Sex in MarriageSexual problems are common in many relationships. This section is for discussions about sexuality. Please limit discussions to those asking for help with a problem and those offering advice. Any other threads may be deleted.
10-60 minutes!!!!!! This is not a porno..... No wonder it is painful. While I'd love to have that type of control at times, sorry but I am not surprised that say a 30 minute avg is painful to a woman......
Sex often times leaves discomfort or pain that typically lasts for hours (at times has lasted a day or more). I would describe her attitude towards sex as this: she would often times rather do anything else (and I mean anything short of a root canal) than be sexually active with me.
Foreplay tends to last 5-20 minutes, and we both enjoy it (I'll admit that I absolutely love pleasing her). More often than not I will have to masturbate to be satisfied after sex is finished.
Another issue is longevity during sex. She typically has 1-3 orgasms within 3-5 minutes of actual sex (excluding time spent on foreplay).
There have also been times where I've abstained from masturbation (as well as sex), as an experiment, for months at a time and while I will tends to help me climax faster it's not much of a difference (certainly not worth the frustration of abstaining for that long).
Normally we don't argue at all, and this issue has been our primary point of contention, especially the past few years.
Browncoat, I have highlighted what I see are you problems.
1. I think this problem is about you and has nothing to do with your wife.
2. The notion that you "absolutely love to please her" is telling. You are so focused on your wife's sexual experience that you are completely disconnected from your own. The result is an inability to have an orgasm/porn star performance, which in this case is a bad thing.
3. Three orgasms is a lot. You are wearing your wife out, physically and psychologically. The whole friction thing reeks of you being completely desensitized by something - porn or masturbation likely.
4. "Not worth the frustration of abstaining."
I don't want to debate high drive/low drive, but here goes. Many guys use sex as a means of soothing their own anxiety. They convince themselves that they are high drive and just need regular sex. In reality, they are high anxiety, often high functioning, and use sex as a means of controlling their stress.
Partners of these types of guys get worn out. Most importantly, the partner feels funny about the sexual encounter because they recognize it for what it is - a stress reliever. The partner typically can not put words to the feeling. There is marginal if any connection and the wife walks away feeling a little empty as a result of the encounter. The guy makes himself feel better by focusing on his wife and her experience ......... "absolutely love to please her".
These guys often have porn issues as well.
I am sitting out here in cyberspace Browncoat and can only offer observations. Your case may not fit these facts.
If it does:
1. No porn and no masturbation, period.
2. Observe your own stress levels and see if there is a correlation between your sex drive and stress levels.
3. Figure out something else to do when you are stressed: work out, be more productive at work, etc.
4. Quit worrying about your wife's sexual experience. A short warm up for her to get her lubed, then make it feel good to you. Tell her to be vocal and do what it takes for her to feel good. After your orgasm, watch yourself and your response - are you OK with the experience?
Books: Married Man Sex Life, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Arousal (Michael Bader), The Way of the Superior Man. Also go watch the TedX talk on pornography here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zif0_60b3WU
10-60 minutes!!!!!! This is not a porno..... No wonder it is painful. While I'd love to have that type of control at times, sorry but I am not surprised that say a 30 minute avg is painful to a woman......
Wish you both luck.....
Well typically the longest we continue vaginal sex is 10-15 minutes or so. Most of the times we just have vaginal sex for about 5-7 minutes, by that time my wife is done. She just pulls herself off or asks that we stop (and I do). Sometimes if it's just mildly uncomfortable and I'm really close she just says to stay in and finish up.
I think FNG has some really good points, Browncoat ... in particular about the anxiety/stress part.
I have seen that a number of times on TAM ... it may not be where you are at, but it's certainly something to think about and mull over. My favorite article to provoke some thinking about it is the following:
It was interesting regarding the amount of disappointment and resentment toward your wife you had when she went in to early menopause. But that is something that is mostly outside of her control and it's not like she was doing it on purpose to thwart or hurt you. Resenting something like that is counter-productive as it can cause your mate to pull away from you ... and the real issues - the resentment - does not lie in your wife in that case, but in you.
FNG I'll post a response later. Was busy editing a response, but you ask some good questions and I want to offer good answers. I'm just up against the clock since our 2nd ST session is soon.
