I feel relieved that my husband stopped initiating sex

[MaryPoppins89]

My husband is (43m) and I'm (42f) and we have two kids (12f,15m).we have very different sex drives, He wants sex far more often than I do, and this has been an issue for years.

For a long time, every night felt tense to me. When he’d initiate, I’d immediately feel stressed because I knew there were only two outcomes: I’d say no and hurt him, or I’d say yes when I didn’t really want to and feel resentful afterward. Even though he was calm about rejection, the disappointment was always there, and I carried that guilt around constantly.

After years of this pattern, he stopped initiating altogether, And honestly I felt relieved, I didn’t realize how much the anticipation alone was affecting me until it was gone. I could go to bed without bracing my self, I could relax around him without worrying that a hug or cuddle would turn into something I wasn’t ready for. The pressure finally stopped.

The problem is that it didn’t just stop the sex, it stopped everything, He barely touches me now. No flirting, no lingering hugs, no playful comments.
Recently he told me he stopped initiating because it hurt too much to keep being rejected and that he’s trying to shut down his sexual side completely so it doesn’t hurt anymore.

That crushed me,I don’t want him to feel unwanted or like something is wrong with him. I love him and I don’t want to damage him emotionally, At the same time, I can’t deny that my day to day life feels calmer now that the sexual tension is gone, I haven’t told him I feel relieved, because that feels cruel, but I also feel like a bad wife for preferring peace over intimacy.

Half the people on here are saying that showing physical affection is pestering for sex and the other half say that withholding it is being cruel on his part. He can’t win.

Have you considered exploring in depth your "why"? Why do I not desire him more sexually? Was it always this way or did it gradually regress to this? These are questions for yourself to answer honestly.

Ultimately, no matter the reasoning for your lack of drive, you still possess the power to change it if you choose. You just have to identify the root cause. Then you can reprogram yourself. You have evidence that it's possible because your husband reprogrammed himself to curb his desire.

So far, your nervous system has been trained to respond with rejection when your husband's sexual advances arrive. Consequently, your husband's nervous system is now being trained to not approach you to avoid the pain of rejection.

The good news is, it's not a point of no return.... unless you choose it to be. We have control. We have the power to transform ourselves.

Sending healing and restoration energy to the both of you.

This is a really difficult topic and there are some very harsh comments here. There are men who offer no romance, no setting the mood and no making an effort. They just expect sex as though it’s their right. Roll over love, I’ll just hump you like a dog on heat and you’ll enjoy it. It’s not enjoyable and I’m not going to pretend it is. We’re tired, we work full time, we carry the mental load, bear the brunt of the responsibility for our children and we’re still expected to good little wives providing sexual satisfaction on a whim. Maybe ops husband should stop pestering her, focus on putting in some effort and make her feel special. Maybe he should give cuddles and hold her hand without making her feel he’s only offering intimacy in return for sex. Maybe he should help out more around the house so that she’s not physically and mentally exhausted. But no, he withdraws loving touch and gets a free pass to cheat because it’s all his wife’s fault for denying her husband his right to demand sex whenever he pleases.

You dont know how he is as a husband as the post doesn't state how attentive, helpful etc etc he is. Just one swooping generalisation there. She is not intimate so he must be a crap husband..

That's a strange take when OP has said she's sad at the loss of cuddles flirting and affection.

Who says her husband has done all these things, but OP just decided she didn’t want to have sex with him? Or are you suggesting the PP who have said they’re in OP’s husband’s position are to blame for their husbands not wanting to have sex with them?

If you don't want to lose him, start scheduling sex so you know when it's going to be and can relax at other times.

What on earth did you think would happen. If you constantly push someone away and reject them of course they are going to stop trying. I honestly don’t know how you can fix this.

First thing to do if figure out youve gone off it because you dont actually like him that much anymore, or you literally have no libido.
If its the later its a medical issue you should sort out if you want your marraige to continue. Drs will actually prescribe testerone to women for this (instead of 'just' menoupause grr). Try oestrogen too.

Differing libidos cause so many problems in marriages. I am about to separate from my husband who I have been with since 20yo (I am 47). He doesn't know it yet. I have felt sexually rejected by him since 23 yo, he was 30 at the time. He has a very low sex drive and only desires me when I am very thin. Obviously I no longer look 20 yo. I am a size UK 6-8, but when I was a size UK 10-12 he did not have any desire to have sex for 4 years, did not masturbate or watch porn or even bring it up. I had given up by that point after being the only one to really initiate or put any effort at all into the whole thing for many many years (reading books, lingerie, date nights, forums, bringing up the conversation about a sexless marriage).

