Reply to s/o: sexless marriages, did you know this happens often?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think maybe some of the surprise comes from the way it's portrayed versus the reality of how it comes to pass.

Most of the reason for the decline in sex is that people get bored, and women get bored more quickly than men for mostly biological reasons. Nobody's fault.

The way it gets portrayed blames it on women being asexual generally, causing women to say "hey! We like sex!" and on men becoming out of shape, thoughtless dopes. Guys say "hey! I'm still in pretty good shape and I pull my weight at home."

Since the individuals don't fall into the stereotypical tropes usually thought of as causing the sexlessness, they think that won't happen to their marriages. But, biology is biology, so it happens anyway, and they're surprised. [/quote]

This, but also -- it's variable! I think people freak out about the drop off in sex when kids enter the picture. [b]But it's not the end.[/b] Things change a lot when kids are old enough to be a little independent, when they can go do sleep overs or attend birthday parties on their own. And then again when they get to high school and are out of the house even more. It's constantly evolving.

There is a period of time when parents are maximally exhausted and have very little time to themselves, plus women go through a lot of physical and hormonal changes around childbirth that can impact their libidos. it's all normal. But if partners are committed and willing to try (and keep talking to each other about it), it will come back, and can even come back in surprising and exciting ways that satisfy the desire for novelty.

So often when people talk about unhappiness in marriage, I think they are getting stuck in short-term thinking. Of course your short-term happiness matters. But people will CAUSE short-term unhappiness by assuming that everything that is happening right now is a permanent circumstance. They look at money constraints and decide they will never resolve. They look at stress or family dynamics when a new baby comes and think their connection to their partner is forever deteriorated. And so on.

The only thing permanent about marriage is the marriage itself (if you let it be). Trust in the commitment and make everything else negotiable, changeable. Experiment. As long as you make those choices together and keep lines of communication open, the specifics are actually a lot less important than you think.[/quote]

In retrospect, I was too understanding about the drop off in sex when the kids were little. I didn't push the issue because I thought it was just a phase. It wasn't until about 8 years later, when our youngest was in school full time, that it became clear that our sex life wasn't going to bounce back. I tried making it priority then, but it was too late. Our sex life is never coming back. [/quote]

[b]Did you talk to your spouse about it, when the drop off happened? Did you talk about it as it continued? Did you talk about it when your youngest was in school full time?[/b]

Sex really dropped off for us after our first was born. But we talked about it. We talked about why it was happening (some of it was libido, some of it was just exhaustion and time). And we kept checking in. One thing that became really important was maintaining physical intimacy even when we weren't having sex for whatever reason -- cuddling, kissing, holding hands, etc. That way, when libidos shifted back into high gear, we didn't have to start from scratch.

I don't think kids kill of sex lives. I think the inability to talk about lack of sex (or anything going on in your marriage that is making one or both partners unhappy) is what does it. That's what it means to "grow apart."[/quote]

No, not really, and yes.

1. When the drop off happened was pregnancy and child birth. I didn't talk about it then, because there was nothing to talk about. It's perfectly normal for sex to go in the tank.

2. During the toddler years, I said stuff like "we should do this more often" when we eventually did get around to sex. But I didn't directly say that I thought it was a problem because toddlers are tough, and I'd heard that sex bounces back when the kids got to school.

3. When our sex life didn't bounce back, I talked to her about it, and I ended up getting a vasectomy and she went off birth control. That didn't change anything. We talked about it again, she said she wanted to want sex, but she just didn't. We talked about it again, and she got super upset and told me that she had horrible body image issues and all she could think about when we had sex was how repulsive she thought she was. No amount of reassurance on my part can make a dent in that. Bringing it up makes her very sad and makes our sex life even worse.

So, that's that. [/quote]

Wow, your experience was exactly mine, right down to my getting a vasectomy and her going off the pill and that still made no difference.  Only difference is my wife is in great shape. Just completely asexual since kids came and we are down to 6x a year, maybe

She's tolde she would understand if I cheat and doesn't want to know.  Women know their husbands aren't going to be faithful like this[/quote]

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