Healthy Sex Life

[ANormalHusband]

Hello all, I'm sure many of you have heard all this before but I'm looking for some advice.

My DW and I have been together for over 10 years and have two children (Younger than 10). We're both in our early thirties.

Over the last year or so I've become increasingly frustrated over my DWs lack of interest in sex and unwillingness to try to spice things up a bit. Prior to this we've always had a fairly healthy sex life but I just feel like things have slowed right down over the last year or so and her interest in sex is really low. Which she admits herself.
We still do it maybe once a week. But even then it's a "quick one" which in some ways I'd rather not bother with. I also work away for a number of weeks so feel like when I'm home we should be making up for lost time.
When I'm away I try to do a bit of flirting via text to build up some excitement but she just says she's not into it and shuts me down.
All of this has ended up with me feeling pretty depressed and moody as I feel like there must be an issue and she no longer finds me attractive in that way. She's adamant there's nothing wrong and I'm just being paranoid.

I've tried talking to her, suggested different things like adult board games, etc but she just will not entertain the conversation. She just gets upset and says that I'm putting to much pressure on it, and doesn't feel comfortable talking about it and gets uptight and if I relax more then it will happen more naturally.
I've tried this, and left any initiation to her but most of the time nothing happens other than a quickie (Which I think she just does to get it out of the way) which then leads back to me feeling down and moody. It just seems like we're stuck in a viscous circle and I don't know what I need to do to get out of it!?
Other than that our relationship is fine. We bicker about little things like most but nothing serious.
She's has a great figure and I compliment her all the time and tell her how attractive I find her and she's not overly body conscious. That I know of anyway.

Am I expecting too much?
I just want a bit more fun, excitement and intimacy.
Any advice?

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras

Completely agree. Telling men they ought to put up and shut up, whilst telling women they deserve to feel wanted and loved, is quite frankly disgusting. Double standards here are appalling.

Of course a quickie is sex. It may not be everything the op wants, but it's sex.

Of course a quickie is sex. It may not be everything the op wants, but it's sex.

And it's fine if you both want it and it's part of a satisfying sex life. I certainly wouldn't want it as the only form of sex in my relationship. It just makes it feel like it's perfunctory and certainly doesn't supply intimacy or closeness. He really might just as well use his hand. Sex is about more than just that isn't it? Otherwise why do we need relationships?

Half the trouble for the wife is probably feeling that what she's doing is not enough for op, and the pressure to perform. It's pretty crushing to have sex and feel your partner is still not satisfied with it. He would be better using his hand than pressing her to have sex and still being grumpy because it's not up to standard in some way.

I am not arguing that sex isn't important, but he needs to lay off the moodiness & pressure and work on emotional reconnection. I'd give the wife advice also, but she's not the one here.

But just saying "leave off the moodiness" isn't addressing the fact that the op too has emotional needs and feelings.

So you are saying understandable that the wife is acting as she is because it's as a result of the ops behaviour/attitude.

However, the ops wife's behaviour/attitude should have no impact or bearing on how the op behaves.

It doesn't make sense does it?

All of the advice here is how the op needs to bend over backwards to look after his wife's emotional needs - treat her, take her on dates, send her to a spa with her mum, come home from working away and do all the chores at home, give her time off to socialise, cuddle without any expectation, compliment her but only on these things...

What about him? When does he get to socialise with his friends, assuming they are at home and not where he works? When does he get time to enjoy his children if his time at home is spent doing the housework? What does his wife need to to try and reassure him that she still finds him attractive?

He isn't a robot and has feelings just as much as his wife does. Yes, she has the stresses of running the home and looking after the children when he's away but he also has his own stresses. She also has the comfort of being with her children, in her own home.

It's tough on both of them so I don't see why it's the sole responsibility of one partner to pander to the other and act like his feelings count for nothing.

There's clearly some who get this and others who, quite frankly are completely misreading this post.
Emotional rape? Really?

@SunshineAngel
If your ex was continuing to get on with the job whilst you just laid there, in tears then absolutely there is something morally wrong and I can assure you that I haven't and would have no interest in that!

In fact, if the DW says she's not in the mood then I can happily accept that. As has been said, she isn't a toy.

If you read the title of the thread, it's not about forcing anything and it's not about no sex. It's about a "healthy sex life" and the emotional connection that couples get from that. And that's the bit that I wanted an opinion on, and advice on why things aren't the same as they have been for the vast majority of our relationship.

Thanks to some on here, who get where I'm coming from, I have a much better understanding of why that might be the case and I'm happy to put their advice into practice.

