Don't want to have sex any more with husband

[wildandfree]

Anyone else in this situation? I don't want to have sex with my husband any more. I only do it because I feel I should and when I do I think about something/someone else. I would rather just be friends with him and have a house share type of relationship. Have teenage children. He's a good person, good father. We are good friends but the chemistry isn't there for me. Part of me thinks I'm just being too fussy and should get on with life and make the most of what I have. Another part thinks I am being dishonest to myself and him. Another part thinks I should do my duty to family life and put the children first.

Anyone else in this space - what are the best options?? No-one else involved at this stage.

Apologies if I'm jumping in here, and I admit I haven't read all the posts, but have you tried Relate or similar? They actually offer psychosexual therapy along with all the other stuff. In my experience, sometimes lack of interest in sex with husband is about not getting your emotional needs met in the relationship. Sometimes it's about a fear of intimacy too. I know once I had kids I found it hard to feel so spontaneously "up for it" as I used to. I think this is because I give so much being a mother that I need my husband to give me more in order to feel like making love in the first place. By "more" I mean more intimacy, attentiveness etc. We can't just turn on sexual feelings, I think they develop out of closeness and trust (in a long term relationship anyway).

W$F I am also in this situation. I have never felt much attraction towards my husband and it's got to the point where it has corroded the relationship. We are great as friends and I do love him, but that area is just disastrous. Unfortunately it's not mutual - he's still very much up for sex but I'm just not. I recently told him I can't continue with the relationship: the atmosphere at home is bad, and we are constantly fighting. There are massive other issues too, but I think the sex is the main one and maybe always was.
I personally don't know what to do either: I would like the idea of a house-share, but at the moment feelings are running too high and it's just so damn sad being at home surrounded by the paraphenalia of our failed marriage. So I'm hoping to move out for a bit. Good luck with your situation - it was great to read my post and realise I'm not alone. I have carried around the guilty secret of not fancying my husband for too long now

Yes to a certain extent I am. But I don't want to have sex with anyone else either. I have begun to wonder if I am simply asexual - I have given up wondering why I am the way I am and trying to 'fix' me, and just accepted it. We do have sex regularly and TBH it's enjoyable but I never want to beforehand. DH doesn't miss out.

I won't throw my marriage and my DC family away because of my sexuality.

If I am honest I don't think I ever really fancied him that much but I found him very attractive and we get on well. I think I had (have) a fear of intimacy as I had a crap father, hence marrying a friend seemed like a safe option. We have talked about all this although I do feel awful admitting that I don't really fancy him that much as I feel it is too much for the male ego to handle. We have agreed that our friendship is the most important thing and we must be supportive of each other whatever happens. I really don't want to make him unhappy.

He IS attractive though. Perhaps it is quite normal to not really fancy your partner after 15 or so years of marriage? He says he fancies me and has not fancied anyone else since we got married but a little (mean) part of me wonders whether this is slightly a control issue. What is "normal" anyway?? Confused....!

I'm in the same situation too but havent got the guts to tell him, so we have pity sex once in a while.

I'd love to just be friends and bring up the kids together but have no idea how to bring up this kind of conversation.

I've been going out a lot more recently after losing lots of weight and finally feeling good about myself, and it doesnt hurt to feel that you've still "got it" when some bloke chats you up!!

It also doesnt help that our body clocks are completely opposite cos i'm a night owl and he goes to bed early which causes tension because i know he is waiting for me upstairs.

I've even had to resort to watching porn to get me in the mood, and after a drunken night out i even went into a cybersex chat room which frankly excited me more than the thought of sex with him!

And even tho i'd never meet any of the blokes on that site, or cheat on my oh, i have to admit i do log on every now and then after he is in bed and have a virtual shag

sorry for the hijack- goodgirl - what similar names we've got!!

I agree with good moon. The more sex you have the more you feel like having and vice versa.
Of course, if there is more to it then getting out of the habit then counselling may be a good idea

Oops sorry,didnt realise anyone else had that name. Read all about netiquette concerning similar names on here and will change post haste!

Crap now i gotta think of another one! all this name changing to avoid my oh is giving me a pita!

i don't mind really!

I think that counselling would be helpful as I think it will give us both a chance to hear the other person's point of view via a neutral third party. However, if I am honest, I want the outcome to be that my husband accepts the way that I feel without taking it as a personal rejection and without "punishing" me for it. You can't help the way you feel!!

It's strange, but monogamy is almost like one of the last taboos, there is very little social tolerance for affairs, but yet it is now considered acceptable to divorce and remarry. In the days when divorce was unacceptable, extramarital affairs must have been very common. In some ways, I do think this was a better model for bringing up children and protecting women with young children financially. No doubt I will be shot down in flames for saying this!!

wildandfree - I am not shooting you down in flames. As many others have said, you have to be honest with yourself and DH.

