# It seems like he doesn't want to have sex anymore



## Mom2-3 (Feb 24, 2016)

I've been married for 11 years. I've always had a very strong sex drive and my husband doesn't. When he turns me down it hurts my feelings and I start to feel unattractive. I feel like something is wrong with me because that's when I feel the closest to him is when we are intimate and after that. I feel loved and wanted. He is a wonderful person a great father and great provider for us. I love him with all my heart. I start thinking he's cheating on me then I start accusing him and going through his phone. I sound like a crazy woman. It's driving me crazy! If anyone can help me with any advice I would greatly appreciate it.


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## Kilgoretrout (Feb 2, 2016)

Mom2-3 said:


> I've been married for 11 years. I've always had a very strong sex drive and my husband doesn't. When he turns me down it hurts my feelings and I start to feel unattractive. I feel like something is wrong with me because that's when I feel the closest to him is when we are intimate and after that. I feel loved and wanted. He is a wonderful person a great father and great provider for us. I love him with all my heart. I start thinking he's cheating on me then I start accusing him and going through his phone. I sound like a crazy woman. It's driving me crazy! If anyone can help me with any advice I would greatly appreciate it.


Has he told you why he doesn't want to have sex? Is t possible he just has a lower sex drive? Did he used to have a higher drive?
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## Mom2-3 (Feb 24, 2016)

He says he only wants me. In the past when we did have sex it would hurt pretty bad during and for a few days after. He says he doesn't like hurting me. I don't mind and still want to continue. We still have sex just not as often as I would like. I hear women talking about how their husbands want it all the time I say you should enjoy that.


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## Kilgoretrout (Feb 2, 2016)

Mom2-3 said:


> He says he only wants me. In the past when we did have sex it would hurt pretty bad during and for a few days after. He says he doesn't like hurting me. I don't mind and still want to continue. We still have sex just not as often as I would like. I hear women talking about how their husbands want it all the time I say you should enjoy that.


Why does it hurt you?

Maybe he just has a lower drive.

I agree ideally you would have it more - as often as you like. Is there a way he might be more willing? Something to try?
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## Mom2-3 (Feb 24, 2016)

Sex is painful. I have endometriosis. I'm willing to try anything. He won't discuss things with me. I always want to take showers with him but he says no. I ask him what his fantasy is he says he doesn't have any. Any suggestions?


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## Kilgoretrout (Feb 2, 2016)

Mom2-3 said:


> Sex is painful. I have endometriosis. I'm willing to try anything. He won't discuss things with me. I always want to take showers with him but he says no. I ask him what his fantasy is he says he doesn't have any. Any suggestions?


Would he be willing to go to a sex therapist together?
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## Mom2-3 (Feb 24, 2016)

I don't know. I will ask him. It's worth a try. ?


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## Kilgoretrout (Feb 2, 2016)

Mom2-3 said:


> I don't know. I will ask him. It's worth a try. ?


I have never done it myself. But some times a third party with expertise can help. I don't know him to know if he would go for it.

I don't know much about endometriosis but it sounds very painful. I am sorry
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## Vinnydee (Jan 4, 2016)

Of course there is always the possibility of cheating but in my experience the cheater has more sex to throw his/her spouse off the track. Sex becomes boring and routine after about 10 years. Same basic things over and over. You both know what buttons to press to please each other but no longer search for new buttons. It sucks when a couple has different libidos. I would like sex daily but my wife would love to do it only once a month. We are in our mid sixties though. 

Sex produces a hormone called Oxytocin whose purpose is to emotionally bond a couple together. Without being exposed to it often, the emotional bond, intimacy, is very low. What happens is that the less you have sex, the less you want to have sex.

The following is not an original idea but it has worked for us several times throughout our marriage. We set as few as two evenings for intimate time. No excuses accepted, we both had to show up in bed. Not necessarily naked and not necessarily to have sex but we had to be there to show that we still loved each other. The first few times we mostly talked and kissed a little but after a few weeks we were having sex every time. We also used this intimate time to tell each other what we liked and did not like about our sex life. For instance, my wife does not like penetration so she avoided sex and did not want to hurt my feelings by telling me that she did not enjoy intercourse with me. My wife is bisexual so our situation had more twists and turns than most. I told her what I liked and did not like. You will be surprised how much good sexual communication can improve your sex life. There are couples out there who do not like how their spouses kiss and will never tell them that. Instead they will avoid kissing or sex altogether. 