Others, it seems associate this with bad experiences they've had and assume I must be "one of those men", and I think others quite frankly love to give men a bashing.

I think I've got what I needed from the post TBH.
Thanks to those who've tried to help.

I think though OP it’s not about lying there in tears it what feeling you need to do something out of obligation can do. It can slowly chip away at the feelings you do have eroding them away. That and a feeling of needing to perform can cause detachment

You do need to own your sulkiness and what impact that could have had on her feelings for you without you realising. The realisation for her that actually she is in the mood less and less

@Hearhooversthinkzebras

Hit the nail on the head there.

I can see the wife's perspective and have done all the bending over backwards to fix things, but I was also lucky to have a wife that also came to the party and understood my needs, feelings and emotions and gave them equal priority.

For one parterre to have to coax and almost 'earn' sex is just wrong, and to me, smacks of differing libidos.

As I've pointed out a few times without any acknowledgement, where the sexes are reversed, house work, mental load and other issues never seem to be mentioned, because I suspect the sex drive and desire over powers any domestic imbalance, if there is one.

As a man, you typically want your partner to desire you, to need you, to want and need urgent and passionate sex - not because you did the washing up or put the kids to bed as some kind of reward, but because your wife has a libido that needs satisfying.

We had sex therapy, and when I discussed this with the therapist, she said that women tend to fall into two categories - linear sex drive and non-linear sex drive.

The women with linear sex drives tend to see sex as a stand alone activity, based on a desire that needs to be met, very much like a man, whereas women with non-linear sex drives are emotionally driven, i.e, if their emotional and spiritual needs are not met, then the libido falls away.

The housework stuff is a load of crap. Even the most exhausted mother isn't going to think her husband is even hotter with a mop in his hand.

Our sex lifehas gone up and down over the years.

I totally understand where you are coming from, and at the smae time can see the wife's POV.

For me, I was taking a lot of the mental load and was exhausted. it wasn't that I wanted him t clean the kitchen floor. What I wanted was for him to realise that the kitchen floor needed cleaning.
We found some solutions, we looked at household stuff and I handed some of it over to him, completely, so it became his mental load.

We talked more about other stuff, not related to kids, and not related to sex life, about life, dreams priorities. We rediscovered the adult connection, not just the parenting one.

Ironically it was when we had a REALLY hard time with our dd, that we came much closer emotionally and that spilled over into the bedroom.

Dates are nice, but pointless to me unless you are able to connnect, and often I wasn't ready, and after the stress of getting out of the house, the romance had gone!

My husband also travels, and far from making up for lost time, I find it takes me a while to get back into having him home when he has been away for a couple of weeks, and I am so ready to walk out and leave him to it, but kids come to ME all the time, as they were used to him being away.

So my message would be that you need to reconnect emotionally. It is all about how I feel about how I feel about him, not really about tiredness etc.

On a practical note, once the kids were able to potter downstairs and stick CBeebies on, we found Saturday mornings worked much better than an evening!

The women with linear sex drives tend to see sex as a stand alone activity, based on a desire that needs to be met, very much like a man, whereas women with non-linear sex drives are emotionally driven, i.e, if their emotional and spiritual needs are not met, then the libido falls away.

this is so interesting, I am definitely non-linear!

SunshineAngel As a multiple rape survivor I'm interested to know what you're defining "emotional rape" as please. The wife doesn't sound forced into sex at all. I always find it off when people decide someone else has been raped without knowing any facts.

It's not directly transactional. Referring to the old "5 love languages" trope, I feel loved when I am given acts of service. So if my husband makes me feel loved by doing lots of household things that need to be done, plus I no longer feel pressure, and I have some space and time, I can then use that space and time to be with my husband, and speak his love language, whatever that is. It's not "I do the ironing, she gives me a blow job in return."

Nobody likes a sex pest - pestering isn't healthy at all.

My ex husband killed our marriage doing this, constantly on and on about it.

The things I wanted like cuddles, him saying he loved me, flowers, remembering my birthday he never bothered with.

@Groundfloor interesting - I think it's usually a stress differential. You can do all the work but not be that stressed by it. If life is nothing but stress, you're not going to be a hornbag.

I think that depends on the type you are - to some, stress kills libido, to others it's a great stress reliever.

I've experienced both types. I can remember my first partner coming home once after a particularly bad, day, annoyed at her boss, frustrated things hadn't gone well, lost her keys etc - a day from hell and she literally dragged me upstairs for a good hard shag to de-stress.

