Infrequent sex

[Namechangedforthisunsuprisingly]

My DH and I have a pretty reasonable marriage, we are good friends, we love each other, we get along well, have a similar outlook on life etc

The issue is we hardly ever have sex - maybe 10 times a year at most. When we do its excellent, but my DH can't be bothered very often. He wanks about once a week (in a different room to me, he tried to be discreet, but when you have been married for this long you tend to know whats happening, and he always takes his phone and never otherwise goes in to the spare room so its fairly obvious)

The last couple of times we have had great sex I have made it quite clear I am up for more of the same the next day, but he says he is too tired and then goes and has a wank instead.

It feels like when I am horny my instinct is to have sex and when he is horny his instinct is to wank.

We have spoken off and on about it over the years, he knows it makes me sad. But he always says he is too tired for more sex. But he has changed his job a couple of times, reduced his hours and responsibilities (not to facilitate sex, one for a better work life balance and once due redundancy) and nothing changes.

I'm 37. I am little heavier than I would like (due to medical reasons - nothing excessive) but so is he. He knows I am working on it, but he tells me he still finds me sexy and when we have sex it certainly feels like he does.

We have been together 12 years and even at the start my sex drive was higher than this. But it was at least once a week and he wasn't wanking in between as often. It feels like he has maintained his need for release once a week its just not usually with me.

I guess I just wonder what the point is? It feels made to break up with him when everything else is great and it would really hurt him, and me. I might never meet any one else so sex 10 times a year is better than nothing.

On the other hand it breaks my heart a little when I know he knows I am horny and he slips away to wank instead.

I'm not a troll I promise, I namechanged for this but MN will be able to see I have been here for years.

@MMmomDD
if you read my post from 09:08 this morning, that is exactly the point I was making..

I would imagine that this man doesn’t actually want to have sex with his wife anymore irrespective of his masturbation habits,.
I would guess that even if he stopped masturbating, he still would not want to have sex with his wife anymore, & that is 100% his choice irrespective of what anyone else might think.

ultimately his wife has to decide if she wants to live sexless relationship or not.

I can only guess, but the guys sex drive might come back if he meets someone new, but who knows, maybe he just doesn’t particularly like having sex, not everyone does after all.

OP I feel for you.

The thread has annoyed me however. I'm sick to death of porn being normalised to the extent it now is within the context of marriage or relationship. Absolutely sick to death of it.

OP, you don't deserve it, you are worthy, forget about the weight and bloody well sit him down and tell him once and for all. You don't need to pussy around this. No man should make you feel this way.

ready to be jumped on

@HowlongWillThisTakeNow

Thing is - neither of us know what is in his head.
I assumed he is lazy and fell into the easier pattern of masturbating. Possibly related to what they went through as a couple.
You assume he lost desire for his W.

If former is right - it can be fixed kick/effort on both sides.
If latter - (his right, I do agree) - he needs to be honest about it and not have his W dangling by occasional duty sex.

@MMmomDD
yep, 100% agree.
based on OPs various posts about weight gain, IVF etc etc, my guess would be the sees his wife in a different way now ?

@Namechangedforthisunsuprisingly I had a similar issue, but actually my marriage was pretty awful and sex was the only thing which was barely holding it together, so when sex started getting rarer and rarer it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I think I did post on mumsnet on other's threads about it, and I even PM'd a few people with similar threads to yours (if you search, you'll see a few), asking if they managed to resolve or improve things, say a year or two on. No-one replied. In one of the neighbouring threads on this page someone said that counsellors call once a month sex as a sexless marriage, and you have even less than that. I had nearly daily sex in my first relationship, so to go from there to twice a week(once we got married) in my second, then twice a month, then once a month or rarer was extremely painful. But also it was more or less the only thing which was good in our marriage when it did happen, so it wasn't that difficult to leave - if our relationship was great and that was the only issue (like in a neighbouring thread) then I have no idea what I'd do.
Saying all that I must say that when my H's drive was low, it was low. He didn't wank, he didn't use porn (I know because due to children's access to the internet we have porn disabled at the provider level) and anyway, he isn't particularly into it. Basically he was fine to go for months without either sex or masturbating. Your situation in that sense sounds kind of worse, because there is no total absence of a sex drive, just an absence of him desiring you, and what do you do about it? You can't force a person to want you, and it's not pleasant to be given sex begrudgingly...

By the way, one of my favourite sayings is Henry Ford's whether you think you can do it, or you think you can't, you are right.

WIth your situation where you think no-one would want you etc - as long as you think that, no one would want you, it's true. If you believe that there is someone for everyone and there's someone out there who'd find you attractive and desirable because it's YOU, then your chances of it happening are way, way higher.
I'm sure you have examples around you of women of any sizes, any number of children or financial position who do find new partners (and relatively easily), it happens because most of the obstacles are in the mind...so they don't exist for those who don't see them :). You really need to find stories of women who successfully found new partners - btw pretty sure I read on mumsnet stories of women who couldn't have children even via IVF with a partner, gave up, broke up and then had kids naturally with a new partner! Find some inspiration, you get what you expect/settle for in life. All the best!

From a male perspective it does seem odd that your partner would masturbate rather than have sex with you, our sex life is very similar, maybe once a month but almost non existent in between, yes I masturbate but not instead of sex with DW , that’s always first choice,DW has, to my knowledge never masturbated, always told me she has never needed to, not sure how normal that is, but OP, perhaps you need to access some counselling to find out why he does this.