Mismatched sex drive

[IamStarved]

100-0
That's the score of the sex drive I and my wife have. I love it, she just hates it. Been married for a while - have never got to try out anything. Watching porn has become a fall back option to stay normal....she finds it all too "yucky" and "dirty" and very animal-ish. No clues on what to do....what do you say, strangers?

Find out why your wife doesn't have a sex drive maybe?

Has your relationship always been like this?

Porn does tend to have a negative effect on most relationships.

I would say "keeping score" won't help

and "get to try out" what ? stuff you see in porn ? Bearing in mind much of that is shite and yucky, then perhaps she has a point

I understand you are frustrated, but do you think your wife exists just to service your libido ?

Viva - been married for 10+ yrs now..initially, I always thought that things will change and she will start accepting sex to be an integral part of our lives. While the relationship is otherwise absolutely fine, it is the physical relationship that I miss a lot. Watching porn is a more recent thing for me only; she has never seen it.

Has she ever been sexual?

Well you have obviously discussed it with her, How is your dw's self esteem?

Do you take care of your appearance?

Any history of infidelity that could have put her off?

From what you said about her finding it yucky and dirty maybe she doesn't feel sexy. There could be a million and one reasons for this.

You have my sympathies. People often underestimate how much sexual intimacy means to some people in relationships. The constant rejection of attempts to initiate sex can leave you feeling not just sexually frustrated, but unattractive, undesirable and eventually unloved, as well as leaving you vulnerable to the attentions of someone else outside the marriage, or possibly getting hooked on porn to relieve your pent up frustration.

Perhaps you need to spell that out to your wife, explaining that you love her, but her constant refusal hurts you emotionally (don't just go the sex angle). Perhaps there is something in her past that is affecting her view towards sex? Has she somehow separated sex from love (could explain why she sees it as just dirty)

I think you should suggest going to sex therapy sessions together.

Agree with fabulous on all of above, but surely sex and love are seperate things? I know that they can be better together but also sex can be better sometimes without or as you are building that connection maybe? A bit off track I know but just wondered.....?

Doh
So you thought things would change.
You must have loved her heaps to keep your fingers crossed about that one.
Thank goodness there's porn these days for men like you.
Poor thing.

i've name changed for this because you could be my husband posting this...

we have incompatable sex drives. he'd quite happliy do it a couple of times a day, where i can go for months without.

the only way i can describe it is like a central heating boiler... hes constantly firing up, raring to go... while with me you can run the hot tap for ages before it 'clicks over' and produces hot water...IYSWIM? when we do 'get going' its fantastic and i really enjoy it. i do find him very attractive and he does look after himself so its not that.

I adore him, i love him so much my life would be incomplete without him. i hope he feels the same about me, but to be honest i dont know how he feels becuase he doesnt talk about emotions or feelings or anything like that. He tells me he loves me if i say it first, but i get the impression hes just going through the motions. This might be because i have refused sex in the past.

We have been married for 10+ and we lived together for a while before we got together and i've always been like this. why is it right that i should change who i am to please him.... when this is me. no airs or graces... what you see is what you get.

and its not enough for him. if i offer a kiss, he wants a cuddle. if i offer him a 'helping hand' he wants a blow job. if i kiss here... he wants it there.

i'd quite happliy never have sex again... but i love him, passionatley. i hate that it hurts him when i say no. BUT i know that he has needs too, i know that it is unreasonable of me to expect him never to have sex because i dont want to, so we do have a bit of a compromise going... he gets less than he wants, i do it more than i want... and we have an uneasy agreement to it. but he'd still have more like a shot.

I am constantly amazed when he says things like... do you realise we havent had sex for 3 months? i say, no it cant possibly be that long.

I worry constantly that he will leave me, but how can i 'prostitute' myself just to keep him.

i hope that this helps you see it from your wifes point of view.

If she's never been sexual, even in the early days of your relationship, then that is either just the way she is, and she's happy about it, or something in her past has created barriers to her sexual self. Either way the only way to move forward is to talk honestly and openly about how you feel - lonely, rejected, incomplete - and try to get her to engage in a dialogue. Michelle Weiner Davis' 'The Sex Starved Marriage' is always a good place to start.

You won't 'stay normal' if you keep watching porn.

Talk to your wife and suggest some pyscho-sexual counselling, if she tells you she wants to change the situation.

Yes, talk to your wife, and listen to her. Whether she is someone with a very low libido, or whether it's that she doesn't want sex with you for a particular reason, she is the only person who can tell you what's going on. There may be things you can do which will make her feel more enthusiastic about sex, or if she really has no libido, there may be agreements you can make between you about you perhaps seeking sex elsewhere. But both of you have to accept that the other person's feelings matter as much as your own, and that this is a problem that both of you have to address.

