Is Lack of sex ever a vaild reason to end relationship?

[balotelli]

Dw and I have been married for 10+ yrs. 1 DC (3).
Her libido has basically died. It was never rampant but now is down to 3 x a year and then when we do dtd I feel that its out of duty not pleasure.
We have a brilliant relationship in every other way, no money worries, make each other laugh lots, have nice house, holidays etc etc But the big old elephant sits in the corner and wont budge.
I know I cantface the rest of my life having making love 3x a year or less. The frustration and feelings of rejection are driving me mental and making depressed.
Dw wont talk about it as she says 'its the way she is and there is nothing that can be done about it'.
Just wanted your insightful thoughts, input and advice before I make a rash descision I may regret for ever.
Thank you for reading.

GeordieMinx! I had a very similar experience. Except every ten minutes or so he'd look around at the clock on the bedside table and see how long he's gone. It was so fucking awful, I've never told anyone before. :D Never came with that bloke- or with anyone until my husband. :)

balotelli, good luck with your chat, if you think it'll help. Just don't put too much pressure on her to come, OK? It ALWAYS has the opposite effect. By the way- you do realise an awful lot of women need oral sex to come with their partners, don't you? A lot of us aren't wired to have orgasms through penetrative sex, lovely though it can be.

midwife99, you're breaking my heart. I bet you're beautiful, too. :(

balotelli good luck with your talk.

viendo,I do like to 'give' oral to dw but she will only 'take' it for so long before wanting to 'finish' with penetration. She will never let me bring her orgasm through any other method even though I am happy to do so.

oh dear, I hate to say it balotelli but sometimes women want to move quickly on to penetrative sex, because they want the whole bloody thing to be over with ASAP. I like oral sex, but sometimes when you sense that this guy is just wanting you to come and is going to go on and on and on and on, you want him to get the fuck on with something else and stop this already.

Midwife, please know that what your DH is doing, is emotionally abusive. It's not normal behaviour in a man (or a woman), it's not your fault that he is like this and you don't have to tolerate it. You deserve better.

There is a possibility that she may not like oral sex at all (not everyone does, despite what women's magazines may suggest), but feels that she needs to put up with some to make you happy. Then she want to move on to penetration in the hope that it'll all be over quicker. It may sound illogical but, if someone finds sex unpleasant and a bit of a chore, then any kind of foreplay may be the last thing they want.

Similarly asking what she wants/if it's OK, may not be helping either. It might not feel at all like it's about what she wants, but about your need to have her take pleasure in sex. That's going to make it considerably less likely that she will take any pleasure in sex. It could be that what she wants is for it to be quick, but that isn't the sort of answer you're likely to want to hear when asking her what she wants, etc.

It may be that she has never taken very much pleasure in sex, and that she doesn't care if she does. This is not 'wrong' (in the same way that really enjoying sex is not 'wrong'). It isn't really 'her problem' at all; the problem is of mismatched desires and possibly different intentions. It seems likely that you will need counselling to tackle this, but you do have to realise that it isn't counselling to 'fix' your wife; it's to tackle the issue in your relationship that you are both contributing to equally. It may be that she reacted badly to counselling before because it seemed to be directed at her rather than at the relationship.

"It may be that she has never taken very much pleasure in sex, and that she doesn't care if she does. This is not 'wrong' "

Brilliant! Thanks damsel. MN really pissed me off sometimes on this subject. Enjoying lots of sex isn't a legal requirement . I am not a freak, frigid, sick or inadequate. I am not highly-sexed but that doesn't mean I'm broken or wrong, just different.

OrmIrian nobody ever said that enjoying lots of sex is a legal requirement. But to be fair to the op, this woman pretty much led him on with lots of great sex at the beginning while her ovaries were temporarily taking the place of her brain, then went cold when the child came. So far, so .... well not that uncommon really. The actual issue is that she expects that to be ok with him and won't engage in any dialog about it.

Plenty of people are not highly-sexed, there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever... but really the onus is on them to put a bit more work into finding partners who are also not highly sexed. As equally the onus is on a highly sexed person to apply a bit of honesty and say that they want lots of sex in a long-termer, in order to give a potential partner the option of deciding that's not for them.

But of course it's real life we're dealing with here

Good lord! So you are never allowed to change? Most people are more highly-sexed in the early years of a relationship but that may well ebb as times passes. That doesn't make them deceitful.

I can guarantee that she won't willingly talk about it because she feels inadequate and guilty. She knows she's not good enough and that isn't a nice feeling. I suspect if the OP lays it on the line she may open up and a solution can be found. Or not of course.