I'll answer quickly on one topic. Masturbation (outside of masturbation when she's climaxed and done), is something I only always do on days when sex is off the table.
I have abstained from masturbation for up to 3 months once, but found it didn't have an effect on how quickly I climaxed.
If I masturbate within 3 hours before sex, it will take definitely have a effect on how long it takes me to climax. So like I said I abstain for 5-8 hours before we have sex on days when we are likely to have sex.
Browncoat, I have highlighted what I see are you problems.
1. I think this problem is about you and has nothing to do with your wife.
You could be right, but let me explain some more things below first. If I am the problem man I'd love to find out what it is... I truly do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FormerNiceGuy
2. The notion that you "absolutely love to please her" is telling. You are so focused on your wife's sexual experience that you are completely disconnected from your own. The result is an inability to have an orgasm/porn star performance, which in this case is a bad thing.
Short version, we are focused on me. I have always taken a long time to be pleased.
Long version: While it is true that I genuinely love to please her, the vast majority of the time we spend during sex is focused on me.
For us sex has 4 parts to it (as a general rule):
1. Pre-foreplay
2. Foreplay
3. Intercourse
4. Post-play
1.) Pre-foreplay is skipped basically folded into regular foreplay if we are able to have sex during the daytime. It consists of me caressing her and kissing/hugging so that she'll acquiesce to having sex at all.
Bottom line is my wife would be completely content with only having sex 4-6x a year (if that much). The only reason she has sex with me as a general rule is because she knows I want/need it. So this is my way of getting her in the ball park of a mood for sex.
Sex is the lowest priority in her life, she has admitted it to me on several occasions. She feels bad for feeling that way because she knows that it hurts me... but that is how she feels. She has always felt this way throughout our marriage. She has told me that only once over the 15 years of marriage can she think of a time when she really desired sex (and that was about 12 years ago).
Foreplay is mostly about giving me oral sex until her jaw hurts. I continue to caress and touch her to try and keep her from loosing w/e mood was created during pre-foreplay and to keep her interested at all. She doesn't like giving BJs much, just tolerates it for my sake.
She takes zero satisfaction in watching me masturbate, nor does she like to give handjobs, hence BJs during foreplay.
I do give her oral sex, but this is because we have found that her body feels better during intercourse and it ends up increasing both of our pleasure after penetration considerably. It also helps with her general lubrication and greatly reduces the chance of pain during penetration.
During intercourse I try and maximize my pleasure, because I know she will orgasm every time. It's extremely rare that she doesn't. When I used to try and focus on pleasing her she used to orgasm within 30 seconds to 2/3 minutes after penetration. Focusing on me tends to make her first orgasm delayed until about 3-5 minutes. I do take about 20-30 seconds during her first orgasm to help her enjoy it more. Aside from that, the subsequent orgasms take no special effort to come about. I'm just focusing on myself and she'll get a few more orgasms.
At some point she's just spent and intercourse ends because it quickly turns from either pleasurable or neutral to painful. At this point we are in post-play where she tends to arouse my testicles or kiss me if that's what I prefer, until I climax. This typically takes another 5 or more minutes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FormerNiceGuy
3. Three orgasms is a lot. You are wearing your wife out, physically and psychologically. The whole friction thing reeks of you being completely desensitized by something - porn or masturbation likely.
Answered this in the long version above, bottom line is she all but guaranteed to have an orgasm every time w/o much effort. She achieves orgasm far more quickly and easily than my only other sexual partner. I mean incredibly easily.
Subsequent orgasms are never the focus, she just gets them along the way to please me. Once the orgasms end for her, typically the pain takes over quickly. Sometimes she can be in a sort of neutral mode, but typically pain begins the second her last orgasm has gone off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FormerNiceGuy
4. "Not worth the frustration of abstaining."
I don't want to debate high drive/low drive, but here goes. Many guys use sex as a means of soothing their own anxiety. They convince themselves that they are high drive and just need regular sex. In reality, they are high anxiety, often high functioning, and use sex as a means of controlling their stress.
Partners of these types of guys get worn out. Most importantly, the partner feels funny about the sexual encounter because they recognize it for what it is - a stress reliever. The partner typically can not put words to the feeling. There is marginal if any connection and the wife walks away feeling a little empty as a result of the encounter. The guy makes himself feel better by focusing on his wife and her experience ......... "absolutely love to please her".
