Sex

[danid26]

Hi all, a bit of advice needed.

Basically, my husband has a really high sex drive and mine is pretty low. I had DD 18 months ago, I just never seem too feel 'in the mood'. I have endometriosis, so sex in general is pretty painful for me and to be honest I feel like a total let down. I want to be able to keep my husband happy, but a combination of pain and tiredness just isn't making me want to do it!

Has anyone else experienced similar? And what did you do to help this.

Thanks in advance everyone x

Im not sure with the endometriosis that there is a fix cos its blooming painful and you just want it over as quick as possible dont you?

@RichardOsmansFreakishlyBigHand thank you for your reply, exactly as you said. The quicker the better! And it makes me feel terrible. There is absolutely nothing wrong with DH. but I just feel like a total let down. I've had surgery, and it's not made a blind but of difference! X

It’s a hard one because you shouldn’t be having sex if you don’t want to.

If it was just the issue of pain during sex then I’d say there are lots of other ways to be sexual active/intimate that don’t involve actual penetrative vaginal sex which could be an option.

But you shouldn’t do that if you don’t want to have sex.

It is tricky when you and your partner have different sex drives though as it does seem either someone is always disappointed or someone is going through the motions when they don’t really want to- which is not okay.

As an aside and maybe worth thinking about though is I read something years ago which was essentially about the different types of desire. One is spontaneous desire, so you just want to have sex spontaneously out of the blue, nothing particularly triggers it you just want to, and this is most common in men. The other main type of desire is responsive/reactive desire which is where you basically need something first in order to be aroused/want to have sex, whether that is your partner initiating foreplay or reading an erotic book for example, and this type of desire is most common in women. So it sort of explains why men do typically tend to have a higher sex drive as theirs doesn’t really need anything to provoke it, whereas for women it does take something, less women will hop into bed and immediately want to have sex than men. And (again especially for women) a lot of desire is contextual, if my house is a mess, I’m tired, I know my baby will probably be waking up again in an hour, I’ve got a to do list as long as my arm, I haven’t had a second to relax all day then I’m probably not going to be in the mood for sex because there’s so much on my mind I can’t shut it off to want sex! Understanding where you both sit within these categories can be helpful to understand each other more :)

I want to be able to keep my husband happy

Under no circumstances, absolutely none at all, should you feel that you have to have sex that you don't want and/or that causes you physical pain to keep your husband "happy". No man should be happy to have sex with a woman if it causes her pain.

Your husband should be understanding that you have a medical condition that means you cannot comfortably have intercourse. He should support you and care for you and not put any pressure on you. My sex drive was on the floor for a while post-partum (no medical complications or issues with pain, just no libido) and my husband never, ever made me feel like it was a problem. It wasn't until my sex drive returned to normal that I realised that he'd have been up for (lots) more sex during the dry phase, at the time I thought he was just too knackered! I think we had sex less than once a month for over a year, and that was the really low phase with longer phases either side with slightly more sex but still not loads.

If course there are other ways to be intimate that aren't intercourse. I wager you'd be more open to doing those things if you felt less pressure to "perform" though.

You don't have to have sex that you don't want or that is painful. Everything else is secondary to that.

I know it is easy to say, but you should not feel bad about his behaviour. You have a medical condition and you need support, most of all from him. Add to this a new child, then his behaviour looks pretty poor. A wife is not a prostitute, you are not required to jerk him off, he can do that himself. Your priority is your health and your child. If he can't accept that, it's his loss.