Being the sole initiator in a long term relationship

[LancashireLad]

In twenty five years of marriage my wife has initiated sex maybe six or seven times. On average we have sex about twice a week which basically makes me sole initiator.

For a lot of years this was really, really hard. I had absolutely no idea why she basically never initiated. I still don't. Maybe she didn't fancy me? Maybe she had a very low sex drive? Maybe women are not the "natural initiators" of sex and as a man it was really my "role" to initiate sex, so really all this was "quite normal". Those were the kind of thoughts which were you going around in my head.

There were times to be honest when my self-esteem was on the floor, feeling unloved and as though she just couldn't be bothered. I thought of giving up on sex altogether and, when I did stop initiating for a while, wondered if she would miss sex sufficiently and would start initiating. But months went by and nothing happened. She seemed quite happy not to have sex. Desperately horny, I started initiating again.

I brought it up in conversation from time to time and my wife listened and seemed to understand but it made no essential difference so in the end I just gave up bringing it up in conversation.

My wife does usually respond, though when she says no, the fact that she never herself initiates makes it extra hard somehow. Basically, though, if I didn't initiate we would not have sex and our four wonderful children would never have been born.

When we do have sex - and we do have it regularly - it's great. My wife orgasms and we do a range of things we both enjoy. It's just that it's always, always me - save once in a blue moon - who starts things off. So whilst there are lots of things I'm very grateful for (so what am I fussing about I sometimes ask myself?) I think it's been carrying the sole responsibility for making sure sex happens that has been a really burdensome, sometimes lonely, thing.

Our marriage is a good and loving one. There's no way I would look at another woman. The last few years I have basically got used to the situation. It's not a "sexless marriage". But I am the sole initiator and that's the way things are and the way probably it always will be.

I just wondered if others have had a similar experience and have worked through it successfully?

Last sentence second para correction, should read: "...the kind of thoughts which were going around in my head". Mysterious typo inclusion of "you" sounded a bit odd!

You will probably get more traction if you put this on the Relationships board - it's a lot more active there

Fairly sure DW would happily never have sex again. All stopped at 45..

My wife is very passive in the initiation phase. It leads to arguments as I feel like I’m the one feeling disappointed and frustrated when it’s a ‘no’. It’s often a no as her inner planets aren’t aligned often.

I’m not satisfied and no amount of discussion seems to alter her approach.

I think I’ll wait and see if she reacts to no advances for a while.

@Longsight2019

I totally relate to description of wife's passivity and inner planets being in alignment only once in a blue moon - to continue the solar system metaphor!

All the best with the holding off of initiating and seeing what happens. As I say for me it didn't work. Maybe it will for you.

Still mystified by it all and basically decided after years of this to recognise that if I really wanted to be with this particular woman that I'm always going to be the initiator. Wish it was otherwise, but there you go.

I have been the female non-initiator in a similar situation. I may not be best placed to give advice as I am now getting divorced but there are a few things I realise with hindsight.

Like many women, my libido fell off a cliff when I had kids and tried to juggle this with work. The only time my libido would reappear was when I was off on holiday or the kids were at babysitters for a weekend. In my case I was doing far more than my stbx and looking back I realise the unequal division of labour was not only making me physically tired but also resentful. There are many posts on the relationship board of women losing desire due to similar so the first advice I would give is to ensure you are in an equal partnership, dividing the labour equally.

When you have no libido you can’t bring it back through force of will. My stbx used to insist I initiate and got angry when I said I had no libido. It just felt like more pressure and made things worse. It would be like a wife getting angry at her husband for having ED, just completely counterproductive.

Having low libido and not initiating didn’t mean that sex wasn’t enjoyable and regular sex kept it on my radar and probably helped. @Longsight2019 I think leaving things with your wife may just mean that sex completely falls off her radar and the risk is you end up in a sexless marriage so I would probably counsel against this approach.

The final thing that definitely didn’t help my situation was an almost complete absence of non-sexual physical affection. With hindsight I think this had a much bigger impact than I realised at the time.

I realise my situation is probably different from one where the partner has never initiated, which in turn is also different from one where the partner doesn’t initiate but also frequently declines their partner’s advances.

@Namechangeforthe I hear all of that and really appreciate your thoughts. I have really done the rounds on this one. We are a partnership of equals in every sense. We have both always worked full time and I do my fair share (in fact probably the majority because of our relative working hours) of the domestic stuff which my wife knows and appreciates. I know there's no resentment, frustration from my wife that I'm not pulling my weight, etc.

I also give my wife emotional support, I'm a good listener, am there for her when life/work is tough, frustrating, etc give her lots of totally non-sexual cuddles, hugs, massages, holding hands, etc.

