How often do you have sex?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:38 and 40 with three kids. Have sex daily, sometimes multiple times. We're both remarried and went without for years, so we're making up for lost time. Lol

Everyday? Really?

Yes, really, with occasional accepting of course. DW has the libido of a teenager. Someone else said daily too. It is possible, believe it or not.

[Anonymous]

3-5 times a week usually. For a while it was 6-8 times a week and that was really fun. We are 4 and 41 with two little kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With DH about once every 3 months. Otherwise about 2-3 times a week with AP.

How? Where?

[Anonymous]

I rarely initiate, but I say no once a year, if that. We're in a decent place now, but it's rare that I can bring myself to initiate after all the rough patches we went through. I touch her playfully and affectionately all the time, and do lots of things to help her with her stress level.

[Anonymous]

37 year old. About once a month.

[Anonymous]

42yo M. More often now that I'm divorced and dating than when I was married. If i did the math it would be close to averaging out to twice a week, but there are peaks and valleys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm jealous of some of you.

38 y/o male, married 15 years, 2 kids ages 6 and 4. Both my DW and I are fit and attractive. I probably try to initiate 4x per week, but we wind up having sex 3 times per two weeks. Sometimes it is twice in a short time span (ie. Thurs and Sat night), but then we'll go 10 days or even 2 weeks without.

It has been a big issue at times in our marriage, and when the kids were smaller we went as long as 2-3 months without at times (and I'm not talking postpartum). I was very resentful after being turned down sometimes every night for literally weeks on end.

Generally when we have sex it is very high quality, and she is adventurous. However, with the drop in libido since kids, and the changes in her body from childbirth (she has had some pelvic wall issues), she's had some physical and psychological sexual dysfunction, which has been part of the issue. Lack of desire, lack of enjoyment during the act, mood swings, inability to orgasm, etc.

Sex in our 20's was great, frequent, and she would orgasm as easily as a guy.

Part of the issue for us is that we both work long hours in high powered jobs (consulting and finance) with lots of stress and business travel, and she gets up early and is generally worn out at night. The kids also get sick at school and bring it home, getting one of us sick, and my wife won't have sex while either of us are sick.

It used to be when we would go out to parties / concerts / with friends we would always have sex at the end of the night. Now a late night with alcohol means she is too exhausted when she gets back.

Sounds like you might have some disposable income. Hopefully, you have family that is available and might be willing to watch the kids. If so, plan 3-4 adult only getaways a year. One of them needs to be a week (somewhere tropical in January/Feb tends to have an aphrodisiac-like impact) where you simply relax, recover and enjoy each other. Don't attack her the minute you get there. Get a drink, watch the sunset, dip your toes in the water and go out for a romantic dinner. Don't pack pajamas but, again, relax and maybe fall asleep cuddling. Try to read her in the morning but sometimes before dinner that night, maybe you could see how she reacts to an "innocent touch". Once she relaxes, it will come back and you can enjoy your time. The other trips can be long weekends to easy to get to locations. Once she starts to associate the vacations with relaxing and enjoying each other, she will be initiating as much as you.

For the week away, make sure it's a week where the kids have school every day but minimal after school activity. If you make it easy and enjoyable for the grandparents, they'll be asking you when they can do it again instead of you bugging them.

[Anonymous]

About 3 times per month. She's traveling for work a lot more these days so it can be even less than that. Sometimes I wonder if she's getting more than I am, IYKWIM.

53m

[Anonymous]

42 year old male. married 12 years, 2 kids. 3-5x per month. We shoot for once a week, sometimes it doesn't happen, occasionally it happens 2x a week.

This is a big improvement from when the kids were young and I thought we might divorce over it. When dating and honeymooners, we were 2x a day.

[Anonymous]

Used to be every day with my man... now, married 14 yrs, once every 6 months? Once I initiate. I realllllllllly miss it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:10 - 15 times per year. Early 40s, together about 20 years, two kids in their early teens.

Same, but our kids are upper elementary. I seem more unhappy about this than DH, but I think it is also my fault that we are in this situation because for many years I was uncomfortable/repressed sexually and didn't really enjoy it that much. I finally decided I really needed to get over my hangups and started to figure out what would make me excited about sex and read some things about what my rebuffing was probably doing to him. I have tried to reverse the damage by apologizing, reassuring that I am up for it, will enthusiastically say YES when he initiates, but I think the damage has been done. So now I have to be the one to initiate whenever I want sex. He always responds positively, but the fact that he never (and I'm not exaggerating here...it's NEVER!) initiates makes me feel very undesired. I guess it's payback in a way. But it's miserable to think that this is how it's going to go until the end of time. I love my husband, but I wish I had known the damage I was doing to his confidence and feelings of desirability early on in our marriage. If I had realized the full extent of it, instead of being caught up in my own insecurities and stunted by my own sexual repression, I think it could have saved our sex life. Now, who knows...

I'm the PP you're responding to. I'm the DH & I almost never initiate -- and that is due to my DW's rejections. I obviously can't speak for your DH, but my recommendation would be to keep talking to him about the change in your thinking, that you recognize you weren't receptive to his advances in the earlier years, but that you believe you would be receptive now & really want him to initiate. I don't know how often you've already had these conversations, but I expect it would probably take several.

In my case, I guess there has been some damage to my confidence, but the main thing is that I don't want charity sex. My wife only seems to enjoy sex when she initiates -- because she has to get in the right head space before she wants sex. I'm sure she'd like me to initiate (forcefully would be my guess) once she's gotten herself in the right frame of mind, but the odds of me guessing correctly at that 20 minute window during any given month are pretty small. So, she has to initiate. That said, if she told me she wanted me to initiate, I'd love to initiate and get an enthusiastic response.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:10 - 15 times per year. Early 40s, together about 20 years, two kids in their early teens.

Same, but our kids are upper elementary. I seem more unhappy about this than DH, but I think it is also my fault that we are in this situation because for many years I was uncomfortable/repressed sexually and didn't really enjoy it that much. I finally decided I really needed to get over my hangups and started to figure out what would make me excited about sex and read some things about what my rebuffing was probably doing to him. I have tried to reverse the damage by apologizing, reassuring that I am up for it, will enthusiastically say YES when he initiates, but I think the damage has been done. So now I have to be the one to initiate whenever I want sex. He always responds positively, but the fact that he never (and I'm not exaggerating here...it's NEVER!) initiates makes me feel very undesired. I guess it's payback in a way. But it's miserable to think that this is how it's going to go until the end of time. I love my husband, but I wish I had known the damage I was doing to his confidence and feelings of desirability early on in our marriage. If I had realized the full extent of it, instead of being caught up in my own insecurities and stunted by my own sexual repression, I think it could have saved our sex life. Now, who knows...

I'm the PP you're responding to. I'm the DH & I almost never initiate -- and that is due to my DW's rejections. I obviously can't speak for your DH, but my recommendation would be to keep talking to him about the change in your thinking, that you recognize you weren't receptive to his advances in the earlier years, but that you believe you would be receptive now & really want him to initiate. I don't know how often you've already had these conversations, but I expect it would probably take several.

In my case, I guess there has been some damage to my confidence, but the main thing is that I don't want charity sex. My wife only seems to enjoy sex when she initiates -- because she has to get in the right head space before she wants sex. I'm sure she'd like me to initiate (forcefully would be my guess) once she's gotten herself in the right frame of mind, but the odds of me guessing correctly at that 20 minute window during any given month are pretty small. So, she has to initiate. That said, if she told me she wanted me to initiate, I'd love to initiate and get an enthusiastic response.

THIS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm jealous of some of you.

38 y/o male, married 15 years, 2 kids ages 6 and 4. Both my DW and I are fit and attractive. I probably try to initiate 4x per week, but we wind up having sex 3 times per two weeks. Sometimes it is twice in a short time span (ie. Thurs and Sat night), but then we'll go 10 days or even 2 weeks without.

It has been a big issue at times in our marriage, and when the kids were smaller we went as long as 2-3 months without at times (and I'm not talking postpartum). I was very resentful after being turned down sometimes every night for literally weeks on end.

Generally when we have sex it is very high quality, and she is adventurous. However, with the drop in libido since kids, and the changes in her body from childbirth (she has had some pelvic wall issues), she's had some physical and psychological sexual dysfunction, which has been part of the issue. Lack of desire, lack of enjoyment during the act, mood swings, inability to orgasm, etc.