I hear what you are saying, and I know what you are talking about. Stress can cause the desire for a quickie.
Since getting sex from my wife is rare, I don't waste those precious moments because I want a quickie. Don't get me wrong sometimes we do have those because we are pressed for time, but I don't initiate for stress sex.
My sex drive is something entirely different than stress. In fact stress can kill this drive. When the drive when it kicks in gets me all hot and bothered, it's like my mind and body are suddenly just craving sex. I have strong passionate feelings, I just want to kiss and hold my wife and savor every part of her. It becomes very hard to concentrate on anything or get my mind off of sex. That feeling can last for hours if not addressed.
Some things will tend to kill the drive though:
1. Serious exercise (a good workout will just tire me out and tend to work off all that pent up energy).
2. Stress, when I'm super stressed the drive doesn't come on nearly as often. If I'm crazy busy at work I may even skip a da w/o having the drive kick in.
3. Emergencies, if something happens that requires taking someone to the hospital or a deadline at work that I have people breathing down my neck... yeah that kills the drive (kind of stress related possibly).
4. Really focusing getting my mind off of thinking about sex. This is hard to do, but I just have to really work on getting all my focus on something else. Eventually the feeling will pass
5. Sexual release (sex or masturbation)
I've always been this way since puberty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FormerNiceGuy
These guys often have porn issues as well.
I am sitting out here in cyberspace Browncoat and can only offer observations. Your case may not fit these facts.
If it does:
1. No porn and no masturbation, period.
2. Observe your own stress levels and see if there is a correlation between your sex drive and stress levels.
3. Figure out something else to do when you are stressed: work out, be more productive at work, etc.
4. Quit worrying about your wife's sexual experience. A short warm up for her to get her lubed, then make it feel good to you. Tell her to be vocal and do what it takes for her to feel good. After your orgasm, watch yourself and your response - are you OK with the experience?
Books: Married Man Sex Life, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Arousal (Michael Bader), The Way of the Superior Man. Also go watch the TedX talk on pornography here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zif0_60b3WU
Good luck.
These days I will admit that I do look at porn on occasion but it's more of the playboy pinup style porn. I don't have the need/urge to look at it most of the time, and I don't look at the hardcore stuff.
I'd say for about 10-12 years out of the marriage I've not even so much as looked at a SI swimsuit edition.
I've not seen a porn movie/video for 13-14 years. I watched porn films twice since I have been married and both were during that first year of marriage when sex was impossible. I've never been proud of that, and my wife knows about it.
10-60 minutes!!!!!! This is not a porno..... No wonder it is painful. While I'd love to have that type of control at times, sorry but I am not surprised that say a 30 minute avg is painful to a woman......
Wish you both luck.....
As for pain in sex, one other thing I should add is that it often surprises us. For example a month or so ago was one of those rare times when I climaxed about the same time she did.
It was the most slow and gentle sex possible (we vary how vigorous we are like most couples I'm sure), and to both of our surprise the next day we couldn't even have penetration. We were both shocked.
Since some were curious about our ST sessions, I thought I'd start posting on what happens in each class and what progress (or regression) occurs from week to week.
We covered basic background story. The bulk of that story can be found in earlier posts above. We were given two assignments
1. Try a silicone based lubricant (apparently the water based lubricants we tried in the past get absorbed into the vagina and leave the clitoris unprotected).
2. My wife was to try and mentally prepare herself for sex 30 minutes in advance.
Last week we were given two assignments, and both were a great success! We are really encouraged.
The first assignment was to use a silicone based lubricant to aid with clitoral overstimulation. It worked amazingly well and helped in 3 ways (some of them unexpected):
1. Reduced and delayed clitoral overstimulation (she could last longer after her orgasm and didn't hurt as much)
2. Delayed her orgasm without seemingly affecting mine (she took longer to get her orgasm... and it was just as powerful as before).
3. It seemingly reduced overall rawness (more than water soluble lubricant).
In the past the water based lubricants didn't help my wife and actually made it take longer for me to climax, so we stopped using them a long time ago. The new lubricant was wonderful, since it stayed in place helped both of us... just outstanding stuff.
