I (36M) struggle with my wife's (35F) lack of desire.

[UndesirableM]

First of all: I hope this post is ok. I know this site is called Mumsnet, but as the title indicates, I'm a man. I'm struggling with something that I don't know how to cope with, and could use women's perspective.

My wife (35F) and I (36M) have a great relationship, going on 14 years now. We have a family live a mostly happy life. While I believe my wife is objectively beautiful/hot, I don't think I'm necessarily unattractive either.

However, over the years, I've just felt more and more 'undesired' or 'unwanted'. In a general sense (does she still find me attractive? Does she still love me/like as before?) and even more so sexually (is she still sexually interested in me?).

In our relationship, I'm considerably more vocal about my feelings towards her than the other way around. I'll tell her I love her, especially at moments when I really feel/experience that. I tell her how beautiful or hot/sexy she is, what things about her are beautiful/sexy or that she turns me on. She'll never do that, except perhaps to reciprocate ("I love you too"). I also have a hard time keeping my hands of her, because in my eyes she's just the hottest woman ever. Every time I see her naked, I want to jump her bones. She tells me she appreciates that (makes her feel wanted), and has admitted that she perhaps takes such things for granted.

When it comes to sex, I'm always the one to initiate. While I cannot really complain about the receptiveness (she's almost always open to it), she'll never initiate. And if she does, it is very much a "it has been a while, perhaps maybe we should do it again". This often doesn't really comes from a place of desire, but more from a 'relationship maintenance' place.

All this together makes me feel very undesired. I often feel like she'll only have sex with to 'facilitate' me, not because she has a genuine desire for sex.
At the very beginning of the relationship, as with many relationship, we would have sex every time we saw each other and sometimes multiple times a day. This started to quite quickly change when we started living together, and, as with many couples, clearly didn't get any better after having a family.

We've spoken about this a few times, and her explanation is that "it's not me". It's just that she doesn't have an inherent need or desire for sex anymore (only very rarely does she get genuinely horny, often when alcohol is involved), and she needs to get herself in the mood for it, make herself want it. She does say she loves it when we do have sex.

This part is making me feel incredibly unwanted and undesired. I feel like I'm so not attractive enough, that she needs to make herself want to have sex with me. There are no verbal or nonverbal indications that there is anything about me that makes her want me, or turns her on.

She's told me the 'needing to get herself in the mood for it' is not uncommon and most of her friends have that and that I should not take it personally. While I have no reason to believe she's making that up, it also doesn't really resonate with me as I'm not in a relationship with her friends.

I want to emphasize that I'll never cheat on her, but I do find myself enjoying interest of other women (and on occasion men, which is appreciated in a different way), as it can give me that sense of somebody wanting me a bit back. I'll absolutely never act on it though.

I genuinely don't know what to do. I'm married to the hottest woman ever, I love her to death but I feel like sexually, I'm not interesting enough for her.
Are there any women out there with some advice/experience? This is slowly breaking my heart.

Thank you, and I've actually read about this before.

For what it's worth, she's actually very keen on trying for another kid, and plan is to start trying soon. Not sure if that matters in that context.

I think OP, if we go back to your original question - you don't feel like she is lusting after you or that she actively finds you desireable - I think the answer is that you are right, she probably doesn't. That doesn't mean that she's actively lusting after Pete on the school run or Dave off the TV - it just m eans that at this stage in her life, her libido is somewhat in abeyance. Which is not unusual. And the fact that she IS open to having sex and does enjoy it when she does, is actully a step more than many women who simply can't get there at this stage in their lives.

The question was on how ofter she masturbates, and the response is that that does not happen too often.

Thank you very much. This is very helpful.

The thing is OP, getting advice about a very personal thing such as a sex life or, even more complicated, how a second party (the spouse) feels about sex means asking/answering a shit ton of questions.

You're asking a lot of people a complicated thing. You've got a lot of interest and answers. Gracefully accept them and ignore stuff if it's been answered already.

We can't know what's in her head. But we can ask what's generally happing month in month out.

You've said you don't want advice to get more sex - instead you want to know why your wife isn't ... what? As up for it or as physically attracted to you on a daily basis are you are to her. Yes?

But to drill down into that we need to know what her side of this marriage is like. Hard to do. Can only find out by asking you how much you understand her and her needs. And her dislikes.

You haven't said anything much about what you know about what she likes or doesn't like.