It was amplified by an act of sexual boundary violation on his part where he was very rough when I said to stop as it hurt and that made me just not want to have sex with him at all anymore. I still persisted though until one night I was walking around in new lingerie I had purchased and came out into the living room, he ignored me and I just said I guess I should stop making a fool of myself then? He just said kind of yeah I guess you should. I gave up and completely shut down sexually and didn't want him to touch me anymore.

I still don't want him to touch me. You can't treat people like that and expect they will still want you in a loving way. I wish I had left earlier but we had children with special needs. Now my children are getting older and I don't care I just need out. Other men find me very attractive. I would say your husband is approaching this point and will either leave you or just find someone else. If he falls in love with someone else he will def leave. Marriages cannot and do not survive like this. I am not saying you should have sex with him when you don't want to. But if you don't want to ever again you should leave him and let him have a sex life with other people who do.

Agree. My first husband was like this, constant rejection. In the end i just couldnt be arsed anymore and just silently checked out. I didnt want a friend, didnt want a room mate. I wanted a partner. In the end i left him but should have left far sooner than i did.

No the opposite, Im suggesting many people on here are blaming the op for her not wanting to have sex with her husband. I’m suggesting that maybe there’s a context to this and it’s not always fair to default blame the woman. I’m suggesting that gentle intimacy such as hugs and hand holding shouldn’t be seen as an obligation to have sex. I’m giving an example where a husband could make more of an effort rather than expecting sex like some sort of contract. I’m not saying all husbands/partners are like this I just don’t agree with the narrative that there must be something wrong with her and she needs to fix it.

This is a shame. Eventually he will become resentful and find someone else which is likely to end your marriage.
Question if this is what you want?

Do you think having 2 teens and your work schedule (not sure if you work) has any bearing on how you feel - does DH join in the housework & parenting or is everything left to you? What's your relationship like generally? Sometimes resentment & unfairness fester on both sides - do you talk about things openly, do you have other issues going on that might be impacting how you feel - your needs aren't met.

So difficult. Me and my husband have not had sex for years but that’s mutual. I think if it’s the choice of only one, it’s a difficult situation to resolve,

You seem very shallow than sex is all you see in a relationship and without it you don't think there's anything else left? Have you never actually experienced loving anyone?

I have/am experiencing this situation for 35 years of my 42-year marriage, when sexual intimacy left our relationship to the extent that we may have 1 or 2 'events' per year, reducing to none, then some 'fireworks' for a short period, one or two years.

The lapse coincides with the time after our third and last child was born, following which my wife had some obstetric issues, which certainly interfered with our love life. Since then, my wife has become morbidly obese, which has resulted in body morphic behaviours such that I am rarely allowed to see her naked.

She has had clinical depression episodes requiring hospitalisation or mental health support. On the face of it, an outsider would probably consider it is not surprising that my wife has an aversion to sexual relations. She has a fairly dim view of sex in general, on top of which I am with Bipolar, which, of course, she has to cope with as a carer, causing a 'patient-carer' scenario, further complicating our emotional and sexual relationship. The constant rejection in the early days was very hard for me because it spurred all manner of insecurities, such as believing I was a rubbish lover, that my wife was exploring outside the marriage for sexual partners. Also, my wife worked on my values regarding the importance of sex in our relationship. I still maintain a possibly delusional position that sexual intimacy reinforces a relationship and a lack of it compromises the relationship when there is a libido imbalance.

Amazingly, we are still together, and I can say there have been some occasions when my wife has threatened to divorce me, but we seem to get through the bumpy periods. I maintain that I will never divorce my wife, but you never know what situations you can be confronted with. My wife has broader life aspirations than I do, a factor that can drive divorce threats.

We both regularly express our love for each other, which is probably the biggest factor (along with codependent finances) that holds us together!

I don't know if the above helps the conversation, but it does add to the category of couples having to work through this highly uncomfortable situation.

Sorry OP but your next post on MN is going to be about you either discovering your husband is having an affair (hope you don’t wonder why) or he may leave before that happens (still hope you don’t wonder why)…

Reprogramme yourself???

