# His late nights are taking their toll. Help!



## walkingwounded (May 7, 2011)

I'm a bit confused and would like some feedback, especially from the men...

Me and my H are both what I'd call quite high drive. We easily do something nearly every day, and have had a policy of always being open to the other initiating, even if we're not in the mood, to see if we can get in the mood (this doesn't need to happen very often!)

Here is the problem...

My H goes to bed LATE. He works a long day at a hard job, and after coming home, and negotiating a hectic home time with the family, by the time it's "our" time in the evening, he wants to squeeze every ounce of time he can out of the day.

I feel similarly to a degree, but I realize the constant late nights are taking their toll so I have started to head off to bed earlier. My preference is that we head off to bed together, but I am getting to the point where I am finding he is going to bed later and later and I am struggling to keep up.

I approached him about this. I have expressed a wish a number of days over the last couple of weeks that we have an "early night" together, the idea being that we have some time together, alone, to enjoy ourselves without being ridiculously tired and so we can spend a little more time being intimate.

He has always said yes, we'll do that, but inevitably... it hasn't happened. I don't feel for one minute he is deliberately avoiding it, but that another 5 minutes turns into half an hour, then an hour, and it's one o' clock before he's coming to bed.

At the moment I am often in bed all ready, and I have always been open to him waking me if he wants to get close. However when this is the rule rather than the exception, I am starting to get rather annoyed! We never get to spend any decent amount of time giving each other attention, and whilst I'm happy with what we DO do, I'd love to have that extra time to be able to do different stuff, step outside of the routine, you know...

Yesterday we were talking about it, and he said we didn't have to go to bed together, if I wanted to go to bed earlier, that was fine, he wasn't offended. Oh, and that we don't have to have sex every night...

Now. If anything he's slightly higher drive than me, and 99% of the time, if we're not being intimate, he'll sort himself out. But I am starting to get frustrated by this arrangement. I would happily have sex every night, or be intimate in some way. But I am getting annoyed that either I have to wait up til 1am to go to bed with him so we can be intimate, or if I'm tired but I still want to connect, I have to ask him to wake me when he eventually does come to bed.

And I should point out, the obvious answer, which is to initiate intimacy at other times, say in the evenings, he does not want. I have tried it before. He wants to chill out, relax in the living room. Apparently indulging in making love is not relaxing to him or a way to enjoy his evening!

Now. How do I say to him nicely, this is unacceptable to me now? We have very busy lives and for starters he's running himself into the ground going to bed so late EVERY NIGHT (and it is EVERY night.) He is constantly tired and acknowledges this is a huge part of why but won't do anything about it and trying to keep up with his late nights... Well I can't do it anymore.

Help!


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## Stonewall (Jul 5, 2011)

Sounds like you are tiring to nudge him in that direction. Get blunt. To use a line from "Top Gun" tell him "take me to bed or lose me forever". We don't think the way ya'll do. While I try to be sensitive to her wants/needs sometimes what should be obvious is lost on me but if she comes right out and tells me what she wants right now; I'm on it like a dog on a bone!


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## Parrothead (Jul 4, 2011)

walkingwounded said:


> I'm a bit confused and would like some feedback, especially from the men...
> 
> Me and my H are both what I'd call quite high drive. We easily do something nearly every day, and have had a policy of always being open to the other initiating, even if we're not in the mood, to see if we can get in the mood (this doesn't need to happen very often!)
> 
> ...


You could show him this post, it is all very clearly explained right here.


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## sigma1299 (May 26, 2011)

Parrothead said:


> You could show him this post, it is all very clearly explained right here.


My thoughts exactly. WW you expressed it very clearly and rationally. I don't think you could do a better job of it than you did here.


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## walkingwounded (May 7, 2011)

Yeah I would do but he's not keen on this site. I've been very clear about what an early night means in this context so he acknowledges what I want, he knows it's not just sleep!

I guess my worry is that he'll carry on as is and I'll either have to keep staying up late or getting him to wake me, or I'll carry on going to bed when I'm tired, he'll keep staying up, and we'll not get that time. And I'll get resentful. Him? I'm not sure. I have to admit to there being a degree of worry post-EA that any drop in our sex life will send his attentions outward. I don't think he would do anything but there again, I didnt before.

I remember around the time he first started working with the OW, we'd been arguing about an issue which was then rather pertinent to our marriage. I was requesting more physical touch outside the bedroom. He didn't want to step up with this. So after getting utterly fed up, I resolved to remove sex from the equation until he could see it more clearly. This literally only lasted a week, but it coincided with him meeting the OW and I think the two are linked in my head.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Parrothead (Jul 4, 2011)

So print it out and let him read it.


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## sigma1299 (May 26, 2011)

Has he always been a night owl or is this something of a new issue?


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