I also learned long ago that any sense of pressure to have sex is going to be an automatic turn-off for her and anything like me stopping initiating will actually provide a welcome opportunity for the "issue of sex" - another "thing" she has to deal with in an already stressful life - to go away for a bit. So I've learned to be very careful, sensitive and thoughtful about when/how to approach sex.

I think fundamentally my wife - who really does enjoy sex once we are up and running - invariably just doesn't have space in her mind/emotions to think about it much, if at all. Certainly not as something which is simply her entitlement to relax and enjoy. It's way, way down on her priority list. So any thought of initiating herself doesn't get a look in.

At least I think so. My wife doesn't talk about sex at all, ever. And I've found it's not terribly helpful to bring it up. Which is why in that sense it's still a bit of a mystery/guesswork to me.

Relaxation/mental escapism at the end of a super-busy day for her means watching hours of television, reading a book, doing a crossword or going to sleep. Sex doesn't cross her mind. After a lot of years I really do appreciate and understand that now, that it's not a deliberate rejection of me and I don't resent her for it.

At the same time - and it's all I'm saying really - I have my own needs too and also that carrying the sole responsibility for ensuring that sex actually happens - "keeping it on the radar", which as you say, is so important - can be hard and sometimes rather lonely work at times.

I know I have written a lot - probably too much - about my own experiences on this one but I'm guessing it's probably an unspoken issue for quite a lot of people and something which, I suspect, very sadly, ends up breaking otherwise good marriages/long-term relationships.

I am the female almost never initiator in my relationship.

Whilst we had a difficult dry spell when I was touched out and exhausted by having a three year old and a one year old, they are now teenagers and actually I'd prefer to have sex more often.

For me, it stems from childhood. I had a very difficult family background and was left in no doubt that women who sought sex were revolting and that there was something wrong with them.

Unpicking it with adult eyes, I can see that in actual fact, the disapproval and disgust related to women who continually and repeatedly sought sexual relationships outside the marriage to the huge distress of the other party and was not in any way discreet about them.

But, the message I have internalised is that women who initiate sex are repulsive. Or at least, if I initiate sex, I am repulsive.

I am extremely happily married and about 10 years in, was finally able to tell DH this thought process, which has made the situation much more understandable from his point of view. I probably manage to overcome this programming about once a year but on about 50% of the occasions, this will then result in me getting distracted by having to discuss with myself repeatedly in my head that it is not disgusting to indicate that you would like to have sex with your husband.

I keep trying but sometimes it takes me about a month to talk myself into making some kind of advance as I torture myself with what might tip over the boundary into genuinely revolting :-(

@blibblibblib400 That's really awful, and quite something to have to have to deal with. Thank you for sharing that. It's horrendous that sometimes such lasting damage can be caused in childhood even unintentionally by well-meaning parents. It sounds like you've got a great and caring husband which must be a real help.

I've sometimes wondered if my wife's lack of initiating and uneasiness about talking about sex generally might have something to do with an attitude picked up from her parents with whom she had a good but not straightforward relationship when she was very young. Although she has never mentioned anything.

If you have good sex, why does it matter if you start it?

@JasmineVioletRose That's a really good question. In one sense no, it doesn't matter. And I really wouldn't mind if it was me initiating the majority of times. I think it's just when a partner never, or hardly ever initiates and it happens over a long period of time for no clearly apparent reason (around the birth of children, illness, etc) you run through a series of thoughts and feelings like, "Is she really that attracted to me? Maybe not if she never actually indicates she wants to have sex with me". "Am I just sex mad and a selfish swine to be bothering her about this when clearly she's not interested?" "She's going along with it out of a sense of obligation or just to keep me quiet". Even if those things aren't actually true the feelings they bring get to your sense of self-worth in the end.

And also the sense of sole responsibility of making sure sex actually happens (with some of the the above feelings buzzing somewhere in the background) can just be really, really tiring. That it's always down to you and you alone rather than being a fun thing you share together, maybe plan or maybe comes from your partner sometimes. Even though it might end up being good sex the whole process of getting there is always just on your shoulders.

I would just love it so, so, so much if my wife suddenly, unexpectedly initiated sex, basically just told me or showed me that she wanted me. Just once in a while. That would quite literally be beyond my wildest dreams. But that doesn't happen in our relationship, basically ever. It's not to say it isn't a good marriage. It really is. I love her to bits. But it's the one thing I wish was a bit different.

Is she peri menopausal? Maybe read up on that? It's probably not because she doesn't love/fancy you, it's just her hormones being a nightmare.