This is all spot on. Maybe men love it when their partner tells them they’re hot but for many women it’s not that flattering. We just get fed up with being sexualised because it happens all the time and it’s wearing.

Im sure she líkes occasionally being told you fancy her but I’d be focused on other things you like about her - and on that subject not things she does for you. Again it’s not flattering to be praised for being thoughtful because that’s about her looking after you. Praise her for being funny, interesting, clever, warm etc. not what she looks like or how self sacrificing she is: she knows thst!

Also do you woo her. I mean do you make her feel special with sex not being the end game. Do you take her out to places she loves, buy her little things she loves? Not all the time but sometimes. Do you treat her like a woman and not a mother or a wife. Because women can get absolutely depersonalised with all the roles they have!

Alright, fair enough. Maybe I'm widely mistaken here. I feel like from a physical chore perspective, this would be hard to be completely wrong about as I know who does what. She does laundry, I do the rest. She has also expressed her appreciation for how much I do around the house, which I would find odd if she wasn't happy about how those things are divided between ourselves.

On the mental load side, I find it a lot harder to understand. I can attest to my own mental load, but her's a lot less. I will try and see if I can talk about that, and perhaps better understand that as well.

When your wife is in the shower, she is thinking about all the things she needs to get done. As she steps out, she is thinking about how one of the children needs new socks
and is worried the only kind your child will wear isn’t made anymore.

She isn’t in a mental state to switch over to sex. She is constantly thinking about managing the family. She is exhausted. We can tell you this again and again, but you don’t seem to want to hear it.

My husband does his fair share at home too. He still has no real concept of how much I am managing.

We are all different though ....

See i love being told i'm hot and DH getting all handsy all the time 🤪

And my sec drive dies not wax or wane depending on how many kids i want to have. (i've got 4 and sex drive is high).

Your wife is not any of us. YOU know her best.

Yes, I know which question you were answering. How many orgasms is she allowed before you deem it too many?

What? Is there a limit on orgams? I'm not sure I quite understand. She can masturbate and orgasm as much as she wants.

With both of the answers you gave to the question of how often she masturbates (asked as a guide to her sex drive) you responded with ‘not hyperactive’ then ‘does not happen too often’ both of which suggest that in your opinion there is or should be a limit.

And she‘ll be firing on all cylinders when she decides she wants to have that baby.

Sperm donors and egg carriers at the end of the day.

Do you do fun things together? Go out, have a few drinks, chat, dance?
I find I feel much closer to DH when we've spent some quality time together

Sorry, women on here need to 'get fucked' (which is what that means) to make them nicer to men who ask them for advice? Do you have any idea how rapey that sounds? Presumably you do and don't care. Women have bodily autonomy. They don't need to 'be' 'rogered' (because putting it like that makes it a one way street) to 'cure' them of anything. Fucking disgusting thing to say

With the mental load op I do find men (generally) just dont get it.

While im cooking dinner, as Im peeling the potatoes this is my thought process on how I can go from thinking about a cut, run through my mental to do list, and end on how ill my mum is:

Oof that cut i did yesterday chopping the onion is still there
I need a new knife, saw one in Tesco ill add it to the shopping list
Also need to remember to add onions
Need to remember to take the sausages out the freezer for tomorrow, hope the onion is still ok for the gravy. We need gravy.
Better pick something up for DS2 dinner hes not keen on those ones
Hes been quiet recently, is he ok? Ill ask DS1 to have a big bro chat
Do hope DS1 is enjoying his course now, he seems happier
Need to chase up his driving lessons
Didnt I see his license on his desk? Hope hes put it in his wallet.
Ill hoover his room later when I do our bedroom
Bedrooms a mess, need to sort that broken window latch out too
I never did check mums window after that leak, ill pop round tomorrow and make sure they fixed it and see if she needs anything
Also need to see about getting her a new walker at some point
Did the hospital get back to her with her referral? Ill check.

My DP while hes peeling potatoes:
The green bin gets full pretty quick
Small potatoes are annoying to peel

It's just a figure of speech to indicate it isn't very often. She can do whatever she wants, I have no opinion on how often she masturbates.

Not as much as we should, but when we do, it's always very fun. We are making some plans to go away for a weekend (without kids) next month.

To be fair to op, I would say something “doesn’t happen too often” when I mean “not very often”. It’s just how I speak, doesn’t mean if it did happen a lot it would be too much.

