Husband wants more sex, I don’t, complains about it so much

[acrossit]

We Have two young kids (4 and 1) I’m overweight, woken multiple times in the night still, have two children demanding things every second of the day and I really I am starting to resent the bit of adult time I have to myself being taken over with husband wanting sex

That makes it sound like it’s all the time. It’s generally once a week. I don’t know if there are answers here, I can’t expect him to be celibate but equally I dread it.

The women saying 'if it was good sex she'd want it' have clearly never been in this position. It is spectacularly common for women to go off sex post-childbirth, and for some months/years after depending on a range of factors (breastfeeding or not, susceptibility to hormone changes, whether the husband is pulling his weight as a parent and partner).

It honestly doesn't matter how much you were swinging from the chandeliers and loving it before, or how expert your husband is. Your desire to be stimulated dies off. You don't want it. You literally do not want it. Even if it is good once you get going, you still want it to be over ASAP, and the next time YOU STILL DON'T WANT IT. And your partner can be doing the thing that used to feel fabulous, but now it just feels like (at best) annoying tickling. Arousal just totally fails to arrive. It is very upsetting when you have previously loved sex with your partner for it to feel like a switch has been flipped and ... there's nothing there.

Please don't invalidate the lived experience of thousands of women who have experienced this reversal just because you personally haven't experienced it.

Like others have said what you are going through is very normal and expected. If your husband is a good man he will appreciate that young children are a sex drive killer and it’s not forever. I remember I couldn’t even stand to be cuddled once the kids were in bed. I had so many demands on me all day — many of them physical. All I needed for myself was space. I’m lucky that my H did get that and never pressured me or sulked when I wasn’t in the mood. Looking back I feel quite awful with how little of myself I gave him. At one point we hadn’t had sex in six months. As the kids got older I did start to miss the closeness we had as intimate partners more than the sex itself. I realised I had to mentally get myself there in order to enjoy it. I started with podcasts, steamy novels and audiobooks while doing chores. It definitely worked and now my drive is sometimes higher than his. For me getting my drive back has added to our relationship and therefore my life. I don’t want to go back to the roommates and coparent era. But at the same time you are only human and right now you are still getting through the early stages of childrearing. It can get better if that’s important to you. But don’t feel bad if you aren’t there yet.

No. You are completely misunderstanding. The point of the 15 mins is in the context of there must be something more wrong in a relationship if at a relatively young age and no new born baby one person has no desire or want of intimacy with their partner. And as it is only a short time, to not even want a short time of closeness and physical intimacy, the whole relationship needs scrutiny.

if someone was tired and the act required 3 hours of effort then it would be understandable that even though they longed for closeness they couldn’t muster the energy but if one doesn’t even want sexual closeness for a few minutes then the whole relationship sounds like it needs looking at.

Your dh needs to be told you are just too tired. If he wants more sex he needs to take on more. 3 hours a day travelling to work is three hours you have to spend picking up the flack of house childcare etc. So my suggestions would be 1) dh changes jobs or 2) you all move nearer his work or 3) he finds more hours in the day to do his 50/50 share of home / kid stuff including 50/50 getting up in the night. Your dh it sounds wants it all. He needs to step up and be an equal partner and father

I felt the same, it really was nothing to with sex, I was tired & unsupported. When I finally got to bed, H had been snoring for a couple of hours, I locked up, let the dogs out, put the washing on, tidied up a bit, had a shower, and as my body hit the cool sheets, “the hand” would be there.
NO, just the fuck NO.
I just wanted to stop, unleash the tension, & sleep before a child needed something…

Hey @acrossit

I am sorry you feel like this.

Please seek help - GP, counselling, self care, babysitters.

Anything.

You loved him and desired him before kids - try to get back to that place as far as is possible if you can.

Is he doing anything to woo you, besides watching you run around and complaining?

No wonder you're turned off!

It’s nothing to do with sex. To me, that’s like saying ‘well if it was a really well cooked meal you’d definitely want to go out to a restaurant and enjoy it.’ But if you’re tired maybe you just want beans on toast and an early night.

DH isn’t a bad man but he can get very annoying if he has not had sex; starts dropping ‘hints’ a lot. I wish he wouldn’t but I guess without that we’d never have sex. And we do; I guess I just see it as a bit of a nuisance!

Oh OP there's nothing wrong with you - this is what happens in the majority of marriages. It could be your hormones or maybe you just don't fancy your husband anymore. Biologically he's served his function (I only half joke).

The problem is that he'll end up leaving or having an affair. Because marriages are transactional...you give sex and he is nice to you and stays. So you have to decide between unwanted sex or being alone. It's an uncomfortable truth but it is the truth.

You could artificially keep the marriage going with testosterone patches.

If all he's doing is dropping hints (not sulking, going silent, being snappish) then I don't think that's unreasonable. It is probably counterproductive though - you might be in the mood more if he mentioned it less.

He clearly wants to have sex with you. That's a normal part of marriage and not a feeling he should be ashamed of.

You don't want to have sex. That's also not something you should be ashamed of. It's a big change from when you first got married though, and something that can come with serious consequences to the relationship.

I really think you need to have a long honest talk about you both want, how best to keep both of you happy, changes you can both make etc. Perhaps even couples counselling.