Sadly, I think DH will be hurt if he does not feel the way you do - but you cannot live forever like you are.

I basically agree with the SolidGold point of view.

Have you already met someone who you would consider having a relationship with outside your marriage or is this just a general growing feeling you have?

Intersting- a couple of weeks ago, there was along feature in the Saturday Times interviewing the Duchess of Devonshire ( now 89??). (She owns Chatworth House.)
She gave an interesting insight into reltionships these days, including her idea that affairs were "normal" and not necessarily wrong- her own words were something like "If a person has to remain spunky ( not a good choice of words) they have to find more in life than they can in a marriage..." You get the idea, anyway.

This is from a woman who is old, has seen more of life than most of us, had contact with a vast number of people, and has arrived at quite a controversial view. Interesting.

I also rememebr Dt Stuttaford- The Times' health/sex columnist, until recently, advocating a similar idea, saying that all relationships eventually fall into 3 types- parent/child, brother// sister, and child/child. He said that when it became brother/sister one way to keep the marriage alive was to have discreet affairs.

Ok- shoot me!

Go on - I dare you, a passionate secret lover!!? ARe there any worth bothering with around?

Just kidding!!

wildandfree - i am in the same situation. i have 2 kids 11 and 13. Been married for 13 years and just don't want to be here anymore. I have worked only part time jobs for the past 10 years and have no way to really support myself and the kids if we did split. I have hinted to the kids, just to see where they are at with it. I don't think they would really mind much if we split. We have had problems from the beginning. Before we were married we lived together and when I was about 6 months pregnant with my first I found out that he was still married to his 1st wife! I almost left him then but felt like I had to stay b/c of the baby. Our communication has always been bad. Whenever we would discuss something he would not "remember" the conversation. During our whole marriage I am constantly saying "We just talked about this the other day!" (I am soooo tired of that) I always felt his personality was a little annoying, too, not really my type but a nice guy and comfortable. Then, about a year ago he accused me of having an affair with a mutual friend, which was a BIG surprise to me. I am very loyal and have never cheated or even flirted, on the other hand he is constantly looking at other women and flirting right in front of me! Anyway, a couple of months later, he accused another person of staring at me and paying me too much attention. Then one day I was looking over the cel phone bill on-line and noticed hundreds of text messages he was sending to a female co-worker. When I asked about it he said he didn't even really remember but he thought it was so-and-so. I started looking at old bills and found that this had been going on for about 6 months! There were sometimes 100 messages in one day back and forth with this woman. I showed him and he swears there was nothing going on and that I'm making a big deal out of it and that she was going through a divorce and having lots of problems with her son and he was giving her advice. Interstingly, he has a terrible relationship with our son who is 13, yet he feels he's competent enough to give someone else advice about her rebellious son. I really don't believe that there was nothing happening there. Suddenly the texting stopped and they don't communicate like that anymore, which makes me wonder how they are communicating. The other day he and I were talking about the phone service and he mentioned that he now uses some kind of iPhone messaging that doesn't register as a text therefore it is free and there is no record of the texts. When he was saying this it all of the sudden occured to me that this must be how he's talking to her. I truly beleive that he still talks with her but now I have no proof. So the sex life is really suffering, not because I am cold or manipulative, but I am pissed off! I am so tired of this sh@t. I don't want him physically, now. Ewww. He even told me that he was going to get a divorce if our love life didn't get better. I told him to go ahead and then he said he doesn't want a divorce and he wants to go to counseling. I told him counseling is not going to make everything better. It might just make it worse. I know people who went to counseling to help their marriage and they ended up divorced. Well, now I am asking for a little space. I am realizing that he is pretty controlling. He absolutely won't leave me alone now. I have had to ask several times for him to back off and give me some space. Then he turns it around like I'm being the bad-guy because I get so upset. He is constantly asking for sex and saying he is lonely and has to have it. I understand that it is important to him but I don't think he should demand it If he knows I really don't want it. And he knows I have asked for space. I finally had to tell him that I want to be separated for him to say "OK I'll give you some space". But I wasn't kidding, I really do want to be separated. He thought I was just threatening him because that's what he has done to me in the past. Anyway, sometimes it has to do with all the bullsh@t that's going on, too. If you can't fix alot of the things that are wrong in the marriage or your just tired of all the heartache that can cause your sex drive to stop. I used to think something was wrong with me, mentally. But now I realize that me and him are not so great together. If you have any advice for me fire away!

