but without the pressure of 'performing' sexually.

I understand it's frustrating for you though and do think he should at least consider some options for making the relationship work.

Sounds on the face of it that he doesn't have a physical problem - it's psychological. Guessing this due to his reaction to sex out of the bed. Was he brought up to think that sex was a dirty thing?

If so it's likely that counselling would be something that could help - but then he would need to realise how serious this is to you - and of course you bringing it up again makes you feel like a depraved nymph!!(when of course you're just 'normal')

YoungMotherTubby, that's pretty much what I'm afraid of!

TBH, I know that I need to bring up counselling, but I'm also terrified that if I do bring him up, he'll immediately nix the idea because of how private he is, and then where does it leave us?

Without giving too much away, he's also going to be away Mon - Friday with work soon, and that's permanent, so things aren't going to get any simpler...

Also, you say it's really dwindled since your son was born. Does he now view you as a 'mother'. That could be really confusing for him in the sex department, and also something that could be sorted with counselling.

I don't think it's that he just sees me as a mum - in fact it's actually probably the opposite. We spend a lot of time doing "couply" things so that we're not just being parents.

I think it's more tied in with the pregnancy - it was a difficult one for me and sex was almost impossible, so that we basically the beginning of the new time scale for everything. Pre-pregnancy we were probably having sex 2-3 times a week, but everything dried up, then it was post partem and I was very sore from 3rd degree tear so by the time we had sex again it had been almost a year since the last time...