The above worked every time. Just did it 5 years ago when we moved away from the woman my wife and I loved for most of our marriage. Try it, even if just one night a week. Turn the lights out and just talk. We also used email to send each other a list of sexual acts we would like to try. Then we compared our lists and found a few things in common for us to try during sex. Just look at all the post here asking why is their spouse doing this or that or acting a certain way when they should be asking their spouse and not accept an answer to just get them to stop asking. You do not need someone charging you by the hour and who just met you, telling you how to fix your marriage. You two have the power within to do so by communication. The only prerequisite is that you both still love each other. If one does not, end it as soon as you can because love is an emotion and not something that you can make happen with thought. Good luck.

My wife and I found an unusual solution to our libido difference. It is called Chastity Play. I will not go into details but what it did was to make the time between my infrequent orgasms, a fun sexual game. For my wife she started to have multiple orgasms once of twice a week that she says are the most powerful of her life. The reason was that she got turned on by the reaction I had to her teasing. There are many sex fetishes out there that do not require dressing up in latex or buying whips and chains. 

P.S., during one of our intimate nights we learned some new buttons to press on each other. Mix it up. Sometimes I just get to watch my wife use her vibrator on herself. Other times she calls my cell phone and lets me listen to her masturbate from the other room. We try not to make sex routine and boring and it has worked for us for many decades. Heck, my wife did not even know she liked sex with women until we tried a threesome. Work it out and make it fun.


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## Mom2-3 (Feb 24, 2016)

Vinnydee said:


> Of course there is always the possibility of cheating but in my experience the cheater has more sex to throw his/her spouse off the track. Sex becomes boring and routine after about 10 years. Same basic things over and over. You both know what buttons to press to please each other but no longer search for new buttons. It sucks when a couple has different libidos. I would like sex daily but my wife would love to do it only once a month. We are in our mid sixties though.
> 
> Sex produces a hormone called Oxytocin whose purpose is to emotionally bond a couple together. Without being exposed to it often, the emotional bond, intimacy, is very low. What happens is that the less you have sex, the less you want to have sex.
> 
> ...



Great suggestions. I try to use our time in bed as time to talk about things. It's quiet and the kids aren't interrupting us. He falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. (Or so he says) I want to talk about different things to spice up our sex life but he's just so quiet about things like that. Girls at work talk about their husbands walking around naked sleeping naked and all sorts of things. Not him. He takes his clothes to the bathroom and gets dressed there if he forgets his underwear he comes out wrapped in a towel.


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## badsanta (Oct 13, 2014)

Mom2-3 said:


> Sex is painful. I have endometriosis. I'm willing to try anything. He won't discuss things with me. I always want to take showers with him but he says no. I ask him what his fantasy is he says he doesn't have any. Any suggestions?


When something very pleasurable causes the one you love a great deal of pain, it can be very tough to even try to understand your feelings about that as a man. 

Start by realizing that your biggest fantasy is likely to just please your husband and know that you can make him happy. You husband likely shares this fantasy but he desires to please you sexually, but since doing so causes you pain he has likely stopped fantasizing as his way to protect and care for you.

If you are able, I would recommend you demonstrate your ability to please yourself sexually with your husband present. Ask him if he is OK with this and just ask him to watch. While he is afraid of hurting you, watching this may help give him more confidence if he can see and observe the ways in which you can achieve the most physical pleasure without hurting yourself. 

While I do not know much about your condition, I would imagine that exploring more gentle ways of lovemaking should help restore some intimacy. You may want to start with a simple back massage with no expectations and just go from there. Do not hesitate to ask him to massage in ways that you enjoy it. 

Just do not try to focus only on his pleasure, but encourage him to find new ways that he can ask you touch him sexually. If you are brave enough and trust him, you could video tape yourself masturbating with your phone so that you could encourage him to explore his feelings on his own while watching it privately. 

Best wishes, 
Badsanta


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## badsanta (Oct 13, 2014)

peacem said:


> As for showers...this is a good idea for bonding together. His reluctance may be because he will be under pressure to have sex once committed. Reassure him that it doesn't necessarily have to result in sex, just fun. Bathing together is more relaxing, less hurried and gives you time to talk. Gradually it will lead to sex.