Yes, just force yourself to let a man inside your body. Re educate your mind to prioritise his sexual needs and disregard what you actually want.
It’s exactly the same as your husband (selflessly) deciding not to be physically affectionate if no sex is on offer and will take no more effort.
You won’t feel any sort of revulsion and depersonalisation as you lie there telling your body to relax and submit.
You won’t feel like a prostitute selling sex for a relationship.
It won’t make you hate yourself, not to mention him, at all.

Christ on a fucking bike.
No wonder the poor OP has legged it.

For a long time, every night felt tense to me. When he’d initiate, I’d immediately feel stressed because I knew there were only two outcomes: I’d say no and hurt him, or I’d say yes when I didn’t really want to and feel resentful afterward. Even though he was calm about rejection, the disappointment was always there, and I carried that guilt around constantly.
It’s surprising you were carrying guilt back when you were rejecting him, but you’re enjoying “peace” after your DH, who you claim to love, has told you this situation is hurting him so much he’s given up trying. Where did the guilt go?

Was he trying to initiate every single night, or did every night feel tense because you thought he might? As you felt you could stop “worrying that a hug or cuddle would turn into something” when you knew he’d stopped trying to initiate, is it possible his hugs were just hugs when they were making you tense? I wonder if you’ve been rejecting sex he wasn’t even offering for a long time (even before you realised he’d given up trying).

The problem is that it didn’t just stop the sex, it stopped everything, He barely touches me now. No flirting, no lingering hugs, no playful comments.
If low-level affection like cuddles made you tense and led to you rejecting him preemptively, surely flirting, lingering hugs, and playful comments would have the same effect. You made it very clear you didn’t want him to do anything you could perceive as an attempt to initiate…so he’s not touching you, flirting, or doing any of the things that would make you “stressed”. It’s clearly not what he wants and he sounds bloody miserable, but you prefer “peace over intimacy” and this is what it looks like.

I don’t want him to feel unwanted or like something is wrong with him. I love him and I don’t want to damage him emotionally, At the same time, I can’t deny that my day to day life feels calmer now that the sexual tension is gone, I haven’t told him I feel relieved, because that feels cruel, but I also feel like a bad wife for preferring peace over intimacy.
The tension hasn’t gone, you’ve just removed the sex from your relationship. The affection, the closeness between you, your husband’s self-esteem, and his happiness are in the process of disappearing with it.

You should probably put some thought into how you’ll manage “preferring peace over intimacy” while still having the relationship you want, without hurting him further if that’s genuinely something that concerns you. Do you plan to demand he gives you an ego boost by flirting and offering lingering hugs…then you’ll quickly reject him before he starts getting any unwelcome ideas? Or, as this is what you wanted, do you plan to compromise by never being touched, kissed, or complimented by him again, changing the romantic relationship to a friendship, and peacefully continuing to enjoy how much calmer your day-to-day life feels?

Your DH already feels unwanted and like something is wrong with him. Avoiding telling him that you’re relieved he’s given up isn’t protecting him from emotional damage, and leaving him with false hope is more cruel than just telling him the truth. If you want things to continue as they are now, give him the information he needs to decide whether he can live with your choices, or if he wants to leave. If you still want a romantic relationship with him, talk to him, try to find a compromise that works for you both, and look into some couples therapy.

This is soooo true @NotGonna - the ick becomes big after being rejected or friend zoned. It's like your brother wants you to flirt.

I was struck by this:

When he’d initiate, I’d immediately feel stressed because I knew there were only two outcomes: I’d say no and hurt him, or I’d say yes when I didn’t really want to and feel resentful afterward.

and the fact that there was no third outcome - that just occasionally, you might have said yes because you DID want to.

It can be hard to hear but some people are just plain sexually incompatible. Some differences of libido or preference can be worked around, but if someone desires sex with their partner and that partner has literally zero desire to reciprocate (whether because of general lack of libido, or just lack of desire for that particular person), there's really no solution.

You could try and stay together sexlessly but as you've said, it can't really be separated from love and affection more globally enough for that to work.

I feel sorry for both of you.
There must still be a lot of tension. You both have so many years left.
If I were you I would get a divorce. You can still be good parents and you will all be happier.

I couldn’t agree more!!! I made this point (not as well as you mind- hats off) a bit back and absolutely stand by it. “what a strange take.” I was told by a poster. Marriage is not a contract for sex. Sex is not a contract for other types of intimacy. If one partner man or woman has gone off sex it is not their job to ‘reprogram’ themselves. There may be a good bloody reason. It’s the job of a loving partner to gently explore the reasons why - not withdraw all types of affection. And it is NOT a free pass to cheat.