Husbands and sex

[Deedeeraaraa]

I (40f) have a far lower sex drive compared to my husband of 15 years (38m)

We would have sex maybe once a month or once every 2 months (even then my husband wanted it closer to weekly or a couple of nights in a row)
But as the kids have got older things have slowed down.

We do still have sex occasionally (last time was in February) but I'd not miss it if we never had sex again. He seems to be heartbroken by this though. As though it means I think less of him.
The truth is I've never found him all that attractive (he knew when we met that I prefer women) but he acts as though this is a big deal.

It's not only that I don't find him attractive, as I said, we do have sex and I do enjoy it when it happens, but I hate the idea of the kids (14f + 12m) hearing us. The walls are so thin in our house and our daughter's room is through the wall from ours'.
And, regardless of that, I go to bed because I'm tired. If I didn't need to sleep I wouldn't have gone to bed.

There are times during the day, when the kids are out, that he'll suggest we go to bed but I'm busy. When the kids are out I like to clean and tidy up properly, or even have half an hour of quiet time.

We have spoken about it and he suggested setting aside a time when we knew we'd be alone but he doesn't understand that's just not how my body works! I can't decide because it is Thursday evening I'm going to be horny.
Sometimes I need to see how my body reacts. If he suggests we go to bed I don't want to, but occasionally if he runs his hand and touches me instead, I sometimes get tingles and realise I do want to.

He's stopped trying all together at home lately. He says touching me when he doesn't know if I'm interested makes him feel like he's abusing me. Especially when I tell him I'm definitely not interested.

I've been away for several weekends this year too and every 5th or 6th trip he'll start to send flirty messages or photos of himself, and it really doesn't do anything for me. I'm polite and make the appropriate 😍 emojis but honestly it's cringy and a bit creepy.
I also know he wants us to sext or me to send photos back but that's really not my idea of fun.

Now he's also started looking for weekend trips away but, again, that's not how my body works. We cant just go away and suddenly I'm going to feel like having sex. Also, neither of us really have time or money to go away like that. Not to mention the cost. Or that if we did go, I'd want to see places and do things and would probably be too tired after that.
He's not booked anything but keeps bringing up how he's never been to city/town/area and how it'd be nice to visit it, "the two of us"

How do I make him realise that sex isn't important?
Or that it doesn't matter if somebody, or even nobody, finds him attractive.
I married him, he's a good husband and father, and he knows how much I love him.

Tl;Dr my husband has a higher sex drive than I do and I want to help him realise that sex isn't important when we really love each other.

”It's not that I don't want sex at all. I'd be perfectly happy if it did happen.”

Sorry what? Your entire thread is literally about how you don’t want it to happen and want your husband to stop wanting it to happen. You are completely rewriting history here.

These two things aren't mutually exclusive.

I do want him to realise that there are more important things in a relationship (although it seems most people disagree with that)
That our marriage isn't any less important just because we don't have sex every time he's horny.

But I've also said so many times that that we'll have sex again but people seem to have jumped on not caring if it happens and confused it with not wanting it to happen.

No, I think a lot of people have totally misinterpreted what I've said and many others have shouted down my responses.
I've apologised several times if I gave the wrong impression, and tried to clarify myself.

When we next have sex that'll be fine. I'm sure I'll enjoy it. It'll be when we're both in the mood. When there's nothing distracting us, or threatening to interrupt us. When we've both got the energy to enjoy it. And when neither of us feel pressured into it.

I want my husband to understand that and also that sex isn't the most important thing in a marriage.
(Although before this thread I thought that there was more to differentiate a friendship from a relationship than just sex. Maybe I've just never had any close friends and just hadn't realised.)

I do want him to realise that there are more important things in a relationship (although it seems most people disagree with that)

Sex is important to your husband and lots of other people. It might not be important to you, but you can't impose your opinion of what is important or not on another person. This is what irks me about the way you frame things in this thread.

