Love but no intimacy

[rudeboy1977]

I’ve been lurking on MumsNet for a long time, hoping to find some insight into my problems with my relationship. After reading another thread related to a relationship with intimacy issues, I finally decided to see if I could form my thoughts into a question. So, the background: I’m a man, mid-50s, married to a woman, also mid-50s. We began dating 35+ years ago and have been married for almost 30 years. We have three kids, ages 15-25. Our sex life was never very active, and it’s now completely gone.

I’m more interested in the general issue of intimacy and love than I am in litigating the specific details of my own relationship. Feel free to assume that I’m the bad guy in some way or another in my story, but I’d still like to learn folks’ perspective on the basic question: what does it mean to say you love someone, but that, due to a low libido, you don’t want to have sex with him? What does love mean if not, at the very least, some desire to make your partner happy? I can understand that, for some people in some circumstances, sex as an end in itself becomes less compelling. But, you know what, we both do lots of things (washing dishes, paying bills, buying and cooking food, cleaning things) that aren’t all that compelling, but we do them because that’s part of keeping our household working. Why is sex not, at the very least, another of the many activities, some more fun, some less fun, that keeps a relationship going? Said differently, what’s the difference between, “I don’t want to have sex with you” and “I don’t care about your desires enough to spend 15 minutes per week doing something that’s better than washing the dishes that will make you happy”? And, from there, to “I don’t love you enough to make an effort to maintain our relationship”?

Oh my, you are basically saying your partner should have sex with you just to please you even if she doesn't want to! That's not on at all.

I think someone has a serious personality fault if they could enjoy sex knowing that the other person really didn’t want to do it.

what they said

Goodness me where to begin.....

It's difficult to talk about love, sex and intimacy in general terms when you have expressed so many views that will not be helping your own situation. You have equated having sex when you don't feel inclined as another chore you might do for the benefit of someone else. I wonder if you understand how many women feel utterly taken for granted by the huge list of chores they do for everyone else. When you talk about spending 15 minutes a week doing something you'd rather not to make your partner happy my immediate reaction is if 15 minutes is all the time it takes then your wife probably isn't getting much out of it. I would feel used and disrespected if a man said you might not fancy sex but could you just lie there whilst I use your body for my pleasure.
Finally it is not your wife's job to make you happy.
I think you need to talk to her to find a way forward. Wanting sex and intimacy is fine but your attitude to it would turn me off.

I'm with you! Sex for me is part of a loving relationship. If my OH didn't want sex I'd have a serious problem. Low libido, whatever!! Its about give and take, excuse the pun. Your partner want the benefits of a good marriage but no intimacy, wouldn't work for me. A partnership is about both people being happy. She doesn't want intimacy so that's the end of that! Shes happy, your not. No, I think shes being unfair

Why do you assume that she's happy with the sex-less status quo? Maybe she'd like to have sex, but her body won't cooperate. Low libido isn't just a state of mind. Maybe she misses it, too. But, whether or not she misses sex, why should she have to let her body be used as a wank-sock?

Doing the dishes is not comparable. Sex involves bodily-autonomy. It is not the equivalent of a domestic chore. Maybe if you had a different perspective on sex, affection and intimacy, your partner would respond differently.

Well, your attitude sounds very entitled - essentially, you want to use her body to get you off.

You say sex was never brilliant and she has low libido. What did you do in the early days to rectify that? Are you a skilled lover? Do you know how to build an orgasm in a woman or do you just serve yourself.

As far as intimacy goes, I think you have domestic familiarity, not intimacy so I’d work in that first before looking at the sex issue. She has to want to be intimate with you for her to enjoy sex and at the moment, she doesnt want to.

I don’t post often but have seen many threads like this. As a man who has a wife that doesn’t want to have sex, I can fully understand this plea. It’s not about sex as such, it’s about intimacy, it’s about feeling wanted and desired. Let me make it clear I don’t believe anyone should have to have sex against their wishes but for men sex and desire is often intrinsic to how they view their relationship with their partner and themselves.

When I met my wife it was about two people desiring each other, she was my lover. That’s not to say there wasn’t anything else to it, there was/is so much more. But it gets demoralising when a portion of that relationship is not happening. It makes you feel unwanted, taken for granted and unloved. It can (in certain circumstances) make you feel used and depressed. It can usually mean the end of the relationship but men seem to be told to “put up with it” as sex isn’t everything and no one has a “right” to sex. I’m not advocating a position on this, I’m just saying what I have observed.

The question should be posed to both people in a relationship : Why did you enter into a relationship in the first place? I’d think that the overwhelming majority of the time it’s because you fancied that person more than enough to want to be intimate (in whatever way) with that person. When that simply isn’t in the relationship any longer just what is there?