WheresTheDoor

WILDANDFREE said
"It's strange, but monogamy is almost like one of the last taboos, there is very little social tolerance for affairs, but yet it is now considered acceptable to divorce and remarry. In the days when divorce was unacceptable, extramarital affairs must have been very common. In some ways, I do think this was a better model for bringing up children and protecting women with young children financially."

what a wise observation.
The older I get the more I think this way.

I haven't read all the thread but not sure I really need to for what I want to say! I do agree with goodnightmoon and Orm without trying to diminish the awfulness of how you must feel. Also despite all that I can see where wildandfree is coming from -- there was once a thread where people said separation should ALWAYS come before infidelity, but you know, people find ways to make things work without making everyone and the children unhappy. I don't condone it but you know. Everybody is different.

But the question was, how to deal with it, and the thing is yes, have been in that situation (the young children thing) and found that the more you do it the more you want to. How extremely unhelpful is that, sorry. I never thought of it as being forced to, I thought of it as -- I really love this person and want to be close to him at the very least. It was a starting point. And I started being a bit more "not that but this" which was most unlike me!

So starting from that everything got better. It all came out of the conviction that it's simply not an option for me, for us, not to grow old together, so I wanted to make things work properly.

Golly that's revealing. As I say, sorry to namechange.

when I said, wildandfree, I meant where's the door
sorry

WTD- I think your situation is differnt from the point made by the OP_ your marriage is not good in many ways and so it is obvious you won't feel like having sex.

I think the main idea of the OP was that her marriage is pretty sound, but the chemistry has gone- big difference.

Quote from the Duchess of Devonshire- owner of Chatsworth.

Women, she says, give up on marriage too easily now. ?It?s no good telling them to keep going because they are divorced before you can open your mouth. Of course people can have affairs in their marriages; how can you expect someone to have a lot of spunk if they don?t ever have a bit of life of their own?

Howtotellmum - I see what you mean. But in the beginning it seemed like it was only that I lost my sex drive. We had a good relationship. We rarely argued and when we did have a disagreement we would just talk about it. I think some years ago, after my first born, I lost alot of sex drive.I thought it was hormonal or something, I went to the doctor to ask what the problem is. He told me that I had to work on myself and he couldn't do anything for me. So I stared going to couselling. That made me feel even worse, I don't think it works for me. As years went on I always had to mentally prepare myself for sex beforehand. At first I would drink a couple glasses of wine just to get a little buzz and that would help. But then I stopped drinking b/c I didn't want to become an alchoholic. Then I started watching love stories that had sex scenes just to get in the mood. This went on for about 10 years. Also, when we did have sex it was not very often. Maybe once or twice a week, then sometmes a couple of weeks would go by. I really didn't keep tabs but he always did. And he would always let me know exactly how long it had been.

Now, I am at the point where I am accepting myself for who I am. I am not going to bash myself anymore by thinking that I have some kind of problem. I've changed and this is who I am now. If he can't live with me anymore because the sex life is not all he wants it to be that's OK. I have to be true to myself.

Sorrytonamechange - I can't see giving myself to someone when I don't really want to (even if that person is my husband). I've done that numerous times in that past and it doesn't make the relationship better. In fact I just felt more resentment b/c I felt like I "had to" just to pacify him.

What I have learned is that if the sex life is suffering it is an outcome of what the relationship is. A good sex life comes from two people wanting to be as close as they can physically because they are very close emotionally and spiritually and the marriage is blossoming.

This thread has pained me, mainly because I recognise my own life. I am absolutely terrified of telling my DH how I feel, as I know it will create a huge hole in our marriage and I can't bear it...I do love him. Gosh, this is a difficult one. Thanks for starting the thread. There's lots of good advice on here.

I sometimes think that my DW would like me to have an affair - our relationship hasn't been physical for a very long time, for a number of little reasons, but the main one is that she doesn't find me attractive.

It creats a difficult place for me. I love her, I'll make any sacrifice I can for her, but what if I can't keep up the good intentions, what if I do have an affair? What if that led to me falling in love with someone else?

At the risk of messing up the stereotypes I don't think i can have two relationships - there will ALWAYS be a sexual elemant to how I feel about my wife no matter how vile she finds me, and in the HU event of my having any sort of intimate relationship with someone else, it could only really be because I love them.

I know this is a womens led thread, and I've posted elsewhere about this, but i just wanted to say that the option of just having affairs can't be as easy as it sounds.

adadwithnoname - I read your thread and it certainly gave the other side of the story to Living without intimacy

The article that BelfastBloke linked to in that thread (written by a woman) about what it is like for a person who still wants to have sex but who has to live in a sexless marriage is very powerful and worth a read by everyone.

For those who are going through this, can I ask if there is any other intimacy or tenderness in your relationship, cuddles, pats on the bottom, ruffling of hair, shared looks, anything?