Sexless Marriage

[FatherFred]

Hi everyone, I know some people see this as a women’s only site but as a father of three children I find the content on here very interesting and helpful.

I suppose its a bit of a cliché for a man to be on here asking for sex advice but I really need some help from people that don’t know us.

I’ve been with my wife for almost 20 years (we’re both early 40’s) and have three beautiful children. I am very happy with the exception of our sex life. It’s practically non existent. The last time we had sex was when our youngest (who’s now three) was conceived. Prior to that, the last time we had sex was around the time our second child was conceived! We have a bit of foreplay every few months but this is only when I instigate it. I go through phases where I purposely won’t instigate it to see if she does but it never happens. I’ve tried talking to her about how I feel but she doesn’t like talking about these things and always promises she’ll make more effort. Every time I discuss it with her I feel a weight has been lifted and things will get better but then nothing changes. I often find myself laying awake at night thinking about it and wake up in the morning in a bad mood and resent her for it.

The first time I discussed it with her she said It was because i don’t show enough affection towards her. This maybe the case in the last year or so but that’s mainly because I feel so rejected and resentful. I still tell her several times a day I love her and always give her a kiss if I’m going out the door even if I’m just popping to the shop to buy milk! The second time I brought it up she told me she just tried not to think about it and basically buries her head in the sand.

We went away for a weekend for her birthday 2 years ago and I ordered some sex toys (for her) to try and spice things up. She wasn’t keen on the idea and they’ve been sitting in the cupboard ever since.

Our sex life was great in the first couple of years but then she just seemed to go off it and it was always me trying to instigate things and more often than not would be rejected. My wife was my first proper relationship and girls I’d slept with before her were mainly one night stands. I’m there fore no expert between the sheets but if I can’t practice I’m never going to get better! My wife can’t explain why she feels like this but has assured me she still fancies me! A couple of months ago I had a big birthday and the in laws looked after the kids. I definitely thought something would happen as we had time together on our own (and being my birthday!) but again nothing happened. I don’t want to instigate it all the time as I hate the idea of her doing it because she can’t say no.

I don’t want to split up but I can’t go on like this either. I’ve explained to her that I’m not looking for sex every night, at this stage I’d be more than happy with once a month!

For the record, there has been no trauma in our relationship - neither of us have ever cheated or had a temporary split during our mainly very happy relationship.

Any advice would be very welcome - apologies for such a long post!!!

Thanks xx

Bottom line : get your ducks sorted and plan your exit.

Elspeth Flashman is right I am afraid.

This a problem she does not want to fix. For the simple reason it is not a problem for her. Things are exactly the way she wants them to be.

My husband could have written this @FatherFred and after nearly 30 years together - 26 of them married - he left me at the end of July. I am honestly devastated and shocked and confused. While he had raised the subject of lack of sex when the kids were small, it never came across as a serious issue - more him throwing his toys out of the pram - and I, caught up in the stresses and strains of every day life, ignored it. He didn't mention it again until 15 years later when it was positioned as 'we've drifted apart', 'there isn't an us anymore', 'I think we need to separate, I want more than what we have'.
I wish he had made me see that he was serious about it 15 years ago when there was time either for us to work on our relationship and get the 'us' back or for us to go our separate ways at a time when I felt more in control of my life and less 'thrown on the rubbish heap' than I do now in my early 50s.
Find a time when your wife isn't trying to cook the tea, put the kids to bed or when she's finally sat down for the night after a 14 hour day and make her see that it's crunch time.
Counselling might help but only if you are still open-minded as to what you want the outcome to be. We tried it but he'd already made his mind up that he wanted to leave so every session was torment with all the things I'd done wrong over the years thrown back at me so I just felt worn down and voiceless.
Good luck. I hope you both find happiness.

@Passmethegin67 I feel like my husbands like you and I can't understand it, how did you think it was never an issue? Did you never worry it was at least an issue for him even if it wasn't for you? I get so angry with my husband as he's obviously happy living without sex and is no longer attracted to me but does he not care about my needs? Or worry I'm unhappy? You say you wish he had sat you down seriously but why didn't you speak to him? I feel like after 2 and a half years of him not wanting me I no longer want it, when you've been rejected and feel so in attractive to the one person that's supposed to want you it really grinds you down until you switch off completely.
I am sorry you're going through this but hopefully you'll now find someone on the same page as you. Just make sure you are open as I'm regretting not starting off our relationship more open as we might not have been in this mess if we were.