But on the flip side, I've experienced the opposite - everything needs to be peachy, all the stars aligned, no stressors, not tired, all jobs done, the third moon in Uranus, atmospheric pressure between 1015 and 1019 mbar, less than 77% humidity, more than 90% charge on her phone, at least 2 pints of milk in the fridge....

I couldn't be arsed trying to fit in with a libido on such a hair trigger that in the end and we split up. Someone else can navigate that mine filed, blind folded, hopping on one leg, wearing ice skates.

My exH killed out marriage dead (tbh, sex was a fucking chore long before marriage!). The sulking, the pressure, the groping, the asking. If he had taken the pedal off the metal and rethought his approach, stopped fucking nagging like a whiny little cunt about it for 5 bloody minutes and consider the fact that I was on my knees from childcare, feeling touched out, housework etc. it might have been salvageable but he couldn't/wouldn't. I hated him even touching me for a long while. He even had me thinking there was something sexually wrong with me and I was considering therapy etc. Left him. Turns out without the whiny fucker I'm a fucking nympho! I love sex with my new DP. I mean LOVE it. I am constantly up for it. For me, sex and domesticity/kids just don't mix at all. It also helps that DP makes me feel like a GODDESS. He prsctically drools over me in my holey pants, AFTER he's cooked for me, listened to my two hour stoned/whisky mac-fuelled anecdote about what happened to me in my village shop, and let me decide on what music is on, or choses a playlist that he thinks I'll like. He dry humps me after I've been to the gym and arrive at his house smelling like an old boot, after handing me a drink and bought all the cheese I like. He panics if he can't offer me at least 3 choices of desert, and also meticulously plans mountain adventures, takes me spear fishing on the spur of the moment, actively wants me to hang put in his social group, volunteers for loads of gold causes, is a brilliant dad, turns up at my DD's parties with goodies and fun activities for her and all her friends. My exDH was about as attentive as a crab. On paper exH wasn't all that crappy. Bascially a good guy. But god damn it...how can you get horny after cleaning someone's skid marks off the loo and have them paw at you because they want their end away when all you want to do is read a book and sleep for 400 years. DP's primary sexual pleasure is making me cum. He will also make pancakes for all the DC and keep them quiet while I get a good lie in even though he's worked twice the hours, and volunteered for almost as many. Be more my DP. Take your foot off the gas. Buy her books you think she'll like. Do something adventurous together that needs ultimate trust, then take her for a pint afterwards. There's nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that bonds more than doing new things together. Then take her home. Make her food. Pour her wine. Listen and listen and listen to her. Then go to bed and stroke her hair and shush her to sleep. I bet you'll find yourself in a mich better situation a few weeks/months down the line.

A cliche on MN is that a couple who don't have a decent sex life are basically friends or roommates rather than a couple as such. Given this, how do you renew an emotional connection with a friend back into a couple without sex? The sex is a required part of falling in love, not just the culmination of it.

Your getting a hard on and wanting to come doesn’t equate to being serviced. You aren’t entitled to sex. You want sex for yourself not to show your wife love. No relationship should need sex to survive she isn’t your come bucket

Jesus why is sex so Important it’s like want it for you sex should be about them not you

@posterCecilandsnail

That sounds great - is it a two way street?

What do you do for him to balance?

@FabbyChix .

That suggests that without a partner to make it all about them., you should have no sex drive or desires?

I take it sex isn't important to you?

Sex is very important to many people, in fact there are countless threads on here by women where lack of sex is a deal breaker, and countless responses to these threads with women advising to LTB and life's too short to do without or have crap sex.

Maybe suggest to those women that it's not important and it should just be about their husbands and not them; see what responses you get.

The whole thing of titling a post 'Healthy Sex Life' which is about you not getting as much sex as you want, is kind of coercive or whatever. It implies that the amount of sex your wife wants is wrong, and that she should do what you want in order for the relationship to be 'healthy.'

A healthy sex life would be one where no-one feels they have to have sex when they don't want it. Coerced sex isn't even sex- it's anti-sex and it just turns the person who doesn't want it off even more.

Cecilandsnail

But reading your post it sounds like you've become the equivalent of your ex in this new relationship.

Would you be up for it if your new partner did, or expected, what your partner is putting up with?

Strange what we view as acceptable depending on what side we are seeing it from.

groundfloor I'm not quite as adept at being awesome but I have my perks 😁 I make him almost cry laughing at my antiques roadshow comedy commentary for one, and I can lure his very teenage daughter out of a funk with chocolate and understanding for two small examples...but I do as much for him as he does for me. It's really been an eye opener as a 'giver' in a relationship to be given to just as much. Makes for bloody hot bedroom action too. I think feeling loved and cherished does wonders for the sexy feels!!!