Sex life making husband unhappy

[Rocksintheriver]

Hi,

I don’t know what I want from posting about this, maybe some advice or solidarity.

Since having our DC (5 and 3), my libido has been in my boots. I want to want to have sex, but the urge often isn’t there and at the moment I’d ideally like to have sex once a month. That’s how often I really feel in the mood. But on average we have sex every 1-2 weeks.

For context, we haven’t been intimate for about 3-4 weeks as I have a medical issue that is making it uncomfortable. I’ve been referred and have a hospital appointment soon.

This amount isn’t enough for my DH. He’s spoken about this a few times before today, and is sensitive about it. He’s not bold and brash and demanding we have more sex. He just states that for him to be happy he would need us to do this more.

Ive explained to him that it’s not because I don’t love or fancy him etc, my body just doesn’t have the urge to have sex anymore than we currently do. He does his fair share of childcare and things around the house, so I’m not resentful or burnt out or anything like that. I just have no libido.

Today he has mentioned that he’s feeling down due to ‘the celibacy’, and that he’s doing some mindfulness practice around this to ‘cope’. This has really upset me for some reason. I don’t feel like he is celibate, and I don’t want him to have to ‘cope’ in his marriage with me. It’s made me feel really inadequate and powerless as it’s not something I’m doing on purpose.

I said we need to sit and have a talk about this tonight once the kids are in bed. And he says we don’t need to talk about it, he’s fine and just needs to adjust. He’s said he’s looked up how priests manage to live with no sex. It’s really upset me. It’s like he’s given up and resigned.

What can I do to improve my libido? It’s clearly causing an issue in my marriage, and I really don’t want that. I understand that sex is really important.

I disagree. Using the word "celibacy" feels off as does some of the other things he's saying. They are putting pressure on in a very "underhand" kind of a way. Not the right word but can't think of a better one. He could have not said anything at all during this period whilst the medical issue is being looked into. That would have been the nice thing to do.

For the posters suggesting non PIV intimacy - From experience, there's something psychologically very hard about knowing you have something inside you that isnt welcome near your sex organs. It has the ability to put you off doing anything remotely intimate.

OP’s DH is getting a lot of stick on here. People have different sex drives and expectations. For some this is a very important aspect of an intimate relationship. OP has an understandable health reason to abstain atm, but longer term it’s better a spouse discusses their unhappiness due to a change in the frequency of sex than just go out and cheat.

It’s important within a marriage to maintain both your sex life and romantic date time away from the children. I have very high expectations of my own DH regardless of us having 2 young children.

So if it was the opposite problem and he had a sore dick that made it really painful for him to have sex OP should go around complaining about how he's made her feel like a nun and whine on about how she's going to cope with it?!! It's only been a few weeks. He's trying to guilt trip you and it's very unpleasant. I wouldn't want him anywhere near me.

It's not manipulation. It's communicating

A man who gets sex every week or two, but who says he resigned to being celibate and is reading up on how Priests learn to cope with it, is not 'communicating' , he is talking crap as he is clearly not celibate. He is being manipulative and trying to guilt OP.

He's not going without. OP says they have sex every week or two normally.

He's lying-whining to OP about how he is celibate to make her feel shit.

This. Any sexual problems need discussion, effort and compromise. Without those, the relationship will fall apart.

Mindfulness to cope ( wanking )

I am waiting for an internal scan, so I can understand how you feel , my husband helps with housework , runs me a bath , we lie down for half an hour , something might happen but not sex.
What's he doing to help you and to feel loved and supported?

He’s making his problem your problem. Which is unreasonable.

He should be worrying about you, how you feel, whether you need any more support from him. Instead he’s worrying about himself and adding that to your own worries.

He sounds fucking grim OP

@MounjaroNewb "Sex isn't a dirty thing that some on Mumsnet make it out to be"

No, but sexual coercion is.

You don't have to just have penatrive sex ... broaden your horizons perhaps

Actually in a healthy relationship he should be doing both.

Worrying about her and worrying about him and what he needs.