People are only capable of radical change via 1 of 2 routes:

1. Through an obsessive internal drive, or
2. Through an external (usually traumatic) external event impacting them.

She doesn’t have (1), so your only option when it comes to seeing radical change is (2). You either leave her for a considerable time, making it clear that the sexless nature of the relationship is the reason in the hope that she will permanently reorganise he understanding of the importance of physical intimacy, or you have an affair and let her find out. Neither of these are guaranteed to work. They may spell the end of your relationship for good, but the inertia is so great only a violent interjection is going to break it. Nothing motivates quite like the fear of losing everything.

A lot of people will harp on about the myriad of reasons a woman doesn’t want to have sex with her husband, but mostly they are just a smokescreen of credible but false excuses. She almost certainly believes that you have provided what she needs, has become bored and simply does not believe you will leave her now that you are invested with a family. This is a selfish attitude which utterly ignores your reasonable needs and the distress that it causes.

Going off sex with your partner is one thing. Not admitting to it, refusing to discuss it and not trying to fix it is another. It is not an act of love it is an an of exploitation - an insidious, low-frequency relationship abuse that leaves bruises and scars that can’t be seen.

As @Passmethegin67 states above, only when the moment is passed do you appreciate what you should have done. You need to force that realisation, I’m afraid.

I was also going to say the same. Passmethegin67, it sounds like you were literally just friends for 20-odd years. I'm confused why you are confused.

@Passmethegin67

Your husband spoke to you about your lack of sex in your relationship and you describe it as him ,"throwing the toys out of the pram?". Then he gave you 15 years which you did nothing with.... and it's still all about you?

It wasn't his job to MAKE you see that he was serious, it was your job to listen to what he was telling you and react.

@ElspethFlashman

You're never going to have sex again.

Its been almost 4 years since you last had sex.

How many years does it have to be until the penny drops???

I remember some poor bloke on here once - it had been SEVEN YEARS since his wife had had sex with him and the pitiful creature was on here asking how to fix it as he still loved her dearly. Good Lord.

So is it going to be 3 more years of her promising a change that never comes?? Throwing more breadcrumbs that you gobble up with relief??

She doesn't even use a vibrator FFS! She doesn't even want sex with herself!

IT'S OVER.

O

V

E

R.

Interesting comment here. @FatherFred I hadn’t had sex for six years entirely at my DH’s choice. In fact so much of your post I could have written - length of time together, the various times I brought it up, how important it was to me and so on. Always met with “I do want to. I’ll try harder”. But he never initiated it, never looked for solutions, never read anything. Just hid his head in the sand. It took being at the very edge of losing me - literally I was at lawyers stage - that he is finally on board to us having a more fulfilling sex life. Or indeed any kind of sex life at all!!! It had built up such a store of resentment in me, plus low self esteem that came out in all sorts of destructive ways. It’s still a massive work in progress. We are in therapy too. But I would NOT say you are never having sex (in your marriage) again. Though you might be ...

But I do feel you need to let your DW know that this IS a total deal breaker for you. Marriage ending deal breaking. Not to threaten but to explain. She has access to the internet and Amazon what can SHE do to help fix this with you as a team?? There are amazing resources out there - check out Betty Dodson Orgasms for Two, Layla Martins free ebooks etc. Personally I found weekends away too pressured (as the sexually deprived one and I imagine as the withholding one).

As for those who think you were wrong to buy the sex toys - I totally disagree!!! You were taking action! You were trying to find ways to give her pleasure! What had she done other than bury her head in the sand? (It’s the passivity I found most hurtful in my husband - his failure to try and fix it. And that also became unattractive to me. I would bloody love my DH to buy me sex toys tho I know it’s different for your DW.
Hope you find a way through it. I can remember my utter desolation thinking “oh my God I’m
44 and I’m never ever going to have sex again in my life ....”. I remember crying on the bathroom floor of a posh hotel during another sexless mini break - the horrible feeling of the elephant in the room.
Good luck

@Passmethegin67

I'm sorry but I agree with the other posters. From your own posts for 15 years you had no or little sex with your husband and never spoke to him about it. Lets be honest, you never spoke about it as you did not want to have sex and a conversation may have led to you feeling you had to try to reinstate your sex life or have led to the end of your marriage. So you avoided the conversation to avoid having to face up to the issue. But there were two of you in the relationship and you had no regard for what your spouse wanted from the relationship, normal physical intimacy. You have every right never to want sex again, but it really is asking too much to expect your sexually active partner to never have sex again.
Ignoring a problem, as you have shown, does not make it go away.

I could have written the OP a few years ago. I kept mentioning it was an issue, she said she would make more effort.

I did everything around the house, helped her with work, purchased gifts, listened, spoke, did everything I could conceivably do - but she had her kids that she wanted and I served no further purpose other than to bankroll her lifestyle.

