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[quote=Anonymous]I have what seems to be a fairly common situation. After two kids, the frequency of our sex life dropped quite a bit. For a long time, it didn't bother me overly much - the stresses of early childhood kill the libido. Not a big problem. Then, when those stresses decreased but our sex life didn't increase again, I didn't say anything and would let the resentment build. We'd have our once-a-month sex, and the resentment would subside for awhile. Rinse. Repeat.

Then, this year, after one stretch where we went two months without sex, I brought it up. Kids are 6 and 8, I felt like I'd been patient for long enough. That made her sad, but things picked up. During the talk, she mentioned things I did that didn't help - sometimes, in her perception, I didn't help enough around the house; I stressed her about spending money. Things were busy. Etc. But, like I said things picked up. I stepped up my helpfulness. I resolved not to bitch about money. But, even so. Here we are again - sex twice this month. Maybe things will bounce back. But, maybe we're just back to me being silent and us not having sex. So, I brought it up again. Now she's sad that I'm getting weird about sex again. Says maybe the problem is that I'm keeping count. That's scarier to me than her having a list of reasons (even though, I guess, turns out those "reasons" may have been more along the lines of excuses.) Now the real issue isn't the lack of sex but my noticing it. Now she says by me mentioning it, she'll be too stressed out about sex because she won't feel free to decline when she's not in the mood. Which is absolutely not what I want. To paraphrase Cheap Trick, I want her to want me when you get down to it. The reason I have been keeping track of frequency is because I know that, if I didn't have some numbers to back me up and then expressed dissatisfaction with frequency, she'd just refuse to believe that our frequency was low.  (Incidentally, when I asked her how much she thought would be a good number, she said once a week. Which wouldn't be that awful to me - I'm thinking more like twice per week - if it really was 1x/week that she made time for it and got into it. But, if the stars don't align perfectly, seems like we're really talking about once every two - three weeks. Assuming no negative relationship issues - in which case we'll probably drop to month-six week range.)

It's gotten to where I get my hackles up about her discretionary activities - exercising, gardening, going above and beyond for the kids - not because I mind her doing these things (I think they are excellent activities) but because I get jealous that she can't be bothered to put that much effort into our sex life. And what's especially frustrating is that, other than the sex, we have an excellent marriage; get along well, see eye-to-eye on most things, great kids, no serious money troubles.

So, I guess what I'm wondering, is there any way to have a discussion about sexual dissatisfaction that is productive and not coercive to the other spouse? Do these discussions ever work?[/quote]

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