That's exactly the type of mindset that have so many relationships fucked. Being in a relationship doesnt mean you stop being a priority to yourself.

It means adjusting and finding ways to meet your own needs and supporting your partner

In fact your entire post is contradictory. His problems need to stay as his problems, but her problems need to be hers and his.

Ask him if you can see his wrist…then when he shows you just wide eyed ‘wow, what’s this attached to it?’

when he tells you it’s his hand, then explain to him that now he knows what it is, maybe he can go learn to use it.

nobody needs sex, what he needs is to realise that you have used your body to incubate people, and said people are now in your life and wear you out so maybe you don’t feel super sexy all of the time. Your desire for sex will come and go, and he needs to get on board with that and help make you feel sexy not pressured

My DH thought it wise to keep count of the number of days that had passed since we'd had sex and tell me one day while we were lay in bed.

Think it was about 23 days. We had a 5 year old, a 3 year old and a long-term poorly 6 month old at the time that I was exclusively BFing. He was still waking regularly during the night for a feed so I was knackered .

As you can imagine, after that comment, my libido did a swift U-turn and I was desperate to jump his bones immediately.

Not. I've never forgotten that comment.

He’s not exactly acting in a sexy way, is he? I can’t think of anything less alluring than a good old guilt trip

I had a low libido a long time before this, it’s just made sex more of an issue than it was before

I agree with PPs that moaning about a 3 week dry spell is ridiculous, but in light of what you added here it may be he's worried that your sex lives are going down the drain completely, and most fairly young men would find that very hard to accept

Hopefully though you can keep talking and find a way through that works for you both - hopefully, too, your surgery will be a complete success

Sounds like he’s low level emotionally blackmailing you about sex. A 3 week dry spell isn’t celibacy, you have a medical issue which means sex is painful. For him to make this all about him is pretty selfish.

As for constantly mentions it, that’s almost bullying you or trying to make you feel guilty, so you give in and have sex. It just all sounds a bit coercive.

Your in the throws of small children, it’s difficult and as a woman you do feel touched out, I lost my libido when my dc were small, but my dh supported me and never pressured me or made me feel bad, eventually it came back, but I can imagine if he’d pressurised me I’d have gone the other way

I also wanted to post that her libido would soon come back if another man came along who she was attracted too. I had no sexual desire at all for years in my long term relationship and thought I had a hormone problem, then another man turned my head and omg how he re-sparked my desire. I felt 21 again and couldn't keep my hands off him.
I know of so many ltr couples that no longer have sex. one couple in there 50s haven't had sex for over 20 years sadly.

Hormonal contraceptives? They reduce libido.

is it any sexual contact that you have no desire to do?

what about ‘activities’ other than piv?

Why? It's a compromise?

It's the usual mumsnet mentality, men have to accept sexless marriages. Women do not.

For what it's worth I went through similar with my ex. In counselling we had to diary event planned sex. It sounds abhorrent, however it wasn't because I didn't want to, I just couldn't be bothered, was tired etc. But once it got going it was enjoyable.

Bit if there's a medical issue then that needs attending to first.

I think he's being a total arse. You have some medical issues that you're sorting out. Meanwhile your 'D'H is trying to coerce you into sex. How supportive.
Once you're feeling better, maybe try some couples therapy.
Meanwhile, he'll just have to date Thumbelina and her 4 sisters.

The compromise could be that her “d”h could go without sex for a while until she’s better, and stop making cunty comments. In fact, he could support her health and wellbeing and take sex and any talk of it completely off the table and just have a wank.

That way, when she’s well enough she won’t have got the full on ick from his behaviour and will actually want to have sex with him when she’s able to.

But then some people will complain that’s not real sex, and it isnt the same, and once you are naked and getting down to whatever you’ve decided to do (mutual masturbation or whatever) they will then keep trying to “slip it in” or pressurise you to just have full sex, you know you want to, blah blah. Sometimes it’s less stressful to just not do anything because the other person will just keep pushing for full sex.

How incredibly depressing