Hello everybody. I’m a 30 year old man and have been with my 34 year old girlfriend for 5 years now. Our son is 18 months old. I am here seeking advice as intimacy / sex has become a real issue in our relationship, at least for me. Prior to our son being conceived I would describe our sex life as completely normal, but as soon as we found out about the pregnancy, that was it, she completely lost interest. Over the course of the past 2 years we have only been intimate on a handful of occasions. We have had several arguments about it since but nothing has really changed. Generally communication about this issue is a problem and I find that however I try to approach it does not yield results in terms of understanding each other and moving forwards.
Her explanation is that she just doesn’t feel that way any more because of baby body, tiredness etc. She doesn’t attribute this to me but says that it just doesn’t cross her mind any more. She does acknowledge that the situation needs to be addressed, but the weeks / months tend to go by with no change. I think if I just never mentioned it again she would be happy with the status quo.
Can anybody relate to this? From my perspective I don’t think that I’m being unreasonable for wanting a more active sex life, but at the same time I don’t think she is being particularly unreasonable for feeling the way that she is feeling. I certainly do not want to find myself in a situation where she is agreeing to have sex out of a sense of duty. Which is difficult as at face value the obvious compromise is to say agree to be intimate once a week or whatever.
I feel like this situation is unhealthy and am struggling to figure out how to deal with it, and would be really interested to hear the perspectives of other women who are, or who have been, at a similar stage in terms of the child’s age etc.
In terms of overall relationship there are not really any other issues. Having a baby combined with being in lockdown for more or less a year has obviously been a struggle.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice.