Wives, does mens' need for sex make you angry?

[Anonymous]

13:53 here. I have to add that DH is usually great in the sack, but if I'm not feeling it and I get a lame advance, forget it. It literally makes me angry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a pretty awesome husband and father. My wife acknowledges that. (She's also a pretty awesome wife and mother for that matter.) She wants to want to have sex with me, and it makes her sad and anxious that she doesn't. On her own, sex once, maybe twice, a month would be enough. She makes an effort and we manage almost once a week these days. But, while she feels sad and anxious about my desire for sex, I feel depressed about her lack of attraction to me. We've been married for 15 years and deeply love, respect, and like one another. But the sex issue is a definite challenge for us.

OP here. This looks like something I wrote. Scary, almost. I wonder if the other comment "are we married?" to your post was actually my wife.

[Anonymous]

i only get angry and disgusted when he nags me about sex, and then gets mad if i turn him down. sexy, right? nagging makes sex as unsexy as possible. also, i get mad when he makes no effort to pleasure me or arouse me and just expects that i'll be wet after a couple of boob grabs.

[Anonymous]

on the contrary, my husband's meekness in starting sex again post-pregnancy made me angry!!

even if i'm not in the mood, being desired is always A+ and a good indicator of a healthy relationship (most of the time!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. PP, thanks for your perspective. That's very helpful. I candidly say that I want more sex, but that's only part of it. I want her to want me. When we do have sex, she usually brings it. She's great. When. She. Gets. In. The. Mood.

When she's not in the mood, and I try to be playful about sex -- say, talk in a fun way about when and how we can have sex -- she just gets pissed off. That's a real downer.

The downer for me (as a DW) is that DH KNOWS that i get stressed when there are a ton of things that need to just get done, and every single damn time I need to tell him. And whomever said that laundry is not as important as sex obviously is not a relationship where both parents work FT and one of us (yes, that would be me) takes care of or has to keep track of most of the laundry, grocery shopping, school forms, camp forms, doctors' appointments, shopping, bill payment, communicating with contractors, nanny/daycare, housekeeping, sports schedules, music lessons, playdates, etc. When I have an hour free, there is always something that needs to be done--and DH refuses to anticipate that these things just have to get done. Either I have to tell him to do it, or it won't get done.

Not to pick on you PP, but please tell us how this relates to maintaining an intimate connection as a married couple. Trust me...I can ALWAYS find an excuse NOT to have sex with my DH. He is not the best when it comes to household responsibilities and I sometimes find myself managing every doggone thing. But upon the advice of a counselor, I realized that if we were going to make it I was going to have to take that connection (including sex) as a positive aspect of our marriage, not a burden. We have gotten through a lot of rough times because our connection has been a comfort. I get overwhelmed and stressed, but nothing relieves my stress better than a nice session. I do ALL of the stuff that you list but even I realize that sometimes things can wait for a nice conversation or a quick burst of quality time. Your house can run like a well oiled machine, but if your realtionship with your spouse goes to hell, that machine is not worth squat.

So...I work FT and manage the household and I will say that keeeping a connection as a married couple (including regular sex) IS more important than laundry. LOL. And the fact that I can still cause that twinkle in his eye IS a positive and the desire. When that twinkle is not there any longer, then you have problems.

To answer OP's question, it does not make me angry at all. We are playful with each other (sending texts, etc.) and it can be sexy and funny. I ask him for it as much as he asks me. It turns me on that my DH desires me because of lot my friends complain that their DH's are not interested anymore. However, if it is not a good time, I tell him so. But I always make sure he knows that the wait will not be too long and I follow through.

Because when DH bothers to anticipate, think about, and carry through with all the stuff that having a home and children entails, it makes me believe that he cares about me, my time, our home, and our kids. That, to me, is an emotional commitment to me, which in turn, allows for intimacy. When he would almost always rather prioritize sex over our kids' needs and home maintenance, which strikes me as selfish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i only get angry and disgusted when he nags me about sex, and then gets mad if i turn him down. sexy, right? nagging makes sex as unsexy as possible. also, i get mad when he makes no effort to pleasure me or arouse me and just expects that i'll be wet after a couple of boob grabs.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. PP, thanks for your perspective. That's very helpful. I candidly say that I want more sex, but that's only part of it. I want her to want me. When we do have sex, she usually brings it. She's great. When. She. Gets. In. The. Mood.

When she's not in the mood, and I try to be playful about sex -- say, talk in a fun way about when and how we can have sex -- she just gets pissed off. That's a real downer.