So we split because I couldn’t live the rest of my life like that. Sex is a very important part of adult life and of a relationship.

Some here will scoff but constant rejection and feeling unloved sucks the life out of you.

Now I am married to someone amazing. She supports me in every way imaginable and makes me realise what an awful life I lived for nearly 25 years. Our sex kids is amazing and as we have more fun we keep learning new things about each other.

You won’t change her. It’s your shout if it’s a dealbreaker or not but in my experience if the relationship is sexless then it’s lacking in many other areas that you don’t even realise at the time because the daily drudge has just become your normal life.

Hope you sort something out.

One thing that has helped me get back into enjoying sex more after two children is realising that I actually now find traditional 'foreplay' to be a total turn-off. I hate being touched with fingers, a massage just sends me to sleep.
I much prefer to just start having sex - VERY gently at first. The sex turns me on and then I enjoy it.
It took my husband a while to get his head round this. He kept feeling like he had to do all the things he understood he 'should' be doing first.

@Passmethegin67

Are you seriously saying that your poor husband put up with a sexless marriage for fifteen years before finally giving up on it and now you’re blaming him and saying you feel “thrown on the rubbish tip”?

The mind boggles....

@Passmethegin67 I think you've been given a hard time here - but it seems naive in the extreme and rather unloving of you to unilaterally remove sex from the marriage. I am not quite sure why you would be "shocked & confused" that an entirely sexless marriage might end when your husband finally realised he could live like that no longer.

You say you wish he had sat you down and explained how important it was for him. But would you have listened? So many spouses just don't. He DID tell you and you did nothing - the toys out of the pram comment suggests something incredibly dismissive of his desire for the ONE defining component that makes a marriage/LTR different from a friendship or co-parenting arrangement.

Its also worth noting that those of us in long term sexless marriages only "ask" or bring it up occasionally because it is incredibly difficult and makes you feel so vulnerable to essentilly have to beg for sex. And then for it to be still refused is even more devastating.

@Desperado24 - so glad you found someone who loves you and is able to enjoy and explore a healthy sex life. I feel quite jealous. Part of me wonders is my husband just "giving" me sex because he doesn't want our marriage to end rather than true desire

I am currently in a relationship where we haven't had sex for seven years. She is not interested and believe me I have tried everything to get to the bottom of jt. We have talked, I have asked her has she gone off me, is it that she just doesn't want to anymore? The bottom line is she doesn't want to have sex or be intimate anymore. Imagine how rejected one feels. I love her to bits, but to be honest it is soul crushing. We have two kids,one 23 and one 15. It feels like she just wanted kids,so she had sex just for that reason only. When there are programmes about cheating partners she is quick to disparage the person having the affair, without any investigation. An affair is an affair, and of.

My DH previous relationship was like this - no sex for 10 years and no kissing or cuddling even, slept in separate rooms. If he tried to initiate sex he was rejected and often verbally abused. Then when he left she was shocked and confused and accused him of being childish and throwing his toys out of the pram (I did almost wonder if a PP was his ex but the ages don’t match).
I left my own first marriage as it was sexless too, but that was more on both sides than just one of us, we became like best friends and are both now very happy with different people.
I’d leave tbh, life is too short!

I think a large number of people in your position would quietly and discretly step outside the marriage and get it elsewhere.

I'm not saying it's right but it is a practical solution to a problem that's not of your making.

It's not possible to be sexualy unfaithful to a person you are not in a sexual relationship with.

She can't simultaneously say that your sexual fulfillment is no long any of her business whilst also claiming control over your sexual fulfillment.

@FatherFred

What was the outcome? Did you manage to get things sorted in the end?

@Menneedtoknowtoo

I am currently in a relationship where we haven't had sex for seven years. She is not interested and believe me I have tried everything to get to the bottom of jt. We have talked, I have asked her has she gone off me, is it that she just doesn't want to anymore? The bottom line is she doesn't want to have sex or be intimate anymore. Imagine how rejected one feels. I love her to bits, but to be honest it is soul crushing. We have two kids,one 23 and one 15. It feels like she just wanted kids,so she had sex just for that reason only. When there are programmes about cheating partners she is quick to disparage the person having the affair, without any investigation. An affair is an affair, and of.

This sounds so sad @Menneedtoknowtoo. Can I ask why you're staying in the relationship, given that your children are older? There's a big world out there, and this is not a dress rehearsal.

This is so sad, you should get divorced and meet someone better suited to you.

@ZaphodDent

That's hilarious! I hope my husband doesn't read that about stopping the tea making!