Is there any coming back from the ick?

[Lecruesetisntright]

Just that really.

I deeply love DH and he's a wonderful husband and father, but I have very serious ick. The thought of sex is grim and when we do have sex I hate it, it's just icky. It's a shame because he is so lovely.

And really like to get through/ over this rather than separate, but I also don't want either of us in a sexless marriage.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

I do feel for your husband here. From what you said he’s a good husband, he cares about your pleasure etc.

Can you try to explain more? He’s sweaty- why? Is he overweight, has this always been an issue? What do you mean by his sex face? You’re conjuring up images of Mr Bean.

i think for starters, stop having sex you don’t want. That’s not going to help anything. Secondly, your sex life sounds very robotic and stale which makes sense given you have children and have been together a long time. Perhaps that needs looking at. Can you go away for the weekend? Switch things up?

OneOliveOtter: "I do feel for your husband here. From what you said he’s a good husband, he cares about your pleasure etc."

As do I. I can't understand divorcing my husband and splitting up our family (hypothetical as we don't have kids yet) over sex. It's so hard to find a loving, caring, kind man who values and respects you and actually treats you well. I'm sure there's always someone we could all find to have better sex with but finding a good spouse and partner - male or female - is so so hard.

This is like the female equivalent of men finding their wives boring or unattractive after giving birth. To me, it's just one of those phases that all marriages go through but the couples who actually want to stay together find a way to overcome it.

Nope

Be very careful or you'll end up having an affair.
If sex is that important to you, find a way to split amicably before you fuck up!
You only get one life, do you want only icky sex for what's left of it? You'll get judged if the answer is no, unfortunately.

And that's what I'm asking. Is this normal? Will I "get over it"? The relationship isn't on the edge because of sex, it's because of, for want of a better word, the ick.

He's wonderful in so many ways and I do love him. I don't want to hurt him and I have no intention of having an affair or anything like that. But as someone else said, is it fair for him to have a wife who doesn't fancy him?

Going against the grain here- I think it’s absolutely normal for sexual attraction to wax and wane over a long marriage. If you focus on it and call it the ick then you’re probably increasing the chances of it waning more.

How long have you been married? How old are your kids?

My advice would be to stop thinking about the ick as a binary state (ie you have it or don’t) and try to accept that this sort of ebb and flow is normal, nobody’s fault and not a reason to do anything hasty. Just give it some time, focus on the things you love about him, and see what happens. If it’s genuinely the case that it’s over, you will know this for yourself without having to give it a lot of thought. OTOH if you find this was actually just a blip then happy days.

Im not saying at all to ignore your feelings, only that you know yourself that he is a good husband and I’m sure you’re aware that splitting up wouldn’t guarantee you another good husband plus amazing sex. So it’s worth giving your relationship the benefit of the doubt for a bit. I think the “ick” concept is probably unhelpful as it reifies what may actually be transitory feelings.

I could not have sex with a man who repelled me. He might be a good man etc but if you don't find him physically attractive it's over isn't it?

Just be careful as he must have picked up on it and if an enthusiastic third party starts giving him some attarion he'll be off. No one wants to feel that they make their dp cringe.

Thank you, appreciate this and will definitely try reframing it in my mind.

I agree.
And as another poster said; if your DH is picking up, even subconsciously, on your ... detachment ... then he too is an accident waiting to happen wrt wandering into an affair.

It's very easy to scoff and say noooo not me! Not him! How? Where? When would i or he ever meet an affair partner. But please trust me when i say yes, you or him. Easily. When you least expect it.

The upshot is that you have two choices. Well 3 technically.

1 sail along as you are.(risky and maybe not fair)
2 try to address it.
3 leave. (not likely i imagine)

No. 2 is best. But you have to decide on weather to advise him of what's going on or try to deal with it alone.

If you do tell him you won't be able to un-tell him .... 🫣

How do you think he would take it?

Badly, really badly. He'd be so hurt. I'd have to do it really carefully.

It might be worth considering some individual counselling to untangle your feelings about this. People can spend years not acknowledging to themselves that they're no longer attracted to/in love with their partner out of horrific levels of guilt. You can love a partner like family, value and enjoy them in your life, and still not be right for each other anymore. It's so easy to think that there's something wrong with you and that you can just try harder, or to shutdown completely and refuse to acknowledge there's an issue at all.