Hmmm I feel for you OP, its very frustrating to be constantly knocked back and really not fair at all. Can you suggest some councelling? Is she stressed about something? You mention, 'dirty' and 'yucky', has she had some negative experience in the past? I don;t think its acceptable to live in a sexless marriage but give it time and understanding and see if anything changes. Also back off totally and see if that does the trick.

Man to man, IaS, here is what you can do.....absolutely nothing!! Sorry dude, but it's true. Good luck if you want to get to the bottom of the female psyche. I hope you have a spare 100 years. I too have been married for 10+ years, and while we are not 100 - 0, I'd say it was more 80 - 20. Fact is, on average, women have a lower sex drive than men. We either accept it, or move on. I am staying put because....well, I love her and she has so many other great qualities.

You can go down the route of trying to find out why she doesn't want to, but I think it will prove fruitless. Chances are she just doesn't want to. You can try asking her to compromise, but I bet it leads to more arguments than sex! If you love her, you have to stick with it and find other ways to amuse yourself. It's why God invented the internet. Best of luck, fellah.

I always thought that things will change and she will start accepting sex to be an integral part of our lives.

Sorry OP, truth time - what made you think things would change? It's not as if she's gone off the boil is it. It wasn't there in the first place.

Fact is, on average, women have a lower sex drive than men

There is no such 'fact'. No scientific evidence to support that opinion, or even anecdotal evidence.

There are threads galore on here from women who have a higher sex-drive than their male partners.

Or from women whose sex-life is impoverished or unilaterally withdrawn because of a partner's obsession with porn.

And an even bigger number of threads from women whose sex drive plummeted in inverse proportion to their workload and the expectation that they will do the majority of the childcare, housework and life organisation for an entire family, leaving them tired and resentful and not in the least motivated to have sex with a lazy, entitled man.

And from women whose sexual partners expect them to take sole responsibility for contraception, leaving them fearful of the impact of pregnancy, or their sex drives adversely affected by the hormones ingested through injections, pills and IUDs.

It is in fact extremely rare for either a man or a woman to have no sex drive at all. Usually a low or non-existent sex-drive is associated with other issues, connected with the person they are partnered with and/or the power struggles in the relationship. Their sex drive would be different if they were in a more agreeable relationship with a different partner or partners.

Their sex drive would be different if they were in a more agreeable relationship with a different partner or partners.

I hold my hands up - my scientific research is non-existent in this field, and any evidence is anecdotal. I suspect yours is exactly the same, but I am prepared to be proved wrong. Can you prove the above quote?

Rick there's a wealth of research about human sexuality and yes, I've read (and contributed to) a lot of it!

The best researchers acknowledge the societal context and how men and women are socialised differently. Their expectations of their sex lives is just one area where difference is noted, but not because of nature but because of society and conditioning.

After that, it starts from the same question. Do you have no sex drive at all? If no, a therapist might explore whether there were issues in childhood or religious beliefs that shaped adult sexual response and of course, there are people who really don't have a sex drive at all and are asexual.

If the answer is 'yes, but not right now and/or not with this partner' then a therapist will look at what's happening in the relationship.

But none of this is confined to women. Men are just as capable of feeling resentment and under-appreciation, as they are of re-enacting a power struggle through the medium of sex, or lack of it.

Charbon, interesting stuff. I am not here to pick a fight. I did some study myself, albeit a few years back, including evolutionary psychology. There are evolutionary reasons why a female should be more choosy about who she mates with, though I guess you know that better than me;

www.personalityresearch.org/papers/denisiuk.html

These reasons would suggest that women are less driven to have sex at the same rate as men - quality over quantity, if you like! Therefore, there is no physiological reason for a woman to 'want' sex as often as a man. I have known some women with a higher sex drive than their partner, but the opposite is true in more cases (purely anecdotal, of course). Look at justforyou's post above - I find this pretty typical. It could be my wife posting! She is how she is, and she is happy. As a man, you have to accept that, or move on. Btw, I am not dismissing the societal norms we are expected to conform to, but these are far more recent than our biological drives.

Rick, evolutionary psychology is utter bullshit widely regarded as questionable in the extreme by most other scientific disciplines. It's got more in common with astrology than serious anthropology. There are theories with at least as much proof and credibilty as this stuff about women wanting love and hating sex, which suggest that women are uninterested in monogamy, like sex with a variety of men and that the current social set up is all down to men being determined to own women's sexuality.