The second assignment was for my wife to mentally prepare herself more before having sex for 30 minutes before having sex. We only tried this once this last week, but the results were incredible for both of us. My wife was actually in the moment, she didn't just go through the motions of sex mechanically, but actually wanted to be there. Sex was really fun rather than feeling like a medical procedure. It felt like one of those 4-6x a year times a year when she actually wants sex.
Time will tell if all this continues to work for us, but we are excited to get some good early results!
This week we covered some of the basics of Pursuer/Distancer (P/D), specifically in terms of how it can explain some of my wife's sexual desire issues. At times I need to pursue a bit less, and she needs to not distance herself as much. Other times my wife needs to pickup on clues that I'm going to pursue her soon so she can begin to mentally prepare herself (like we did last week), and I have to watch for more clues so I know when to back off and give my wife more space.
This is our homework for this week, to go over a 2 page list of various characteristics of the pursuer (me) and the distancer (my wife). Should be interesting.
I have to watch for more clues so I know when to back off and give my wife more space.
I like where this is going.
If you recognize yourself as a "pursuer", you may have some work to do to understand why. As an example, lots of guys use sex as the ultimate form of validation. "If she has sex with me, I/our relationship must be OK". We pursue our SO's for sex to get validation and unwittingly suffocate them and their passion. The result is bad sex and resentments.
Sounds like you are in good hands with your therapist.
If you recognize yourself as a "pursuer", you may have some work to do to understand why. As an example, lots of guys use sex as the ultimate form of validation. "If she has sex with me, I/our relationship must be OK". We pursue our SO's for sex to get validation and unwittingly suffocate them and their passion. The result is bad sex and resentments.
Sounds like you are in good hands with your therapist.
It's funny you should ask this very question. Our therapist said in a couple of weeks she's going to have an IC session with me to get to the bottom of that (and I'm sure a few other issues).
I've been thinking about that question off and on today, and I'm still thinking about it now. I have a lot of things that come to mind though I'm not sure I've got a proper answer yet.
Part of it is my my general sexual drive and how I know she's my only outlet (besides self satisfaction). Though that begs the question why do I have the drive that I do, and is it healthy/"normal"?
I can definitely say it's not a form a validation for me, to be honest I never thought of sex as validation of anything. Not to say that some couldn't or shouldn't... just not something that ever occurred to me.
Hey, it's great that you have already seen some amount of progress!
I think sometimes it's easy to lose sight of what really great things our spouses actually DO for us in amongst our feelings of what they DON'T.
You are so blessed ... you have a wife who is WILLING to be accommodating, WILLING to go to counselling to try and make things better ... WILLING to try doing the things the counselor suggests... oh, there are so many good things there if you look for them.
Concentrate and ruminate on those positive things about your wife for a bit, then go give her a big kiss.
You are so blessed ... you have a wife who is WILLING to be accommodating, WILLING to go to counselling to try and make things better ... WILLING to try doing the things the counselor suggests... oh, there are so many good things there if you look for them.
Thanks I really do feel blessed. I am really and truly grateful that we can work through things together, because I know that I too have a lot to work on. It's part of being human, that whole imperfection thing.
I honestly make a point every day to compliment her when I see or hear something that uplifts me (so it happens several times a day and it's always genuine). I don't want to just sit there and berate her, that will never work. There's a place to express your pain, but then it's time to put it on the back burner and just live life.
I originally answered MEM in the middle of the "People Obsessed with Sex on TAM" thread, but it was growing wildly and my stuff was off topic. So I copied my response here, and linked to the original in case you wanted the context:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Browncoat
Mem, I asked my wife to read over your post... primarily because I wanted to make sure I answered for the both of us, not just from my perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MEM11363
Brown,
Many of your threads reflect the notion that your wife doesn't see your sex life as a "mutual" thing.
Yes and no was how my wife answered.
No in the sense that she honestly doesn't want sex nearly as often as we have it, and no she isn't always into it at the start of foreplay most of the time.
Yes in that she does enjoy it for the most part, and she is trying to let herself slow down and realize that all the things rushing around in her head can wait. That she can, though it is hard work for her, to allow herself to put me and my needs first for a while.
My wife, like most women, constantly has ideas bouncing around in her head: Long term plans for the future, concerns for our children, dates for events coming up soon and what's required for them, any chores that need doing around the house, etc.