You need to sit down and tell her how you feel and if you both want to save your relationship, go to 'Relate' you both need to talk to somebody impartial on this one and will give you the advice you need.

I don't really get from his posts that she feels inadequate and guilty. What I get is that they get on well otherwise, that there is a status quo there where she doesn't want sex and has decided that that's the way it's gonna be, does not want things to change, has a father there for her child and in general has a nice little life.
Why doesn't she want sex? I'm going to go with she just doesn't fancy him any more (lots of people can't sustain the 'fancy' once the mundane kicks in, it's not unusual and not a reflection on the partner). She also has intimacy issues and the reasons for that are likely rooted in her childhood, in particular her relationship with her father and the relationship between her parents generally.

Of course things ebb as time passes. But there's ebb and total shutdown.
I agree that I wouldn't really call it deceitful either, rather it's more down to the biological trap women are caught in.

I don't get that from his posts either but that might be down to his not noticing or not reading the signs. IME few intelligent people wouldn't be aware of their partner's disappointment in that sort of scenario and it would make me them fairly miserable in their turn. It can get to the point where neither partner wants to mention the big fat elephant in the room. Believe me!

Anthing can be a "valid reason."

Any form of sheer unhappiness and not wanting to spend our few paltry years thus is a valid reason in my book.

OP I don't mean to sound rude but can you explain to me how you see yourself having a great relationship when your wife treats you like this?
I understand the sex is only a part of your relationship but its a huge part. If your wife is so lovely and loves you then surely she wouldn't think this as acceptable?
If you have had these discussions and she knows you are unhappy then why does she not give a shit. She is young and fit so we can't even use the excuse she is unwell etc

All I can say is if my DP told me that he just didn't like sex much, knowing full well I did and adopted this casual attitude of this is how I am, then I would in no way describe our relationship as good!

Equally if I 'went off' sex knowing my DP felt like you then I would not be so naïve as to believe all was ok. I would at least get help or try and regain some intimacy. If I truly couldn't then I think we would have to split or face the fact that at some point he would probably end up getting sex elsewhere. Now that is something I could not accept unless I really didn't care. In which case that would mean our relationship was over anyway.

She may be a person who doesn't deal well with grey areas and really likes to know exactly where she stands, a person for whom the destination is more important than the journey. If in her mind the 'destination' was security/marriage/motherhood, and if she had learned some unhealthy messages about sex and about intimacy by whatever means in her childhood, then it might seem perfectly fine for her to have arrived at her destination and then got off the train.

I'm just wondering for those of you say lack of sex is a valid reason for leaving.. How would you deal with your OH developing cancer , becoming disabled, becoming mentally ill etc ? priorities change over time . . Sex isn't always the glue . Years of shared memories and other forms of intimacy can become the staying power if the 2 people are meant to be together and they communicate openly and honestly .

Yes. If.

nanny if dh decided for no reason that actually he doesn't really fancy having sex with me any more..it would break my heart. Sex feels good, it is good for you.. I feel that he desires me and wants me and it is a physical expression of love. I'd want to know WHY he doesn't want to share something so great with me anymore.

If he was paralyzed and we couldn't have sex ever again I would hardly have the same feelings because I hadn't been rejected. I WOULD have a hard time living in a sexless marriage but I also believe that in those circumstances or circumstances where I couldn't have sex with him... we would make the effort to do what we could for other person.

But as someone very rightly pointed out earlier, it isn't just the physical act of sex it's the affection, attention, appreciation and intimacy that comes with it. In many of the cases here, all of that has disappeared too which makes it much sadder.

No-one else seems to have picked up on the 'wrong time of month for DTD'.
If this is a reference to menstruation, can I just say it really bugs me that bleeding once a month makes it a no go zone. If you're already struggling with the idea that sex is 'dirty', then being told that a natural body function that is beyond your control makes it a no go area, is not going to help with your attitude.
I don't know if that is your viewpoint, OP, but it is a problem a lot of men have. Which to some degree is fair enough but at the same time, if you want to have sex with the women the rest of the time, then that should be something that you are willing to get past.

I don't think anyone is saying it's just lack of sex. There is a refusal to discuss it and that seems to be the clincher here. It is the lack of honest and open communication or sense that there is willingness to work together on this that seems to be causing just as much pain as the lack of sex. I agree with Kittens about the cancer/other circumstances, and agree with Geordie too.

That might be something the OP's wife has decreed though, Frida.

I did say I didn't know if it applied to him/them.

In my experience time of the month bothers women far more than most (mature) men?