The downer for me (as a DW) is that DH KNOWS that i get stressed when there are a ton of things that need to just get done, and every single damn time I need to tell him. And whomever said that laundry is not as important as sex obviously is not a relationship where both parents work FT and one of us (yes, that would be me) takes care of or has to keep track of most of the laundry, grocery shopping, school forms, camp forms, doctors' appointments, shopping, bill payment, communicating with contractors, nanny/daycare, housekeeping, sports schedules, music lessons, playdates, etc. When I have an hour free, there is always something that needs to be done--and DH refuses to anticipate that these things just have to get done. Either I have to tell him to do it, or it won't get done.

Not to pick on you PP, but please tell us how this relates to maintaining an intimate connection as a married couple. Trust me...I can ALWAYS find an excuse NOT to have sex with my DH. He is not the best when it comes to household responsibilities and I sometimes find myself managing every doggone thing. But upon the advice of a counselor, I realized that if we were going to make it I was going to have to take that connection (including sex) as a positive aspect of our marriage, not a burden. We have gotten through a lot of rough times because our connection has been a comfort. I get overwhelmed and stressed, but nothing relieves my stress better than a nice session. I do ALL of the stuff that you list but even I realize that sometimes things can wait for a nice conversation or a quick burst of quality time. Your house can run like a well oiled machine, but if your realtionship with your spouse goes to hell, that machine is not worth squat.

So...I work FT and manage the household and I will say that keeeping a connection as a married couple (including regular sex) IS more important than laundry. LOL. And the fact that I can still cause that twinkle in his eye IS a positive and the desire. When that twinkle is not there any longer, then you have problems.

To answer OP's question, it does not make me angry at all. We are playful with each other (sending texts, etc.) and it can be sexy and funny. I ask him for it as much as he asks me. It turns me on that my DH desires me because of lot my friends complain that their DH's are not interested anymore. However, if it is not a good time, I tell him so. But I always make sure he knows that the wait will not be too long and I follow through.

I'm not the PP, but for me the connection is that it's really hard for me to relax when there are still things that need to be done. That's not just about sex. It's about watching TV. It's about taking a hot bath. It's about going to yoga or whatever. Those are things that, for me, come after the work is done. The work would get done faster if there were two people doing it, and my husband is pretty great about doing things when I ask him about a specific thing. Keeping the house from falling apart and everyone fed isn't always the first thing on his mind. Having sex isn't always the first thing on mine, and if I am up to my elbows in dishwasher and facing down taking out the trash and changing the cat's litter box because those things need to happen (or else GROSS), having him try to initiate sex is the worst timing ever.

I'm not saying that I would 100% always be ready to go if he took out the trash and changed the litterbox first, but when I get home from work, I have an "agenda" and there are certain things that I need to take care of before I can relax enough to do the fun stuff.

PP here. I have to give my DH more credit because he would never try to initiate sex if I am knee deep in some household task. I would hope that most men are more savvy than that. I guess not. LOL!!

I think my point is that we can ALWAYS create the "agenda" because, let's face it, there is ALWAYS something that needs to be done or that could be done. At a certain point, it makes sense to sometimes step back and say WHAT is most important here?

Maybe I am the problem. LOL! Because after 20 years of marriage and 4 kids, I can relax even if everything on my list is not done. My list is more of a "best case" document than an agenda. LOL!! And we have survived.

PP you're responding to here. I think it varies couple by couple. DH and I have fairly different standards about the house. It doesn't bother him at all to leave a sink full of dirty dishes, sitting by the door waiting to be taken out, ignore the litterbox for most of a week and fail to vacuum until he's reminded to do it. He doesn't get upset about the mess because it just doesn't bother him. But we live in an 800 square foot apartment, the two of us plus 4 year old DD and the cat. If the litterbox is starting to smell, it bothers me that he does not proactively change it. It bothers me that he feels like it's okay to leave dirty breakfast dishes in this sink instead of unloading the dishwasher and putting the dirty dishes in there. It would be different if I knew that he would be taking care of the mess when he got home from work, but that is functionally never what happens.