From a male point of view, he may be refusing a shower because this will make him loose control of his urges and he will be the one that feels the need for sex. By avoiding a shower, he may be preemptively avoiding things that may get him turned on too much so that he does not hurt you.


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## Mom2-3 (Feb 24, 2016)

He is a very kind man so that may be the problem. He does worry about that a lot.


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## MJJEAN (Jun 26, 2015)

badsanta said:


> From a male point of view, he may be refusing a shower because this will make him loose control of his urges and he will be the one that feels the need for sex. By avoiding a shower, *he may be preemptively avoiding things that may get him turned on too much so that he does not hurt you.*


I thought the same thing when I read he dresses and undresses in the bathroom, sleeps with clothes on, keeps his bits covered with a towel, etc.

I dearly love DH and am highly attracted to him. I am also a high drive woman. Yet, when DH strained a groin muscle and sex was out of the question until he healed, I found myself doing those same things just to avoid getting either one of us accidentally aroused so that I wouldn't lose my mind, "talk" him into sex, and cause him pain. 

How much help are you getting from your doctors? Is there anything that can be done medically to take away the pain from sex?


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## Young at Heart (Jan 6, 2015)

Mom2-3 said:


> He says he only wants me. In the past when we did have sex it would hurt pretty bad during and for a few days after. *He says he doesn't like hurting me*......





Mom2-3 said:


> ...*He falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. (Or so he says) *
> 
> .....Girls at work talk about their husbands walking around naked sleeping naked and all sorts of things. Not him. *He takes his clothes to the bathroom and gets dressed there if he forgets his underwear he comes out wrapped in a towel.*


A few thoughts. Listen to him and believe what he tells you. Also remember that a relationship is not one-way. By that I mean that in marriage one partner "conditions" the other, concurrently with being conditioned by their partner. Think Pavlov's dogs or Skinner. 

After a few years each partner knows how to read the other, in terms of facial expressions, body language, tone of voice. Whether you believe it or not, your H probably really doesn't want to hurt you or inflict pain on the woman he loves. Whether you like it or not, he knows when you are in pain. So in the past when you have been having painful intercourse your reactions have been conditioning him. You are part of a feedback look that needs to be changed if you want to have greater frequency.

You say that you don't mind the pain. I really agree on going to a sex therapist and a medical specialist in vaginal or neural medicine. If you can, you need to change his multi-year pain conditioning. That will be hard and take time. In essence you need to reinforce that for you sex with your husband is a positive experience. Even if it is painful (which you should see help to alleviate, as there are things from dilators to hormone creams), you need to overwhelm him with how much emotional joy you get out of sex with him. To do that you need to be very verbal and communicate to his "love languages" (Chapman's 5 Languages of Love). He needs to understand the emotional importance of sex between the two of you from your perspective, even if it causes some pain. 

Ok the asleep as soon has his head hits the pillow thing. Again, believe him. When I was in a sex starved marriage and my wife was refusing to have sex with me or when she did have sex with me and she would emotionally hurt me at my most vulnerable post coitus moments, I decided that enough was enough. When I crawled into bed at night laying next to the woman I loved and wanted to have sex with and yet knew if I tried to initiate anything she would deeply emotionally hurt me, I came up with a strategy to minimize my emotional pain. It hurt when I lay awake next to her wanting her. It hurt worse when I tried to initiate sex. My solution, which stunk, was to be so physically tired and exhausted that each time I lay in bed, I would immediately fall asleep. I would wager your husband has come up with an exhaustion strategy for his different situation.

Now as to the changing in the bathroom, not be naked in front of you issue. I have a totally different spin on this. I don't think it is for fear of his loosing control of himself. 

I think that he is wounded by the lack of intimacy. Most people who think that their spouse doesn't enjoy sex with them feel wounded. They feel emotionally rejected, like they aren't good enough to be "loved." I am sure you feel this way at times. Assume for a moment that your H also feels this way, even if it isn't true. His ego and self image are probably hurt. People with low self image or confidence are reluctant to show their naked body, because being naked in front of someone else is to be vulnerable to being hurt by them. 

Again, I would recommend that you see a medical doctor who specializes in the area where your pain occurs and seek the help of a sex therapist. Next I would recommend that you work hard on making your H feel loved an cherished in his love languages by reading and studying Chapman's "5 languages of love.

Good luck


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