Getting the spark back - without feeling like a gobshite

[greenbelly]

Without boring you all to death... We've been together 10 years, married 3, 2 dc's. Since our first child our sex life has been non existent. My husband used to try but there's only so many knock backs a man can take I suppose. I don't fancy him much and we drifted. Our relationship has changed so much and I have changed, I was 16 when we met he was 24. The age gap is not an issue.
What is an issue is that we hardly talk. I mean we never have deep meaningful conversations about things that we enjoy or are important to us (apart from the children). I can see us having a better relationship in the future I'm just not sure how to get there. In my head, any effort to change things feels contrived, awkward and embarrassing.

If we go out there's not a huge amount to talk about, we fill the silence with small talk but its not fulfilling. It's awkward mostly.

In the beginning our relationship was amazing. I realise things go stale after time and children but how do you get it back? Having something in common might be a good place to start...before kids it's was mostly eating out, holidays, long drives that we enjoyed. Not things that we can easily go back to these days.

Sex for me is always meh. I can take it or leave it. I want to want it more though. I feel like we know each other so well that anything out of the ordinary is just going make one or both of us feel silly. Not sure I can push past that...

Takes continued effort to keep spark in a relationship and it has to be from all parties. It is more difficult to have time together as a couple when you have young children but it's not impossible. The awkward conversations and lack of affection & sexual interest are more worrying however. If you organised a weekend away, for example, do you think anything would materially change or would you be equally not interested in each other and not talking, just in a different location?

And then, of course, there's the possibility that you're just badly matched. The things we like, the things we want to talk about and the people we're drawn to age 16 are often very different to what we want when we're older. There's even a phrase for people who marry young and later regret it... 'starter marriages'. If that's what's happened to you, if you've grown apart, then you could easily stagger on for another fifty years of married life together being mildly dissatisfied... but it could be better to cut your losses.

Either way, the awkward silences have to stop and you need to talk to each other properly as a couple. Nothing gets resolved by avoiding the problem.