I am making it sound like he's a slob and I'm a neatfreak and we have a resentful hostile marriage. That's absolutely not true. He does things when I remind him to do them and doesn't get snippy about it. I try to ask for the things I need instead of getting silently resentful about it. We have a lot of really awesome sex. But literally the only times I am resentful about it are times when I have been flying around the house all evening cleaning this and cooking that and overseeing a bath and bedtime while he is sitting around on his iPad or whatever. By the time that's all over, I am actually tired and not feeling like sexy time. We've talked about it, he's agreed to try to notice more, and to his credit, he has. But given our specific situation, letting the list slide isn't an option. There is nothing less sexy to me than living in squalor, which would be what would happen if the bare minimum of stuff doesn't get done every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a pretty awesome husband and father. My wife acknowledges that. (She's also a pretty awesome wife and mother for that matter.) She wants to want to have sex with me, and it makes her sad and anxious that she doesn't. On her own, sex once, maybe twice, a month would be enough. She makes an effort and we manage almost once a week these days. But, while she feels sad and anxious about my desire for sex, I feel depressed about her lack of attraction to me. We've been married for 15 years and deeply love, respect, and like one another. But the sex issue is a definite challenge for us.

Bottom line, this isn't going to change unless you make it clear that this is something you are willing to end the marriage over, and are attractive enough that doing so seems like a bad outcome to her. Once you have done as much as you can to try to increase her attraction to you, and find that it still isn't enough, you are looking at a tough decision to make: suffer, cheat, or leave. All bad options. I'm working through similar issues myself, and hope it doesn't come to that, but I am starting to believe that once a woman has lost sexual interest in you, it's not fixable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a pretty awesome husband and father. My wife acknowledges that. (She's also a pretty awesome wife and mother for that matter.) She wants to want to have sex with me, and it makes her sad and anxious that she doesn't. On her own, sex once, maybe twice, a month would be enough. She makes an effort and we manage almost once a week these days. But, while she feels sad and anxious about my desire for sex, I feel depressed about her lack of attraction to me. We've been married for 15 years and deeply love, respect, and like one another. But the sex issue is a definite challenge for us.

OP here. This looks like something I wrote. Scary, almost. I wonder if the other comment "are we married?" to your post was actually my wife.

I wondered if this was OP too. But OP you basically never go out with your wife except to escort her to the sofa and watch TV. How are you a pretty awesome husband?

[Anonymous]

PP, this is OP. You imply that she wants to go out and I don't make the effort. That's not true. She escorts herself to the couch; sometimes I do too, sometimes I linger in a place that (I think at least) invites her to spend some time with me, but she goes to the couch instead. In the past I made the effort to go out to dinner, but she wasn't interested. Too much hassle on weekends and we'd rather be with the kids (her especially, but me too.) Lately we've been trying to do more together.

[Anonymous]

"OP here.
1. If there are physical issues, it's don't ask/don't tell.
2. We've been trying to do more of that, but running the household is a full time job that we do together. Most of our couples-only time is in front of the TV after the kids are in bed.
3. No, but I'd have no clue what it is. I've certainly got my faults (we all do) but when I look around, the bar is pathetically low when it comes to being a good husband.
4. Yes. All the time."

So this tells me that you have 3 things to do on your to-do list. Ask her to have an open and honest discussions about #1 and #3 (separate discussions, and be willing to listen and not judge). If she can't or won't, then I think counseling is in order. And you really need to find a way to work on #2. Tell her that you want to find new things to do together, and ask her to commit to trying one new thing together a month for the next 6 months. Each of you gets to find and organize (including arranging childcare) three activities (alternate months - you go first) that are either new or that you haven't done together in a very long time. The one who isn't doing the planning doesn't get to complain. Hopefully, something will stick and become a new hobby that you do together.

[Anonymous]

Husbands,
If you are not getting enough sex, try COMPLIMENTING AND APPRECIATING your wife more. Verbally. It's really important to women and will change your relationship.

There is always something to sincerely compliment, btw. No need to lie.

[Anonymous]

My husband just says how about some pussy and I say okay. Then for the next 7 minutes I think about what color paint would look good on my front door or the valance I'm thinking about buying.

I never tell my husband no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Husbands,
If you are not getting enough sex, try COMPLIMENTING AND APPRECIATING your wife more. Verbally. It's really important to women and will change your relationship.

There is always something to sincerely compliment, btw. No need to lie.

I can't imagine a truly sex starved husband hasn't tried this at some point. "It's been 6 months with no sex. You mean if I tell her she looks pretty, she'll want to fuck me?"

I don't know, maybe that's the problem sometimes.

[Anonymous]

PP, I think we'd be shocked to learn exactly how different people can be in their understanding of what can lead to more sex.

OP, have you heard of the book The Love Languages (or something like that)? From what I recall there are 5 different categories and a person typically falls into one. If your love language is physical connection (as it is for most men) and she's trying to fill your tank with verbal affirmations - you aren't feeling loved. If her love language is acts of service and you're trying to love her through physical connection - she isn't feeling loved.