When does sex end in a marriage with children?

[happydappy2]

Married for 20 years, 2 children late teens, husbands job very all consuming, I’ve felt like a single parent for years (although he does provide financially for us.) We had a great sex life when younger but now I just don’t fancy him….he probably doesn’t fancy me either! Just asking for others points of view as my libido has fallen off a cliff…. When do happily married couples naturally stop having sex?

We are 58 and 64, married 38 years, 2 adult chuldren. Still having regular sex, thank goodness.

Also you are asking about the sex life of happily married couples. You don't sound happy op.

I initially read it like that too!

KiwiLadyPie, yes of course - I’m a doctor. Obviously, my PILs would hardly have asked me otherwise. Although it was rather more disconcerting to discuss it with them than an unrelated patient!

😂

You can absolutely stop fancying your partner for a number of reasons ina marriage and you have no control over it. There is nothing as emotionally painful than having sex with someone you don't find physically attractive.

A lot more people do stop having sex than you'd think, and a lot more than you think because the male partner has a low sex drive. If it doesn't bother either partner I don't think it matters. I think it's actually quite a natural thing to lose interest in sex and it's often something that is over-medicalised or causes great anxiety when there needn't be any. Also fiction often creates rather unrealistic pictures of relationships. Some people may be having sex all their lives, personally I'm just not bothered at all these days and there are lots of things I'd rather do.

I still fancy my Dh, but at 58 lm just not interested in it at all.

Dh is 75 and I am 70 and we have sex approximately every two weeks which we both enjoy. We had a period about seven years ago when Dh had prostate cancer and was on hormone treatment which meant we didn’t have sex for about 3 years but when he came off the hormones are sex life was rekindled.

Never, I’m at the same life stage as you. It’s not easy with teens in the house, but we treat it like we’re the teens trying to do it behind our parents backs. There’s always a way.

the main thing is that you should still feel like you’re a team, sharing the shitty bits of day to day life so that you can share the good bits together.

Been together 24 years, I'm mid menopause and sex is still very much a part of our lives. It isn't as wild or as often as in the past but it's still very much in play.

Our sex life had never been great, soon as DD came along it really fizzled out. He tried for a long time to make the effort but I didn't want to, I've never had those feelings.
Until recently...and I think it may be due to peri menopause?! Sadly we separated last month after a very long marriage so now I have all these new feelings and nobody to experience them with!

I would assume people in happy marriages don't stop. Or at least they stay intimate, even if there's a problem which makes sex itself difficult. All of our intimacy stopped at the conception of our youngest who is now 10.

Not true at all. I'm post menopausal and my sex life is better now than at any other time in my life. I certainly haven't lost interest in either sex or my partner.

if everyone is in agreement and you have what you need as above there is no reason for doom. I find the insistence on “happy couples = sex” very strange. Usually life doesn’t work in binaries, and things aren’t black and white but the “happy = sex” point of view appears to have a specific, formulaic notion that all couples and household must fit - else they are doomed.

happiness - and contentment - comes in a variety of forms and can be quite fluid. I’d hesitate to lay out prescriptions and formulae for “happy coupling = X or Y”. I simply don’t know what that equation should read - as it’s likely to be fluid, changeable - by person, by pairing, by household, by circs.

This.

This is what I feel like. Me and DH just have a very low sex drive and I wasn't joking when I said we probably have it once or twice a year, if that. I'm just not that bothered about it and we have teenagers in the house which puts us off.

Single now but with ex DP it was very hit and miss after our DS came along. Initially it was regular (we actually had sex about 5 weeks PP), but once the sleep deprivation (I was doing it all on my own) kicked in I sort of lost a bit of interest.

Then I gained weight and my ex was critical of that and implied he didn't fancy me as much, I was balancing full time work with parenting/all night stuff and my ex was just difficult to live with - I ended up just not really feeling connected to him in any way, my self esteem was shot to pieces and it was hard to want to have sex with someone who was snappy and moody.

We had a brief period when we split and he got with someone straight away and then decided he still loved me and (I was a mug to go back, btw) when we got back together our sex life resurfaced for a while. Ex was on furlough during pandemic as was I, and then I went back into full time work with a different job and was running the house etc, just wanted downtime in the evening as work and DS was full on. We didn't really have any free time without DS at this point due to the pandemic.

Ex initially said he felt neglected and I wasn't making an effort (I was trying, and he kept suggesting date nights but these were hard with a DS and no childcare) but then became difficult and snappy/moody again and I just didn't feel connected to him again. He said he didn't fancy me as much due to weight gain and he felt it hard to want to have sex with me. I lost some weight but I think by that point our relationship was in such trouble that neither of us really felt the desire to do so. By the point in which we split we were hardly having sex at all.

A widow in her 80s told me "If the sex is good, the marriage is good"

Nope. I've had fantastic sex with men I definitely would not marry!