When she wants to relax, she wants more than anything to read (primarily books, magazines, and newspapers). She also likes to watch movies or tv shows with me on netflix as well, but that's something she'll do if only to spend more time talking to one another (we pause stuff a lot, we're kind of terrible that way). When she's reading or watching shows with me, we talk about life, politics, religion, etc. Really just anything that comes to mind, and we talk a lot which is wonderful.
The last thing she generally thinks of, or really wants to do is have sex. Not that she sees it as a bad thing, it's just that all those things I listed above... all of them are far more interesting to her, excepting a few times a year.
She has sex with me more often because she knows I want it and need it. She has to actively work to think about sex, or even to see herself as sexy or a sexual being. She's always been this way, and my guess (this is just me talking now) is that it comes from her family. Her mother has always been non-sexual, never discussed sex, never dressed up excepting the bare minimum to go somewhere fancy (otherwise as plain vanilla as possible), etc. Her mother's mother was the same way apparently.
So one of the things we've been trying to do is an exercise where she starts thinking about being sexy and about sex about 30 minutes before a planned window of time to have sex. That has helped... but the point is that it's work for her. It's a concentrated effort.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MEM11363
I love my wife and as you can tell from my threads I respect her privacy when asked. AND she has this condition. That said I would not be ok being uninvited to a checkup if I wanted to go. This is impacting you alot more than it is her.
Yes I was talking to her about this very thing last night, when we discussed her possibly going back for a 3rd evaluation (btw she agrees with my assessment of her first two evaluations). This is something I'm still pushing for, and she's still resisting. Getting the reasons out is also fun, because she doesn't always know why (as is the case here). This is pretty typical though, I normally have to gently/lovingly get her to understand her own feelings and express them to me. It's a little verbal truth dance we do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MEM11363
You often talk about sex and intercourse without any differentiation.
It seems your wife finds this whole topic tiresome and wishes you would simply accept it.
While our sex life excludes intercourse (because it is painful to her) it is very nice and keeps our bond strong.
For my wife, taking time to have any type of sex is just as low on her list of priorities. We sometimes do have sex w/o intercourse, but the norm by far and away sex is intercourse for us. This is primarily because if she's going to spend the time she'd rather do what keeps me the happiest for the longest so that she can postpone the next sexual encounter. Like I said, she'd rather be doing just about anything else other than having sex (of any kind).
Last week we were asked to go over the pursuer and distancer attributes. It definitely helped us to understand where some of the dynamics in our marriage were coming from, and some other attributes didn't apply at all. Practically it helped us to better understand each others needs and few things we both need to avoid doing.
This week I've been working on trying to do more little things around the house for my wife. Even started tackling some of those honey-dos that have been on her list a bit too long.
She's been trying to work more on focusing on time we spend together, to try and be in the moment more, when we kiss or are together in bed. Her focusing has been a real boon both in and out of the bedroom for both of us. It's really improved our sex life a great deal, and both of our enjoyment.
Her focus is something we both need to keep working on together, because for the first time in I can't remember how long (that is more than a quick goodnight peck on the lips), she's coming up to me and initiating kissing and hugging. It's almost been jarring to be doing my normal routine and here she comes. A welcome change, but change just the same since I tend to get very focused on one thing at a time (very typical guy I know).
Pain during and after sex though, has for some reason become a bigger issue this week. We are going to try and schedule for a 3rd doctor's opinion this upcoming week. We both want to try and find a sub-specialist in the area of sexual pain for women, based on the really good suggestions we got here (thanks everyone). Two other doctor's have told us nothing is wrong... clearly something is. We kind of doubt that pure psychologically projected pain would linger for days on a women who has to actively think about sex or being sexy. There's something physiologically off here.
In therapy this week we discussed passion. My passion for her and how/when it comes on especially strong. Mostly we talked about how my wife feels about my passion and her own passion.
My wife feels a bit intimidated when my passion is most strong, not because she's repelled by it, but rather because she's concerned that she may never be able to come close to feeling that sort of passion for me. This concerns both of us, though I think her more than me. She is concerned that she just doesn't feel passion, not for me, not really for anyone ever... frankly it hurts to hear it but I think she may be right.
Next week we are both going in for IC, mostly focused on passion issues, but other issues I'm sure will come up.
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Re: Another case of HD/LD married couple 
and helped in 3 ways (some of them unexpected): 