The youngest child is 1, and there's a 4 yo as well. OP sounds tired and worn out. When men are exhausted, they're likely to be able to squeeze in a 15 min in-and-out pump-and-dump because it's easy for them to come, and it makes them feel good. For exhausted women, it's not that easy to be aroused, let alone be able to come, so they get no pleasure from the act. And 15 min of being being pumped and dumped into is not only 15 min she could be asleep or doing something she DOES find pleasurable, it's also 15 min of her body being invaded and used by a selfish git who wants to get off in his unwilling wife's body.

There's nothing wrong with OP - she's tired. It's a season of life. It's utterly physically exhausting and depleting to have small children, and that improves when they get bigger.

There IS something wrong with this man whining about no sex. It is coercive, disrespectful, and selfish.

And it's completely counterproductive. By the time OP gets in the mood again, she'll be so turned off by years of his pawing and whining and her lying there while he grunts away on her, she'll be loathing the whole idea of sex. Or should I say, sex with HIM.

This, exactly this, is how men wreck their marriages.

Maybe he should get testosterone inhibitors, so that he stops being a sex pest, theyeby saving his future sex life with his wife.

I have lived experience of being married to someone who's behaviour changed when DC came along and as a result I felt so disinclined to have sex with him that we did not do it, for several years, at all. The thought was abhorrent. It ended up with him trying to jump me in my sleep, and when asked what the fuck he thought he was doing, the answer was, well I've tried everything else. I'm sure he thought he had. Other than relating to me like a human being, rather than a cardboard cutout of a wife.

I was waiting until youngest DC was at school to leave, because that would put me in the best financial position to support myself, but mentally and physically I was totally checked out. So I guess what I'm suggesting is that if there are no other issues in the relationship, then one would probably want sex if it felt good. We are humans, we go towards what we enjoy, because we are wired to.

If not, then there's a wider issue within the relationship, and I absolutely undersand that feeling.

A transactional man like that doesn't deserve the very significant perks of marriage. Just to remind everyone here, married men are a lot better off than single men:

• Married men earn 10-40% more than single men because their wife's mental and physical labour helps them
• Married men are more likely to feel "very happy" and to have a meaningful life, because of their wife's emotional and mental labour
• Married men live longer and are healthier, less likely to suicide and feel loneliness, because their wives care about them and push them to get medical/psychological treatment
• Married men have more frequent and emotionally satisfying sex (they wreck this when they are coercive)
• Marriage provides legal protections and benefits eg tax advantages
• Marriage gives men social status and standing because of all the above advantages

If a guy cheats because he's not getting his leg over because his wife is exhausted because of THEIR kids, he's not worth having, and he certainly doesn't deserve all these perks of marriage. Women are better off without men like that. Especially considering what marriage means for many women:

• Much increased domestic labour
• Lower earning power, and sacrifice of identity and potential, because of expectations to sacrifice for H
• Shitty mental health because of selfish pushy husband
• Weaker social connections, because no time or energy
• Less sexual satisfaction - because hubby is coercive and turning her off with selfish behaviour
• Significant risk of emotional, mental, sexual, financial, and physical abuse and entrapment
• Reduced happiness
• Lower life expectancy

Marriage is a bad deal for women in this patriarchal world.

It’s not something you have to do.
Don’t put pressure on yourself. However, it’s not something he has to do without.

I suspect you’ve never had sex when you saw as a chore and didn’t really want it ….
If it was as easy as ‘just have sex’, spread your legs and it will be fine, there wouldn't be any thread on this subject.

I see this point to a small degree but marriage is a conditional contract and if you choose that contract then compromises need to be reached .
It's not fair to expect someone to be celibate when its not their choice and if your husband was the one rejecting you i imagine you would want it sorted out .
You really need to talk about it , can someone have the kids for a while or overnight ? you describe him as a good man ,tell him how tired you feel , and it is bloody knackering being a working mom! listen to him also, sounds corny but 'reconnect ' speaking from experience i know how we/partners inc end up bottom of the pile with everything a busy family life entails, but its sad that distance can end up destroying something that was once good.
If you make a bit of time to be together intimately you never know you could find each others spark again.

Agree. None is obliged to have sex but it is also a torture for the party who wants it. The constant rejection and you body just craving making love while your partner doesn’t need it, is a big issue.
Don’t know what the answer is, but I ve been there. Being constantly rejected and craving sex. To top it all up it proved that he was actually getting it elsewhere.
Making love is one of the most beautiful things in the world. None should be under pressure to do it, however none should also be deprived of it.

I’d really recommend mating in captivity by Esther Perel. You can get it as an audiobook, I found it very helpful.

NO ONE IS OWED SEX. NO ONE!

Married or not, you have NO right to the body of someone else. That body belongs to that person, and only to that person, and that person should be 100% free to decide whether they want to have sex.

Any other mentality is treading on the slippery slope to coercive rape.

That includes marriage. If you got married with the idea that you now owned your spouse's body and would now be able to have sex whenever you wanted, you got married with a criminal mindset.

If your spouse does not want sex with you and you find that unacceptable, then you should divorce. You do NOT have the right to use emotionally, mentally, or physically coercive behaviours to guilt, confuse, exhaust, or force your spouse to have sex with you. Nor do you have the right to cheat.

A PP above who said, "Making love is one of the most beautiful things in the world." I agree. But it's only beautiful if the desire for it is MUTUAL and consent is ENTHUSIASTICALLY and joyfully given. Otherwise it is very ugly and dirty.

That exactly what I meant. None owes sex and none who wants it should be deprived of it. Divorce

"deprived" indicates that you feel that you have a right to sex. You don't.

Early menopause? Might be an idea to chat to your GP.