In general, if a man's female partner is reluctant to have sex with him very often, the first thing he should look at is his own behaviour. Does he expect her to do all the domestic work and childcare? If so, this is a turn-off: it's hard to feel lust towards someone who is demonstrating that he considers you his servant.

The second thing to look at is how he approaches sex in the first place. Is he fixated on despunking, or is he interested in what she likes/wants? A lot of men still see sex as something they get from women and all they can think of is getting their cocks in there.

Finally, it's all too easy for couples to fall into a pattern of one being desperate for sex and constantly hinting, asking, complaining; every touch or friendly word being interpreted as 'Sex! Are we going to have sex? Let's have sex right now,' which makes the other partner more and more reluctant to engage with the desperate one in any way; feeling constantly pressured to have sex is hugely offputting.
But the only way to resolve the situation is by talking and listening to how the other person feels, what s/he wants to happen and what changes/compromises s/he is prepared to make in return.

Rick - evolutionary theories are neither here nor there - where is the evidence that modern men NEED to reproduce a lot, like they used to, rather than stop at fathering a child or a few children? Evolution is not a set of rules, what applied 100s of yrs ago isn't relevant in populated societies of current times where people live much longer, there are financial and social pressures to procreate LESS, and funnily enough men are nothing like as macho as they used to be, it's proven that their libido is lower that in a man of the past - it makes good sense. Looking at men now - they aer much more feminised whereas women are also now hunters/gatherers so more like males, there is androgyny on the rise. People aer influenced by these factors now more than the past genetic makeup. Yes, there is still a difference in preferred quantity of sex, somewjat higher in men on average, BUT if this was a real real need, men wouldn't stay with one partyner at all - they don't need to now. But there aer many monogomists at least for a considerable length of time. So the need is not overwhelming! it's almost like an old habit which is dying out slowly. Equally women aer much freer with their sexuality as they don't depend on men as much, I know a lot of women who cheat or cheated on partners with lower libido (although not neccessarily with lots of others, but the needs aer also there to similar extent). Also a number of gay men is up, meaning that it's nature's way to curb reproduction (that's not scientific but makes sense to me in the bigger picture).

I feel like I am derailing this thread from the OP's original request for advice. All I was attempting to do was to put forward the small amount of reading I have done around the subject, and suggest some reasons for his partner's behaviour. She may just have a very low libido - it happens. In this case, it doesn't sound as though they ever went through that initial 'can't wait to get you naked' part of their relationship.

If there is a thread on this particular aspect, I would appreciate someone pointing it out though.

Thanks folks. appreciate your candid inputs. I guess that's why it is easy to discuss such a subject with complete strangers.

Well...I can safely claim that I have talked, I have listened, I have waited, I have helped (and continue to) in the household chores, I have backed off for a while, etc. etc.
Therapy? Discussion with a GP? No chance. Not in this lifetime. She has not agreed to it; will never do. For her, even kissing is horrible / yucky.

My gentle probing about any childhood abuse received 24 hours of non-stop rant on I having gone crazy to even ask her such a Q. Funnily, when I shared with her about I having fading memories of having been sexually abused as a young lad, she did not believe me.

Neither of us have ever had any other partners and therefore no other physical relationships.

I do feel vulnerable and constantly wonder if I ever found myself straying away, how will I hold myself back. I also keep wondering if I am indeed, "normal", for having such a high sex drive. I do feel I am slowly drifting away emotionally, though I still feel that I love her a lot. Trouble is, she doesn't seem to see my love; her conclusive view is that for me "love only means sex".

Some people just don't need much (or any) sex in their lives op, which I know doesn't help you. Also, others (and I would say lots of others actually) just can't do the LTR thing, in the sense that it's fine at the start, then they just don't fancy/don't want to sleep with their partners any more.

And I do agree with Rick's assessment that you more than likely have to put up with it... unless you decide to go the route of giving her a deadline to do something about the situation or you'll leave.

Regarding the libido in men v women debate, obviously there are no statistics but I know far more women than men in a LTR who are not that pushed about sex (only speaking of my own set of acquaintances though). Women are highly motivated biologically to reproduce, and I think lots of women, when they have achieved that goal, simply aren't interested in the whole regular sex imperative that attaches to LTRs.

OP, you ar very unlucky, sorry, it's not usual for a woman to find even kissing 'dirty'. It sounds not so much like a case of childhood abuse, but of very stringent moral upbringing - were her parents (who she loved) very religious (or is she)? Otherwise it could be that she witnessed her mother being cheated on and the mother was extremely traumatised - transferred her hate of sexual motives to the daughter?