Sex is making our lives miserable - does this happen to anyone else!

[alltalkedout]

Hello. My husband and are in a bad place. Sex has always been an issue for us - according to him we don't do it enough and sometimes when we do have sex he doesn't feel that I am attentive enough to him in bed.

We get stuck in these cycles of it all being great for a while but then something will happen (illness, exhaustion etc we have two you children under 8 and I work full time) and a week or two will go by where we don't have sex and then he starts to behave like a spoilt child. Silent treatment, moody and miserable awful to be around and sleeping on the sofa. Then we don't have sex because I don't like him when he is like that. Usually it works out and we make up and things are fine but not this time.

It's happened again and he's left the house for the afternoon to get away (not left for good). He said he's not sure that he can live like this for the rest of his life and that we are incompatible sexually.

I tried to explain that it's normal for couples to go through dry periods but he says that if he doesn't have sex then the chemicals/ hormones make him crazy. This changes who he is and I don't like who he becomes when he hasn't had sex for a while which makes it harder for us to reconcile. He is also convinced that I don't fancy him - I do I just feel knackered as my daughter wakes up every night.

I just wondered if this happens to anyone else. It make me feel like a frigid freak and he tells me that other women actually like sex and I don't. Am I being unreasonable or do others experience this - especially the hormones making him behave badly/have no control over his moods and behaviour.

Thank you.

It's amazing how many of you appear to hate OPs husband though you've never met him

It's amazing how many you appear to hate OP though you've never met her

Why do posters label every single natural response during relationships as abusive.. What is a normal response.. The third sentence says sex has always been an issue for us.. So it's a long running issue in this marriage..

It's now got to the point where she's asking for help on here and he's sat in a car park somewhere ringing his hands..
Of all the books on this subject very few mention pots, pans and nappies..

Two healthy married adults should be enjoying a sex, it's fun..

Abusive responses are labelled as abusive, that's all. If you think his response is natural and normal you should perhaps consider why you think that.

People who are objecting to his behaviour know full well that sex should be fun. Which it isn't when you're either living with a partner who is sulking because they went for two weeks without sex, or having sex with them because you're anxious about how they will behave if you don't.

So sulking & sleeping elsewhere is a normal response for not getting sex for 2 weeks..

I think most of the people I know are abnormal then, because they certainly would think it is.

It's always been an issue because he's always sulked (and worse) when she hasn't simply lain back and opened her legs . Hardly 'fun' having sex with someone who behaves the way he does

Two healthy married adults should be enjoying a sex, it's fun..

Only if they both want to at the same time.

And the should is your own opinion- it's not fact.

Friend of mine who is married hasn't had sex for years. Doesn't want to. Doesn't want to with her DH or anyone.

I stand by the fact that I believe it's more than 2 weeks between. Studies show that married men underestimate how much housework they do. If a man came on here and stated that he did "lots of housework", I'd ask him to specify. Statistics show that women in relationships overestimate how much sex they are having. So when someone comes on the board and says they've had sexual problems since the beginning of their relationships but it's "every week or two", I am just as skeptical.

When there is a libido mismatch and the man is the one who feels sex is not happening often enough, How many of the woman's needs is the man putting himself out to meet?

See I cannot agree with this. Asking "does he meet her needs post" boils down to treating women as sexual vending machines. Be nice, do housework, meet their needs = get sex.

I don't understand why people keep reading this as revolutionary and anti-patriarchy. That is the essence of patriarchy in its modern manifestation! Women remain as sexual gatekeepers. Men do things to get sex from women. This implies that women don't want sex. This also denies the lived experiences of women who are asexual or don't want sex for reasons unrelated to their relationship. Many sexual problems in marriages can be blamed on patriarchy but not all of them can be blamed on the man in the relationship. This distinction seems to be lost on most people.

This is what I call "dinner in the dog" advice. Even when women could not divorce, there were some women who were able to shift the balance of power in their homes through force. "Your dinner's in the dog!" But winning power struggles is not the same as true equality. They don't shift and restructure all of the forces around you - and within you - that stop you from being equal. It doesn't lead to a true partnership; it's not revolutionary; it's not anti-patriarchy and it won't lead to a healthy sexual identity.

Apple

My DH might overestimate how many times he'd wielded a feather duster but only in my dreams would I overestimate how many times I'd had a cock inside me.

Could you please link to those stats you mention? Love to see them.

well fwiw i agree with you apple on the "man doing more housework = he is more entitled to sex" idea. though the balance of workloads is certainly something that might be addressed if in the course of an adult discussion about a lack of sex in the relationship a readjustment of workloads is something that might help the other partner feel more like having sex (though it cannot of course be a guaranteed thing). however while the OP in this case might find that is a solution to their problems, their main problem seems to be that he behaves like an absolute dickhead after two weeks of no sex (and i see no reason not to take the OP at face value on this). this is making her anxious about saying no to him when she doesn't want to have sex, and no one should feel that way.

having said that ("man doing more housework = he is more entitled to sex" idea is wrong) i would also like to make it clear that i don't think SGB was suggesting this, so that is not an interpretation of her posts

Regardless of what SGB was or wasn't saying, there is a lot of research which shows a direct correlation between the amount of housework a man does and the amount of sex he has ( in a monogamous relationship of course.)

It's the underlying reasons and attitudes behind it isn't it. Dp does his fair share around the house not to get sex (or more sex), but because it's the right thing to do. Which is a character trait (also demonstrated in other ways) that makes him all-round more attractive to me. A man who started helping around the house for the sole reason of trying to get more sex (and by extension would stop doing so if said sex didn't materialise) is no less entitled in his attitude than he was before.

Apple: No, I don't mean it's a straightforward exchange - and the man who does the washing up once a week and then gets his cock out is still likely to be regarded as more and more repulsive by his wife because he's still treating her like a machine he is entitled to make use of.

But a man who does things to please his partner (whether that's housework, talking through her problems with a neighbour or buying her the hard-to-track-down novel she's wanted for years) is more desirable to her. He's demonstrating that he actually cares about whether or not she's happy, and he is interested in her, the individual woman he's in a relationship with, rather than treating her (and therefore obviously percieving her) as something that exists to make his life more pleasant, with no right to expect anything from him unless she opens her legs. Couples who actually like and respect one another generally have better, happier sex lives and if there is a problem they can discuss it without one getting angry and the other getting scared.