I just don’t feel physically attracted to my husband anymore. I did when we first met, but the connection was always more loving than purely sexual.
We have a 6 year old and life is fairly stressful. It’s not sex drive as i fantasize about sex with others regularly.
I ignored the warning signs that we might not be a great match, both being low earners, not great with money, fairly disorganized and chaotic, rather than choosing someone I could learn from and vice versa; with my chaos comes creativity, empathy and joyfulness and I bring that to my mothering and am super dedicated as just one example of my better qualities. But I also have low self esteem in terms of fulfilling my career potential and can never seem to get things if the ground in that respect.
He really seemed to believe in me and would reassure me we were a good team and things would be alright if we were together and in many ways we were, but I now feel it was all a bit immature and not grounded in reality and the stresses and strains of everyday life. Our relationship was great if we could hang out having fun, tell ourselves one day our careers and finances would fall into place and get takeaways four night a week.
But after the birth of our child five years into the relationship, this quality of (clearly delusional) optimism seemed to disappear, or any sense of us as a team. Now he’s super stressed and very pessimistic. Scared of change and always preoccupied with work (in part very necessary as we’re only just making ends meet.) I’m stressed too but I do try to think with him about how we could better our situation, I’ve arranged therapy, asked him to spend more time with me, and he participates but never puts much into action. He’s just too used to burying his head in the sand in that area. Outside that he’s a great, fun and loving dad to our child.
I think I now project a lot of what I hate about myself into him. We’ve had some couples counseling and it’s helped me feel less hateful. We’re good friends, but are like flat mates.
Lots of stuff I read says a version of “make time for each other, and intimacy will follow” or “start with a sex ban and just enjoy being together and build up.” Well what do I do if I simply don’t want sexual intimacy with him? I recoil at the idea. However well we get on I’m adverse to putting work into that side of things as it’s not really something i physically or emotionally want, from him, or with him.
I’m left feeling like it’s my duty somehow to make myself want to sleep with a friend, that I’m a bad wife for not just doing it, or for not focusing on getting towards wanting to do it. It’s awful. And as a result we just don’t have sex, I’m talking for years at a time. He isn’t happy about it but doesn’t really complain and has never tried to take any action towards talking about it or changing it and says he’s happy with a hug now and then. Any action taken is always from my side, when it comes to our relationship.
Yet on a wider level I know it’d be nice for our child if we were romantically connected, we chose each other after all. As we’re not at logger heads and it’s not abusive, leaving seems extreme. Additionally, things would initially be so hard if we split, for us both and so for our child, financially, as well as it being a huge upheaval. I don’t believe in staying together for the children overall, but I do feel like marriage is a commitment to trying to make it work as best as you can.
How do I shift this? Is it better to simply accept a sexless marriage when I feel I miss that so much, but not with him. Or do I just accept that an amicable separation is more honest and support our child through it, knowing overall I might love again with someone I actually fancy.
My parents never had a loving relationship and nor did my husband’s parents and we’re just functional, friends if you like as we seem to be. I feel like having never seen a more loving, alive relationship modeled between parents it’s probably thousands of pounds and a whole lot more energy than I have to be able to have that myself.
Having a partner who isn’t the father of my child might just suit me better, do you think sometimes the reality is that the internal work is just to complex, too great to surpass, and accepting something in between might work better. I think we’d co parent well. But is that a cop out, would I be letting my child down? Unless things are terrible we know from child development experts and psychotherapists that when parents split it is a trauma, at any age. Not an unsurpassable one but it’s a huge big deal and in my case just for the possibility of finding a man I fancy. I’m so lost.