Like if I was making a list of what was important to me in a relationship, sex would be high on the list. If you were in a relationship with me, you wouldn't get to come along and rewrite my list for me, and go "oh no, you need to put sex much further down".

Which seems to be what you want to do effectively for him.

I do want him to realise that there are more important things in a relationship (although it seems most people disagree with that)
That our marriage isn't any less important just because we don't have sex every time he's horny.

Do you think he thinks sex is the most important thing in a relationship?* *

”When we next have sex that'll be fine. I'm sure I'll enjoy it. It'll be when we're both in the mood. When there's nothing distracting us, or threatening to interrupt us. When we've both got the energy to enjoy it. And when neither of us feel pressured into it.”

Ok, but your list of reasons why you’re not in the mood include your children, needing to tidy up, wanting to have some quiet time, being tired, only going to bed becuase you want to sleep, having to do laundry, bad back, being too tired on holiday….
Seeing as literally every part of every day life appears to distract and interrupt you from being interested in having sex it’s hard to see how this is any different from just saying never. Or maybe, possibly in a few more years when the kids have left home.

@Deedeeraaraa

yup this OP

Nah, it'll be menopause then 😂

"I want my husband to understand that and also that sex isn't the most important thing in a marriage."

Do you understand what an incredibly condescending and insulting thing that is to say? As if you are the best and only decider of what a marriage should be like, and you will graciously teach him where he is wrong in his idea that sex is an important part of a marriage. You will patiently show him how his feelings are wrong and how he shouldn't have them.

You have the right to decide you never want to have sex again, and to enforce that in your marriage by refusing his advances, and even by insisting he never make another sexual advance to you ever again. But what you do not have the right to do, is to tell him that sex should not be important to him.

These may be his thoughts. You are cheating with another man. You no longer love him.

I am in this situation with my wife and these are my thoughts.
Nothing you give him or do for him matters if you do not show him you desire him or make love to him.

Couldn't you just spend those 3 and a half or so very occasional minutes thinking of all the good things he brings into your life? 😬
poor bloke

She doesn't desire him though and it won't feel like 'making love' if she doesn't want it.

You are correct; and while sex is not the most important thing in a marriage, when one is denied and one is opposed nothing else can span that divide. It consumes the thoughts.

Hi OP,

Im glad you have been completely honest with your husband from the start because it means he has always known what kind of future he’s had in front of him.

I have a much lower sex drive than my husband and I know it bothered him. As an average we have sex once or twice a week but I know he’d like it much more frequently.

I’m tired a lot too…..as by the time I’ve got the children in bed and all the other stuff that comes with having young children (aged 6 and 9) I feel exhausted. By the time 9.30pm comes around I am done in!

We make plans to have sex all the time and I really want to stick to it….but then the day comes round and I just have no motivation for it.

I do really enjoy the sex when we have it though. I wouldn’t say I’m drooling with lust for my husband and that I want to ravage him and tear his clothes off, but when we do start having sex I feel very attracted to him and I lose the closeness and the intimacy, but also the passionate side of it.

We have separate bedrooms and in a way it has improved things because sometimes when I’ve gone to bed because I feel so tired, I realise about an hour later that I’m not as tired as I bought and I creep to my husband’s bedroom, then I get into bed with him and we have spontaneous sex. It’s almost bought a bit of naughtiness and unpredictability into our otherwise consistent relationship.

Goibg away as a couple always helps as it means we can just focus on each other as individuals and we won’t have to be ‘parents’. We can just be ourselves and it’s like going back to before we were married and just dating and getting to know each other. We tend to go away every 6 months from Friday night to Sunday night and we undoubtedly have more sex than normal during those times. Whereas normally we would have sex 1-2 times a week when we’re at home, we have had sex up to 3 times a day in 24 hours when we are away.

I am also attracted to women and I do wonder whether sometimes that comes into play.

Ultimately though OP, the situation you are in isn’t what the majority of people would think of as “normal”. Holding hands and a quick kiss before work is not how a sexual relationship should be between a couple.