I’d bet there are many sexless marriages out there, just look in the Sex thread for numerous examples where sex and intimacy have decreased and it’s becoming an issue within the relationship. It does look like it is a “normal” or “usual” part of longer term relationships. It seems very few people confront it properly and that ends up in resentment, splits and affairs (on both sides).

It’s a relatively unacknowledged issue and from the replies above you can clearly see why. It’s far deeper than “my wife won’t have sex with me” (but I do acknowledge it can sometimes be that simplistic) mainly because neither side have explored their feelings or thought it through enough to understand the underlying reasons and causes.

I make no judgements on why sexless relationships happen, they do and we need to confront it as adults and equals.

I guess I'm going to litigate my relationship after all. First, I'm a stay-at-home dad, and I do most of the chores. Perhaps women in general feel burden by all the chores that life throws at them, but I don't think that applies here. To the "maybe she's not happy", I've tried to talk about our sex life several times over the years, and she has shut those conversations down. She gives every impression of preferring TV and her computer to sex, but perhaps she's just hiding her feelings really well. As for "it's not my wife's job to make me happy", you're right, but that's my point: if she loved me, wouldn't she want to make me happy? Same goes for the "having sex as a chore". I don't want to have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex with me, I want to be married to someone who loves me enough to care about my happiness with our sex life. My comment about the dishes is simply that I'm not asking my wife to give me a kidney once a week, I'm asking her to be mildly enthusiastic about something that she seems to enjoy, when she can be bothered to join in. I guess my point is that I think the "I love him but I have a low libido" is, except in some exceptional cases, nonsense. If you don't care enough about your spouse to want to him or her to be happy with your sex life, I don't think you love your spouse.

Have you considered the menopause?

People shouldn't have sex they don't want for the sake of their partner, because unlike the washing up, it involves their body being penetrated etc when they're not actively wanting that. Which is likely to make them feel disgusted, degraded or violated. Sex is supposed to be a mutually pleasurable, mutually desired activity.

Also, unlike sex, no one wants to do the washing up.

Finding out why your partner no longer wants sex is critical, rather than finding ways of emotionally blackmailing them into it.

A relationship becoming sexless is obviously a problem if it's not both partners' choice, but no, it's not the case that one should feel they have to share their body for the other's sake.

I’ll tell you why the sex and intimacy dwindled in our marriage. It’s because he can’t talk nicely to me. When everything’s fine and he’s getting his own way and nothings being questioned by me or I’m not having a saying on anything then it’s all great. The minute I question or stand up for myself then he talks to me angrily or like I’m an employee. Somebody biting your head off for having feelings or an opinion doesn’t make for wanting intimacy or sex. Saying sorry and being honest and showing an interest in meeting the other person’s emotional needs DOES make for intimacy. You’ve compared sex to washing the dishes so I’m guessing you’re not interested or making any effort to meet her emotional needs. Somebody who has that opinion about sex just doesn’t get the emotional aspect surrounding giving your body to somebody. There’s an old saying “if you want to bed me, you’ve got to woo me” what woo-ing have you done? I bet you did loads in the early days and I bet if some young, blond with a giggle and hero-worship showed an interest in you, you’d be wisking her off to dinner or Paris like an eager dog with its tongue hanging out. You might want to have a think about that.

Wibble753 I don't disagree with much of what you say and I certainly don't think anyone should put up with a sexless relationship if that doesn't work for them. I would like to think that in a loving and respectful relationship an acceptable solution could be found.

My issue with the OP is that he talks about sex and intimacy which for me would be about an emotional connection. I would find the idea of a partner expecting me to satisfy their sexual needs, without any desire for sex on my part, very disrespectful. It suggests a need for sexual relief above intimacy and I would find that repellent, I am not a masturbatory aid.

OP your follow up post clarifies things. Unfortunately if attempts at discussion have failed then you are left with the difficult task of deciding if you can tolerate a sexless relationship, you are by no means obliged to.

You can see why I said it’s usually more complicated than “my wife won’t have sex with me”. There is often an underlying issues or set of issues including a difference in what an “emotional connection” actually is for both partners. I do try not to be judgemental given my own situation which closely mirrors the OP and have taken time to read such threads and do my own research surrounding the issue. I have a good understanding of my own situation but in the end it does seem to come down to a basic “does she really still fancy me?”. If yes, then the situation can be (usually) rectified. But there is always the “no”... again as stated above, why would you then want to be with that person? Duty? Upsetting the kids? Finances?

I’ve also seen this situation multiple times both on threads on here and IRL. Posts like those from youorme certainly don’t help the OP (or anyone else) in any way and unless you are his partner you assuming a massive amount and reflecting your own relationship on his.