Sexually frustrated Husband

[Brightling]

It seems I'm married to one of those men who gets very moody when their intimacy needs aren't being met as often as they would like.

We've been married a significant amount of time. When we first met my sex drive was average and a few years and very young children later it's pretty much dwindled. I'm all touched out by the children. I am very unhappy with my post multiple pregnancies body. I'm tired. All I want is to be able to go to bed and sleep without being propositioned. It's not every night but it happens frequently enough for it to be considered badgering. Actually what I would like also is for the "no I'm not up for it tonight" to be received with "ok let's sleep" rather than him raise his voice tell my I've got a problem, I need to see a therapist, I should stay off those websites (such as MN) and what's he supposed to do about HIS sexual needs as it sounds like he's supposed to have an affair if I'm not interested. He says he can't even cuddle me if I've said no as he finds it too difficult. Whenever I say none turns his back on me and I feel like I'm being punished for saying No.

I get that he is frustrated but I am not prepared to lay back and think of England. Sex is a privilege not a right. It's my body and if I don't want to I don't have to. Even though he says that he doesn't want me to do it for the sake of it I think he's BS'ing me. He tells me he's a nice person, a good partner, a good dad and that other couples are all having sex though he always refers to sex as making love.

When we are having an active sex life he is ridiculously happy and helpful and affectionate.

I can't stand the sulking behaviour when he's frustrated. He is a hands on father and he does pull his weight round the home. It's just the sex pressure pushing me away. It's getting to the point where I don't want to be intimate with him at all as any contact he sees as a green light to progress a cuddle or whatever is then met with a sulk when I say I don't want to continue.

He does make lots of effort making meals but I'm so cynical that All I can think about is that there is an expectancy at the end of the night which puts me on the defensive and then I end up causing an argument simply to avoid the strop that he will pull when I say I don't want to be intimate because it's only when I get cross about it that he will let it drop and quit going on and on and on about it.

I'm know my sex drive isn't what it was but the sulks and date nights are not helping one bit. I dread any meal or date night. I'm not even sure why I'm even posting.

Mike's posts are distressing to read. So his wife is having sex with him 7 times a month when she isn't really in the mood?
I've had small children and a pestering/sulking husband and it killed my libido. It was only when he stopped sulking when I said no, that it came back. It took a while for that to happen, I had to trust him that he wouldn't sulk/get snappy on being turned down.
Libidos wax and wane over the years. Sometimes mine is higher, sometimes his is. Sometimes there are dry patches, other times it's like we are teenagers again. I think that is what a 'normal' sex life is like, we are not fixated on some mythical 'average' figure that needs to be achieved on a weekly basis.
I get the impression Mike is fairly young and immature, hopefully he can gain some wisdom with age.

the accusations that I bullied my wife into unreasonable amounts of unwanted sex are not true

And there we have it. Any amount of unwanted sex is unreasonable. Mike, you are a marital rapist. No more, no less.

Jings, this thread has gone on.....

There's a strange thing i often perceive on these threads, women don't want to have sex with men if they don't uphold certain standards of behaviour or pull their weight etc. Hence it becomes easy to justify not wanting to have sex by saying it's my partners fault for being a complete dick.

If men can be nicer, they might get sex from the wife. In other words, the men are still the ones with the primacy in the whole situation, if it's them who dont want sex the typical response is that they are wanking too much, having an affair, asexual or even gay, if they do want it but the wife doesn't, then it'll be because of his behaviour, pressurising and so on and so forth.

To me the fundamental issue here is whether you find someone sexually attractive or not, i don't think my husband's body is repulsive because he irritates me profoundly at times, i certainly don't feel and never have felt sickened by the thought of having sex with him. This is the problem really, it, and the lack of respect you currently have for him wont really go away and that's why I think the relationship is on it's last legs. His shitty behaviour (and it is shitty) didn't start overnight, it's the result of a gradual change to the relationship and his desperation. If he had just gone off into his cave and switched off any sexual feeling for his wife, well that wouldn't be great either....

What we're basically saying here is that the husband should have been a bit nicer, and then brightling would maybe want to have sex with him. This is no basis for a healthy sexual relationship.

I would have thought that your partner being nice to you, being respectful, ie. not sulky, moody or emotionally abusive, is the bare minimum anyone should expect from a relationship.