It’s good that you enjoy sex when it happens, it’s good that you don’t want to sleep with anyone else, but it’s totally normal for your husband to want to be desired and that seems to be where the problem lies.

Sex is a huge part of marriage to some people and although it isn’t to you, it clearly is to your husband. A man actively wanting to have sex with his wife is completely normal and not something he needs therapising for.

Although you have always been honest with him and so he knew what he’d let himself in for, I do not see how this can be resolved.

You both deserve more than to be in some kind of sibling / friendship relationship.

I love a lot of people but that doesn’t mean I should marry them. You may love your husband and think he’s a good man, but that doesn’t mean you have to be married to him.

You both deserve happiness and I think that when the relationship discrepancy is as big and destructive as this one, the level of happiness and satisfaction that is intrinsic to marriage may not be something you can find with each other.

100% this.

I feel sorry for him.

He'll have an affair, enjoy sex and finally leave you.

It was his choice to get with someone who had a low libido.

If I got with a man who had no libido then I wouldn't expect people to feel sorry for me when he didn't want to have sex with me.

He knows she's not interested and never really has been but he still thinks it's ok to try to touch her up when she sleeps.

People with low or no libidos shouldn't be made to feel like they've done something wrong when they haven't. Are they supposed to magic up a libido?

She shouldn't have sex if she doesn't want it and I certainly would not like a man to have sex with me when he didn't want to 😷

The original post clearly states, "The truth is I've never found him all that attractive (he knew when we met that I prefer women) but he acts as though this is a big deal."

Given that he was aware of this from the beginning, it's perplexing why she chose to marry someone she doesn't find attractive. This situation seems odd.

The issue of libido isn't even relevant here and hasn't been mentioned. Why are you making assumptions?

She shouldn't have sex if she doesn't want it and I certainly would not like a man to have sex with me when he didn't want to

That's completely valid. It indicates that you're not compatible. It's time to move on and stop wasting each other's time.

Zombie post from nearly a year ago.

Yeah so that's even less reason to feel sorry for him. I wouldn't get with a man who says he prefers men and isn't attracted to me and then expect him to have sex with me. And if I did then I don't know why people would feel sorry for me?

It's perplexing that they both chose to marry each other, but they did, so he's not deserving of any more pity than she is really. He entered a relationship knowing she wasn't attracted to him and when sex was infrequent from the start.

She entered a relationship with someone who she wasn't attracted to and made it clear from the start, yet had to deal with all of the issues that came with that such as him trying it on all the time and then touching her when she goes to bed.

It's a shit situation for both and it's because they both chose to ignore the incompatibility, not because the OP is the bad guy and doing something wrong like many people make out.

Touching her when he knows she doesn't want him to is completely wrong however.

Libido is relevant as she said in the OP in the TLDR that her husband has a higher sex drive than she does, she also mentioned several times that she does have sex when she wants to, and when she wants to she does enjoy it so it sounds like she does have some kind of libido, even though its low and even though she isn't attracted to him.

Touching her when he knows she doesn't want him to is completely wrong however.

It's concerning that people who claim to be in love and are in a relationship have issues with physical affection from their partner. This isn't typical in a healthy relationship.

It's all the more reason for them to part ways. Staying together under these circumstances isn't sustainable.

Yes and he's well aware that she doesn't want to be touched and touches her anyway so that's even more concerning.

They should part ways, I just don't think he deserves sympathy and she doesn't. They either both deserve it for both making a decision to enter into a relationship where they were fundamentally incompatible or else neither of them deserve sympathy.

Ah username changed, I must have posted on this with a previous username for it to revert to this!

It's awful for children to see a lack of affection between their parents.
Imagine being a child and witnessing your father trying to hold your mother's hand, only for her to recoil in disgust.

Zombie thread resurrected, he might of moved on by now.

Yeah but that's a situation of both of their making isn't it?!