Congratulations on being married for so long & still feeling so much love 🧡👍🙌

https://lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/Understanding%20Menopause%20for%20Partners%20Blog.pdf?token=AWxu44Lslj3vHm77Z1D5zmTn9eGypynTUTrlnUdZG0Tlgn2-XYlea3b4ABhqNDCqpzEYPykwbCxotHOYcZPN2S9rUzpy4uksWsccZ4k5-y2mlDpqBIn8amsKRxSSMhCK0b9lrhvd-5cJRp8ixHbyuvhPLL_okhYpWZA2tKxy7RbdEZ5e-Gez2u77pfCZncEyx-87I-rWg5xW4fLFgsWe8OyhxsLaRiQzW9OxUE46Eoug&mibextid=plIg07&fs=e&s=cl

Not sure if this link will work?

https://lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/Understanding%20Menopause%20for%20Partners%20Blog.pdf?token=AWxu44Lslj3vHm77Z1D5zmTn9eGypynTUTrlnUdZG0Tlgn2-XYlea3b4ABhqNDCqpzEYPykwbCxotHOYcZPN2S9rUzpy4uksWsccZ4k5-y2mlDpqBIn8amsKRxSSMhCK0b9lrhvd-5cJRp8ixHbyuvhPLL_okhYpWZA2tKxy7RbdEZ5e-Gez2u77pfCZncEyx-87I-rWg5xW4fLFgsWe8OyhxsLaRiQzW9OxUE46Eoug&mibextid=plIg07&fs=e&s=cl

@JasmineVioletRose Thanks, I really appreciate that. And I'll certainly have a read through the links you've sent. She's been into menopause about three years now - shes 55 - and I appreciate the massive impact that can have on a woman's libido along with other things. I don't doubt that could be contributing to it.

But the thing is she's always been like this, apart from the very earliest days of our relationship. There hasn't been a recent dropping off of her showing interest in starting off sex, it's never been there. I've gone around and around in circles for two and a half decades trying to figure it out but have concluded that I just need to accept this is the way she is.

It’s shit & lonely & sole destroying being the only initiator in a LTR, you slowly move from lovers to roommates to housemates to divorce,

I will never marry or live with another woman again

The idea that we (women) shouldn't be interested in sex is way more pervasive than most people realise. I internalised so much as a young women due to hearing people use words like slag, prick tease etc and it took me years to unpick and realise that's what makes me unwilling to initiate. It has caused problems in my marriage and DH and I have had to really build trust in order for me to feel confident about initiating because there was always this niggling thought in the back of my mind that he would be disgusted if I showed my real feelings. I don't know how helpful that is to you OP but it might be a conversation worth having with your DW, I think more women feel like this than we realise.

This is the OP btw. Just thought I'd have a name change to something a bit more lighthearted, going for my favourite Beano character as a kid as I realise my recent posts were getting a bit heavy and I didn't want to develop a reputation as that moody, introspective dude who goes on and on about his problems! This really isn't me all the time, our married relationship is actually very good and happy although this is an issue and the first opportunity I've had to express it in any context.

But yes, I totally agree @Cantbeliveyoufakeit it's awful how much mental and emotional damage can be done, sometimes unconsciously by individuals and society in general. Although I've tried to speak to my wife about this, as well as sex generally, even when it's lighthearted there's a sudden sense of reluctance to take the conversation any further. Like I say, once we are there, "doing the deed", no problem and she clearly enjoys it.

Maybe I'll try to talk to her again (and try and listen really hard) when the moment is right.

It took me a long time to feel able to talk about this stuff with DH but the truth is talking is everything in a long term sexual relationship. The conversations we've had (finally, we've been together 20 years!) have been like a series of lightbulbs going on for both of us and once you understand where the problems come from it's so much easier to see how to fix them. It's hard when one (or both in our case) of you finds it uncomfortable to talk about sensitive stuff but absolutely worth the effort imo.

Messaging can be good as a first step, it's sometimes easier to not have to say things out loud and it allows time to process before responding. My top tip for broaching it is to be very clear that you see this as a joint problem which you'd like to resolve together, as a team. Avoid any blame or recrimination, just talk about how it's making you feel and how you'd like your relationship to be and ask her to do the same. It won't work if you're not both on the same page though and you may have to give her a little time to catch up if this isn't something she's already been thinking about.

It's not wrong or unreasonable to want to feel wanted by your partner, I didn't realise for a long time how it made DH feel that I didn't appear to want him and he wasn't great at putting it across in a way that didn't immediately make me go on the defensive. We had a lot to unpick between that and my issues but the starting point was that we both wanted the other to feel happy and fulfilled in our marriage so we had to get over our discomfort and be honest with each other. Good luck, I'll check back in case you want to ask anything along the way, I hope things improve for you.

Thank you @Cantbeliveyoufakeit that's very kind taking the time on this and offering helpful practical advice. I do appreciate it and will see if I can move forward on this. I'm often the one in my life and work to be offering advice and guidance. I don't always always find it easy when it's the other way round!