We're not saying anything of the sort, fine.

Of course it didn't change overnight. We've had children. He didn't alway cause such a fuss when I wasn't in the mood prechildren. He was super cool with it. No pressure. No guilt trip. No blaming. Nothing. But now we have children and the opportunities for intimacy are less due to bf, children in our bed and him working so I wonder if this has made him all the more antsy because the next available opportunity in his mind is not as soon as he would like.

I don't think I want to even look at that book link.

I wouldn't have sex with anyone who wasn't nice to me. What a strange concept, fine.

Exactly AF. Even the most attractive person can become unattractive based on unattractive behaviour.

No, fine, we are saying that if a husband helps out with the shitwork, his wife will be less tired and feel more inclined to sex. If you were at work 24/7, and your boss woke you several times a night to work, and you hadn't been able to wash in four days, would you be horny?

Also, it's clear now that Mike is a troll. I should have realised but he did pace it very well. Years of practise from his mother's basement. On the plus side, we have probably given the pillock the only screaming orgasm he will ever have.

God I've never been so livid reading some of the posts here..

To the men who think it's easier to leave or cheat... do you think finding another woman who'll put out so readily will require no effort? No romance? It's certainly possible but you'll probably have to pay for that and I'm sure your low libido wives will then meet someone who's willing to make them feel special, like a woman and not just a body. And that's when she'll realise she didn't have a libido problem at all.
What's that saying about watering your own grass

Sulking,moods,grumpiness,coercion are all big turn offs. If your partner is off sex then there is a reason and just having more sex will not fix that. Your wife might agree to increase the frequency when threatened with divorce or cheating but can you honestly say she looks at you with a desire and longing to sleep with you? She's doing it to shut you up..she's doing it out of fear. That in itself is horrifying.

Op...I feel for you,you need to talk to your husband and tell him what you need

I dont think the thread has moved forward at all from the very beginnig. The standard MN view is that the man in a relationship where his female partner loses her libido is he should shut up and put up with it for as long as it takes and she has no obligation at all even to find a cause or try and work on a solution.

This thread has proved you wrong actually Perseus. Unless all those who have posted on this thread to say they think the OP and her h need to talk, as well as those who think she should have sex when she doesn't want it, aren't actually posting on MN?

I wouldn't have sex with anyone who wasn't nice to me. What a strange concept, fine.

You're missing the point a bit, what's odder is the concept that sexual attractiveness is pegged to manners. This is plainly not the case.

I disagree actually.

There has been some really good advice and suggestions.

I know that if he quits with the way he is handling his disappointment and takes the pressure off that I am much more inclined to want to have intimacy rather than be treated as purely a sexual object because he may not even know this is how he is making me feel. Well he does know now because I've told him. There is no way pre babies that he would have reacted the way he is reacting now when his advances are not received as he would like.

There are many examples in "the arts" let alone on these threads of people who are drawn back into a sexual relationship with someone they don't really like all that much. They still find them sexy though, and enjoy that about them, in many cases that is all that there is in common, fuck buddies i believe the kids call it.

I have to say I don't think it's an issue with a man who should just 'shut up and put up with it for as long as it takes'. (I assume that would be the same for women?)

I actually suspect that a woman who has a low libido will not want sex but it doesn't mean she will not miss the intimacy coming with it (most of the time the intimacy disappears with it even when we know you can keep the intimacy wo the sex/much less sex). I know that even though my libido was low and I started to feel better in myself (ie not as knackered) I looked for ways to move my libido up. I still do btw. If I left it as it is, I would probably chose to never have sex. But I do, I ensure that I am up to it some of the time. I do it for myself though NOT out of duty towards DH.
I do it because I enjoy it. Because in some ways, it is part of healthy lifestyle/relationship. I do it because I know that the situation now is a LT one and it is unlikely that my libido will shot up again. I do it because it is beneficial FOR ME. If it wasn't, I would refuse to do it because there is no way I will use my body in a way that is detrimental to me (or my body).
In very simple words, being ill and exhausted, if having sex is making me worse (which it can do) then I'm not doing it.
If, before when DH was pestering me, having sex would mean that I felt crap afterwards, sore and used, I learnt I shouldn't be doing it.