Sex in our 20's was great, frequent, and she would orgasm as easily as a guy.

Part of the issue for us is that we both work long hours in high powered jobs (consulting and finance) with lots of stress and business travel, and she gets up early and is generally worn out at night. The kids also get sick at school and bring it home, getting one of us sick, and my wife won't have sex while either of us are sick.

It used to be when we would go out to parties / concerts / with friends we would always have sex at the end of the night. Now a late night with alcohol means she is too exhausted when she gets back.

Sounds like you might have some disposable income. Hopefully, you have family that is available and might be willing to watch the kids. If so, plan 3-4 adult only getaways a year. One of them needs to be a week (somewhere tropical in January/Feb tends to have an aphrodisiac-like impact) where you simply relax, recover and enjoy each other. Don't attack her the minute you get there. Get a drink, watch the sunset, dip your toes in the water and go out for a romantic dinner. Don't pack pajamas but, again, relax and maybe fall asleep cuddling. Try to read her in the morning but sometimes before dinner that night, maybe you could see how she reacts to an "innocent touch". Once she relaxes, it will come back and you can enjoy your time. The other trips can be long weekends to easy to get to locations. Once she starts to associate the vacations with relaxing and enjoying each other, she will be initiating as much as you.

For the week away, make sure it's a week where the kids have school every day but minimal after school activity. If you make it easy and enjoyable for the grandparents, they'll be asking you when they can do it again instead of you bugging them.

Appreciate the feedback. This is pretty much what we do. We take multiple vacations annually, including internationally, and try to do several of them per year without the kids. Some of the adult only trips are long weekends (NYC, Vegas, Miami) some are week-long vacations (did a week skiing out west earlier this year, went to Spain last year). I literally, mere minutes ago, booked a week in Santorini next month for the two of us, with business-class air each way (so it should be relaxing). Both sets of grandparents are retired and love watching the kids.

Sex happens much more often on these trips, and is often very high quality (the best sex since kids has pretty much always been on vacation). In the past, there were accusations that I only cared about sex when on the trips, but we're past that now. However, once we return it feels like we fall back into a rut, and she's stressed, exhausted, etc.

I believe sex is like working out. You have to kind of just do it / power through it until your body gets used to it, then you crave it. Every time we get in a good place (maybe 3x per week) something will happen to derail it; either a week long work trip for one or the other of us, a sick kid, or just work stress.

A previous poster wrote about the effect a DW constantly rejecting her DH has on his psyche. This is true. It leads to resentment, too much reliance on self-pleasure by the guy, building up walls to avoid getting hurt, etc. Things are much better now than they were just 2 years ago, but it was hard, especially traveling all over the world and being exposed to women who literally threw themselves at me. I never cheated, or even so much as kissed anyone.

Still, I have told her I would like to get back to every 2-3 days reliably, which was pretty much the minimum amount of sex we had in our 20's.

[Anonymous]

Married 15 years. About once per year. She wonders why I'm so cranky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

In my case, I guess there has been some damage to my confidence, but the main thing is that I don't want charity sex. My wife only seems to enjoy sex when she initiates -- because she has to get in the right head space before she wants sex. I'm sure she'd like me to initiate (forcefully would be my guess) once she's gotten herself in the right frame of mind, but the odds of me guessing correctly at that 20 minute window during any given month are pretty small. So, she has to initiate. That said, if she told me she wanted me to initiate, I'd love to initiate and get an enthusiastic response.

I'm the PP who is taking his wife to Santorini next month. This is my situation as well, although maybe not quite as bad. I hate charity sex, and sometimes I'll initiate, try to turn her on for 20 minutes (oral, massaging, foreplay, etc) and she'll get frustrated, snap at me that it's not working, that she's broken, and turn over.

We try to flirt and act sexual with each other even when not actively having sex, which I think is important. So we'll exchange a steamy kiss when we get home, we'll flirt all night, I'll give the kids their bath, read them their story, put both to bed, but she'll be too tired after that.

On weekends, I push for quickies during nap time, but she always wants to get things done / run errands. I think she's going to have to give on this, as I think you have to get it when you can, especially with a spouse that has a hard time getting / staying in the mood or keeping energy levels up. My other issue is she constantly talks about how tired she is at night, but then works out at 5:30am constantly. Further, she claims to hate morning sex...