I think you also have to appreciate that people change over the course of a relationship. It's not common for people to be having the same amount of sex 14 years into a relationship as they were in the beginning, especially once kids have come along. Women change emotionally. Our bodies change. Hormones can be all over the place. Our children become our main priority and sex falls down the list. Even when the woman still loves her husband/partner very much, sex isn't necessarily the be all and end all. When my DC were young, I was always thinking 'will the kids hear us or interrupt us', 'what other chores do I have to finish'...sometimes I was just tired or not in the mood. It wasn't that I didn't fancy my husband, just that sex wasn't as important to me as it was him.

@Jiggerypokesy Also do you woo her. I mean do you make her feel special with sex not being the end game. Do you take her out to places she loves, buy her little things she loves? Not all the time but sometimes. Do you treat her like a woman and not a mother or a wife. Because women can get absolutely depersonalised with all the roles they have!

This is really well expressed and is what I was trying to say in the post you quoted. Thanks.

Yes, I wish DH would bring me a little gift or send me a message to show he's just thinking about me. Remember the things that are important to me. But he doesn't and he can't and he honestly truly doesn't understand. I wish he would see a scarf and think, "Ooh, Magic would love that" or hear about a show of a band I like and think, "I'll tell Magic - maybe we can go see it together".

It's the same reason so many of us women get so annoyed when our DH's families expect US to do the planning/thinking for events, birthdays, presents etc. SIL even was in touch with ME to discuss what to get MIL for a big birthday recently. Why? It's not my mother, why should I be part of the planning for a special gift. But she knew perfectly well that neither of her brothers would do it. And it's infuriating but it's also annoyingly common.

In our house, I have stopped being the one who plans for DH"s family. And he's fine with that - he totally accespts that is his responsibility and he 100% owns it. But he honestly ALSO thinks it's totally fine to go to the shop on the morning of the birthday and just buy whatever comes to hand, without any thought. He has literally no concept of how a gift can be more than just spending £50 on a cute top or a nice photo frame but could/should have meaning. I'm already worrying about my next big birthday because I don't know if he'll put any of the effort in that I do. Not because he doesn't love me or care, because he genuinely doesn't understand (and he certainly doesn't expect more than a supermarket t-shirt and a box of chocolate for his own big birthdays either).

Thank you. While I understand this the general concept of this, and I also understand that sex might be a different priority of people. I also fully understand that there might be a 'desire gap' between myself and my wife. It had just lead to a moment where that gap became so considerable, that I started to question whether it was me. Her approach to sex/intimacy has changed so much over time (from actively pursuing it to not having an active interest in it at all), that I couldn't help project that as a lack of interest in me, and not just physically.

This thread however, even the less-friendly posts, has helped put things a bit more in perspective and understand better how she might experience things.

Do you both go to bed at the same time? Dh works late, used to come into bed two hours after me then wonder that I wasn’t lying there waiting- I was generally snoring and hugging my pillow because I was exhausted because I’m up first thing with the kids then do a million things then off to work then home and do a million things. God life is exhausting

ps we don’t have much sex now because he decided I didn’t love him while I wondered that we never went on date notes, he never told me he appreciated me, we didn’t laugh, hug or watch tv together etc etc … I’d say we won’t last much longer so just think hard I suppose is my point. Men think sex equals love but it isn’t. Love is everything else

So many men think women are sex appliances and that when they go on the blink that they should look for a replacement. Instead of seeing their partners as someone who they’ve built a life and a family with. I never understand it.

Instead of being all needy and me,me,me, you should be asking her how you can help her feel more connected with you. Be prepared for the answers to be domestic and mundane, not something out of your porn fantasies.

Failing that, woo her. Make her laugh. Be thoughtful. Put her first.

I'll say 100% this. I would think we were heading to divorce (and tbf we could be as I would not want to be in a relationship that was missing this) if my husband toned down how often he told me I looked hot, let me know he was wanting me, being handsy and affectionate.

I would not take the adice to tone this back without your wife expressing it's too much!

My drive lowers when my husband isn't as assertive - after a long day of stressfull work, juggling kids, teaching at my hobby, the house etc, even though my husband really does split things 50/50, it doesn't affect my sex drive - how confident and assertive he is does!

This all to say, it doesn't matter all the reasons people give as to what your wife is feeling, there's noway to know what it is for her by asking strangers for advice!