The reality is that no one is going to be looking after me and my health and my MH if I don't do it myself.
And I'm sure that no sensible person here would say that one should ever do something detrimental to your health or MH. And yes that includes sex.
For me it would equivalent to ask someone to drink some alcohol when you know they have a liver disease. Or to Ask someone to go and see toxic PIL when you know it will make their MH worse.

What is NEVER helpful IMO is to treat a period of time just after giving birth as the sign of the libido being low FOREVER when in most cases it isn't. Or treating the normal ebbs and flows as something that is pathological and will never change. (Eg the OP's case).
If it turns out it is going to be a LT issue, then yes there is some serious talking to do incl whether you can keep up intimacy wo sex/much less sex, whether the low libido is a symptom of a relationship issue rather than a problem on its own, whether on ethical/moral ground, you will be happy to leave your partner because they are ill (if this is the issue NOT a relationship issue).
No one can tell anyone what is the right answer. It will be different for each couple.
I know some people will divorce on the ground on a sexless marriage. We usually hear about them a lot.
I've also met quite a few people in a sexless marriage that do stay (Eg one person whose wife got Serioulsy ill during/after the birth of the dc2. Both mum and dc2 ended up disabled. He is one of the people I know that are exactely in that case. I do notice though that these people are never vocal, as if they were ashamed of the situation....
What I don't think is OK is a relationship where all intimacy is gone and you are basically room mates. It's a very different situation that a sexless marriage where intimacy is still present.

Xpost with a llot of people there...

Brightling I'm very happy to see that things are moving forward for you :):) and in the middle of all thes nearly 1000 posts, you have found some helpful stuff too. Sometimes it did feel like the thread had derailed to a different agenda.

Itll, I believe there are some women that are attracted to the "Bad boy", the arrogant ones, the so-called alpha males and the ones that piss women about

I am not one of them, thankfully

Neither am i Makes my blood run cold.

It makes feel like committing violence, so it's best I give those types a swerve

I have fucked men I don't like very much. But I wouldn't marry one.

I think it's a really irrelevant point. Sex within a committed relationship is just one facet of demonstrating love and respect. Doing your fair share of wifework, listening to your partner, accepting that you may not always be on the same page lots of the time but that giving ground needs to happen on both sides, etc etc.

A fuck buddy is, by definition, not a husband or a wife.

OP, I can't remember if there was a set number of weeks with the Relate course. It was at least 6 or 7 visits. I think there may not be a set length, but it's not like they're profit making so they're not going to recommend unnecessary sessions. I can't say it was always terribly fun (I had to consider my own behaviour and attitudes as well as his) but it was very useful and I am glad we did it.
www.relate.org.uk/relationship-help/help-sex/sex-therapy

itll yep they do and then they have a fuck. I would expect more from having sex ('making love') in a LT relationship.
I suspect that those who still have sex with their partner whilst they only feel contempt or disgust are doing so in the naive hope of catching a bit of that 'honeymoon' phase with their DH/DP.
One of my very close friend was in a physically abusive relationship and was still having sex with him. That's the reason she gave later on when she was finally out of it.

One of my very close friend was in a physically abusive relationship and was still having sex with him. That's the reason she gave later on when she was finally out of it.

Not to mention that fact that she was in an abusive relationship, so refusal would have meant a beating.
Or the fact that some (most?) encounters wouldn't have been consensual, or some of it would have been after coercion.

She probably doesn't even define any of it as rape, but it is very common in DV relationships. Having sex to avoid being beaten is coercion, therefore rape.

Yet many dv victims won't define it as such.

Brightling: glad to hear that you and your H are working things out together.
As for everyone else: mismatched libidos can make people in relationships miserable, but it's not always a case of the high libido partner being in the wrong. Some abusive, manipulative people will withold sex as a way of punishing and hurting a partner; some people will deliberately tell a partner that his/her desire is disgusting or sinful, or complain that the partner is less physically attractive than s/he was and therefore unfuckable. And some people (usually men) who 'pester' for sex ie ask for it, complain about not getting it and maul and slobber over their female partners, don't actually want sex at all - the intention is to distress the woman and 'put her in her place'.
Mismatched libidos is a problem that can generally be sorted out if both partners are decent people who care about each other and are willing to talk and listen. If one partner is a selfish arsehole, it's irrelevant whether it's the HL or LL person - the relationship is going to fail.