I'd be very wary chucking everything up in the air. You have a good man, presumably a good father and happy, settled children. That's not nothing. Compare that with the misery of divorce and the chances of finding someone fraction as good??

You can’t keep having sex you don’t want OP. Even with a good man.

A bit of a different suggestion but have you recently come off the contraceptive pill by any chance? There’s relatively good evidence now to show that the partner a woman picks on it is quite different to the partner she is attracted to off it, even down to things like the way he smells.

The ick is normally for a good reason. Firstly can you actually pinpoint the reason?
Mine was he let me down badly, he didn't come through for my little family, I thought we were on the same page, he had a stupid affair, it put a bomb under our relationship but ultimately went nowhere. He came back and thought great, we are good now.. But I saw him as an unreliable cheater, an awful person as well as not a man I respected. It killed our sex life stone cold. It gave me the ick when I had to have sex with him.
You need to identify why you have the ick.

Did you ever fancy him? It’s unusual that you can’t pinpoint what it is. I wonder if there could be something hormonal going on with you.
Any chance of pregnancy or peri? If the latter, HRT could be a way back but if it’s just the ick I don’t know. It seems a shame to let a good man go.
The mid life dating pool may not be much better.

How old are you? My sex drive has fallen off a cliff at 55. It did in my 20s too so I’ve always been really careful to protect it. Not sure what to do about. I love DH and not interested in anyone else though.

This is an interesting thread. A few months ago I felt quite similar to you OP. I was relatively content in my relationship but not sure I really fancied him any more. Assumed down the line this would return. Happy family unit etc. A lot of your posts about how you feel resonate with how I felt OP.

Then out of the blue - he left me !! Said he was not happy, and left for another woman. I did not see that coming at all. Presumed if anyone would ever call time on the relationship it would be me. He must have checked out a long time ago (he evidently got “the ick” himself) and I feel sad that he never spoke to me about his feelings and we never had the opportunity to change anything.

So he might be unhappy too.

Are you physically affectionate and romantic with each other outside of sex? If not, maybe it's part of the problem.

You said earlier you don't snog unless you're having sex.

Maybe try a reset, start small and try to rebuild some anticipation and interest.

Agree to take sex off the table for a bit, instead of it being a routine and chore. Work on rebuilding some fun and time to be a couple rather than family: go on dates, woo each other, kiss, hold hands, do massages, tease each other, build up the physical intimacy from scratch again.

From what I have read that you are unsure about the situation, this means you do not have the 'ick'. You are unsure and questioning how you feel.

The 'ick' is the point of no return and is something you are 100% sure about. You have not reached that stage yet and might never do.

My marriage was like this. I had the ‘ick’ and had done for many years. We not only ended up in a sexless marriage (as it was a chore and just, well, boring and lifeless) bit also had zero form of intimacy and affection in our marriage. We didn’t kiss, we didn’t hug, he never complimented me (vice versa), we were just like two people living in the same house. He was a nice man in other ways, and we got on outside of anything to do with intimacy, and I accepted it for the way it was. We lived like this for years. The sexual chemistry just was not there and, to be honest, probably had never been from day 1 - I was very inexperienced and naive (as was he, I suppose). A ten year age gap didn’t help either.

Many years went by and what do you think happened? …

Another man entered my life. Boom!!! 💥 Of course, I ended my marriage immediately (well, after thinking things through).

We just weren’t 100% compatible, or close to it. However, we probably were as friends. That’s all it was - a friendship. I regret wasting so many years missing out on intimacy and affection (being a passionate woman, I was being starved).

Once you feel like this, you can’t change it - well, I don’t think so.

There's fancying and then there's fancying though. The man I'm seeing now has made me realize that while I fancied people previously, there is actually a whole other level of fancying I didn't know existed.

I've never been in a long marriage so I'm perhaps not in the best position to advise. BUT I've never come back from the ick - once you get to the point that you literally never want to have sex with a person again I don't know where you go from that really.

I think you need to tell him that you feel more like friends and see if he can work through it with you. That way you have been totally honest from the outset.